Destor on Ordering a Pizza Conservatively in Texas
Ramona: Hatred in a Lovely Church
Gallup: Obama 46, Romney 46
Book of the Month
From the Readers
- Wattree 18 hours ago
- Another Trope 1 day ago
- CVille Dem 1 day ago
- PeraclesPlease 3 days ago
- PeraclesPlease 3 days ago
- PeraclesPlease 4 days ago
- ironboltbruce 5 days ago
- Orion 6 days ago
- bslev 6 days ago
- Another Trope 6 days ago
Creative corner
- Donal 2 days ago
- MrSmith1 5 days ago
- MrSmith1 1 week ago
- tmccarthy0 2 weeks ago
- MrSmith1 2 weeks ago
From the Dagbloggers
- destor23 1 hour 28 min ago
- Donal 6 hours 34 min ago
- Ramona 1 day 5 hours ago
- Donal 1 day 6 hours ago
- destor23 2 days 3 hours ago
- Donal 2 days 19 hours ago
- Donal 5 days 2 hours ago
- William K. Wolfrum 5 days 8 hours ago
- Ramona 5 days 8 hours ago
- Doctor Cleveland 5 days 17 hours ago
Hits of the Day
Websites going dark in protest of proposed legislation
by artappraiser 1/18/2012 - 3:43 am
By Jon Swartz and Scott Martin, USA Today, Jan. 17, 2012
More than a dozen websites planned to go dark Wednesday to protest a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills they claim will gut the Internet and stifle free speech.
Wikipedia, Moveon.org, Craigslist, user-submitted news site Reddit, the blog Boing Boing and the Cheezburger network of comedy sites planned to participate in a blackout to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills. [...]
Read the full article at
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-17/sopa-pipa-blackout/52622786/1
- Add new comment
- 194 reads
In the News
-
Doctor Who Helped Find Bin Laden Given Jail Term (for...
By Ismail Kahn, New York Times, May 23/24, 2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency pin down Osama bin Laden's location under cover of a vaccination drive was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.
A tribal court here in northwestern Pakistan found the doctor, Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state, said Mutahir Zeb Khan, the administrator for the Khyber tribal region [....]
-
Russia lawmakers advance bill on penalties for protesters
By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2012
MOSCOW — Stiff new penalties aimed at opposition protesters were given preliminary approval Tuesday by Russian lawmakers loyal to President Vladimir Putin, the target of mass rallies and demonstrations before his March election victory.
The bill, which opposition parliament members termed draconian and protested by threatening to file out of a legislative session, calls for fines of up to $50,000 and up to 200 hours of community service for organizers of rallies and demonstrations that grow violent or exceed the approved number of participants.
The sanctions were approved on first reading by parliament's lower house, which is controlled by Putin's United Russia party. They mark a return by the Kremlin to a tough stance against critics after concessions during the recent election campaign [...]
Also see:
Russians back Putin, strong leadership
Washington Post, May 22, 2012A Pew survey of 1,000 Russians found that President Vladimir Putin is well-liked by more than 70 percent of citizens, especially older adults.
-
In Cuba, Mystery Shrouds the Fate of an Undersea Internet...
Associated Press, May 21, 2012
HAVANA — It was all sunshine, smiles and celebratory speeches as officials marked the arrival of an undersea fiber-optic cable they promised would end Cuba's Internet isolation and boost web capacity 3,000-fold. Even a retired Fidel Castro had hailed the dawn of a new cyber-age on the island.
More than a year after the February 2011 ceremony on Siboney Beach in eastern Cuba, and 10 months after the system was supposed to have gone online, the government never mentions the cable anymore, and Internet here remains the slowest in the hemisphere. People talk quietly about embezzlement torpedoing the project and the arrest of more than a half-dozen senior telecom officials.
Perhaps most maddening, nobody has explained what happened to the much-ballyhooed $70 million project....
-
Domestic violence is biggest threat to west Africa's...
By Tamasin Ford in Monrovia, Guardian.co.uk, May 22, 2012
Husbands, not strangers or men with guns, are now the biggest threat to women in post-conflict west Africa, according to a report by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) released on Tuesday.
The IRC report, Let Me Not Die Before My Time: Domestic Violence in West Africa, based on data collected over 10 years by the IRC in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast, said domestic violence is the "most urgent, pervasive and significant protection issue for women in west Africa" [.....]
-
US Army more selective on recruits, re-enlistments
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press, May 22, 2012
WASHINGTON -- Uncle Sam may not want you after all.
