Oct 16, 2009
Posted by VC on Oct 16, 2009 in Media | 0 comments
In a grumptacular state of red wine induced hungoverness, I perused through my Google reader’s customized content. Hello Niiu. It’s a start-up newspaper based in Germany whose papers will be delivered for the first time on November 16th. Not just a paper, but a customized paper very similar to the digital content my google reader’s rss feeds aggregate. You pick your content, Niiu prints it, and then it gets delivered to your door.
One thing that may prove challenging to their revenue stream is that the reader selects the content that will be printed online the evening before it is delivered. Why would I get a print version of something I’ve already read? It’s unclear whether the stories would be blurred, leaving only headlines available for selection. Would I still be interested in the topic the next morning? Or would I move on to the latest and greatest updates in my GReader?
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Jan 3, 2009
Posted by VC on Jan 3, 2009 in Media | 0 comments
From watching TV news and reading many mainstream American newspapers, a person could get the idea that the Islamic leaders of the Gaza Strip are to blame for the most recent violence in the region.
November 5, 2008, Israelis broke the cease fire. They crossed the borders and shot thirty rockets at an area in which they said Palestinians were digging a tunnel. Israeli officials said the tunnel was to be used to kidnap an Israeli.
Certainly, the situation is far more complex and involves decades of turmoil. However, journalists should not feed the news beast without adequate research.
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Oct 23, 2008
Posted by VC on Oct 23, 2008 in Business, Media, Politics, The Net | 0 comments
As I leave the polling place, the little sticker on my hand makes me proud to have made the effort to have my opinion heard in a country that used to disenfranchise Mexican-American women.
The little American flag appears to wave freely in a patriotic breeze. Printed to the right of the flag, the statement “I Voted” encapsulates and simplifies the struggle to participate in the elections that give people the power to make policies which alter the way they live life. It seems so long ago that my grandmother had to pay a poll tax to vote. She’s 90.
I wonder if hindrances to casting ballots are truly a thing of the past, or if they’ve morphed into sneakier ways of denying people’s rights?
I voted on a Hart Intercivic eslate 3000 this morning. I wonder if it accurately cast my ballot?
After watching the documentary Hacking Demoracy , I’m not so sure. It was alarmingly simple to hack the voting machines. After a negative 16,000 vote count was produced on the Diebold voting machines in Volusia County, Florida in 2000, the movie’s protagonist Bev Harris wanted to find out just WTF had happened. Authorities claimed it was faulty memory cards, but no one was allowed to see how the machines work. Not even the California Secretary of State.
Harris went online and downloaded official software and documents from a Diebold ftp site that had been left unsecured. She began to discover how much of a joke the security features are in the software. To bypass a password prompt, Harris accessed the spreadsheet file from which the software pulled the vote totals and wrote different numbers in the fields. Voila! Someone else had officially won the election.
The company that had been hired to certify the machines as acceptable for use (and sale) had not even tested the security features.
Oh, Democracy and Capitalism. Hand in hand you frolic down the side walk in front of a strip mall. What a playful couple of love struck old farts.
The pivotal scene is the one in which a computer scientist writes a few lines of code and uploads it into the memory card that stores the votes. A room full of election officials gasps in astonishment when the votes they had cast emerged from the machine altered. One even cried as she recognized how corrupt the election system had become.
Unfortunately for me and the Austinites who voted at my polling place, the Hart Intercivic eslate 3000 is a machine manufactured by a private company that intends to profit off of lucrative grants from the US government. I am supposed to trust that this equipment was not tampered with by some political zealot. Riiiight.
These are the same machines that disenfranchised voters in Hawaii and tabulated votes wrong in Virginia. In 2004, some Hart machines had a default setting for a vote for Bush. Even when Austinites selected a straight Democratic ticket, their vote went to Bush.
These machines make a mockery out of something that’s supposed to be sacrosanct. In the end, does my vote really count? Is this sticker merely a conversation starter for me to flaunt a status symbol? Oh look at me and how political I am. I can push important buttons. My vote doesn’t really count. But check out the sweet flag on my sticker.
Or is my sticker a badge of hope? Hope that my vote is tallied correctly. Hope that the next few years in the US find our society living healthier and more sustainable lives in all aspects. Hope that Americans begin to respect each other’s ideas and beliefs and lay off the ethnocentrism. As I wear my sticker, I hope that the memory cards haven’t been tainted.
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Sep 11, 2008
Posted by VC on Sep 11, 2008 in Media | 0 comments
I admire Keith Olbermann for being so damn ballsy and on-point. In this video he articulately bashes how Republicans have politicized and packaged into a cheap campaign promise the murder of thousands of Americans during 9-11(™).
Warning: video ID not specified!
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Jun 21, 2008
Posted by VC on Jun 21, 2008 in Media | 0 comments
As we sat on a teal bench in Shutlz Garten, I took a look at this thing that I had created. It was veggie dog with 3 squirts of sauce: Stubb’s BBQ sauce, mustard, and ketchup. I was insanely hungry and had 40 minutes to kill. For some reason unknown to anyone in my immediate area, the Veggie Dog Eating Contest didn’t start on time. So I ate. It wasn’t too bad. It didn’t really taste like anything except saucy bread.
Two Guys wearing Karate Kid head scarves posed for the cameras. The guy under the green pennant in the picture, whom I recognize from somewhere,stood to their left stretching his arms. Friendly locals gave each contestant 10 plain hot dogs. “You don’t have room for condiments!” a mildly intoxicated man yelled. The Score from the Rocky Balboa movies pumped up the crowd.
Last year’s second-place winner Sean carried his trophy with him for good luck. It was a little hot dog with arms holding its full belly, face contorted in painful joy. He was really excited to be interviewed. He had a whole cheering squad with him. They wore papers with hot dogs drawn on them that said “Sean” on the wiener. We didn’t stay long enough to see how he did. It started raining and the beast demanded another story.
Going out with photogs is all right when it’s not so hot outside.
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