Fresh, crisp, clear municipal water
by Geoff Whiting
Issue date: 7/31/07 Section: Opinion
This column titled "From the Tap" was named with some illusion to the drinking that permeates our college life. I have to thank Coca-Cola and Pepsi though; they've given me the chance to relate my title to everyone.
Thank you for your bottled water.
I'm looking at the little bottle of Dasani sitting on my desk, reading the words at the top that say "Purified Water." I used to think this meant they started with a good, clean water source and ran it through a filter while they added minerals. Well, Dasani, you got me. Aquafina, the number one selling bottled water in our country, and Dasani, the number two, both bottle their water from the municipal water supply, according to the AP.
Tap water.
I can see it now, some guy starts off in his basement with a sink, a bunch of clear plastic bottles and a dream. He can make a fortune off selling this to you at a high price while he pays a ridiculously low price. His American dream.
I'm sure they all have a great legal defense, because they don't actually tell us their sources on the bottle. Aquafina has those lovely mountains on its label; we all just assume that the water must come from some pure, mountain stream.
Like kids flocking to candy, we have gotten in the car with strangers for what was supposed to be just some clean, healthy water. We didn't expect to be taken for a ride and mistreated.
The thing is, these guys weren't supposed to be strangers who would swindle our money from us. They are Pepsi and Coca-Cola. They're the companies that we see advertised everywhere, which we can buy anywhere, and for a lot of us have always been around. Last year, Americans spent about $9 billion on bottled water according to ACNielsen.
This stuff feels personal. It is like waking up to find an old friend stealing money from your wallet.
Nestle is rumored to be dropping the price of its water by around 8 to 9 percent, and it is safe to bet that Pepsi and Coca-Cola will be following suit. So, at least they will be stealing less while you sleep.
I'm ending this column and these summer rants in the same way I began the rest, with something from the tap. This time, as the ice makes that sweet clink and the glass begins to fill, I propose a toast to my faucet. If it's good enough for Dasani, it's good enough for me.
Identity theft made easy
by Geoff Whiting
Issue date: 7/24/07 Section: Opinion
Were you enrolled in 10th grade between 2001 and 2003 or did you work for a public Louisiana college or university in either 2000 or 2001? If you did, someone you don't know might have a nine-digit number you hold very dear.
The Louisiana Board of Regents had a list of more than 80,000 names and Social Security numbers displayed on a publicly accessible Web site. If that number wasn't enough, the list also had birth dates and addresses.
In the days of rampant identity theft, the Louisiana Board of Regents put all this information on display for anyone to find if they searched well. The best part is they had absolutely no idea they were doing it.
WDSU-TV in New Orleans broke the story a week ago.
WDSU's source, Aaron Titus, said he "found the open door to the Board of Regents internal network using Google."
Titus also found about 150 other online lists that contain more than 75,000 additional names and social security numbers, according to WDSU.
Honestly, what on Earth are these people doing? We've all filled out the school forms and college applications and jumped through all the hoops. In the era of identity theft, we still give up our sacred nine digits, in the hope that schools have our best interests at heart.
In its statement, the board said, "The Board of Regents is working to notify the potentially affected people and has set up a Web site to advise them of ways to protect their privacy."
Apparently they are going to contact everyone whose information they gave out, that way they can make sure they have updated addresses on them. Why not make it something for everyone, even those that weren't directly affected, and why not actually make it public knowledge that some people might be at risk?
Oh and how about not making it a Web site. You guys don't seem to have much luck with those.
There is some light at the end of this dark, moronic tunnel. Within a few hours of notification, the Board of Regents did correct the problem and made a statement admitting fault.
We're just left hoping that it was enough. This stuff has been out there for quite a while, and a guy found it with Google. Protect yourselves, boys and girls.
Our generation's mob is going to be on the Internet, and they are going to love sites like that.
Money, apology cannot replace victims' innocence
More than 500 victims of Roman Catholic Church
by Geoff Whiting
Issue date: 7/17/07 Section: Opinion
On Sunday, Cardinal Roger Mahony, leader of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, apologized to more than 500 victims of sexual abuse by archdiocese priests.
This apology came the day before jury selection in the lawsuit filed by those victims was set to begin.
It makes you wonder - why settle and apologize now? Were they not sorry enough before to accept responsibility and at least attempt to compensate for the damage they have caused?
It seems like there is some criteria that has to be met before they admit to any wrongdoing.
"Whether you give me a check for $10 or $10,000, where can I take that check and cash it at some place to make me 10 years old again?" said Steve Sanchez, one of the plaintiffs.
"There really is no way to go back and give them the innocence that was taken from them," Mahony admitted during the press conference.
As part of the settlement, the Los Angeles archdiocese had to release documents showing the knowledge and coverup of these actions.
Priests accused of such misconduct were sent to therapy, transferred to other parishes, or simply took sick leave.
The most disturbing part is many were allowed to continue as ministers for years after these accusations.
The archdiocese handed over proof that they knew about this, and that they've known about these allegations.
Along with an apology, Mahony gave some details about the $660 million that will be paid to the plaintiffs.
Nearly $227 million will come from insurance and $60 million will come from Catholic orders named in the complaints.
Still, $373 million will come from the church.
While the church had to sell some buildings to help raise this money, I'm sure not getting taxed on your income helped them out a bit.
Mahony admitted not everyone is going to be "satisfied" with the outcome, though he added that these complaints have led and are leading to reforms within the church, including attempts to protect parishioners from future abuse.
"Even though I can't restore what was lost, there is good that has come out of this," he said concerning these reforms.
In his position, he needed to find a bright side, but saying that any "good" has come from this is pretty sickening.
The victims of this abuse need a lot more than an apology and a lump sum to make up for what has happened to them.
They need a way to get their feeling of safety back, and that is something the church seems unable to do.
N-word burial will not be effective
by Geoff Whiting
Issue date: 7/12/07 Section: Opinion
The NAACP buried the N-word at its 98th annual convention on Monday.
A simple pine casket was brought about a quarter mile to Hart Plaza in Detroit. It was adorned with a single bouquet of fake black roses and surrounded by people calling out against what was symbollicaly inside.
"Today we're not just burying the n-word; we're taking it out of our spirit," Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said.
In 1944, the NAACP held a funeral for Jim Crow, and they are hopeful that this funeral will be as successful.
By burying the n-word, the NAACP hopes to start a move towards a more positive self-image for young African Americans. We just have to see if this public burial is something that will actually make a difference.
After Michael Richards's outburst on stage and after Don Imus's comment about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, NAACP leaders and others soon challenged blacks and the entertainment industry to stop using such terms.
Take a quick trip down to the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks and see how their previous requests have worked. While the NAACP has said that this move is not an attack on rap or pop culture, it does seem to be an affront to them both.
This is a good start and a noble gesture. I'm just skeptical on how successful it will be, and how pure the intentions behind it are. It seems to be along the lines of declaring a war on a concept. It is really hard to kill or bury something intangible.
A problem the NAACP may face will be some division created by their chief, Julian Bond. In Bond's convention address, he compared the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to a lynching and that it "is resulting in a deliberate effort to dispossess black landholders."
Whether it is Katrina or the n-word, making it a black problem and only a black solution simply won't work. These are things the nation as a whole needs to address and solve.
The problem is that burying a symbol doesn't bury its meaning. To get rid of symbols like the n-word, we have to have a conscious push in the majority of society to call for its removal. We can't depend on an exclusive organization to lead the charge in change for all members of society. If it was a true push for removing the word from our society, representatives from parts of society outside of the NAACP should be present.
Rock star, rocketman duo a good fit for the University
by Geoff Whiting
Issue date: 7/10/07 Section: Opinion
"He's a rock star. He's doing great work," said Lawrence Boyle, University of Massachusetts trustee. He was talking about John Lombardi who will most likely be named our system president this Thursday.
Boyle seems to have Lombardi pegged with the rock star comment. He seems to be very stubborn, have an air of superiority, and his mouth can get him in trouble. That being said, he can repeatedly deliver and sell out a stadium.
He became chief of the University of Florida in 1990, and gained support from the students and alumni for increasing the school's academic standings. He also became known for his outbursts whenever he disagreed with almost anything or anyone. He became infamous for calling Adam Hebert, State University System chancellor, an "oreo" at a private dinner party. This became public and hoopla ensued.
But before you get out the pitchforks and torches, Lombardi did apologize. Both he and Hebert have said the whole thing is behind them.
He resigned after giving four administrators pay increases of at least $25,000 without getting approval from the regents or chancellor. Sounds a bit like good ol' boy politics, so maybe he will fit nicely here.
From there he went over to UMass in 2002, which was about to be hit with a $40 million loss in state funding. He played hatchet man and cut programs and laid off workers, while doing the ever-popular raising of student fees.
I know that makes me cringe a little, but Lombardi also pushed UMass away from reliance on state funds. He created the UMass Amherst Foundation, which has raised about $144 million in private funds.
"Dr. Lombardi does not enjoy working within the university system," said Stephen Uhlfelder, University of Florida chairman of the Board of Regents. I'm left looking at that quote wondering if it is a bad thing.
Our Board of Supervisors has a Union fee increase on its agenda for July, and, yes, that is the one that 51 percent of us voted against.
"The public is very eager to see tuition cut to the lowest possible level. On the other hand, all the consumers of higher education want the best possible quality," Lombardi said of a tuition increase at the University of Florida. It's true, it's eloquent, and hearing something like that might have inclined more of us to give up a few bucks for a shiny, new union.
He seems to get the job done, despite his rocky past. We already have a rocketman with our beloved Chancellor, so maybe a rock star is right up our alley.
Supreme Court denies racial roulette
by Geoff Whiting
Issue date: 7/3/07 Section: Opinion
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
That was Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s words this past Thursday. The Supreme Court restricted the abilities of public schools to use race as a factor of determining who can attend, potentially causing a great deal of disruption to the integration programs across the nation.
This decision was notably split with heavy opposition on both sides. This is one decision that "the court and the nation will come to regret," Justice Stephen G. Breyer said.
Though it might not seem so, this ruling actually came about not as a motion to keep certain kids out of schools, but to allow children to go to their neighborhood or choice schools and not be turned away because the school had too many of their race already attending.
The decision is an interesting one because it raises the idea of what qualifications we can and should look at in our students. Should we look at race as a defining feature? How about gender, sexual preference or socio-economic backgrounds?
I know people like me in all of those ways, but we are still different - we are still individuals.
Perhaps the trick is to look for patterns that are multifaceted. If a group of students who are of the same race, gender, and economic class, or another set of common, factors are all performing poorly, we can base decisions on that.
If one school has too great of a difference on students across multiple levels, perhaps the district lines for the school can be redrawn to include more of the community.
We are in an era of political correctness, but we cannot let that stand in the way of common sense. If there is a community of white, black, Hispanic, etc. that all tend to go to a community school, it might not be smart to bus them out to other parts of the city in the name of diversity.
I went to schools with temporary buildings, sometimes no air conditioning, cracked walls, and I know a fair amount of you did too. These problems existed regardless of the percentage of different races in the school.
We cannot let our public schools decay in front of us, we cannot praise some and refuse to fix others. We need to repair all of our schools, and not ever be shown a statistic on race when it comes to where we are putting our money.
No 'vroom' at the inn
by Geoff Whiting
Issue date: 6/26/07 Section: Opinion
Ever wonder what Jesus would do if he were in the driver seat when that SUV cut you off? Now we may have a little insight.
Two weeks ago, the Vatican issued the Drivers' Ten Commandments, which sadly did not originate with the majesty of the previous 10.
The interesting thing about this coming out of the thousand car Vatican City is that it has not seen an accident in about a year and a half. It is good that the church recognizes some of problems of its people, but do we need a decree to tell us not to drive like idiots?
"You shall not kill," tops the list off, making its way up from sixth on the original ten. In a move to modernize, "thou" is now "you." I'm sure some like this, but I wonder if we lose the anger and scariness of a faceless wrath which previously commanded a slew of "thou shalt nots."