In sharp contrast to the peak years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Army last year took in no recruits with misconduct convictions or drug or alcohol issues, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press. And soldiers already serving on active duty now must meet tougher standards to stay on for further tours in uniform.
The Army is also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars less in bonuses to attract recruits or entice soldiers to remain.
It's all part of an effort to slash the size of the active duty Army from about 570,000 at the height of the Iraq war to 490,000 by 2017. The cutbacks began last year, and as of the end of March, the Army was down to less than 558,000 troops.
For a time during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army lowered its recruiting standards [....]
Latest Comments
-
in The Hijinks Of The...Another Trope
-
in The Hijinks Of The...Verified Atheist
-
in Something Happened in...Verified Atheist
-
in Something Happened in...Another Trope
-
in Something Happened in...Resistance
-
in Something Happened in...Another Trope
-
in Something Happened in...Resistance
-
in The Hijinks Of The...destor23
-
in The Hijinks Of The...destor23
-
in The Hijinks Of The...Sanjay (not verified)
-
in The Hijinks Of The...Sanjay (not verified)
-
in The Hijinks Of The...Peter Schwartz
-
in Something Happened in...Another Trope
-
in Something Happened in...Another Trope
-
in Something Happened in...Resistance
New York Times' coverage:
... yawn ....
So what does a 24-hour black out serve?
As much as I hold Italians in contempt ... had a garage there change out my car radio and found out later they just cut the wire connectors on both radio and in the car dash and spliced the ends together instead of using the adapter I gave them ... they have a one trick pony that would be a model to follow - hiccup strikes. Every few days or so, drop out for an undetermined number of hours. Better yet, once one starts, others follow at staggered intervals to make it a wave effect. And keep it up until the Congress announces they'll leave the internet alone.
Did you notice this headline either Genghis or Articleman put up on the home page?
Kind of has a hiccup sorta theme...I do the h*adlin*s, and did that on*. Always a pl*asur* wh*n th*y g*t notic*d.
I%'s a gr*a% h*adlin*, bu% b*caus* I abhor SOPA *v*n mor* %han you do, I'm no% using %h* fif%h OR %h* %w*n%i*%h l*%%*r.
%ak* %ha%, Congr*ss!!!!
Sheesh, maybe we do need to get out more.
%hanks.
I don't g*t it.
Nic* on*
Whether effective or not is open to debate, but the 24-hour black out of sites like Wikipedia serves to make people aware of the issue in front of Congress who might not otherwise be aware of it - and this in turn can lead to some members of Congress to rethink their support of the bill.
It raises awareness. I know this might surprise you, but many people just don't know much, if anything, about SOPA. Having it on Google's front page (for example) should reach a lot of people who use the internet on a regular basis.
So what does a 24-hour black out serve?
Apparently some Congresscritters do pay attention when big entities like Google & Wikipedia express being upset in this manner about some of those mysterious innertubes issues that hardly anyone usually pays any attention to or understands And I would suspect that this might be a rare special case where what they did is much more effective than lobbyist dollars, because Congresscritters, their families, friends and their constituents use those sites themselves. Top of Google News home page now:
That doesn't mean it's going to work as well if it was done again or often. The novelty factor probably worked a lot to their benefit. (I would argue that it's part of what people pay lobbyists for, to come up with new novel ways to get attention from Congresscritters on an issue, to realize and listen to another side of a story when they've only been hearing one side)
P.S.. for those who don't have NYT access, the next two graphs are quite interesting on the "who":
Yeah, the campaign seems to have -- dare I say it? -- won. Its sponsors had already begun tweaking/diluting it. Now I don't think we'll see even a drastically retweaked version till after the election. If then. Yay!
I love the smell of running dog fear in the morning...Seeing the sponsors scatter like roaches in a Brooklyn kitchen when the lights go on (tmi?) is a beautiful thing.
ooh, great analogy, gets everything across in few words!
I have a new idea in lobbying, and it's all down to Newt's brilliant plan to substitute nine year olds for janitors
I think fannie/freddie could have gotten way more bang for their lobbying buck using my new company Boy (and Girl) Rangers--who's gonna say no to a nine year old kid? spozed to start at 8:55 but can't make the sophisticated youtube editing dialog box work cuz too old or too high)
Wow! just rewatched the last four minutes montage--they've got firehoses on peaceful marchers, carloads of nine year olds brutally murdered--Capra did not play!
In Canada, Google has been business-as-usual today (no blacked-out logo). Wikipedia is blacked out here, the same as in the States -- much more effective at raising awareness of the worldwide nature of the threat. I love Wikipedia.
I love lamp.
On Googlepower (& of course, the question comes to mind, will it corrupt?)