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AOL Hometown is Closing

by: Lasthorseman

Fri Oct 24, 2008 at 16:55:48 PDT        
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http://hometown.aol.com/
Yes but you may say, well so what, that is no big deal.
Ah, but you miss the bigger picture and other indications pointing to the death of the internet.
Why do I and why should you think this is a very bad deal.
Because Goddammit when lamestream wants you to have an opinion THEY will give it to you.
Lasthorseman :: AOL Hometown is Closing
AOL the largest and most corporate of internet service providers is closing it's hometown.  By itself it would be a non-event but the secret lies in industry trends and the disruptive cycle computing as a whole is entering.

The word is out that Vista sucks.  Microshit's new operating system needs dual core processors and 4 gig of memory to get to a startup screen.  After that it spends most of it's time checking if you really do have a license for the incompatible software that is on your machine.  I am an engineer who gave up on building computers for people as a business mainly because of the instant changes in entire buss structure.  It is obsolete when you order it.  It comes down to the usefulness of a product vs not.  In business speak the phenomena is called disruptive technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
So the first of all aspects is that your machine sucks because it's obsolete and won't handle the latest and greatest of crap.
And what does make PowerPoint "excell" anyway?
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tuf...

The other indicator is my personal observation on a long term industry trend over the past several years.  That trend has been to develop the technology to shove as much data as possible into a serial buss which means the technology to shove crap,lamestream crap direct to any wireless media they choose.

Another thing I resent is always being under the ASSumption that I am a software pirate criminal or something.  My Myers Briggs type does conflict with the more anal assholes of the world and if I bought software to do something good for me the first thing is does is ask me to type in 58Cfe-78dbg-45iab-78klp-iIlr4-xc94md-23fls, what is this a sobriety test?

Do I really have a problem paying for software and supporting the hard work of people who created something?  No.
Do I have a problem with assholes building an infrastructure that will lock out whistleblowers within a corporation from sending out emails and documents should the magically discover the corporation is evil?  Yes.
The original concepts buried within Longhorn and DRM, digital rights management where just that anal.
http://www.google.com/search?h...

Plus to expand upon that "trusted computing" does mean that you need an internet connection for them to check up on what you are doing with their software with the added "benefit" to you in keeping your system "up to date".
How big is the collection of assholes?  Well "they" are an infra-industry consortium, an oligopoly, an anti-trust megazoid.
http://www.bsa.org/country.asp...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://www.riaa.com/
Regional encoding of DVDs, for business control and other assholian memes.
http://www.dvdtalk.com/rce.html

So the oldest,largest, most "mature" of internet services wants to wipe out your personal ability to "sort of" create your own homepage to express your opinions to a potential world-wide audience.  Well who did you think you were?  A "free" American or something?

Free of electronic crap I did practice on the Apocalyptic horse today.  It is a wonderful time to ride.  Bugs gone, perfect weather and the vibrant fall colors.  After that we took a two year old on a walk in the field.  He was completely amused chasing milkweed seeds around as my wife blew them into the wind.  We didn't have to spend two grand for a machine to "entertain" him.  We didn't spend two grand for a machine to "inform" him.  We just gave him a real day, a day grounded in solid reality.  We sat him on the three year old philly and he beamed from ear to ear.  I won't be able to tell him how controlling assholes think until much later unfortunately.

There is one other link I had in mind.  It was about digital TeeVee and the resulting "free" internet service it promised to provide.  That "free" service, the article stated was to be heavily censored much like the "internet" in places like "Red" China.  Yes, China, host of the corporate sponsored censored "Olympics", carbon exempt China, focal point of western investment houses China.......

Updated with a PS.
What did I know and how did I find out about this.
www/radarmatrix.com was in fact an AOL homepage complete with excellent links to those nifty weather satellites.  It also provided me with an at work connection to a website BANNED by our corporate babysitter software we have come to call "SmurfControl", www.surfcontrol.com
The banned website was prohibited under the category "offensive/tasteless".  The banned website also contained extensive links to mainstream world news sources but ran under the banner leaning toward "conspiracy themes".  That banned website is www.propagandamatrix.com and is comes out of England.  I surmise that the parent company whose top officers are on the Bilderburg Group attendees list know of the site based upon geographical proximity.