The rest of the list deals with things like not driving under the influence, helping the victims of accidents and their families, and convincing kids and the "not so young" to not drive.
The list also warns against using your car as "an occasion of sin." So beware, kids on Lovers' Lane, Jesus is watching when you fog up those windows, and he does not like what he sees.
The eighth commandment was actually a really nice touch. It calls for us to bring together guilty motorists and the victims to heal.
While it seems like this reunion would either happen in court or be accompanied by another brawl, hopefully they have it right.
The ninth and tenth are a tag team that could have really been the only two - "On the road, protect the more vulnerable party. Feel responsible towards others."
These two capture a big part of how poorly we all drive. I'm guilty, as are most of us, of driving like a jerk, especially after someone else does. So maybe if we kept these few things in mind, the roads might be slightly less frustrating.
We should not need some outside institution to tell us not to drive like idiots, but we drive so poorly that it has come to this. Maybe now we can look to other areas to improve, before the Ten Commandments of Drunken Screaming gets sent our way.
Genes do not replace personal responsibility
From the tap
by Geoff Whiting
Issue date: 6/19/07 Section: Opinion
Happiness, aggression, anxiety, intelligence? Yeah, there's a gene for that.
Thanks mostly to the 2005 Human Genome Project, 92 percent of the human genome is mapped and considered "pragmatically complete." This means we can start to determine what those genes influence.
Genetics may show motivation, but we can't leave accountability behind in its wake. In the '70s, several defendants tried to use genetic research to negate their guilt, which was uniformly rejected by the courts.
The National Institute of Mental Health helped to identify the "aggression gene" and also linked that gene to impulsive violence and emotion regulation in 2006.
Also in 2006, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research uncovered evidence of a gene that appears to influence intelligence. They discovered that the dysbindin-1 gene is linked to general intelligence, as well as the prominence of schizophrenia.
Google the word "gene" or any characteristic, and you're likely to come across a scientific article that explains which gene controls it.
Discover Magazine is the latest outlet for this gene debate. Michael Abrams, biology columnist, brings up the idea of a gay gene in its June 2007 issue. He speaks of a gene believed to be linked to homosexuality in men but also to fertility in women. He said, "the environment a child grows up in has nothing to do with what makes most gay men gay."
But researcher Brian Mustanski, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said, "since sexual orientation is such a complex trait… it's going to be a combination of various genes acting together as well as possibly interacting with environmental influences."
They both show correlation, not causality. Our scientific community does not know enough about genetics to say that a specific gene can cause a specific behavior or characteristic.
This debate will continue. Some people are calling for further research and others calling for cessation. Some people are even looking to research to point to a "cure," a gene we can turn off and on to control the traits of our kids.
Humanity is like Christopher Columbus when it comes to genetics - making new smaller discoveries and on the cusp of making something great but with great potential to make mistakes. We can't yet reach a point where we use genetics to explain behavior. We can say that things are more likely to happen, but we can't ignore personal responsibility.
Buying textbooks is a tricky business
by Geoff Whiting
Issue date: 6/12/07 Section: Opinion
Textbooks will eat your soul.
Well, not your soul so much as your wallet. I dropped about $550 for a spring intersession class and another $150 on textbooks, and I must say the light-weight feeling of my wallet is a little disheartening.
Walking up to the counter with your armful of books, your heart drops because you know that when the books are rung up, Ramen will become a larger part of your diet. College Board, the testing group that has brought us gems like the SAT and AP tests reported book costs for the 2005-2006 academic year ranged from $801 to $904 per student.
Seriously.
Now, as much as I do like to complain about our bookstores, I stumbled across something that made me wonder if my grumbling is truly justified. The National Association of College Stores, which puts out an "FAQ on College Textbooks," said after paying all the expenses of buying from the publisher and store operations, "a college store makes about four cents for every dollar's worth of new textbooks sold." So, the LSU Bookstore made a whopping six-dollar profit off me.
I think I may have misplaced my anger. It seems like my wrath should be visited upon the publishers rather than the awkward woman who can only give me five bucks during buyback. I had the brilliant idea a few semesters back to buy my books online and stick it to the man. You see, the international English versions of textbooks are often a good bit cheaper-some even 25 percent cheaper according to the NACS. I enjoyed the money I saved and was proud of my defiance against those who were plundering my bank account.
But I was played.
The reason those books are so cheap on the Internet is because the United States book publishers sell them abroad to wholesalers at hugely-discounted rates. They still have my money.
These prices grow at twice the rate of inflation and wonder how we can pull off affording our books with our impressive paying jobs. Not everyone comes here with tons of cash. There are laws people are trying to pass, groups urging teachers to chose cheaper books and many people begging publishers to drop costs. They haven't gone far. Until things change, I'm going to keep buying my books on the Internet, checking them out from the library or borrowing them from classmates. I urge you to do the same.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Nokia and Friends To Wage Mobile War On Everyone Els
From The Online Reporter Edition # 573
Publication Period January 26 through February 1, 2008
Nokia and Friends To Wage Mobile War On Everyone Else
“Nokia estimates that in 2010, the total Internet services market will be approximately €100 billion ($146 billion),” said Nokia president and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. “Nokia’s goal is to be the world’s number-one in bringing the Internet to mobile devices.”
Nokia has slowly been pushing its way into absolutely every aspect of the industry. Nokia’s VP of sales Chris Dailey said at CES that Nokia intends to become a leader in Internet services for mobile devices. Nokia, he said, shares Xohm’s WiMAX vision of mobilizing the Internet and intends to provide appealing WiMAX-enabled devices.
Nokia and Facebook To Join Forces?
It looks like Nokia and Facebook are working on getting the social site to Nokia’s handsets in a pretty large fashion. This could be as large a move as the iPhone’s YouTube button and also feature Facebook in Nokia’s retail displays, says PaidContent.org.
Rumors abound about this deal, and a big one is that the deal will involve Nokia purchasing a stake in Facebook, much like Microsoft has, according to PaidContent. Facebook has been gathering funds slowly for what seems to be a push towards Europe and a deal with Nokia, the
world’s largest cell phone maker, would dramatically increase its global distribution. These rumors seem to have an air of plausibility because of the players involved. Nokia is fighting against Apple and the iPhone, which features a YouTube button and uses Google as its default search engine. With this move, Nokia puts itself into direct competition with Google, which it soon would have faced anyway in the realm of handsets.
The Nokia Squad and The Google Gang:
If Nokia gets Facebook, it also gets Microsoft. Microsoft, which has a deal to do Facebook’s US advertising until 2011, recently beat out Google for its advertising outside the US, mainly because Microsoft bought some of Facebook’s shares. Nokia has been tacking on other mobile services and partners for a while, from Ovi’s social site Mosh to Sony Pictures and CNN adding videos to Nokia’s repertoire and Universal’s music catalog. Nokia bought the digital map company Navteq for $8.1 billion last October to revamp and improve Nokia Maps. Nokia has been locking horns lately with content providers though; Orange and Warner Music both recently refused to support Nokia’s Music Store.
Google’s online services team has its Internet herald YouTube, Apple and its iPhone with four million units sold, MySpace which Google paid News Corp $900 million to handle its advertising for three years and Google’s search engine that is often the default for mobile and PC browsers and is a search engine you have most likely already used this morning.
Social Sites: Destination Mobile
MySpace and Facebook have been battling it out since Facebook hit the college scene. MySpace has cornered the market, enough so that News Corp bought Intermix Media in 2005 for $770 million in cash and thus acquired MySpace. Google serves as the main search engine for MySpace and has already proved to be mobile friendly.
Last October, MySpace received around 75% of US traffic for social networking sites and Facebook reached around 15%, according to the Web tracker Hitwise.
MySpace has already made its way to the mobile world. It is offering things like sending and receiving messages and friend requests, commenting on pictures and profiles, posting bulletins, blogging and searching the site. It’s up and running with two versions available, one received through a subscription for about $3 a month and the accessed through MySpace Mobile Web beta, a free WAP version that is ad supported. MySpace has controls over most applications, usually either shutting down or buying them, on its site and these controls definitely made a move to mobile a bit smoother.
Facebook officially launched its Facebook Platform for its Internet site back in May of 2007. Facebook is unusually open to developers and encourages them, so not only do developers get access to Facebook’s 20 million users, Facebook has become a rich platform for third party applications. If its platform is such that the applications can be easily shifted to and viewed on mobile devices, Facebook is poised to explode past MySpace in the mobile market. MySpace has joined Google’s OpenSocial – and Anti-Facebook – Alliance that provides a platform for developers to write one set of code for multiple social networks. Facebook leads in sheer numbers of third party applications, but Alliance members hope to gain an edge with the addition of MySpace. If this deal goes through and Facebook looks good and is easy to use, users will buy Nokia mobiles just for Facebook.
Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said, “One of the things to say, very clearly, is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real. If you are of a certain age, you sort of dismiss this as a college kids or teenagers thing. But it is very real.”
Nokia Spars with Google and Apple Over Mobile Apps
This isn’t Nokia’s first dance with mobile applications. The Nokia Music Store aims to provide an experience to rival iTunes. The portal features major labels, independent and local artists’ music for both streaming and purchasing. Users can purchase individual tracks or full-length albums.
Nokia maps is a free application, though it cost Nokia over $8 billion, that comes with zooming and route planning from just about anywhere. Nokia maps also comes with voice-guided navigation for devices with built-in or external GPS modules and purchasable city guides. Google maps is perhaps better known more widely used, but it is now paired very directly with Apple in the minds of consumers thanks to the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Google will undoubtedly remain a strong force in both searching and map functions, but now Nokia has the opportunity to advertise itself as an alternative to Google and as a more complete alternative to Apple’s iPhone.
The Video Game
YouTube is the unrivaled champ in online video and has the chance to be the same with mobile video. It is the unanswered feature that will keep Google’s gang one-step ahead. YouTube is thought of as user generated content (UGC) but has moved far beyond that to create Internet heroes and display professional content. Google’s Eric Schmidt said, “This is the next step in the evolution of the Internet.” Nokia’s best shot at getting in this game is enabling Flash on its handsets, which is something Apple does not do, and making sure the market knows that it’s YouTube-compatible.
If a user goes off looking for valid competition to YouTube, he probably won’t be back for quite some time; however here is a brief rundown of some:
* Eyespot – It’s an easy to use, colorful video uploading site with some community features. It allows video “mixing” but the quality is YouTube-esque at best and is a very rigid process. With a “100MB” limit and some of their “Most Popular” videos with views in the mere 30s, there’s no reason to come over here from YouTube.
* Ourmedia – It started off as “The Global Home for Grassroots Media” but is now “Channels of Creativity.” It used to be the hub for socially conscious and activist videos. Now it is a hub of slow page loads and frustrating interfaces. Oh and about every page we went to after the main page was littered with spam, and yes some of them are promoting YouTube videos.
* Vimeo – It touts “seven billion users who have uploaded over 950 trillion videos.” The sleek application feels more like a well designed Web site than an application with a lot of nice privacy settings. It allows mobile video uploads and allows HD uploads that retain their quality. Due to its privacy features, Vimeo will probably never reach the views of YouTube, but those features will keep users coming back and keep this site booming.
*Google Video and a slew of others – Yes Google Video did exist at one point and then it was soundly beat by YouTube. Now Google Video is a YouTube viewer that provides a few extra ways to filter and sort. There are also countless other sites offering the same thing with mini version of the stardom and following YouTube commands. So, if a user isn’t looking for Diva-status, they’ll be looking at videos over on YouTube.
Google and Yahoo: Search Engine Battle Royale
Google and Yahoo have been squaring off since Google entered the search business and slowly eliminated the need for a phone book. Google and Yahoo both had very different approaches – Google began and stayed much more browser-based using techniques like Ajax, a group of tools used to create interactive web applications, while Yahoo was based more in the semi-proprietary widget world. Yahoo had a chance to edge out Google, as widgets tend to be a bit more flexible and Google did have some major challenges in converting its resources to a mobile compatible state, but Google has thrived, becoming a verb and sitting on the iPhone you have or probably wish you did.
