Category Archives: Internet

Keeping The Competition OUT

EU, Free Markets, Internet, Regulation, Socialism, Taxation, Technology, The State

Under the guise of upholding a fair and free-market order, uncompetitive companies, given the option, will petition centrist establishments to regulate the market. This kneecaps the competition and ensures the lobbyists retain ‘market share’ without having to compete for it. This is what ETNO is doing.

“The ETNO,” informs RT, “is made up of telecommunication companies including Swisscom and Spain’s Telefonica that are well-established in nearly three dozen European countries.” The ETNO’s Executive Board, which is a European-based lobby group, “has asked the United Nations to tax American websites that provide services abroad.”

In December, the leak reveals, the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association (ETNO) approached the United Nations with a proposal that would outline a restructuring of the Internet’s business model when taking into account Web entities with an international presence. If approved, the legislation would tax American-based content providers — such as Apple, Google and Netflix — for offering services to customers overseas. Should they get their wish, the ETNO might soon usher in some serious revisions for the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR), a legislation that deals with cross-border communications traffic that has remained untouched since its last revision in 1988.


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Microsoft Previews Windows 8 OS

Free Markets, Internet, Outsourcing, Private Property, Science, Technology

News comes that “Microsoft has launched the most complete preview yet of its forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.” Is that good or bad? I live with a Microsofty who tries to defend the Machine as best he can. Yet, I dread each and every improvement in this indispensable technology.

I’m just a simple user; not a designer. And each and every “improvement” seems to come with added complexity.

To me, a technological “improvement” means ease of operation. I long to go back several revisions of Microsoft Word and Outlook. I swear; each and every function I once achieved with one or two clicks of the mouse, now takes nine. I’ve even documented a bug or two, which, when challenged on, my better half smiles and walks away.

This weekend we were forced to replace the home’s telephones. (The free market is fabulous. Most Americans can afford a few “telephones.”) The lines kept crackling. It turns out the noise was not the fault of the old, trusted telephones, answering and fax machines.

The upshot of the improved technology: Whereas I was once able to press a single button, and by so doing activate the answering message; I now must click through a whole process to get the same result.

I am told that this added complexity and inconvenience is due to cheap innards. Extant hardware must be made to carry as much programming as possible. Designing for customer comfort is secondary to the price of the components.

Ultimately, each time I accidentally click to update my browser or any other of the things I use to function online, I dread the complexity that will ensue.

Some things are best kept simple. Technology is one such thing.

UPDATE III: Planet Facebook Owns It (The Little Guy/Gal Needs Social Media)

Business, Democracy, Economy, Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Internet, Labor, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Technology

“Planet Facebook Owns It” is the title of my new column, now on WND. Here’s an excerpt:

“The more you hear from your average, financial-markets hater—the more you wish you could transport each one back to a mud hut in a far-away land, where women wear grass skirts, and carry their groceries on their heads, and where no man dares to or is capable of dreaming-up businesses like Costco, Overstock.com, or Facebook.

Planet Facebook, in particular, is a global, social, political, and potential economic revolution. Had the idea for this social-networking site not come into being, we’d be the poorer for it.

Facebook users love it and cannot imagine life without. Yes, they complain endlessly—but largely because they can. Unlike government (and CNN’s Anderson Cooper), you can keep private enterprise honest. Business aims to please its constituents, the consumers. Complaints encourage compliance.

Facebook went public. In the process of going public, some people got rich, or richer; others didn’t.

INDIVIDUALS VS. CORPORATIONS: To the media, these are two antagonistic and atomistic solitudes, never the twain shall meet. This ‘angels versus demons’ caricature is lapped up by the masses, even though most of them own shares in major American companies, through their pension funds.

Most Americans benefit from and are heavily vested in corporate America.

True to this cartoon, the Little Guy is depicted as good; Big Players as bad. Invariably, those who can’t get rich off an initial public offering (IPO) are labeled sympathetically as ‘small investors,’ or ‘retail investors.’ Those who land in the lap of luxury for the umpteenth time, because of their capacity to invest vast sums, are dubbed derisively ‘big investors,’ ‘Wall Street.’

