For Shame! Boycott Microsoft and Hewlett Packard for Their McCarthyite Blacklisting of Air America
Air America was set up to air a liberal point of view as an alternative to the usual Hate Radio. It's going bankrupt, and this may be why: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has documented a deliberate attempt by several major companies, including Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, to put AA out of business!
Traffic directors at ABC affiliates have received memos from several companies including HP and MS that specifically request that their ads not air on Air America with the result, of course, that Air America gets no ad revenue.
The McCarthyite era, we are told, ended in the 1950s. Clearly, McCarthyism has been privatized as a tacit CONSPIRACY to exclude all but right-wing views...allowing in fact a wide spectrum of hateful views, allowing in fact monkeyshines and worse that make radio listeners and phoners into buffoons beneath pity and contempt, but NOT allowing reasonable discussion to a permanent war economy.
I propose that insofar as possible, Microsoft be boycotted.
I will NOT upgrade from the Visual Basic and C# Express products which are free for my own work. I will get further .Net from the mono project, not Microsoft.
I will NOT upgrade to Windows Vista.
I will continue to use Open Office despite its slowness and limitations and develop my own SQL parser, or use mySQL, for data base products.
I will convert to the Mozilla browser ASAP.
I will refuse any further invitations to the Microsoft Author's conference and will no longer promote Microsoft products in any way.
The joke is on Microsoft. There is no way it can price its software competitively for China, a market of a billion "seats", because as soon as it did so, a brisk trade in legal, purchased copies of Microsoft software, without the quality problems of clones, would start to flow through Hong Kong back to the USA.
Sooner or later, some coder in Asia is going to create an effective Windows clone which will run all Windows code on an open source platform. It's feasible if you have the time, and it's legal to do so as long as you recode the entire operating system from top, to bottom.
Microsoft is not anticipating this. Instead it prices its professional software at US rates unimaginatively.
Instead of creating a GLOBAL business model, Microsoft marketeers waste their time with destroying Air America.
Software development is no excuse
In 1970, if someone had spoken of the "relevance" of hairspray to antarctica he would have been regarded as a nut. Then we found out about florocarbons and their effect on the ozone hole.
Ecologically everything is related to everything, but, of course, convenience and morality mean that some pairs of things are more related than other pairs.
We are responsible in our work for its effects. Likewise, just today, just this instant, Microsoft did something which pushed the "relevance" of their marketing strategy to software into my personal red zone, and the post explained why.
Most radio programming carefully uses computers and software for pinpoint demographic targeting and their audience has been found by these means to be a captive, hostage, audience, of predominantly white, predominantly pissed-off, men in cars on journeys to work, or from, filled alternately with horror of anticipation or exhaustion, and not "up" for messages of progressive hope: "up" instead to hear that it's somebody else's fault and there is a conspiracy after all.
By denying Air America ad revenue, Microsoft adds to information smog because the political views aired on radio, a mature and therefore in Marxist terms a declining industry (filled with the noise of struggle for a declining profit margin), are driven by lowest common denominator advertising dollars.
It's not even a "rational" strategy, although I hesitate to say this because Microsoft's success is not on my plate. Listeners on Air America are probably a perfect demographic for Microsoft, being probably heavy users of software, being able unlike the typical listener to find the power key.
Spare me these calls to be narrow and filled with geek fear.
The *reductio* of the reduction of "free speech" to "you have the right to say what you want, you don't have a right to be listened to" is the concentration camp. Concentration camp survivors remarked upon the fact that in at least some of the death camps, there was a great deal of "freedom of speech": people could say anything they wanted because they were being killed.
In fact, "free speech" is inclusive of the duty of respectful listening, unless you are being spoken to dishonestly or threatened, and it is inclusive of the provision of even-handed forums.
As such, the IRRATIONAL (from a business standpoint as above) denial of ad dollars to all but a particular viewpoint is anti free speech.
I shall therefore BOYCOTT Microsoft as described.
Software Development
Well, Edward, maybe you can push to get the government to fund Air America then. After all, they already fund NPR.
And thanks for the software development tip.