Yahoo has been doing deals with Motorola, LG, Samsung, and Nokia for quite some time now. However, even though Yahoo Go runs on 250+ mobiles, and comes preloaded on some phones made by Motorola, LG, Samsung and Nokia, many carriers in the US remove the software. The New York Times recently reported that “no American carrier offers phones with the Yahoo software installed, forcing American consumers who want to use Yahoo Go to download it themselves.”
Yahoo has no control over any phone’s operating system and its ties with Nokia aren’t nearly as strong as the Google and Apple tie, major obstacles to getting its product out there.
Yahoo has been slowly cutting back and phasing out services, like removing almost all community features from Yahoo 360 and killing Auctions and Ask Yahoo.
Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang said in his blog last October, “we’ve closed Yahoo Podcasts and plan to shut down a number of one-off services, and we’re currently assessing our options.
The big thing to notice here, is that no one really noticed when most of these services began cutting back and dieing off. The recent announcements of coming layoffs might mean the move to mobile proliferation could be a last ditch effort to keep Yahoo from having one foot in the grave.
People Who Live In Windows Houses Shouldn’t Throw Apples
If Nokia and Facebook do come together, Microsoft coming along for the ride is a safe bet. Microsoft currently handles Facebook’s ads in and outside of the US. Microsoft bought about 1.6% of the Facebook stock to the tune of $240 million. Google also saw the opportunity here and the ad giant bid for a stake of Facebook.
With Google and Apple partnering up in a big way for the iPhone and iPod Touch, there could have very easily been a Facebook button if Google had won the bid.
Microsoft picked up Facebook to improve its standings in the Web markets and Apple seems to be in Google and thus MySpace’s corner, even if behind the scenes. If this all goes well, Windows might even pick up the Nokia Music Store for its mobile OS in order to beat out iTunes that currently has a limited availability. Now that the iPhone and Windows mobile are taking root in the world mobile markets, the clash of these Titans can be expected to bleed over into the social networking world.
Publication Period January 26 through February 1, 2008
Nokia and Friends To Wage Mobile War On Everyone Else
“Nokia estimates that in 2010, the total Internet services market will be approximately €100 billion ($146 billion),” said Nokia president and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. “Nokia’s goal is to be the world’s number-one in bringing the Internet to mobile devices.”
Nokia has slowly been pushing its way into absolutely every aspect of the industry. Nokia’s VP of sales Chris Dailey said at CES that Nokia intends to become a leader in Internet services for mobile devices. Nokia, he said, shares Xohm’s WiMAX vision of mobilizing the Internet and intends to provide appealing WiMAX-enabled devices.
Nokia and Facebook To Join Forces?
It looks like Nokia and Facebook are working on getting the social site to Nokia’s handsets in a pretty large fashion. This could be as large a move as the iPhone’s YouTube button and also feature Facebook in Nokia’s retail displays, says PaidContent.org.
Rumors abound about this deal, and a big one is that the deal will involve Nokia purchasing a stake in Facebook, much like Microsoft has, according to PaidContent. Facebook has been gathering funds slowly for what seems to be a push towards Europe and a deal with Nokia, the
world’s largest cell phone maker, would dramatically increase its global distribution. These rumors seem to have an air of plausibility because of the players involved. Nokia is fighting against Apple and the iPhone, which features a YouTube button and uses Google as its default search engine. With this move, Nokia puts itself into direct competition with Google, which it soon would have faced anyway in the realm of handsets.
The Nokia Squad and The Google Gang:
If Nokia gets Facebook, it also gets Microsoft. Microsoft, which has a deal to do Facebook’s US advertising until 2011, recently beat out Google for its advertising outside the US, mainly because Microsoft bought some of Facebook’s shares. Nokia has been tacking on other mobile services and partners for a while, from Ovi’s social site Mosh to Sony Pictures and CNN adding videos to Nokia’s repertoire and Universal’s music catalog. Nokia bought the digital map company Navteq for $8.1 billion last October to revamp and improve Nokia Maps. Nokia has been locking horns lately with content providers though; Orange and Warner Music both recently refused to support Nokia’s Music Store.
Google’s online services team has its Internet herald YouTube, Apple and its iPhone with four million units sold, MySpace which Google paid News Corp $900 million to handle its advertising for three years and Google’s search engine that is often the default for mobile and PC browsers and is a search engine you have most likely already used this morning.
Social Sites: Destination Mobile
MySpace and Facebook have been battling it out since Facebook hit the college scene. MySpace has cornered the market, enough so that News Corp bought Intermix Media in 2005 for $770 million in cash and thus acquired MySpace. Google serves as the main search engine for MySpace and has already proved to be mobile friendly.
Last October, MySpace received around 75% of US traffic for social networking sites and Facebook reached around 15%, according to the Web tracker Hitwise.
MySpace has already made its way to the mobile world. It is offering things like sending and receiving messages and friend requests, commenting on pictures and profiles, posting bulletins, blogging and searching the site. It’s up and running with two versions available, one received through a subscription for about $3 a month and the accessed through MySpace Mobile Web beta, a free WAP version that is ad supported. MySpace has controls over most applications, usually either shutting down or buying them, on its site and these controls definitely made a move to mobile a bit smoother.
Facebook officially launched its Facebook Platform for its Internet site back in May of 2007. Facebook is unusually open to developers and encourages them, so not only do developers get access to Facebook’s 20 million users, Facebook has become a rich platform for third party applications. If its platform is such that the applications can be easily shifted to and viewed on mobile devices, Facebook is poised to explode past MySpace in the mobile market. MySpace has joined Google’s OpenSocial – and Anti-Facebook – Alliance that provides a platform for developers to write one set of code for multiple social networks. Facebook leads in sheer numbers of third party applications, but Alliance members hope to gain an edge with the addition of MySpace. If this deal goes through and Facebook looks good and is easy to use, users will buy Nokia mobiles just for Facebook.
Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said, “One of the things to say, very clearly, is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real. If you are of a certain age, you sort of dismiss this as a college kids or teenagers thing. But it is very real.”
Nokia Spars with Google and Apple Over Mobile Apps
This isn’t Nokia’s first dance with mobile applications. The Nokia Music Store aims to provide an experience to rival iTunes. The portal features major labels, independent and local artists’ music for both streaming and purchasing. Users can purchase individual tracks or full-length albums.
Nokia maps is a free application, though it cost Nokia over $8 billion, that comes with zooming and route planning from just about anywhere. Nokia maps also comes with voice-guided navigation for devices with built-in or external GPS modules and purchasable city guides. Google maps is perhaps better known more widely used, but it is now paired very directly with Apple in the minds of consumers thanks to the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Google will undoubtedly remain a strong force in both searching and map functions, but now Nokia has the opportunity to advertise itself as an alternative to Google and as a more complete alternative to Apple’s iPhone.
The Video Game
YouTube is the unrivaled champ in online video and has the chance to be the same with mobile video. It is the unanswered feature that will keep Google’s gang one-step ahead. YouTube is thought of as user generated content (UGC) but has moved far beyond that to create Internet heroes and display professional content. Google’s Eric Schmidt said, “This is the next step in the evolution of the Internet.” Nokia’s best shot at getting in this game is enabling Flash on its handsets, which is something Apple does not do, and making sure the market knows that it’s YouTube-compatible.
If a user goes off looking for valid competition to YouTube, he probably won’t be back for quite some time; however here is a brief rundown of some:
* Eyespot – It’s an easy to use, colorful video uploading site with some community features. It allows video “mixing” but the quality is YouTube-esque at best and is a very rigid process. With a “100MB” limit and some of their “Most Popular” videos with views in the mere 30s, there’s no reason to come over here from YouTube.
* Ourmedia – It started off as “The Global Home for Grassroots Media” but is now “Channels of Creativity.” It used to be the hub for socially conscious and activist videos. Now it is a hub of slow page loads and frustrating interfaces. Oh and about every page we went to after the main page was littered with spam, and yes some of them are promoting YouTube videos.
* Vimeo – It touts “seven billion users who have uploaded over 950 trillion videos.” The sleek application feels more like a well designed Web site than an application with a lot of nice privacy settings. It allows mobile video uploads and allows HD uploads that retain their quality. Due to its privacy features, Vimeo will probably never reach the views of YouTube, but those features will keep users coming back and keep this site booming.
*Google Video and a slew of others – Yes Google Video did exist at one point and then it was soundly beat by YouTube. Now Google Video is a YouTube viewer that provides a few extra ways to filter and sort. There are also countless other sites offering the same thing with mini version of the stardom and following YouTube commands. So, if a user isn’t looking for Diva-status, they’ll be looking at videos over on YouTube.
Google and Yahoo: Search Engine Battle Royale
Google and Yahoo have been squaring off since Google entered the search business and slowly eliminated the need for a phone book. Google and Yahoo both had very different approaches – Google began and stayed much more browser-based using techniques like Ajax, a group of tools used to create interactive web applications, while Yahoo was based more in the semi-proprietary widget world. Yahoo had a chance to edge out Google, as widgets tend to be a bit more flexible and Google did have some major challenges in converting its resources to a mobile compatible state, but Google has thrived, becoming a verb and sitting on the iPhone you have or probably wish you did.
Yahoo has been doing deals with Motorola, LG, Samsung, and Nokia for quite some time now. However, even though Yahoo Go runs on 250+ mobiles, and comes preloaded on some phones made by Motorola, LG, Samsung and Nokia, many carriers in the US remove the software. The New York Times recently reported that “no American carrier offers phones with the Yahoo software installed, forcing American consumers who want to use Yahoo Go to download it themselves.”
Yahoo has no control over any phone’s operating system and its ties with Nokia aren’t nearly as strong as the Google and Apple tie, major obstacles to getting its product out there.
Yahoo has been slowly cutting back and phasing out services, like removing almost all community features from Yahoo 360 and killing Auctions and Ask Yahoo.
Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang said in his blog last October, “we’ve closed Yahoo Podcasts and plan to shut down a number of one-off services, and we’re currently assessing our options.
The big thing to notice here, is that no one really noticed when most of these services began cutting back and dieing off. The recent announcements of coming layoffs might mean the move to mobile proliferation could be a last ditch effort to keep Yahoo from having one foot in the grave.
People Who Live In Windows Houses Shouldn’t Throw Apples
If Nokia and Facebook do come together, Microsoft coming along for the ride is a safe bet. Microsoft currently handles Facebook’s ads in and outside of the US. Microsoft bought about 1.6% of the Facebook stock to the tune of $240 million. Google also saw the opportunity here and the ad giant bid for a stake of Facebook.
With Google and Apple partnering up in a big way for the iPhone and iPod Touch, there could have very easily been a Facebook button if Google had won the bid.
Microsoft picked up Facebook to improve its standings in the Web markets and Apple seems to be in Google and thus MySpace’s corner, even if behind the scenes. If this all goes well, Windows might even pick up the Nokia Music Store for its mobile OS in order to beat out iTunes that currently has a limited availability. Now that the iPhone and Windows mobile are taking root in the world mobile markets, the clash of these Titans can be expected to bleed over into the social networking world.
Myxer Now Reaching 5.5 M Users
From The Online Reporter Edition # 575
Publication Period February 9 through 15, 2008
Myxer Now Reaching 5.5 M Users
Mobile content destination Myxer, the guys who last week jumped over the five million user mark, have again garnered some attention by reaching over 5.5 million users and 12 million downloads a month, and we got to talk to Myxer founder Myk Willis to try and figure out how Myxer did it and where it’s going.
The Foundation And The Facts
“It’s a great time to be in mobile,” said Willis, and his company is proving that. Myxer is an ad-supported pair of Web and mobile sites with mostly free content.
Myxer provides downloadable mobile ringtones, wallpapers and other content from music artist to users.
