Recently in Current Events Category
... the only way to shut [WikiLeaks] down will be to shut down the Internet itself. Politicians should be aware that these are the stakes. They either get used operating in the open, where the people they're governing are in on everything they do, or they go totalitarian, around the globe, now.
Do we value the pursuit of knowledge, discovery, and innovation into the mass-information age? do we want our children to grasp and manipulate the world first-hand? are man-made objects as equally accessible as natural entities?
Coy Doctorow is angry with Apple's path: The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."
He is on to something significant.
Submit. Believe! or else Rot in Hell.
Apple's filed a patent on a design for a device that won't let its owner use it unless that person demonstrates that she has complied with an advertiser's demands by paying attention to an ad and taking some action indicating her dutiful attention.
The Fed has never pushed its target for the federal funds rate as low as zero to 0.25 percent ... the central bank said it planned to use a variety of unconventional methods to flood the banking system with credit and drive interest rates lower.