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AOL first (4.00 / 6)
then personal blogging/political sites after?

Whatever you do to others you also do to yourself!

Thanks for explaining why my Laptop with Vista (4.00 / 4)
sucks so bad....Now I know why I prefer my Windows 200) Desktop Dinosaur. But I really miss my Windows 3.2 computer....it had all these neat games that I was addicted to and slow dial up internet....and...Oh well.

I still want Bush and Cheney in jail!

I so miss my (4.00 / 4)
Win 98SE.
It copied DVDs.  It ran stuff instantly in even 512 MB.  It didn't complain, tell me I had to do shit or was "violating" some God forbidden security protocol.  Best of all it never ever scolded me for the unforgivable sin of heaven forbid not being connected to the internet.

It is the first thing I blatantly noticed in the changeover of dedicated lab computers taking simple data acquisition and controlling lab machines.  XP whines incessantly ad nausium every ten seconds like a five year old about not having an internet connection, so bad I had to look up how to shut the bitch up.  No doubt a marketing push for the Satanic subliminal institutionalization of Satanically destructive memes.

One of the biggest losses in my engineering career has been the loss of control over computing systems and networks.  It has been taken over by the "global IT help desk" which of course is more obstacle than help.  Their interest, their prime directive is the "security" of their system and peon engineers wanting to talk over the network to a computer in another plant is just about as important as a grain of sand in the universe.  

Whatever you do to others you also do to yourself!


[ Parent ]
I retired my 486 (4.00 / 3)
Running PICK last year. I do have a couple old early-Pentium machines running Linux that I'm using as file servers. They are capable of copying DVDs and stuff, too. My laptop is running XP and I don't seem to have any of the complaints you have with your XP machine. My primary desktop is W2K and is my prefered machine, as Windows boxes go. No Vista machines here, I've seen enough of it to know I'm not interested. I really prefer my Linux (Debian) workstation, but I haven't done much to make it work with MS Office files, which I have to deal with often so use the W2K box most. None of them has more than 512MB RAM, the servers are 256MB and 128MB.

I anticipate a backlash from users, especially with the current trend in the Economy, away from pricey, buggy, operating systems (ala MS) toward the open source options. Linux will gain popularity, IMO, but as for alternatives to the internet...? I don't have a solution that doesn't involve creating a parallel network. DARPA was never integrated with the PSTN until this thing we call "the internet" became available as a commercial product. Decoupling the internet from the PSTN would be a step in the right direction, but it'll never happen at this point, ATT/Vz, et al are making too much money.

Tack him up, brother.


[ Parent ]
agreed... (4.00 / 3)
... this economy is likely to be a boon to open source, which was already gaining momentum before the crash...

[ Parent ]
Software as a Service (4.00 / 2)
is the latest and most Satanic meme currently gaining ground in the IT industry.  Bigger than de-regulation of business the IT industry wants to sell the concept of internet based software so not only do the have total control of "your" machine all of "your" data goes through their servers too.   Oh, I'm sure they have a "privacy policy".
http://www.cio.com/article/109...
Like I said there are several ogranizations in IT/hardware pushing the worst possible of policies simply for their profit margins.

Whatever you do to others you also do to yourself!

[ Parent ]
I plead ignorance sir... (4.00 / 3)
...I cannot pass the sobriety test, and my cohabitation with Vista Obscurantus has brought me far too up close and personal with disfunctional technology.  

If I had a horse, I'd go for a ride through the tall grass in the whistling wind.

But alas, I must stay here, daughter of the violet veil.

The fierce urgency of now.  Martin


VISTA (4.00 / 2)
Voluntary Institutionalized Slavery To Assholes
Why not have a sense of humor about the destruction of America and seek to enjoy ourselves when we can.

Whatever you do to others you also do to yourself!

[ Parent ]
When this machine dies, (4.00 / 2)
this one here, the one that I'm hating on more every day, the one that takes 10 minutes to turn on, the one that won't turn off without repeatedly clicking stuff, the one that shuts down programs while they're running, I'm joining my spouse and my three kids and buying a Mac.  I'm taking this one and the one it's connected to in the next room, and I'm personally throwing them both in the recycling bin at landfill. It might not be an answer, but it's gonna feel really,really good.

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