Myxer currently has over 5.5 million users who have downloaded 50.8 million pieces of content from a catalog of 308,711 items.
Myxer itself charges nothing but it does give artists the option to charge for content – artists must apply for the ability to charge for content. Myxer makes its money predominantly off of page and SMS-text ads and a tiny amount off of the content sold on its site. While Myxer is predominantly music, it also contains some comedy, sports and political content.
Myxer saw 13 million to 14 million downloads in January alone, averaging about 500,000 SMS messages everyday. Myxer has a little over 50% of its user-base as women, and in the market of teenage girls it sees a market penetration of about 2.5%. Myxer currently averages about 800,000 new users per month, with about three times that many unique visitors and attributes the vast majority of its growth to viral growth.
Myxer And Its Artists
The best place to start is the market of Myxer’s birth, independent music artists. These artists, who can reach the loving title MyxerIndies, were introduced into a market that was begging for content. Artists were allowed to and helped to make their content available to mobile devices and then have it provided originally for free. That’s the brilliance, right there.
Myxer took in artists who had no major label affiliation or had no label affiliation of any kind, and put their content into the market for free. Myxer didn’t do this with just 10 guys in the back of a van, it did this with many artists and it continues to do so, with about 13,000 bands.
According to its Web site, a MyxerIndie is a “special designation that we give to artist accounts who ask, and who provide us with some additional information like a website and an artist image.” When an artist becomes a MyxerIndie they can then choose to charge money for their mobile content, and MyxerTones allows each artist to specify the price for each item. One additional advantage is that it enables artists to create and maintain a fan list to reach out to the mobile phones of fans at any time.
With MyxerTags, artists and others can add tags to content on existing Web sites and MySpace music pages that link directly to content. A visitor simply clicks on the tag and then enters his phone number to receive the mobile content.
Artist that sell content get 30% of the retail price for every item sold. According to its Web site, “The rest goes to cover expenses such as PayPal or credit card transaction fees, SMS message delivery, carrier fees, my wife’s growing shoe collection, and the enormous pile of cash we have in the middle of the room here.” As you can probably tell, Myxer feels a little more laid back than most music and mobile distribution sites, probably another reason it’s seen such great success.
Myxer and The Fans
With thousands of artists and labels covered, Myxer users simply sign up for free and search until they find what they’re looking for. Of course, some users won’t be satisfied with the selection, so Myxer offers a remedy through MyxerTones.
With a free MyxerTones account, users can upload pictures and songs to be turned into wallpaper images and ringtones – continuing in its long-standing tradition, Myxer offers both of these services for free. After the content is made to the users liking, it can be sent to his mobile, the only charges coming from his carrier. This service supports WAV, WMA, MP3 and M4A files, but DRM is still a barrier, as the service cannot convert any files with any DRM encryption.
Myxer’s Myk Willis Looking At The Current Industry
To founder Myk Willis, Myxer really falls into the realm of three industries: music, mobile and the Internet. The music industry is an “ugly mess” that has such a distrust of its users, it “can’t be 100% for making the customer happy.” Mobile currently is just “a mess” as it is still stuck in the telecom mindset. The Internet is a beautiful industry that is different everyday. Willis is a fan of this because the openness of the platform allows “anyone with a valuable service [to] reach anyone in the world.”
The goal of Myxer and the goal of the whole industry should be to make “delivering mobile content and services as accessible as delivering it on the Internet.” There is great interest and profit to be had by anyone “aggressively looking to work to build a new economy.”
Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android made their way into the conversation as they always will for months to come, and Willis made an interesting observation: the mobile industry is currently closed standards – think your carriers and even the iPhone – and a move to an open network – think Android and the Open Mobile Alliance – will help everyone eventually but will disrupt the whole market when first introduced.
Willis praised the iPhone as a great “smack upside the head” to carriers by providing an amazing user-interface. The iPhone allows room for tons of content – even more after this week– and takes personalization to an extent never really seen before on mobile. Look for iPhone support in the build next week. On the same token, the iPhone is a closed device in a lot of ways.
Willis is “110% behind an effort for an open platform” for mobiles. The short-term effects of Android and other open systems will be disruptive as waves of devices with these platforms hit the market. Open platforms are great for consumer choice, but there is difficulty for content providers to hit all the phones.
Willis was genuinely excited about almost everything the market has the potential to do, especially when Myxer could be involved. The industry is expanding like crazy in every direction and Myxer has a product that reaches out to countless people. Though just about anyone that was seeing over 13 million downloads in the past month and sitting on a budding market would be over the moon.
The Future: Videos, The UK, and New Partners
The one thing surprisingly not yet mentioned was mobile video. Willis was honest about their approach to video, saying that video support had been available for a long time but only recently did Myxer begin pushing it. Once Myxer began to catalogue and organize its video collection, “The take-off has actually been crazy,” said Willis. Myxer has a service where on its homepage it promotes one piece of content, and recently when that content was a video, it was sent 450 times to mobile phones. Myxer is just getting into the swing of this, but as phones become more capable and data plans more liberal, watch for an explosion here.
Last month, Myxer made its way across the pond and launched its UK site: www.myxer.co.uk. The site and service are virtually the same, though the UK team will focus more on UK independent artists and labels as well as local advertisers. UK Managing Director Ian England said, “We created a business that leverages the best of the Internet and mobile to make digital content simple to share and access anywhere you are.” With the move to the UK, and eventual plans for the rest of Europe, Myxer is looking to make “anywhere you are” as many places as possible.
Willis offered up a taste of the coming expansion by saying there is a deal coming with Iris Distribution, a digital music distribution company for independent labels, saying Myxer will bring the artists and content from Iris to its user base. There were definite hints at other talks and possible deals coming soon, but Myxer and everyone else are on guard when it comes to deals because of a certain music site that went down in flames last week.
One interesting thing to note came from Willis towards the end of the interview: Nokia continually impresses him with how it tries “to get closer to the consumer.” Willis said that Nokia is definitely committed to the same ideal of a Web-style way of doing business. These comments did not seem like hints at a deal or clues to some puzzle to put together before this week’s publication. Willis seemed genuinely happy that other companies are moving towards giving consumers a free and open Internet-like experience on mobile devices.
Maybe that’s the future of the market, companies all working towards the same goal with the user’s experience being priority number one. Market trends are coming out of every possible place imaginable – that anyone with a great service can get it to anyone in the world, a thing Willis mentioned earlier – so maybe Myxer is poised to be the ad-supported source for mobile content. Maybe one day it’ll tackle the realm of MP3s.
Publication Period February 9 through 15, 2008
Myxer Now Reaching 5.5 M Users
Mobile content destination Myxer, the guys who last week jumped over the five million user mark, have again garnered some attention by reaching over 5.5 million users and 12 million downloads a month, and we got to talk to Myxer founder Myk Willis to try and figure out how Myxer did it and where it’s going.
The Foundation And The Facts
“It’s a great time to be in mobile,” said Willis, and his company is proving that. Myxer is an ad-supported pair of Web and mobile sites with mostly free content.
Myxer provides downloadable mobile ringtones, wallpapers and other content from music artist to users.
Myxer currently has over 5.5 million users who have downloaded 50.8 million pieces of content from a catalog of 308,711 items.
Myxer itself charges nothing but it does give artists the option to charge for content – artists must apply for the ability to charge for content. Myxer makes its money predominantly off of page and SMS-text ads and a tiny amount off of the content sold on its site. While Myxer is predominantly music, it also contains some comedy, sports and political content.
Myxer saw 13 million to 14 million downloads in January alone, averaging about 500,000 SMS messages everyday. Myxer has a little over 50% of its user-base as women, and in the market of teenage girls it sees a market penetration of about 2.5%. Myxer currently averages about 800,000 new users per month, with about three times that many unique visitors and attributes the vast majority of its growth to viral growth.
Myxer And Its Artists
The best place to start is the market of Myxer’s birth, independent music artists. These artists, who can reach the loving title MyxerIndies, were introduced into a market that was begging for content. Artists were allowed to and helped to make their content available to mobile devices and then have it provided originally for free. That’s the brilliance, right there.
Myxer took in artists who had no major label affiliation or had no label affiliation of any kind, and put their content into the market for free. Myxer didn’t do this with just 10 guys in the back of a van, it did this with many artists and it continues to do so, with about 13,000 bands.
According to its Web site, a MyxerIndie is a “special designation that we give to artist accounts who ask, and who provide us with some additional information like a website and an artist image.” When an artist becomes a MyxerIndie they can then choose to charge money for their mobile content, and MyxerTones allows each artist to specify the price for each item. One additional advantage is that it enables artists to create and maintain a fan list to reach out to the mobile phones of fans at any time.
With MyxerTags, artists and others can add tags to content on existing Web sites and MySpace music pages that link directly to content. A visitor simply clicks on the tag and then enters his phone number to receive the mobile content.
Artist that sell content get 30% of the retail price for every item sold. According to its Web site, “The rest goes to cover expenses such as PayPal or credit card transaction fees, SMS message delivery, carrier fees, my wife’s growing shoe collection, and the enormous pile of cash we have in the middle of the room here.” As you can probably tell, Myxer feels a little more laid back than most music and mobile distribution sites, probably another reason it’s seen such great success.
Myxer and The Fans
With thousands of artists and labels covered, Myxer users simply sign up for free and search until they find what they’re looking for. Of course, some users won’t be satisfied with the selection, so Myxer offers a remedy through MyxerTones.
With a free MyxerTones account, users can upload pictures and songs to be turned into wallpaper images and ringtones – continuing in its long-standing tradition, Myxer offers both of these services for free. After the content is made to the users liking, it can be sent to his mobile, the only charges coming from his carrier. This service supports WAV, WMA, MP3 and M4A files, but DRM is still a barrier, as the service cannot convert any files with any DRM encryption.
Myxer’s Myk Willis Looking At The Current Industry
To founder Myk Willis, Myxer really falls into the realm of three industries: music, mobile and the Internet. The music industry is an “ugly mess” that has such a distrust of its users, it “can’t be 100% for making the customer happy.” Mobile currently is just “a mess” as it is still stuck in the telecom mindset. The Internet is a beautiful industry that is different everyday. Willis is a fan of this because the openness of the platform allows “anyone with a valuable service [to] reach anyone in the world.”
The goal of Myxer and the goal of the whole industry should be to make “delivering mobile content and services as accessible as delivering it on the Internet.” There is great interest and profit to be had by anyone “aggressively looking to work to build a new economy.”
Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android made their way into the conversation as they always will for months to come, and Willis made an interesting observation: the mobile industry is currently closed standards – think your carriers and even the iPhone – and a move to an open network – think Android and the Open Mobile Alliance – will help everyone eventually but will disrupt the whole market when first introduced.
Willis praised the iPhone as a great “smack upside the head” to carriers by providing an amazing user-interface. The iPhone allows room for tons of content – even more after this week– and takes personalization to an extent never really seen before on mobile. Look for iPhone support in the build next week. On the same token, the iPhone is a closed device in a lot of ways.
Willis is “110% behind an effort for an open platform” for mobiles. The short-term effects of Android and other open systems will be disruptive as waves of devices with these platforms hit the market. Open platforms are great for consumer choice, but there is difficulty for content providers to hit all the phones.
Willis was genuinely excited about almost everything the market has the potential to do, especially when Myxer could be involved. The industry is expanding like crazy in every direction and Myxer has a product that reaches out to countless people. Though just about anyone that was seeing over 13 million downloads in the past month and sitting on a budding market would be over the moon.
The Future: Videos, The UK, and New Partners
The one thing surprisingly not yet mentioned was mobile video. Willis was honest about their approach to video, saying that video support had been available for a long time but only recently did Myxer begin pushing it. Once Myxer began to catalogue and organize its video collection, “The take-off has actually been crazy,” said Willis. Myxer has a service where on its homepage it promotes one piece of content, and recently when that content was a video, it was sent 450 times to mobile phones. Myxer is just getting into the swing of this, but as phones become more capable and data plans more liberal, watch for an explosion here.
