Fox Coverage of election campaign

It was interesting to hear news reporter bad mouthing Obama so much about his half an hour campaign show. Then praise McCain for the rest of the show even though he got equal free time on another show. It is interesting to see the conservatives trying to pull apart  his campaign. They had a McCain speech on the news that sounded exactly like Bush. He kept on saying that he will find the terrorist and stop our enemies from ruining our way of life. I wanted to pull my hair out, the only ones that are ruining our lives today is our own government. This administration has used terrorism and fear to kill and hurt more innocent people than any terrorist. They have ruined our economy, hurt our relations with our allies, they don't try to solve or find compromises with our enemies and have made jobs harder to keep. The administration has taken away our homes and gave money to the companies that will only keep it for themselves. McCain will continue to mismanage our country because he is unwilling to compromise and admit the trouble that we are in. Obama is not going to make miracles happen over night but I think that he is more willing to try to help the education, health care and fuel crisis. These are the problems that have hurt people more than any threat of a terrorist who is horribly wrong but probably was created by our own ignorant views that we can do whatever we want and others have to listen to us. I am not unpatriotic but I think real discourse is more important than being proud of where you live. We need to pull together and fix our problems over party lines and try to fix the mess that we are all in. I hope that this election goes smoothly and that change will actually happen even though it will not happen as quickly as we would want. It is much easier to blow something up than to rebuild. It is much easier to hate than it is to get along. It is harder to work together than to point the blame anymore. It is easier to fight than to get along. We all need to work together in the world and it will be hard to make things better for everyone. No more scapegoats or insults but lets get some real dialog and real policies that help unite this country with the rest of the world in peace. 

New Ipod Mixer

There is a new ipod mixer for DJs which has a great new feature.  This new mixer allows you to take multiple songs off of one ipod and get them ready to mix together. For people who do not know much about mixers it does basically what the name is. The mixer mixers two different sources of music players together. It could be  a record player, CD player, ipod or any other type and you can transition one song to the next without any break in it. This is a great tool to have especially being a DJ at a party. You never have to have dead air. Now the new mixer is different than the old way because in the past you needed two different playing devices that are playing difficult storage units like music on a CD. The new one only requires that you have one unit that plays the music and holds it. The real benefit is that this mixer can take several songs off of this single device and temporarily store it on the mixer. Now you can mix the different songs that are already on the ipod. The ipod has this feature when connected to the computer by setting up playlist but this new mixer allows you to do it easier and on the fly. It has made it easier for DJs that know how to use this equipment to have a larger amount of music on a single device and can access it faster and easier. I do not have one yet but I will soon. I love the use of CDs and it is more free and less restrictive than ipods in my resistance to learn a new way of playing music but with this new mixer I will be willing to spend money and learn a new skill. In the end it will be easier for me to find songs that I may not play as often and reduce the chance of not being able to do my job to my best ability in playing the songs that the audience has requested. This is just like the leap from records to CDs and this may become the new way of how people hear their digital music at parties.

New Online World New Online Problems

The more information that we put on our online world will creates more problems in the real world. The push to do online billing and make everything digital will make it more difficult to conduct any business without the aid of the computer. All of our stores are computerized and this is leading to a complete monopoly of technology in business. It is increasing our dependency on computers and especially the internet. The laws do not protect the consumers rights over privacy of his economic persona. The laws about theft do not fully keep up with online theft. It is sometimes easier to convict a person who physically robs a store for a few hundred dollars. The people who steal millions online, get away with it and it is harder to prosecute them. There needs to be a huge adjustment to have we view the network and internet crimes. Not just money, but copyright information. There are many new problems out there because we are connected in this online community. There needs to more policing of the internet but also safeguards to stop a new government rule online that can become corrupt. This new world has to be controlled but not ruled by the elites. It is a very tricky situation. When online problems get out of control they will become our real world problems. The distinction between these two worlds are becoming more narrow by the day. I hope that the internet will be in control but not under control. This is a brave new world and I hope that we don't go back to 1984. This is a loaded statement but our direction of the world may depend more than ever on how we handle this online world.  

