“One of the problems is newspapers fired so many journalists and turned them loose to start so many blogs,” Mr. Mutter said. “They should have executed them. They wouldn’t have had competition. But they foolishly let them out alive.”
I thought we were supposed to kill all the lawyers first? And how would he define this genocide of journalists? Surely the crap that spews out of my keyboard wouldn’t count, so I am safe right?
Rupert Murdoch is the face of change these days, and what an ugly face he has (just a personal opinion). They want to start charging for news content, since the current newspaper business model is so flawed and will never make any money and has no future. I don’t think it will work however. I personally read the NYTimes.com site every couple of days because it has interesting content, but I think I would just move on to a different site if they wanted to charge me money. There are many alternatives after all – as Mr. Mutter noted in the quote above – who write interesting stuff on their own blogs and have the same qualifications as the people at NYTimes.
One noteable comment that I have heard is that all these blogs lack the resources to report global news effectively. There is no way a blogger in a spare bedroom in New Jersey can report on the scene from Baghdad for example. This is a valid critique, but ignores the secondary effect of that financial constraint. The secondary effect is that a US blogger that wants to have some sort of report on the local goings on in Iraq will need to rely on the local bloggers in Iraq – voila! – instant foreign bureau. Also, since there is a local person reporting then the views will have a local flavor, not the current US bias that we get today.
As a Canadian living in the US, it was a culture shock to realize once I moved here how insular the US is. The news reporting seems to ignore the world at large (except for the current war zone) and pays little attention to the other 95% of the global population. This is contrasted with the generous foreign aid that the US provides to the world. A strange contrast. There is a couple of simple fixes of course – just watch BBC America and read news from foreign countries online. Also, look at a map once in a while and if there is a country there that you don’t know anything about, then do a Bing on it and find out something. A little unstructured self paced geography class.
But back to killing all the journalists – do it right after the lawyers and politicians. They deserve it more.
I was quite lucky – I was able to get into the first round of financing for only $100,000 !!! Thanks kids for letting me use your college fund – just don’t tell Mom.
Jeff was unable to raise the cash! Score one for me!
This is an actual response after a interview with a company about their website:
Thanks for coming in today. I know you asked me to send you more details about what needs to be done. There is no way I can give you a list of each and every thing that needs to be done. So please base your quote on what you already know.
Thanks,
Name Deleted
So after not stating what need to be done, the customer now wants us to figure out what he wants. If you are this type of customer please read this nice article on web design then call me.
Actually if you are like this guy and have no idea what you want, please DON’T call.
… is a woman. Amber is the owner of Handichik.com and here is a list of the things she has done for me in the last few months -
Repaired some minor roof leaks and whitecoated (2 coats) my 6000 square foot roof
Re-hung an exterior door wrecked by the last tenant of a small apartment
Ran network cable 100′ in my warehouse so the shipping computer was online
Fixed a leaky toilet in a tenants house
Installed some metal fence that she recycled from a house being demolished
Installed some underground irrigation so my plants would live through the summer and Tucson Water wouldn’t bankrupt me
It is not that I couldn’t have done these things myself – I am a fairly handy person too – but with the current business cycle I am quite buried in work at my business and I don’t have the time. Besides that, Amber always seems to have a knack for finding bargains on new stuff, or having that connection to the great used stuff. When she says she will take care of something I have found that I can forget about it – the job will be done.
So in my opinion, the best handyman in Tucson is a woman. I highly recommend her – but maybe I shouldn’t. If too many people know about her, then she will end up on one of those TV shows and land a contract endorsing a big box home improvement store like Lowes. Then I will never get anything done.
This morning I took my son to the doctor for a checkup regarding his surgery from 6 months ago. The checkup proved that everything was fine, he had healed nicely and the surgery had been a success. The doctor examined him, then a medical intern had a look.
After that was done, the doctor asked what I thought about Canadian health care since he figured the USA would have a system like that soon (I am Canadian). I told him thatI personally did not know any friends or relatives in Canada that would trade their medical system for the US system, and that I think the Canadian system is cheaper (after counting extra taxes, co-pays, hidden medical costs, etc).
I then mentioned the scare tactic that has been in the media – that the government would be rationing care, unlike the GENEROUS insurance companies now that will authorize anything the doctor wants. The good doctor responded by spontaneously combusting bursting out loud in laughter at the absurdity that he got free reign over his patient’s care.
He assured me that almost every procedure was a fight with the insurance company. Profit seeking companies would never put the bottom line ahead of patient health, would they?
Every day I try to get up a little earlier that everyone else in the house so that I can get a little work done in peace and quiet. P&Q is hard to come by for me (and all parents, I am sure) because during the day I am at work with management responsibilities and the phone ringing fairly often. After work my children want attention – play video games, going for a swim – then there is dinner, a little TV and conversation with my lovely wife and then to bed. The only time for the P&Q is early in the morning between 4 am and 6am.
For Father’s Day this year, my gift was P&Q. I went for a motorcycle ride by myself, had breakfast by myself and thoroughly enjoyed my time alone. I must be a little weird.
This morning was one of those nice quiet mornings. A little coffee, the laptop turns on and I start checking emails and news. Then a little voice says “Hey Dad, let’s do something fun”. Troy has decided that he likes my quiet time and has got himself out of bed to come join me. Grrrr! How can I say no? This is not fair I think, then I recall my mother’s words “Payback is a bitch” or something like that because she actually doesn’t swear.
Troy wants to watch videos of car crashes, or play video games with car crashes, or draw pictures of car crashed. Is there a theme here? What happened to our deal that he would stay in bed until 6 am? How come a 5 year old gets to wriggle out of a verbal contract like that ?
He sure is cute though. Car crashes on You Tube, here we come…
So I was randomly surfing around, and I ran across this little video which states that there are 400 Million broadband connections worldwide and my little brain went pop because that is a lot of connections.
Which was from http://www.plugcomputer.org/ and talked about a little tiny PC that plugs into a wall socket. And that linked to this product Pogo which will let you plug in a portable hard drive to your wall outlet and network cable and then you have a NAS device. Crazy.
Now if I could just figure out some super awesome bit of tech to plug into wall sockets worldwide I could be RICH <evil laugh here>
And the article that started this random surf was on the NYTimes site.