Last month, Myxer made its way across the pond and launched its UK site: www.myxer.co.uk. The site and service are virtually the same, though the UK team will focus more on UK independent artists and labels as well as local advertisers. UK Managing Director Ian England said, “We created a business that leverages the best of the Internet and mobile to make digital content simple to share and access anywhere you are.” With the move to the UK, and eventual plans for the rest of Europe, Myxer is looking to make “anywhere you are” as many places as possible.
Willis offered up a taste of the coming expansion by saying there is a deal coming with Iris Distribution, a digital music distribution company for independent labels, saying Myxer will bring the artists and content from Iris to its user base. There were definite hints at other talks and possible deals coming soon, but Myxer and everyone else are on guard when it comes to deals because of a certain music site that went down in flames last week.
One interesting thing to note came from Willis towards the end of the interview: Nokia continually impresses him with how it tries “to get closer to the consumer.” Willis said that Nokia is definitely committed to the same ideal of a Web-style way of doing business. These comments did not seem like hints at a deal or clues to some puzzle to put together before this week’s publication. Willis seemed genuinely happy that other companies are moving towards giving consumers a free and open Internet-like experience on mobile devices.
Maybe that’s the future of the market, companies all working towards the same goal with the user’s experience being priority number one. Market trends are coming out of every possible place imaginable – that anyone with a great service can get it to anyone in the world, a thing Willis mentioned earlier – so maybe Myxer is poised to be the ad-supported source for mobile content. Maybe one day it’ll tackle the realm of MP3s.
MIT Professor Goes from Cult Following to International Fame Via Online Videos
From The Online Reporter Edition # 570
Publication Period January 5 through 13, 2008
MIT Professor Goes from Cult Following to International Fame Via Online Videos
Walter Lewin used to be a name you would know around MIT, but not really in India. That has all changed thanks to the global classroom institute and YouTube.
The 71-year-old physics professor, who has long had a cult following on the MIT campus, offers his courses for free online at the OpenCourseWare of MIT. And, according to The New York Times, these videos have won him fans from across the nation and around the world.
The credit for this phenomenon all goes to professor Lewin and his lectures. From dressing up and firing a golf ball cannon at a stuffed monkey wearing a bulletproof vest, demonstrating freefall and flailing on students with cat fur to demonstrate electrostatics to building a large water-battery, he actively engages his class and online audience in all the aspects and wonder of his science. Lewin even rode a tricycle propelled by a fire extinguisher to show how a rocket lifts off.
“Through your inspiring video lectures I have managed to see just how beautiful physics is, both astounding and simple,” a 17-year-old from India e-mailed recently.
Lewin told the Times, “Teaching is my life.” He reportedly spends around 25 hours preparing each lecture down to the very last detail, “Clarity is the word,” says Lewin.
Publication Period January 5 through 13, 2008
MIT Professor Goes from Cult Following to International Fame Via Online Videos
Walter Lewin used to be a name you would know around MIT, but not really in India. That has all changed thanks to the global classroom institute and YouTube.
The 71-year-old physics professor, who has long had a cult following on the MIT campus, offers his courses for free online at the OpenCourseWare of MIT. And, according to The New York Times, these videos have won him fans from across the nation and around the world.
The credit for this phenomenon all goes to professor Lewin and his lectures. From dressing up and firing a golf ball cannon at a stuffed monkey wearing a bulletproof vest, demonstrating freefall and flailing on students with cat fur to demonstrate electrostatics to building a large water-battery, he actively engages his class and online audience in all the aspects and wonder of his science. Lewin even rode a tricycle propelled by a fire extinguisher to show how a rocket lifts off.
“Through your inspiring video lectures I have managed to see just how beautiful physics is, both astounding and simple,” a 17-year-old from India e-mailed recently.
Lewin told the Times, “Teaching is my life.” He reportedly spends around 25 hours preparing each lecture down to the very last detail, “Clarity is the word,” says Lewin.
Hollywood: Digital Movies Are Great, Digital Storage Not So Great
From The Online Reporter Edition # 570
Publication Period January 5 through 13, 2008
Hollywood: Digital Movies Are Great, Digital Storage Not So Great
The digital age is new, shiny and looks amazing. For the movie industry, it is also potentially decaying, according to a report from the science and technology council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences called “The Digital Dilemma.” The yearlong study looked into the effects and practices of digital movie archiving and storage.
The most surprising fact in the report is that the cost of storing a digital master record of a movie is about $12,514 a year, versus $1,059 that it costs to keep a conventional master film. It actually gets worse when a movie is purely digital, being produced with an all-electronic process involving no film, with a yearly storage cost of $208,569.
We know, digital was supposed to make everything better. It makes the movies look sharper, the TV picture clearer and the music sound perfect, but it also fades quickly like a shooting star. Without occasional use, a hard drive can stop working in as little as two years. According to the report, only about half of a consumer’s DVD collection will survive for 15 years. There’s also the digital “brick wall” that this stuff hits when it degrades. Tapes used to become grainy and scratchy with some warping over time, but digital media simply becomes unreadable.
The report has a somewhat bleak outlook, and the study shared this pointedly. “If we allow technological obsolescence to repeat itself, we are tied either to continuously increasing costs — or worse — the failure to save important assets.” Think of the 1975 Viking space probe, the one NASA tried to read information from in 1999. The digital data stored from the Viking was unreadable because of degradation, and its format became obsolete soon after its launch.
Film, shipped out to a nice cool salt or limestone mine, can sit and wait for the 25th anniversary special of the movie, quietly and comfortably without changing much. The film and any extra shots can wait easily and without much fuss. Digital media requires much more pampering, and movies like “Beowulf” or “Superman Returns” tend to create more storable material than older films, all of which comes in the nice, expensive digital format. Why would anyone throw something out that could be the next big special feature? It could help drive sales and pay for that expensive extra storage, but it probably won’t.
Global Media Intelligence reported that movie companies rely on this kind of a storage library for about a third of their $36 billion in revenue each year. With the industry needing their libraries that much, and with the cost of storage going up with each new digital addition and magic trick, the consumer’s only hope to avoid yet another increase at the box office and DVD counter is a universal standard for storage, and an easy way to keep that storage alive and running.
Publication Period January 5 through 13, 2008
Hollywood: Digital Movies Are Great, Digital Storage Not So Great
The digital age is new, shiny and looks amazing. For the movie industry, it is also potentially decaying, according to a report from the science and technology council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences called “The Digital Dilemma.” The yearlong study looked into the effects and practices of digital movie archiving and storage.
The most surprising fact in the report is that the cost of storing a digital master record of a movie is about $12,514 a year, versus $1,059 that it costs to keep a conventional master film. It actually gets worse when a movie is purely digital, being produced with an all-electronic process involving no film, with a yearly storage cost of $208,569.
We know, digital was supposed to make everything better. It makes the movies look sharper, the TV picture clearer and the music sound perfect, but it also fades quickly like a shooting star. Without occasional use, a hard drive can stop working in as little as two years. According to the report, only about half of a consumer’s DVD collection will survive for 15 years. There’s also the digital “brick wall” that this stuff hits when it degrades. Tapes used to become grainy and scratchy with some warping over time, but digital media simply becomes unreadable.
The report has a somewhat bleak outlook, and the study shared this pointedly. “If we allow technological obsolescence to repeat itself, we are tied either to continuously increasing costs — or worse — the failure to save important assets.” Think of the 1975 Viking space probe, the one NASA tried to read information from in 1999. The digital data stored from the Viking was unreadable because of degradation, and its format became obsolete soon after its launch.
Film, shipped out to a nice cool salt or limestone mine, can sit and wait for the 25th anniversary special of the movie, quietly and comfortably without changing much. The film and any extra shots can wait easily and without much fuss. Digital media requires much more pampering, and movies like “Beowulf” or “Superman Returns” tend to create more storable material than older films, all of which comes in the nice, expensive digital format. Why would anyone throw something out that could be the next big special feature? It could help drive sales and pay for that expensive extra storage, but it probably won’t.
Global Media Intelligence reported that movie companies rely on this kind of a storage library for about a third of their $36 billion in revenue each year. With the industry needing their libraries that much, and with the cost of storage going up with each new digital addition and magic trick, the consumer’s only hope to avoid yet another increase at the box office and DVD counter is a universal standard for storage, and an easy way to keep that storage alive and running.
Cry ‘Lawsuit!’ and Let Slip the Dogs of War
From The Online Reporter Edition # 570
Publication Period January 5 through 13, 2008
Cry ‘Lawsuit!’ and Let Slip the Dogs of War
If you’ve always been afraid to download music from a file-sharing site for worry of being caught by a record label and its team of lawyers, fear not. You, too, can be sued even if you’ve never once illegally downloaded music. Well, that’s what we thought too when reading a recent Washington Post story.
It seemed that according to lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), copying songs from CDs you purchased to your personal computer, even if for just personal use, is just as illegal as downloading them off file-sharing P2P sites or posting them to such sites.
This is only somewhat the case. The confusion stemmed from a lawsuit in Arizona against Jeffery Howell of Scottsdale. Howell is accused of sharing 54 music files in a specific shared directory on his computer that was accessible by users of Kazaa and other P2P software.
That’s the normal look of these lawsuits, but concerns were raised on the fifteenth page of the brief that responded to the judge’s technical questions, where RIAA attorney Ira Schwartz claims Howell is liable for creating any “unauthorized” copies, including ripping these songs from legally purchased CDs.
According to the brief, “It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings on his computer….Virtually all of the sound recordings on [Howell’s computer] are in the .mp3 format….Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife’s use.”
The part being left out above and being waxed over by the Post’s story is that, from the brief, “once [the] Defendant converted [the] Plaintiffs’ recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies.” “Shared folder” is the most important part of that sentence, and probably the key idea to the whole lawsuit.
The lawsuit isn’t going to call for damages on every single song that has ever been put on Howell’s computer regardless of its origin. Rather, it is going after files obtained and shared illegally.
Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer, told the Washington Post, “The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation.”
The RIAA’s Web site states that “transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player won’t usually raise concerns so long as the copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own [and] the copy is just for your personal use.” The part “won’t usually raise concerns” seems a bit out of place though. It looks like the industry hasn’t truly made up its mind.
For a little extra perspective, let’s look back to Sony BMG’s lawyer Jennifer Pariser during the Jammie Thomas case, where she said that copying a song from the CD you paid for is “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy.’”
William Party, Google’s copyright godsend, sums this whole scenario up quite nicely on his blog, “This new rhetoric of ‘everything anyone does without our permission is stealing’ is well worth noting at every occasion and well worth challenging. It is the rhetoric of copyright as an ancient property right, permitting copyright owners to control all uses as a natural right; the converse is that everyone else is an immoral thief.”
Publication Period January 5 through 13, 2008
Cry ‘Lawsuit!’ and Let Slip the Dogs of War
If you’ve always been afraid to download music from a file-sharing site for worry of being caught by a record label and its team of lawyers, fear not. You, too, can be sued even if you’ve never once illegally downloaded music. Well, that’s what we thought too when reading a recent Washington Post story.
It seemed that according to lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), copying songs from CDs you purchased to your personal computer, even if for just personal use, is just as illegal as downloading them off file-sharing P2P sites or posting them to such sites.
This is only somewhat the case. The confusion stemmed from a lawsuit in Arizona against Jeffery Howell of Scottsdale. Howell is accused of sharing 54 music files in a specific shared directory on his computer that was accessible by users of Kazaa and other P2P software.
That’s the normal look of these lawsuits, but concerns were raised on the fifteenth page of the brief that responded to the judge’s technical questions, where RIAA attorney Ira Schwartz claims Howell is liable for creating any “unauthorized” copies, including ripping these songs from legally purchased CDs.
According to the brief, “It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings on his computer….Virtually all of the sound recordings on [Howell’s computer] are in the .mp3 format….Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife’s use.”
