Vintage Computer Festival East 3.0
Saturday, May 13th , 2006
InfoAge Learning Center
Wall Township, New Jersey

An event of local interest to some MemeStreams users...

Vintage Computer Festival - VCF East 3.0

MySpace isn't cool, it isn't hip and it isn't trendy. It represents a cyber trojan horse and the media elite's last gasp effort to reclaim control of the Internet and sink it with a stranglehold of regulation, control and censorship.

Since Rupert Murdoch's $580 Million acquisition of MySpace in July 2005, it has come from total obscurity to now being the 8th most visited website in the world, receiving half as many page hits as Google, despite the fact that on first appearance it looks like a 5-year-old's picture scrap and scribble book.

MySpace is the new mobile phone. If you don't have a MySpace account then you belong to some kind of culturally shunned underclass.

What most of the trendy wendy's remain blissfully unaware of is the fact that MySpace is Rupert Murdoch's battle axe for shaping a future Internet environment whereby electronic dissent, whether it be against corporations or government, will not tolerated and freedom of e-speech will cease to exist.

Oh, I love "the conspiracy" perspective on just about anything. This site is chock full of conspiracy theories. I've explained the origin of my love for conspiracy theories many times before, but its always worth repeating. Conspiracy theories get repeated. Its the nature of the game.. It can't be resisted. It all started when I worked at this gourmet tex-mex place in Belmar, New Jersey called Hell's Kitchen. The owner of this truly great establishment could best be described as a "conspiracy theory router". Everything was open game from government police state plots and tales of black helicopters, to UFOs and the second coming of Christ. The back office of the place was stocked with supplies, firearms, and short wave radios. This back office held all the secrets of the universe, including the most closely guarded secret of the ages: what salsa we used. "The end times are here my friend. The shits going down! What do you want on your taco?"

You name it, I heard about it, at length. Too much length usually. It did wonders to fine tune my bullshit detector. It got to the point where I had to do serious and constant research to keep sanity in check. I truly loved every moment of it.

Good conspiracy theories always have a few things in common.. They start off with something completely plausible and (sometimes) reasonable, even if its an incitement of something. By the end, they wind up some place way off the reservation of reality, but go close enough to the edge every so often to keep it all almost somehow plausible. The bullshit detector is forced to align against many angles of incidence. The conspiracy theory must do this while at the same time avoid introducing any new information. The end result of the message must always be "it is inevitable, and we are completely screwed".

At some point in th... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

MySpace Is The Trojan Horse Of Internet Censorship (Plus, thoughts on conspiracy theories)

STATEMENT

This bill would require an operator of any interactive computer service or an Internet service provider to establish, maintain and enforce a policy requiring an information content provider who posts messages on a public forum website either to be identified by legal name and address or to register a legal name and address with the operator or provider prior to posting messages on a public forum website.

The bill requires an operator of an interactive computer service or an Internet service provider to establish and maintain reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name and address of an information content provider who posts false or defamatory information about the person on a public forum website.

In addition, the bill makes any operator or Internet service provider liable for compensatory and punitive damages as well as costs of a law suit filed by a person damaged by the posting of such messages if the operator or Internet service provider fails to establish, maintain and enforce the policy required by section 2 of the bill.

Oh boy, here we go.

New Jersey bill prohibits anonymous internet posts

Vonage, the New Jersey-based VoIP services provider filed documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission yesterday, hoping to raise a whopping $250 million in a widely anticipated initial public offering. The marquee group of investment bankers are hoping that investors would over look the obvious structural problems in Vonage’s financial model, and buy the stock in the company. Business Week has a rather in-depth look at the chances of the public offering. The Stalwart does a stellar job as well.

$213.77 per customer in marketing? It's cause they're using old media television saturation -- does that work? I would think "6 free months of service for every new customer" would work at least as well, and cost less (especially because churn goes down after 6 months of usage).

Om Malik on Broadband : » Vonage Churn Investor Heartburn

O'Brien,
a New York Times reporter who has covered Trump's businesses for
more than a decade, wrote in TrumpNation: The Art of Being the
Donald that The Apprentice star had repeatedly exaggerated
his wealth and "was not remotely close to being a billionaire."
The book actually pegs Trump's worth "somewhere between $150
million and $250 million," hardly chump change but a figure much lower
than the billions the mogul says he has accumulated, and one he claims
in the lawsuit is "grossly misrepresented."
...

In the lawsuit,
filed Monday in New Jersey state court, Trump is seeking $2.5 billion in
compensatory damages and $2.5 billion in punitive damages.

Yahoo! Top Stories - Trump's Billion-Dollar Defaming Claim

Seven northeastern U.S. states have signed the country's first plan to create a market for heat-trapping carbon dioxide by curbing emissions at power plants, New York Gov. George Pataki said on Tuesday.

In a break with fellow Republican
President George W. Bush, Pataki helped create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, in which participating states agree to curb emissions starting in 2009, with cuts in emissions starting in 2016.

Other members of the RGGI are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont. Membership is open to other U.S. states.

Seven states sign CO2 plan in break with Bush - Yahoo! News

According to recent press reports, Pentagon officials have been spying on what they call "suspicious" meetings by civilian groups, including student groups opposed to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel. The story, first reported by Lisa Myers and NBC News last week, noted that Pentagon investigators had records pertaining to April protests at the State University of New York at Albany and William Patterson College in New Jersey. A February protest at NYU was also listed, along with the law school's LGBT advocacy group OUTlaw, which was classified as "possibly violent" by the Pentagon. A UC-Santa Cruz "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" protest, which included a gay kiss-in, was labeled as a "credible threat" of terrorism.

Can we all agree that we've entered Bizarroworld now?

AMERICAblog: Pentagon sees G/L/B student groups as 'credible threat'

Gravity is a myth -- New Jersey sucks. =P

(Building collapses in NJ).

It's Official -- Gravity is a Myth

Decius wrote:

When students post their faces, personal diaries and gossip on Web sites like Myspace.com and Xanga.com, it is not simply harmless teen fun, according to one Sussex County Catholic school principal.It's an open invitation to predators and an activity that Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, the Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.

Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

Stupid, and infuriating. Not the school's purview.

If they want to tell the parents that they believe X,Y,Z about weblogs, etc. and say "Hey, you might want to check up on your kids web activities," I still think they're dicks, but that's fine. And I'm talking about a general missive... not a direct letter to Susie's dad saying "Susie has a blog at ... and it's putting her in DANGER!" But for them to tell a student "You can't do this in your spare time, at home, not using school resources"?

100% bullshit.

The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said.

McHugh, shut the fuck up. You can justify anything by saying it's to "protect the children." Protect the children by fucking EDUCATING THEM. THAT is your job. Censoring, limiting, and hassling them is not.

RE: MemeStreams banned by New Jersey Catholic School

When students post their faces, personal diaries and gossip on Web sites like Myspace.com and Xanga.com, it is not simply harmless teen fun, according to one Sussex County Catholic school principal.It's an open invitation to predators and an activity that Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, the Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.

Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

MemeStreams banned by New Jersey Catholic School