SIMPLIFIED: People with oodles of money make a killing. People without much money would kill to be in their shoes.

U2’s Bono exemplifies the first type. Bono might be a chap who fronts a three-chord band of unimpressive droners, but he knows a good business deal when he sees one. In 2009, the singer invested $90 million in Facebook stock.

Cui bono, you ask. And the answer as to who benefits from Bono’s industry is this: The singer has pledged the $1.5 billion he reaped from his Facebook investment to charities in Africa.

Business, in contrast to Barack Obama, is a positive-sum game. …”

Read the complete column, “Planet Facebook Owns It,” now on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column (WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column) in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” “Return To Reason” on WND, and the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT.

UPDATE I: Myron, “that FACEBOOK is overpriced” doesn’t contradict what I wrote, to the effect that “… prices are supposed to fluctuate continuously, as market forces bring supply and demand into balance.” Does it?

UPDATE II: To “Old Man”: I don’t hang out on Facebook, much less on twitter. Rather, I use social media quite efficiently to promote my work, only. I’ve gotten good at this efficiency. I waste no time at all, engaging in little extraneous discussion. In fact, when that “Hi, baby” chat window pops up at me (you can no longer disable the thing with ease), I “Unfriend” the creep right away.
For the little gal with no promotional assistance, Facebook is business. If you look at my pages, you’ll see that all my blogs propagate to Facebook and twitter (now, there’s a useless forum) mostly automatically through special applications interfaces. (Of course, these often malfunction, but not nearly as badly and as routinely as the government does.)
My book I advertised on Facebook, managing to reach 3 million pages, if I recall. That was a bit of creative work.
How cool is that? Very cool when you have no other promo support. As hard as it is to fathom, I’ve worked uphill to get my book out on Amazon, the Only Bookshop That Matters. As I noted in the “MAÑANA” blog post, “the softcover of The Cannibal is coming ‘Mañana,’ Pacific Time.” (The hardcover is available, for now.)
Although the soft-spined (but never spineless) Cannibal has been collated (in-house by myself and my husband) and features bonus material, its Publisher disavows Amazon, and is in no rush to supply the Only Store Worth Supplying with Cannibal softcover copies. (“After almost a decade in the Pacific Northwest region, I can safely say that, with a few treasured exceptions, people outside the Microsoft workforce (who, with Boeing, is the main employer here) have a hard time acting professionally and honorably.”)

So, yes, Facebook can be valuable for the Little Guy/Gal, who has no other option but to work it .

Incidentally, employers can, through Facebook, find out something about the bums they are about to employ. For example, I had employed a social media person, initially. This being America, the paid personnel rarely responded to my inquiries. Busy was she? Not on your life. She was chatting frivolously on Facebook, in real time, as I tried to reach her via email. Since then, three more potential “workers” have conducted themselves similarly. (It’s America. We are, for the most, unmotivated by obligation, professionalism, contract, intellectual honestly, or proprietary; but by how things make us feel. Doing the right thing we frame as an act of heroism.)

UPDATE (May 26): Thanks for your support for this work, Nell. As I said, the writer in this instance has no influence. Readers will have to use their clout to get the softcover issue to the Amazon market, where most readers prefer to shop. Do contact the publisher.

UPDATED: Plain IPO, Or A Planet Unto Itself?

Business, Capitalism, Democracy, Internet, Technology

I’ve been debating futilely with someone about the value of purchasing Facebook stock, pursuant to the IPO (Initial Public Offering).

In my opinion—and I am not a stockbroker or an expert; just a rational thinker who uses (as opposed to hangs-out on) Facebook—at $38 to $42 a share, Facebook stock is not that expensive.

You have to be bereft of an imagination, and/or someone who has never used Facebook to productive ends—not to realize that Facebook is no hot air, Dot.com financial balloon.

Facebook is a planet unto itself, a global, social and political tool; a revolution.

UPDATE: I would compare the invention of Facebook to the discovery of a planet. The products of many a dot.com come and go; Facebook is here to stay. I said that to my better half a short while after joining FB last year (2011). Bono might be “a chap who fronts a three-chord band of unimpressive droners,” but he knows a good business deal when he sees one.