The part being left out above and being waxed over by the Post’s story is that, from the brief, “once [the] Defendant converted [the] Plaintiffs’ recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies.” “Shared folder” is the most important part of that sentence, and probably the key idea to the whole lawsuit.
The lawsuit isn’t going to call for damages on every single song that has ever been put on Howell’s computer regardless of its origin. Rather, it is going after files obtained and shared illegally.
Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer, told the Washington Post, “The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation.”
The RIAA’s Web site states that “transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player won’t usually raise concerns so long as the copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own [and] the copy is just for your personal use.” The part “won’t usually raise concerns” seems a bit out of place though. It looks like the industry hasn’t truly made up its mind.
For a little extra perspective, let’s look back to Sony BMG’s lawyer Jennifer Pariser during the Jammie Thomas case, where she said that copying a song from the CD you paid for is “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy.’”
William Party, Google’s copyright godsend, sums this whole scenario up quite nicely on his blog, “This new rhetoric of ‘everything anyone does without our permission is stealing’ is well worth noting at every occasion and well worth challenging. It is the rhetoric of copyright as an ancient property right, permitting copyright owners to control all uses as a natural right; the converse is that everyone else is an immoral thief.”
Google Really Is Taking over the World
From The Online Reporter Edition # 570
Publication Period January 5 through 13, 2008
Google Really Is Taking over the World
Google, the giant of online advertising and searching, has had its $3.1 billion takeover of fellow online ad giant DoubleClick approved by the Federal Trade Commission. The merger creates an advertising titan unlike any other in the online world. Google’s reach is now wholly unrivaled, and its breadth nearly immeasurable. This merger is a herald to a new age of advertising; one based on immense data gathered about, not by, users.
The merger will allow Google to encompass the entire online advertising market, because of the strengths of both companies. Google is the leader in text-based advertising, sending relevant ads with search information. More people use Google than any other search engine, to the tune of 65%, which helped the company see 3Q07 revenue of $4.2 billion and a share price that recently topped $700 and still hovers near that historic marker. DoubleClick is the leader in advertisements for Web sites, things like banner, video and scrolling ads. It made about $150 million in 2006, but has the potential to be worth much more, as is apparent by Google’s offer of $3.1 billion. Together, advertisers in the two networks cover almost every product imaginable, from online publications to antiques and the latest Wii games.
Online advertising is the fastest growing sector of advertising, growing by an annual rate of nearly 20%, leaving outdoor, radio and TV advertising in the dust. It is the only market that can tell advertisers such a vast amount of accurate information: where viewers live, how long they looked at the ad, which site they saw it on and even related ads seen and searches done. Companies like Google will continually buy out smaller companies with better information gathering and ad-displaying tools, helping to ensure a continued growth in the market.
The marriage of Google’s search and information gathering with DoubleClick’s advertising expertise will result in Internet users seeing more, and possibly only, advertisements that directly correspond with their online activity. These ads will be tailored to each individual user, and some fear that this custom fit will occur through Google gathering too much private information. Some fear that this collection of data and highly personalized advertising could lead to new theft and abuse through the Internet or even mobile devices.
The FTC Says Yes to Merger of Giants
The FTC approved the deal without conditions by a four-to-one vote. The FTC did not feel it was approving an Internet advertising monopoly. In its written statement, the FTC said that the merger would not cause a control of the market, specifically citing Google rivals Microsoft, Yahoo and Time Warner, who “have at their disposal valuable stores of data not available to Google.” Pamela Jones Harbour, the FTC commissioner who disagreed with the ruling, said in her dissent that she has “alternate predictions about where this market is heading, and the transformative role the combined Google- DoubleClick will play if the proposed acquisition is consummated.” As a whole, the FTC did note that it had privacy concerns with the merger, but the panel said that it didn’t feel it had the authority to consider privacy in an antitrust matter.
In Google’s corporate blog, which was updated shortly after the FTC vote, Google general counsel David Drummond said, “the FTC’s decision publicly affirms what we and numerous independent analysts have been saying for months: our acquisition does not threaten competition in [the] quickly evolving online advertising space.”
Apart from this merger review, the FTC has called for comments on five self-regulatory privacy principles for online advertisers. While the FTC has approved the merger in the US, Google and DoubleClick still must make their case to the European Union, which is generally stricter with antitrust and monopoly cases than the US. The EU has already dealt some blows to US ambitions, such as its strikes against Microsoft. For this reason, Google’s competitors, as well as some privacy advocates, now focus their lobbying efforts in Europe. Google also has a much larger corner on the Internet search engine market in Europe.
US Private Sector Is on the Fence
Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said of the merger, that the combined company “will become the world’s private ministry of information” and that it “will be able to develop the most detailed profile of users around the world.”
Microsoft and AT&T, the biggest rivals to express concern about the merger, previously spoke against the deal, saying it would allow Google to muscle out any competitors. These worries seemed to have grown in the past year with Google successfully sweeping into mobile, television and other media. While they were dissenting loudly before, it seems no one has really gotten a worthwhile comment out of these two giants since the FTC announcement. Perhaps Microsoft is being quiet so no one will think back to its $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive, a firm that builds media campaigns entirely on data gathered about users.
Some were far less worried about the merger. Robert Liodice, president of the Association of National Advertisers, commented, “Doesn’t everyone know everything about everybody anyway? ...We’ve got identity theft going on everywhere… I view the potential concern about the Google- DoubleClick deal as a drop in the bucket compared to the national issues at play.”
“This merger, and their forays into other media, helps Google follow you if you want them to — and even if you don’t — across a huge expanse of the globe,” said Joseph Turow, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.
The EU and European Dissent
The European Union tends to be a bit stricter than the US on privacy policies. Privacy is explicitly named as a basic human right in the European Union’s constitution, while ideas of it are implied but not specifically stated in the US Constitution. However, the EU regulatory body that is reviewing the merger said it would focus mainly on the antitrust issues. Last month, the European Commission began an in-depth review of the merger, which is expected to be completed by April 2.
“The EU is a bigger potential roadblock than the FTC was, but it’s hard to say if they’d actually block the merger,” said Blair Levin, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “It’s a possibility but by no means a certainty.”
“The Google-DoubleClick merger would harm consumer welfare by creating a structure that almost certainly will be less respectful of user privacy,” said the BEUC, the EU’s top consumer lobby, in a letter to the European Commission. “There are many ways in which Google, post-merger, could push up prices for advertisers.”
The big thing to watch out for in all of this is the thing that seems to be mentioned the least. If Google does successfully acquire DoubleClick and does indeed end up with something of a monopoly in the online ad space, it has the potential to drive up costs for advertisers, which could then be imposed on consumers. Nothing new, but a little daunting if you think of the global scale at which this giant will operate. Google has regularly proven to be smart and savvy, so we doubt this merger will jack up prices immediately if even at all.
Publication Period January 5 through 13, 2008
Google Really Is Taking over the World
Google, the giant of online advertising and searching, has had its $3.1 billion takeover of fellow online ad giant DoubleClick approved by the Federal Trade Commission. The merger creates an advertising titan unlike any other in the online world. Google’s reach is now wholly unrivaled, and its breadth nearly immeasurable. This merger is a herald to a new age of advertising; one based on immense data gathered about, not by, users.
The merger will allow Google to encompass the entire online advertising market, because of the strengths of both companies. Google is the leader in text-based advertising, sending relevant ads with search information. More people use Google than any other search engine, to the tune of 65%, which helped the company see 3Q07 revenue of $4.2 billion and a share price that recently topped $700 and still hovers near that historic marker. DoubleClick is the leader in advertisements for Web sites, things like banner, video and scrolling ads. It made about $150 million in 2006, but has the potential to be worth much more, as is apparent by Google’s offer of $3.1 billion. Together, advertisers in the two networks cover almost every product imaginable, from online publications to antiques and the latest Wii games.
Online advertising is the fastest growing sector of advertising, growing by an annual rate of nearly 20%, leaving outdoor, radio and TV advertising in the dust. It is the only market that can tell advertisers such a vast amount of accurate information: where viewers live, how long they looked at the ad, which site they saw it on and even related ads seen and searches done. Companies like Google will continually buy out smaller companies with better information gathering and ad-displaying tools, helping to ensure a continued growth in the market.
The marriage of Google’s search and information gathering with DoubleClick’s advertising expertise will result in Internet users seeing more, and possibly only, advertisements that directly correspond with their online activity. These ads will be tailored to each individual user, and some fear that this custom fit will occur through Google gathering too much private information. Some fear that this collection of data and highly personalized advertising could lead to new theft and abuse through the Internet or even mobile devices.
The FTC Says Yes to Merger of Giants
The FTC approved the deal without conditions by a four-to-one vote. The FTC did not feel it was approving an Internet advertising monopoly. In its written statement, the FTC said that the merger would not cause a control of the market, specifically citing Google rivals Microsoft, Yahoo and Time Warner, who “have at their disposal valuable stores of data not available to Google.” Pamela Jones Harbour, the FTC commissioner who disagreed with the ruling, said in her dissent that she has “alternate predictions about where this market is heading, and the transformative role the combined Google- DoubleClick will play if the proposed acquisition is consummated.” As a whole, the FTC did note that it had privacy concerns with the merger, but the panel said that it didn’t feel it had the authority to consider privacy in an antitrust matter.
In Google’s corporate blog, which was updated shortly after the FTC vote, Google general counsel David Drummond said, “the FTC’s decision publicly affirms what we and numerous independent analysts have been saying for months: our acquisition does not threaten competition in [the] quickly evolving online advertising space.”
Apart from this merger review, the FTC has called for comments on five self-regulatory privacy principles for online advertisers. While the FTC has approved the merger in the US, Google and DoubleClick still must make their case to the European Union, which is generally stricter with antitrust and monopoly cases than the US. The EU has already dealt some blows to US ambitions, such as its strikes against Microsoft. For this reason, Google’s competitors, as well as some privacy advocates, now focus their lobbying efforts in Europe. Google also has a much larger corner on the Internet search engine market in Europe.
US Private Sector Is on the Fence
Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said of the merger, that the combined company “will become the world’s private ministry of information” and that it “will be able to develop the most detailed profile of users around the world.”
Microsoft and AT&T, the biggest rivals to express concern about the merger, previously spoke against the deal, saying it would allow Google to muscle out any competitors. These worries seemed to have grown in the past year with Google successfully sweeping into mobile, television and other media. While they were dissenting loudly before, it seems no one has really gotten a worthwhile comment out of these two giants since the FTC announcement. Perhaps Microsoft is being quiet so no one will think back to its $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive, a firm that builds media campaigns entirely on data gathered about users.
Some were far less worried about the merger. Robert Liodice, president of the Association of National Advertisers, commented, “Doesn’t everyone know everything about everybody anyway? ...We’ve got identity theft going on everywhere… I view the potential concern about the Google- DoubleClick deal as a drop in the bucket compared to the national issues at play.”
“This merger, and their forays into other media, helps Google follow you if you want them to — and even if you don’t — across a huge expanse of the globe,” said Joseph Turow, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.
The EU and European Dissent
The European Union tends to be a bit stricter than the US on privacy policies. Privacy is explicitly named as a basic human right in the European Union’s constitution, while ideas of it are implied but not specifically stated in the US Constitution. However, the EU regulatory body that is reviewing the merger said it would focus mainly on the antitrust issues. Last month, the European Commission began an in-depth review of the merger, which is expected to be completed by April 2.
“The EU is a bigger potential roadblock than the FTC was, but it’s hard to say if they’d actually block the merger,” said Blair Levin, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “It’s a possibility but by no means a certainty.”
“The Google-DoubleClick merger would harm consumer welfare by creating a structure that almost certainly will be less respectful of user privacy,” said the BEUC, the EU’s top consumer lobby, in a letter to the European Commission. “There are many ways in which Google, post-merger, could push up prices for advertisers.”