New Economy

The new economy has elements of our old one with some new ways of working and some new products to sell. The new products are not products that you can hold in your hand. These products are software programs and information. Different ways of using our new integrated networks to distribute information and ideas. We are connecting between like minded companies that can help our own businesses grow. These international and national companies have associations with other corporations to streamline these new products that help build up and make both companies stronger. We are selling services that are not as tangible as making a chair but can be transfered by digital means. Yes some of them can be put on CDs but most are just sent over the private superhighways. They may use public internet to connect to some companies but many more companies have these private archives and transmissions.  The big problem with these new integrated systems that are being streamlined in order to prevent barriers to increase productivity make it harder to keep things copyrighted. The new problem is getting paid for these software and information from being taken instead of sold or used within a company exclusively with their other associates. These private companies along with military and government agencies have always been able to get the top of the line equipment and now software. The tipping point to get the public to use them still has to make it affordable and found a use for them before everyone needs to have it in order to keep up with the rest. This lag time always occurs and when something does not catch it is put on the shelf until the public is ready and willing to utilize these new technologies which are more ideas than material things. The office will someday have a more modern version of an assembly line factory system. The office work will be connected to many departments and can have different jobs handle separately done but seen by everyone in other departments that need to see them for their own work. This new economy will improve the production, make it easier to work and eliminate the problems that slow down production. This style of work will affect all big business in the long run. The new economy will not allow one company to focus just on their own profits and success. These companies are becoming more interconnected and reliance will help companies become stronger but also more vulnerable to other companies failures. The new economy will be forced to make sure that other countries economies and practices become more uniform and stable or there will become more unstable businesses with the businesses in the whole world. These monopolies can sink or swim depending on how well they work together as a whole. 

New World with Human Interaction

We continue to push the limits of our imagination. We want to see what we can create because we want control over it. But if we continue to make things more powerful it may go to far. What will happen when the computers don't need us anymore. Will they be able to develop with their own agendas. We will lose control over the technology and it will decide what their and our futures. It may sound like science fiction but it may become science fact. Just like the natural evolution of our own DNA  the computers will be able to evolve without our input.  Manuel Castells and Jan Van Dijk both deal with these issues of if we do not keep ourselves in check we will pay the greatest prices. They have different views but I believe they both understand the power of technology and how it will change our world as we know it. Our technology is a very powerful tool just like a calculator. If we cannot add or do math without it, it does not help us. If we allow these tools to do everything for us we lose that knowledge. Our future generations will lose this knowledge forever. I hope we do not become to dependent on the tools that were there to guide our knowledge seeking and make it faster and more productive. It is difficult to tell what is to much.

Technology Making us strangers

Can we continue to become connected on the internet without losing our connections to each other. They would like us to think that we become more connected to each other with instant communication. This is great but we cannot get that human experience online. There is a huge problem when people have to rely on the internet for dating, friends, work, hobbies, and their lives. If we get so used to being online we will lose that time that we could be outside. If we have to work online do we ever get that human touch to our work. If all our hobbies are online do we ever want to leave. All our friends and family will have to be connected by the internet will we have any more real relationships or love. If we get a date online can we ever fall in love with the real person. If we do all these things online when do we live our real lives. Do we lose our own identity? Do we lose the human touch? Can we no longer be human any longer if everything in our lives is digital copy? A digital copy is compressed and not real. These are very scary realities that we can fall into over time. We would not fall into it if we were not conditioned to in our lives to except technology to be more important than real life. The digital world is becoming more interactive and real but it will never have that human touch to it. I wonder if we will stop ourselves before it is too late? We have a perfect world out there and all around us but we are not satisfied with it because we did not create it. Can't we get back to the beauty of the world and nature without losing our comforts that technology has given us?

The Bailout

Does anyone else feel that the media is trying again along with the government trying to  scare us into wasting our money on bailing out companies that profit off of our hard earned money. 

This is absolutely crazy to think that they only gave us hundreds of dollars and they will give a company trillions of dollars. That racial seems a little off. I got a great bail out plan. We give every tax payer a hundred thousand dollars and that will stimulate the economy. If we give out the money to them but only let them pay off a house, pay off credit card debt, pay off a student loan, put into savings, or pay off a car loan or some other loan. This money would go back to the banks and would help everyone out. Do any of you think this would work? I know this would be impossible. I know there would be tons of problems with this. Why not set up some kind of lottery way where everyone wins. It would only be for the people who made under a certain amount. This idea is crazy too but I think giving a company all this money and expect to get a tax cut without losing any good programs would be impossible to do. Why is the media feeding into this. Any more ideas on this I would love to hear. Do you think this bailout would work? How do you think this affects our view of the government and their agendas? Do you think our checks would to butter us up to approve this deal? Why didn't anyone catch this earlier? Where is our money going and the economy going? If we don't pay our bills we have to suffer so why not make them suffer through the depression as much as we are.