The People's Windows OS
When the IBM 360 and its (late and buggy) operating system came out, I wondered whether I could write my OWN OS for the 360. But being a little too much of the ladies' man and not enough of the geek, I did not.
But on the IBM 1401, I had to write my "own" OS...for each major program.
Suppose you had your own real Windows, coded with your own code from top to bottom...that had none of the bugs of Windows, and many usability features.
As a 17th century philosopher would say, that is a "clear and distinct" concept, a palace of Kublai Khan, a Xanadu, that may be under construction as I write in the deserts of Central Asia:
...where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea
"Hate Radio"? Grow up
Typical drivel from a pseudo-intellectual. The tall tales are all old: "George Bush stole the election ... twice", "9/11 was an inside job", "... vast right-wing conspiracy", etc. etc.
Did you ever think that maybe the reason these companies don't want to advertise on Air America is because they don't want to advertise on any political-oriented radio programs? In this day and age, can you really blame them?
Are you going to be boycotting every company on that list?
You should just stick to writing about software development -- I (and probably many others) could give two sh*ts about your political views. The last time I checked, this was a free society, and this includes your right to boycott Microsoft and my right to tell you that I don't care.
I'm sure you have your opinions on this being a "free" society because George Bush is so very very evil.
When was the last time you checked...
...whether this was a free society? 1980? Civics class?
News fa lash. A free society is NOT one in which you and your buddies at the office could give two sh*ts about politics...because you know damned well that if you were to drive to work with a fading Kerry 2004 or Gore 2000 bumper sticker on your car, some client, some visiting investor, would complain, and your company's burn rate would explode.
You have no right "not to care" that I need respect as a right to place in my pantheon of rights.
Fortunately, "a crowd of people turned away". The next election will probably be decided in the greatest traditions of the American people, because they seem not to care indeed about their "jobs", as if some crummy job without health insurance that doesn't cover the mortgage is worth anything, as if some job that does, because it's sixteen hours a day of Windows Hell, is worth anything.
Instead they see the body bags and the dead Iraqi children. Unless the election is stolen again, these people are going to have their say.
I didn't "tune in, turn on, and drop out". I had kids and I worked like a dog as a programmer for years, always struggling to improve my skills in such a way that I was never age-discriminated out of the field.
So I reserve the right, buddy, to connect the dots. And if Microsoft is part of putting liberal radio out of business, I reserve the right to download Mozilla Gorilla.
Do I make myself clear, Guest?
Come from the shadows
"Grow up" used to mean forming views, meeting responsibilities, not taking shit.
Today, like "get a life", it means to fulfill a media image of what adulthood, in early 21st century America, is supposed to look like: glamorous, thin, apolitical, happy with things as they are, like Seinfield. Hip, cool, aware, has the latest products, gets laid with the partners of his or her choice.
Has a great job, rolls with the punches, betrays coworkers...you get the picture.
On Dec 12 2000, in an unprecedented action, the Supreme Court decided the election which Gore had one in terms of popular vote.
The administration, despite the calls of thousands of 9-11 survivors, fought the Kean "investigation" and withheld information unilaterally and unverifiably claiming that national security was at stake in a time when under the Constitution as written we are at peace.
It's quite feasible for me in fact to boycott every company on "that" list, since I live in China, I have access to civilised and properly funded public transportation and medical care, and in a pinch I can code my own software tools.
Many American programmers have been told in any number of ways that there is no alternative to a spend and work cycle totally within hegemony but this is simply not the case. Check out Craig's List for starters. There are lifestyles and jobs where you do not have to consume crap products and thereby support CENSORSHIP.
Finally, Microsoft is willingly advertising both on mainstream American news/opinion channels (which themselves have the center-right point of view) and many right-wing nut stations.
The radio business, beginning in the 1960s, became increasingly cutthroat but cannot broadcast prolabor and liberal views, because these views themselves would call for a truly national and truly public supported radio, not to spew government propaganda, but to allow ALL people to take turns LISTENING (to the views of others) and SPEAKING (their own mind).