The big thing to watch out for in all of this is the thing that seems to be mentioned the least. If Google does successfully acquire DoubleClick and does indeed end up with something of a monopoly in the online ad space, it has the potential to drive up costs for advertisers, which could then be imposed on consumers. Nothing new, but a little daunting if you think of the global scale at which this giant will operate. Google has regularly proven to be smart and savvy, so we doubt this merger will jack up prices immediately if even at all.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The Congolese Atrocity and its Preventable Apprentice
For most of us, Halloween has just passed, and we’ve slowly sobered up and regained our humanity. We’re leaving a season with reverence for the dead, where ours and many other cultures around the world celebrate life and ancestry through feasts, goodwill, tricks, and general debauchery. Blissfully, we play with the idea of death and the dead and walk around in mobs that smile and cheer to each other. All the while, as we stumble down Carlotta and stare at all the bare flesh, some people across the world are stumbling and half naked for an entirely different reason.
Doubtlessly this Halloween season, you’ve seen countless doctors, especially with the Grey’s Anatomy crazy, but if you were in Geti, Goma, Kikwit, or many other cities in Congo, then you’d be hard pressed to find a doctor even in their hospitals. Looted, burned, and bullet-ridden, they stand as mausoleums, haunted houses of their own. People come and go, looking for a glimpse of hope, realizing that they must continue on to search for it. This is the Congo, where the war officially ended in 2002. At the end of this summer, an estimated four million people have died in the Congo since 1998, and according to the International Rescue Committee, half of these people were children under five. By the end of this year, twice as many people will die in the Congo as have died in the entire conflict in Darfur, which began in 2003.
The conflict in the Congo arose after the genocide in Rwanda, a shadow of death creeping over the land. The Hutus, responsible for the genocide in Rwanda, fled to Congo, which was at that time known as Zaire. Those who regained power in Rwanda followed, seeking their pound of flesh. Rwanda and Uganda entrenched themselves in Congo and began a slaughter to rival that which took place in Rwanda.
At this point, the world took a step back and let this happen. No country took a real effort to step in, which is perhaps because they were all too embarrassed over allowing the Rwandan genocide to occur. “A lot of the killings and horrors were in large part overlooked, either deliberately or not” says Anneke Van Woudenberg, a researcher with Human Rights Watch for Congo. She sets the mood very well. Even right now, as these people are dying and struggling to democratically elect their leaders for the first time since 1965, we are mostly ignoring their plight and deaths.
As I write this, the elections are going on. As you read this, they have passed and the world has noted a leader or at least a run-off between two viable candidates will be set. Throughout the campaigning for the first election, tension mounted at every single event because of ethnic slurs and racial epithet coming from all sides. Groups, such as the Human Rights Watch, are calling for an end to these slurs because they have only lead to death and destruction in the past. Abdoulaye Yerodia, one of the Congo’s four vice-presidents, used this tactic in 1998 when he used such language to entice violence against the Tutsi. He made a series of speeches that resulted in the murder of hundreds of Tutsi and the injuring of many more. In all hope, the Congolese people will elect a leader they can be proud of and agree on. In all hope, they will have chosen someone to unite them and someone the rest of the world can back. If not, there is a great possibility that the many rivaling groups will continue with their violence and the world will look on, unaware and unsure of whom to support. If this happens, then we might still be in the dark about the situations and about the death and destruction that continues. The Congo will not be in the news if violence continues, but Darfur will stay in our headlines for the time being.
We’re taking a look at Darfur, because, as Lydia Polgreen put it, Darfur comes with a magic word: “genocide”. Darfur presents us with a moral high ground, a way to clearly define the right and wrong parties, the human and the inhumane. While local militias and guerillas from other states have joined in the war in Congo, Darfur remains mostly isolated to the Arab government and the non-Arab tribes that rebelled in 2003. The Sudanese government’s military actions, aided by other arabic militias called janjaweed, have forced about 2.5 million from their homes and killed hundreds of thousands so far. You’ve seen the commercials, so you know of the mass rape and pillaging narrated by famous voices. However, their charities are still far short of cash.
The world is looking at Darfur, acting concerned and publicly denouncing it as a horrible crime against humanity, but we’re sitting on our hands. The UN is having trouble sending aid and military forces to Sudan and the surrounding area. The National Redemption Front, the rebels’ new name, is claiming large victories. It also claims that since it is a new organization, it is not bound to any previous cease-fire agreements or negotiations, according to Adam Shogar, a spokesman for the National Redemption Front. “It is all-out war,” Shogar proclaims, “there are no agreements.”
The conflict of Darfur has spilled across the border into Chad recently. Refugees from Darfur have been seeking shelter there in camps, but now they are mounting counterattacks against the Sudanese government from camps and from locations near these camps. The National Redemption Front even makes statements out of a headquarters in N’djamena, the capital of Chad. As they become a unified rebellion, they add in other countries, militias, and motivations for waging war. In response, the Sudanese government will need to hire and rely more on the janjaweed, which presents another group with other desires to add to the pillaging and murder. This conflict is a war that is rapidly deteriorating into multiple factions all vying for power, a goal that they seek to achieve through murdering their enemy entirely. Commercials and politicians have spouted this conflict for months, saying we need to act before it becomes another Rwanda. I urge us to act before it becomes another Congo.
———————————-
Further reading
Human Rights Watch. “D.R. Congo: Halt Growing Violence Ahead of Elections: Presidential Candidates Must Act to Reduce Tensions Ahead of October 29 Vote”
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/10/25/congo14441.htm
Polgreen, Lydia. “Grim New Turn Likely to Harden Darfur Conflict.”
The New York Times, October 20th, 2006.
The International Rescue Committee
Uganda website: http://www.theirc.org/where/the_irc_in_uganda.html
Sudan website: http://www.theirc.org/where/the_irc_in_sudan.html
Terrorism, More or Less - SFR issue 3 - Oct 11th
In April, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) entitled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States” was published. An NIE is a coordinated summation of the judgments of sixteen US Intelligence agencies, which is then approved by the Director of National Intelligence. This means it represents a unified assessment of a certain issue pertaining to national security.
NIEs are literally estimates which show a general trend in the current state of affairs in relation to the past. They tend to shy away from being strictly predictions, and usually serve more of an informational role with suggestions for the future. This NIE was partially declassified on September 26th by President Bush.
This might not seem like a rarity, but it truly is. Only about twenty of these reports are made a year, and according to the intelligence sources of CNN and FOX News, only three or four such reports have been partially declassified in the past fifteen to twenty years.
There has been a lot of debate on both sides about the details of the report and the reasons for President Bush to release part of the details of this report. The first major point of the release is that our counter-terrorism efforts have crippled the leadership of al-Qa’ida, and that it is no longer as centralized of an organization as it once was.
Al-Qa’ida is believed to pose the largest threat to the Homeland and U.S. foreign interests, and the global Jihadist movement, which includes al-Qa’ida and other terrorist groups, is spreading and slowly adapting to our counter-terrorism efforts. All our intelligence agencies, foreign and domestic, report that those identifying themselves as Jihadist are growing in number and geographical diversity.
While the report tells us that the Jihadist movement is gaining support, it also states that the movement lacks a central authority with a unified global network or strategy. New cells continue to grow and their lack of a central base will make them harder to root out. Threats from these kinds of groups will continue to grow and our foreign policy and actions are likely to change in a way that includes the concept of large threats from these groups in our country and abroad. These groups often view Europe as a good way to attack Western interests, as exhibited by the March 11, 2004 bombing in Madrid and in London on July 7, 2005.
The current Iraq conflict and the Iraq jihad serve as inspiration to new Jihadists, a catalyst for resentment towards the U.S. which is fueled by the feeling of success their movement is causing in terms of American causalities and fading support. The failure to capture Bin Ladin and al-Zarqawi continues to promulgate the ideology and the vision of victory for new Jihadists.
Three other underlying factors for the spread of the Jihadist movement are given: (1) a fear of Western dominance and thus a feeling of being humiliated and powerless; (2) the slow development of political, economic and social reforms of “Muslim majority nations”; (3) a general and pervasive anti-U.S. sentiment among most Muslims. These are generalizations made by the report to give an overview- it is information on a scale that encompasses too much for exceptions to be presented; they are meant to inform, not offend.
The report presents us with a few holes in the Jihadists’ armor. The first is that the conservative interpretation of a shari’a based government, is unpopular with the majority of Muslims. This idea is too much of a narrow, conservative path, and presenting this would most likely cause a divide between the Jihadists and their audience. Many Muslim clerics have spoken out and condemned acts of violence of the Jihadist nature. These clerics have been preaching political activism through the system itself via peaceful and meaningful routes. This mainstream Muslim ideology, if presented right, could prove to a powerful wedge. Some of this will be represented through democratic elections, which will simultaneously remove some of the Jihadist element from the public eye and present the Jihadists with new opportunities to exploit.
Sunni extremist organizations, such as Jemaah Islamiya, are also mentioned because they are beginning to expand their territories. They are not viewed to be as great a threat as the al-Qa’ida networks, but they will have a great variation in threat to our foreign and domestic interests, so it is a hard threat to judge.
The report states that improvised roadside bombings and suicide bombings will tend to be the most likely means of attack. Urban conflicts and counter attacks are also very likely. Former insurgents in Iraq are likely leaders of such conflicts and training for explosives. Groups will also be very inclined to continue kidnapping civilians. Even though Iran and Syria are considered to be the largest state sponsors of such activities, other states will either offer some support or be unable to prevent these kinds of attacks. This includes any non-Jihadist organizations that have an anti-US sentiment. We could start seeing these tactics used by any type of organization if they continue to prove successful.
The last point presented is that it is very likely for any and all of these groups to use the internet, and increasing shift functions to the internet for all aspects of their of communication and finance. All news stations talk of increased insurgents and Jihadist actions. Every general that comes on TV, or puts out a press release, talks about an increase in resentment towards their troops all across the Middle East. Pakistan and Israel are at each other like dogs, and President Bush’s hosting of President Musharraf and the Afghan leader Hamid Karzai did not seem to show us much ease in that tension.
So in September, before a big series of elections, President Bush has pulled out what some believe is a trump card. He took a classified report and gave it to the public. In one fell swoop, he showed that the government isn’t going to hide every piece of information they collect or try to get off your hard drive. The report itself is top notch, every intelligence leader puts his stamp on these. So not only have we just been told that al-Qa’ida is on the decline and decentralized, but we’re also being told this by the top dogs. This report presents us with a skewed view of both sides while also alluding to increase of anti-US sentiment, but quietly reminding us all the while that this increase is not as big a threat and is not as organized as it could have been if we would have not stepped in. It treats Iraq interestingly, because it shows that the idea of Iraq is a fuel to the fire of Jihadist thought, but also repeats that the majority of Muslims could easily be turned from this ideal.
Partial-Birth and the Supreme Court Oct 23rd - Issue 4
We all hear about late term abortions or as Charles Canady (R-Fla) coined in 1995 “partial birth abortions”. This November the 8th, the United States Supreme Court is going to be hearing a case where they will determine the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003. This is an act “to prohibit the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion”. They are looking at to see if the act is invalid because it “lacks a health exception”, which Congress determined unnecessary to preserve the health of the mother, and then to see if it is unconstitutional for any other reasons that may arise. The cases presented are Gonzales, Attorney General, v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., et al; and Gonzales, Attorney General, v. Carhart, et al.
Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973), a companion ruling to Roe v. Wade, requires that a state’s restriction on abortions must include a health exception for women, and that it must include mental health as well as physical health in this exception. The Act of 2003 does not include an exception because the information shown to Congress convinced the Congress that, “the facts indicate that a partial-birth abortion is never necessary to preserve the health of a woman”, (Section 2.13) Here’s where it gets a little interesting, Congress when make its laws and passing act, even when they are so closely intertwined with the courts’ decisions, can choose to disregard any information and previous court rulings and reach its own factual findings independent of the courts. So while the Supreme Court must uphold previous decisions and take those into account, Congress can make decisions without information it defines as flawed or erroneous. In this case, Congress determined that such abortions are never necessary to save a woman’s life, which puts the bill in direct opposition to the ruling concerning Doe v. Bolton.
The CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health, on April 14th of this year, stated that a late term abortion, being defined as the pregnancy at 21 weeks or later, account for only 1.4% of all American abortions. Intact Dilation and Extraction abortions, where the fetus is removed via the cervix and is mostly intact, thus the “partial birth” status, account for about 15% of late term abortions. Annually, this is between 2,500 and 3,000 cases according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, but many estimates are significantly lower.
With this being such a small percentage of abortions, it is somewhat surprising to see this at the forefront of the abortion debate if you look strictly at the numbers. Think about the other 98.6% of cases, some of the numbers there are a little staggering, but you’ve heard more about partial birth abortions than any other kind. The reason this is probably at the height of the debate is the appearance of and the name “partial-birth” when it comes to these abortions. If you physically look at this procedure it does very closely resemble the initial process of birth, where all of the fetus besides the head is outside of the mother, which is highly disturbing. The fetus’s brain tissue is removed, and the fetus is then removed completely from the mother. It is a process you will never want to see. People on all sides of the political spectrum readily admit both this resemblance and its disturbing nature.
The key in this though is that it is a resemblance. In his State of the Union address of 2003, President Bush said this bill would “protect infants at the very hour of their birth.” Sorry Mr. President, but you’re about 15 to 20 weeks early. Partial birth abortions generally happen between the 20th and 24th, while a full term pregnancy is usually 40 weeks. At 20 weeks, a fetus is at right about a pound, and the National Center for Health Statistics says the survival rate for babies born weighing 1 pound 1 ounce is only about 14%. Though it is honestly hard to get past the visual and look at such numbers objectively.
The name “partial-birth” is to offend people, it is a political term to make people oppose it . The 2003 Act says that the “gruesome and inhumane nature of the partial-birth abortion procedure and its disturbing similarity to the killing of a newborn infant promotes a complete disregard for infant human life”(Section 2.14-L). Even our laws in the case of abortion are emotionally and politically charged to make them seem like an act of complete barbarism. For a lot of people, that is exactly what they are. Abortion, whether it be partial-birth or abortion in general, is one of the larger issues in our society that has basically no middle ground. It is a decision that is heavily intertwined with your family, your religion, your personal beliefs, and your passion. Reserved debates on abortion are quite a rarity, because it is incredibly hard to separate your emotions in this case.
My personal views on abortion aren’t important for a few reasons. The first is that, as it stands right now, partial-birth abortions are illegal under federal law. Equally as important is that we seem to need pro-life and pro-choice citizens in this debate. I would over joyously prefer the number of abortions to go down because our citizens had smarter and safer sex which could allow stricter regulations on abortion cases, but at the same time I never want to see a bill passed on abortion that says there will never be a moment where this is life saving to the mother. As much as we know about the human body, I do not feel that we know enough to limit our options when it comes to the possibility of saving a life. With the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003, I’m not trying to rattle the cage and overturn all abortion laws and let them run rampant in the streets, the point of this was to get the whole issue out there and simply ask why not put in a simple clause that says they’re okay if the mother’s life is at risk.
Dictionary Terrorists - Sept 24, SFR issue 2
If you haven’t heard about terrorism and terrorists nonstop for a few years, then you’ve been under a pretty big rock. We hear about it everyday: wars on terror, roadside bombings and insurgents keep our 24-7 news cycle running. With all this going on, what defines a terrorist and why are some called terrorists and others just scare us.
The United States Code, Title 18, Section 2231 sets out definitions for forms of terrorism, international and domestic, and sets up a definition for who terrorism effects. The most in-depth definition involves international terrorism; understanding this definition will consequently make domestic terrorism easier to grasp.
International terrorism means activities that -
• Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State.
• Appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.
The UN has yet to agree on an official definition of terrorism, but they do have a general academic consensus on the matter. This is very similar to our Code but it also specifically extends terrorism to propaganda and acts that incur collateral damage.
This definition is broad, unspecified, and easily applicable. Many groups fit this idea of terrorism but are not in the forefront of our minds when it comes the thought of terrorism. American’s most prevalent thought of terrorism begins with the loss of our World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad predominate our ideas of terrorists with AK-47s and religious garb. We must also remember the Ku Klux Klan, the Irish Republican Army, the Nagaland Rebels (a Christian group responsible for many bombings in India in 2004), the Aryan Nation, and the genocidal Army for the Liberation of Rwanda.
Terrorism and terrorists are products of hate. We must not limit ourselves and our perspectives to a certain group, this gives them strength. If we put our energy into going against only one enemy, we strengthen the resolve of that group and all their sympathizers, while ignoring other atrocities going on in our world.
While the definitions of these acts help give scope when our leaders speak of terrorists and acts of terror, they leave open the problem of ambiguity. Edward Peck, former U.S. Chief of the Mission in Iraq and ambassador to Mauritania, presents an uncomfortable position concerning the definition in Section 2231 that calls terrorism activities those that influence government “by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.” Ambassador Peck said, “[One] can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them. Israel is another. And so, the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.”
Even the UN seems to agree on this problem of ambiguity, with their web site admitting: “Cynics have often commented that one state’s ‘terrorist’ is another state’s ‘freedom fighter’.” In no way am I implying that our state or Israel are terrorist nations, but Peck’s statement shows that terrorism depends on foreign policy, foreign allies, and the tendency to classify ‘terrorists’ and ‘terrorism’ as something brutal, sadistic, and so inhumane that the country who defines it keeps itself out of the definition through this type of mindset.
President George W. Bush first used the term “Axis of Evil” in his Jan. 2002 State of the Union Address, which was a reference to Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Under previous administrations, these countries- along with Afghanistan, Libya, Syria- were called rogue states or states of concern. These labels are used for countries we feel to be a threat to the world’s peace. The criteria most often contains the act of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, sponsoring or harboring terrorists and their organizations, mass disregard for human rights of its citizens, and a stance of hostility towards our country. These are just the basics; every country is reviewed and defined as a threat on very specific terms.
These terms and their definitions are not endorsed universally. People on all sides of the issue throw them around quite often and seem to take offense to them as a misuse just as often. It is hard to take an objective look that is all encompassing. It is hard to understand what parts of a classification make one more of a threat than another. It is also hard to get past the news, movies and television specials that shove a certain idea of terrorism and a certain person as terrorist in our face day after day.
We must be aware of ourselves, our world, and take the time to view a terrorist by their actions, not by the color of their skin or their faith. All people have the capacity for good and we must not lose that faith.
Further reading:
Blum, William. Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. 2000.
Goodman, Amy. “Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Talks With Former US Diplomats on Israel, Prisoners and Hezbollah’s Founding.” Democracy NOW. 28 July 2006.
United Nations Department Office on Drugs and Crime. Online. http://www.unodc.org/unodc/terrorism_definitions.html.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Social Security: Originally printed around Sept 21
Article #2 for the first issue of 'Students For Reform'
"The Social Security Blanket Needs Patching"
"The Social Security Blanket Needs Patching"
The Social Security Act, signed by President Roosevelt on August 14th, 1935, was enacted to: “frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age”. In January 1937, taxes were collected for the first time and the first one-time, lump-sum payments were made that same month. Ernest Ackerman was the first person to receive Social Security benefits, he got a payment of seventeen cents that January. Ongoing monthly benefits started in January of 1940.
Social Security has generated approximately $10.7 trillion in income from 1937 to 2005, while only paying out about $8.9 trillion. However, for 11 of those years we did not create a surplus and we appropriated Trust Fund bonds to cover the difference. The estimates the bonds covered range from $24 to $26 billion dollars.
Most of you are going to expect me to take the side of Social Security and the approximately $1.8 trillion in surplus, but I only hope to show its current state and expose problems that the Social Security office itself admits.
First and foremost, Social Security is a tax, and anyone covered by Social Security in their employment is subject to- and must pay- the FICA payroll tax. Social Security has never been a voluntary program, despite whatever internet rumors you might have read. The Social Security Trust Fund created in 1939 has never been lumped into a generic government fund. Originally, benefits of Social Security were not taxable income, but in 1983 Congress authorized taxation of Social Security benefits.
As it currently stands, the retirement age for anyone born in or after 1960 is 67. Let’s assume, using the government’s Social Security website calculations (http://www.ssa.gov ), that you were born in 1980 and that you will retire in 2047 at 67 years old. You’ve made about $20,000 this year. With assumed inflation, you would have received around $4,100 dollars (roughly equal to $860.00 today. These numbers are in terms of current benefits). The website says these numbers could be cut from 26 to 28% by 2040 if our current system does not change. This information is based on the estimated ratio of workers to retirees falling from 3.3:1 (today) to 2:1 within the next 40 years. Over the next 75 years, our government expects a $4.6 trillion shortfall in revenue, with negative cash flows beginning in 2017.
- Geoff Whiting
Education: Originally printed around Sept 21
One of the two articles I wrote for the first 'Students For Reform' issue.
"I Like My Education with PB&J"
"I Like My Education with PB&J"
Now that we have entered, or at least partially entered, the real world we hear so much about, we have to start balancing our own budgets. Similar to most college students, I suffer from two vices: alcohol and pizza. As the months go by, the pizza-booze fund slowly shrinks and I have to make adjustments. Our state’s budget works the same way. Legislators propose and enact a budget based on the money we have and what they feel the state will generate. As the months go by, they don’t always hit their projection- so they cut into their beer and pizza fund. Except with our state it is edjucation and healthcare.
Yes, you read that correctly. The places where Louisiana cuts its funding from when short are indeed edjucation and healthcare. I’m not out to demonize our representatives; in their defense, they cut from these programs because it is all our State Constitution will allow.
Year after year we read about schools in disrepair. We’ve organized fundraisers and signed petitions to get money; some cities even tried to pass tax increases that were supposed to go straight to their schools. These barely made a dent when they were successful. And in many places, such as Lafayette, people were afraid that the tax dollars would never make it to the classrooms- assumptions based on previous taxes that only lined greedy pockets.
At the college level we do not see it as much. We are not around in the summer when schools can not afford air conditioning. These are the schools we, or our neighbors, will send our kids. These are the schools that future workers will attend, and I, for one, want them to count my change correctly the first time. Schools continue to fall apart, yet because money isn’t available for other state-supported programs, all they can do is pull it out of the school’s funds.
Similarly, our healthcare system has been dwindling for the past twenty years. We are losing healthcare units and nurses to run those units far too often. In Baton Rouge we no longer have a generalized healthcare clinic, just those specifically for women’s needs and sexually transmitted diseases. I’m glad we still have those, but I pity the people required to travel to Lafayette or Abbeville for a healthcare unit.
During Hurricane Katrina, we lost many doctors, nurses and safe places to go once it hit and inversely gained more sick and injured people. Clinics were forced to find replacements, but often there were no substitutes. Children’s Special Health Services lost volunteer doctors, mostly those from New Orleans, and simply shut down some of the clinics that were offered. Currently, they act as a referral service; their only option is to struggle with other state-run programs (generally Medicare) to schedule and pay for appointments and operations these children need. When nurses quit or retire, it is truly a crapshoot to see if they will be replaced or not.
I said I was not going to demonize our legislators, but in their own image of politics, I lied. The fact these remain the primary source of income the state taps into when government programs fall short infuriates me endlessly. The commercials aired during campaigning feature these politicians talking about how they care about us and share our values, yet they are taking away two of our basic needs. They’re treating our education and our healthcare like fringe benefits, things we can lose and still remain productive citizens. I am personally tired of being on the bottom of every state ranking. There is no way we can improve our productivity, our GDP, our quality of life without improving how our citizens are educated and taken care of.
- Geoff Whiting
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
The initiate.
So this is the first of my real blog. Woot? Basically this will be the less emo version of the events of my life. I'll also be posting my SFR articles on this thing and asking for help about what to write about. If you're still reading by this point, check out www.studentsforreform.org , and let me know if you have any ideas or would want to get involved. Have a good one.
