I don’t reckon that most US citizens have twigged yet that their ‘great’ corporations will do business with anyone. It was never a problem when the US had the ‘biggest’ economy, the rest of us in the rest of the world would be p….d but our criticisms fell on deaf ears.
Does anyone else watch Murdoch’s english language Star TV news outta Hongkong? It has a very diferent perspective on Iraq for example than his US channel Fox News.
Microsoft are very sensitive about China cause they missed out on a major Chinese government contract to supply the system for the Chinese bureaucracy in the late 90’s. Despite their eagerness to immerse themselves in the net culture the average chinese citizen was extremely proud of their government for standing up to the great Mr Gates. They felt that microsoft couldn’t be trusted not to put backdoors or ‘clipper’ chips into the system at the behest of the US govt.
Gates doesn’t make the same mistake twice and if kowtowing to the Chinese power structure will make a few bucks then so be it. Let’s face it they’re probably major shareholders by now anyway.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 14 2005 22:22 utc | 3

Someone should ask Bill Gates if he thinks that the U.S. should switch to the Chinese model of capitalism.

Posted by: steve expat | Jun 15 2005 0:23 utc | 5

Eureka, I Have Phoned It!
In case you hadn’t noticed it, we’re being locked down.
Any of you who can recall the dancing baby and the most
personal of websites on the Internet, knows what I mean.
Corporate holds the gateway, they hold the media arms,
they hold a huge chunk of commercialized mind-space,
and are searching out and destroying not only the Waco’s,
but systematically reverse-archiving, futsing and wiping
down the scattered remains of their former crusades.
What you can Google now, soon you’ll only be able to Lexux/
Nexus, only by subscription. Until finally, only by pay per view.
“Rolling Stone: Hot photos, steamy videos. Click for details!”
Wasn’t that Bill Gates’ business model? The PPV MSFT OS?
All your files stored “securely” in etherspace, like the account
numbers and personal credit history of 3,900,000 CitFinancial
subscribers, only in MSFT’s case, a Messengerspace shot full
of bugs, worms and viruses, like Hotmail/AOL on crystal meth.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39203623,00.htm
WINDOWS SECURITY CENTER
“WARNING: WIndows FIrewall detected suspicious network
activity on your computer. Do you want to learn how to protect
your computer?” [Click Yes or No. Go on, click Yes, or click No!]
Boy, have they got you! We have six virus protection programs
on our computer, and still the bugs get through, and still there
are trojans that can’t be uninstalled. Waiting, watching for your
“secure” online file transfers, back and forth via MS Passport.
“You’ve been Longhorn’d!”
So here we go, segueing back to the initial premise. If you look
a year down the track towards the future, text blogging is dead.
All your personal ISP information will be clearly identifiable to the
auto-collection e-databanks hovering behind MS’s Longhorn. At
*any time* under Patriot Act II, the FBI can access that information
without your knowledge, download all your blog posts, have your
name, address, phone number and credit information in hand, and
with a flip of the wrist, they’ll have your vehicle license plates and
your personal medical history, your employer’s name and phone,
and the names and whereabouts of everyone in your family.
Automatically, silently. Longhorn will be their access point, their
“public library” of access information for everyone online @MSN.
So here’s the plan:
As part of our company meltdown, if you’ve been following my
posts, Corporate issued a “no-email” edict today. All e-mails
to outside the corporation must be routed through Corporate.
Freemail access must be discontinued, Internet use cease.
Another old-timer in the cube farm here phoned, whispering,
“Oh, for the good old days of telephone party lines.” Eureka!
With OneSuite.com and PalTalk.com and BlueTooth WiFi
and Global Triad, we are only web-augenbliks away from a
new paradigm … anonymous VoIP / VOD chat-blogging.
From anywhere in meat-space, from any random wifi IP on
your PDA enhanced cell, you can join in the conversation.
Populism and Progressivism Timeline
http://www.pinzler.com/ushistory/timeline8.html
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CasTele.html
(both amazingly detailed timelines, well worth the browse)
1876 The telephone is invented
1878 Western Union and Bell divide up the airwaves
1880 47,900 telephones, most on party lines (shared)
1883 J.J. Carty invents the switchboard and J.P. Davis
builds the first underground telephone trunkline
1891 The Populist Party is born
1896 Two hundred thousand miles of u/g telephone wire
1901 140,000 United Mine workers go out on strike
1911 Senator Robert La Follette helps to found the
National Progressive League
1914 The Clayton Anti-Trust Act is passed by Congress
You get the drift. All of the social advances we have grown
to accept as naturally “American” were made at the infancy
of the telephone, when anyone could talk to anyone or a
whole group of people on a party line, without interference.
This did not occur during the age of the written telegraph,
and has not occurred since, except maybe on short-wave,
and for a brief decade, on the infant Internet.
So here’s my prediction. The Internet is dead, at least the
keyboard version. Blogging has captured only 7% of US,
but nearly everyone and their kids have a cellphone now.
It’s only a matter of a year for broadband and PDA-cells
to catch up to the point where, if you’re as old as I am,
you can say into your Bluetooth headset wrist-cellphone:
“Sam, this is Dick (Tracy). See you over at Starbucks.com,
we’ll grab a brew, and talk about wrecking the convention.”
And all the hovering Raptors in the world won’t know who
you are, or where you’re calling from, or where you’re going,
and there won’t be any trace, except maybe an etherwire
MP3, as quickly erased and recorded over and so lost
and gone, ala Bladerunner, “like tears in the rain.”
“Let us do it right, and then we won’t have any bad dreams”
WiFi VoIP/VOD T2S/V2T blogs. Voila, your eureka moment.

Posted by: tante aime | Jun 15 2005 4:42 utc | 7

geez, tante. cool rant!
no news here. i guess it takes some peeps a long time to figure out that corporations are there to make money and that capitalism is for corporations and not for the peeps.

Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Jun 15 2005 5:41 utc | 9

And we can also google ‘tante aime’. If you are worried about being profiled, I suggest a handle that is a little less unique.

Posted by: DM | Jun 15 2005 6:07 utc | 11