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Who Owns Your Computer?

When technology serves its owners, it is liberating. When it is designed to serve others, over the owner’s objection, it is oppressive. There’s a battle raging on your computer right now — one that pits you against worms and viruses, Trojans, spyware, automatic update features and digital rights management technologies. It’s the battle to determine who owns your computer.

You own your computer, of course. You bought it. You paid for it. But how much control do you really have over what happens on your machine? Technically you might have bought the hardware and software, but you have less control over what it’s doing behind the scenes.

Using the hacker sense of the term, your computer is “owned” by other people.

It used to be that only malicious hackers were trying to own your computers. Whether through worms, viruses, Trojans or other means, they would try to install some kind of remote-control program onto your system. Then they’d use your computers to sniff passwords, make fraudulent bank transactions, send spam, initiate phishing attacks and so on. Estimates are that somewhere between hundreds of thousands and millions of computers are members of remotely controlled “bot” networks. Owned.

Now, things are not so simple. There are all sorts of interests vying for control of your computer. There are media companies that want to control what you can do with the music and videos they sell you. There are companies that use software as a conduit to collect marketing information, deliver advertising or do whatever it is their real owners require. And there are software companies that are trying to make money by pleasing not only their customers, but other companies they ally themselves with. All these companies want to own your computer.

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Considering buying a Dell? Don’t.

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After getting hit by a wave of regulation in recent years by school boards and legislators, soft drink makers say they get the message: School isn’t the right place for sugary sodas.

Long the target of people who blame soda’s calories and popularity among young people for contributing to rising childhood obesity, the nation’s largest beverage distributors say they will stop selling non-diet sodas to schools and start serving reduced sizes of other drinks.

So to decrease sugar intake, poison is the answer?

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In the 1960s, the Soviet bloc was deluged by a flood of new jokes. There were around 20 subcategories. The most popular theme was the economy: One housewife to another: “I hear there’ll be snow tomorrow”—”Well, I’m not queuing for that.” There were jokes about Soviet propaganda: The capitalists are standing at the edge of the abyss. Soon communism will overtake capitalism. There were gags about Marxist-Leninist theory: Why is the individual placed in the centre of socialism? So it’s easy to kick him from all sides. There were jokes about communist art: What is the difference between painters of the naturalist, impressionist and the socialist realist schools? The naturalists paint as they see, the impressionists as they feel, the socialist realists as they are told. There were jokes about communist-style democracy: When was the first Russian election? The time that God put Eve in front of Adam and said, “Go ahead, choose your wife.” And, of course, there were Jewish communist jokes: “Hey Hymee, how’s your brother Joseph?” “He’s living in Prague and building socialism.” “And didn’t you have a sister, Judith—how’s she doing?” “She’s well too—living in Budapest and creating a communist future.” “And your older brother Bernie?” “Oh he moved to Israel.” “And is he building socialism there too?” “What, are you crazy? Do you think he’d do that in his own country?”

alternatively, check Salon

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Stephen Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Assocation dinner was probably the most blisteringly satirical attack ever directed against a sitting American president while he was in the same room.

But more significant than this historic event was the media’s initial coverage of it — virtually nonexistent — just as in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, the significant fact was not the monarch’s nudity, but his subjects’ complete denial of it.

Why did many media reports (like the New York Times story by professional Bush bootlicker Elizabeth Bumiller) completely omit mention of the Colbert speech?  Why did others make only passing mention of it, without noting its pointed barbs at Bush and the news media?  Were the press terrified?  Embarassed?  Angry?

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There’s plenty of jokes in giving a car a brazillian wax job, but I won’t make them.

This story is funny enough without them…

Cartoon animation really doesn’t get much better than Tex Avery at the height of his game.

Thanks to Kevin Langley of Goober Sleave you can watch the YouTube video here.