This would make people less willing to buy the crap sold by the adverts because they would realize (as we see in the Internet phenomenon of blogging) that a society in which people take turns LISTENING (to the views of others) and SPEAKING (their own mind) is vastly more satisfying to their real needs than slaving away to buy shrink wrapped toxic crapola.
Indeed, talking about code is satisfying because it is a safe way for sexually repressed and sexually humiliated American men to break out of the isolation to which so many Americans are condemned by their daily round.
Come from the shadows.
"Some Vietnam veterans have told me what they did over there when they were animals. They have been giving testimony about it to the public, to juries, to judges. Some of the juries cry, and so do some of the judges.
One Ex-Marine has a face like a Puerto Rican angel and a body count of 390. That means he and his unit killed 390 people in a variety of hideous ways, and the angel got to go count the dead bodies for the record."
"And now he and a lot of his buddies are trying to make up for what we made them do. We paid the taxes that bought the war that hired the men and dropped the fire that burned the huts and killed the people who then were the bodies that Scott counted. It's a rotten thing to brainwash someone into doing the dirty part of killing while we stay at home. It's a rotten thing to pretend the war is coming to an end when it's only taken to the air. And in 1972 if you don't fight against a rotten thing you become a part of it."
"What I'm asking you to do is take some risks. Stop paying war taxes, refuse the armed forces, organize against the air war, support the strikes and boycotts of farmers, workers and poor people, analyze the flag salute, give up the nation state, share your money, refuse to hate, be willing to work ... in short, sisters and brothers, arm up with love and come from the shadows."
Joan Baez, 1972
"The tall tales are all old..."
Because we're fed such a diet of half-truths and stretchers that like children addicted to McDonalds, we lose the taste for food.
As early as 1972 people were like, air war, thousands of Vietnamese dead, yeah yeah right, what's for dinner.
So competing theories, 9-11 inside job for example, are greeted with the habituated response, but the critical difference is that the bosses prefer us to eat the chef special yah de yah yah, not exotic fare.
With hearts grown brutal we have fed ourselves with fantasies.
Focus
You must focus on your job
Don't be a slob
That has nothing to do with that.
Don't comment your code
It's a waste of time
Valuable company resources you don't own.
We need your fine mind
To serve us,
Not yourself or even your community.
Then maybe one day
Or maybe not, can't say,
You will retire and the fun part will start.
A cruise, golf, shuffle board on deck
Hey ain't it great.
But for now you must focus
On only one thing.
Why do you care
That there is no clean air
Don't swear, it's not nice
Oh, sorry, times have changed
Did you know your skills are rusty?
There's the door, don't be a bore
And here's your Cobra paperwork
Don't be a jerk
Fill it out and return it
Even though it's a pile, I agree, of horse s*t.
Hey where are you going
We love you come back
We'll double your pay
Don't leave us this way.
Remember Ed?
No not the horse...
Is Ed dead?
...maybe down in Mexico or a picture upon somebody's shelf...
Mistah Kurtz, now, he daid.
The horror
END BEGIN
Restart reload
and in my end is my beginning.
Dang, I have to boycott Compaq too...
Lucky me. I bought this here laptop before I heard about the Air America situation.
Let's see, Vaio sux and both HP and Compaq are down for the count, being the same company.
OK, so my next laptop will be Lenovo, or a red and black Chinese notebook.
ReactOS
www.reactos.com -- a libre windows clone, developed steadily for 10 years now... Quite slowly indeed!
I'm of the opinion that political (philosophical) views need to have everything to do with everything you do...
Well done
Wow, and here it is. I wasn't aware of this effort, just figured it was out there.
Looks way cool. I will investigate it further.
Software Development
How can you categorize this as "software development"? If I wanted to read your political views I'd subscribe to some other blog. Oh, and your analysis makes no sense whatsoever. Why must MS and HP allow their advertisements to run on Air America affiliates? Maybe they don't want to be associated with politics of any sort.
Fair's characterization that this is somehow censorship is bogus. Just because someone doesn't want to advertise on your show doesn't mean you're being censored, it means your show either stinks or they don't want to be associated with you. You have a right to say what you want; you don't have a right to be listened to.