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19 Mar 2006 @ 04:24, by swanny. Communication
How Are You?
How are you? how am I?
Well thanks for asking I suppose
but it's a little to late, well no, it "is" to late
to ask "how?" I am, you are or we are. Period.
I am. You are. We are. Get over it. How is somewhat
besides the point and inconsequential don't you think.
I mean, there's not a heck of a lot we can do about it
now. Now "what" I am and what you are and what we are,
that is a little more relevant.
And "why" and "where" and "who" and "when" yes
but how?
Give me, give you and give us a break.
I mean who do you think I am that I would know
how anyway? God?
Geez....
It's not as though you really care either, is it,
or that you could or would do anything about either.
Right! So take your how and hit the trail.
I Am.
I Am tired.
Thats a what by the way, not a how.
How am I tired?.... see stupid.
I am tired of how.
"What" am I now.
I am still tired. More >
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 4 Mar 2006 @ 07:17, by i2i. Communication
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20 Jan 2006 @ 16:18, by Unknown. Communication
Found on the Web
OPEN LETTER TO THE EARTH
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
JANUARY 01,2006
Well hello everyone, hope your day is going well.
Strange world aye?
Well it seems that it may be that Humanity is at war
with itself because maybe there's nothing better to do
and war, drugs and sex, is good for business.
Well that may be the case and war may be fun and interesting
but to myself it is a sorry state of affairs. i.e.: (Let them eat cake)
It would seem then that some people may just have to much money, power and time on their hands then, oh my...!
I can accept perhaps that fighting, poverty, disease, hunger, homelessness, pollution, global warming, loneliness, the elements, prejudice, racism, ignorance, addictions, hatred, greed and such may not be as much fun or as interesting as war but really if you have to and want to war then please do it on the moon and not on the planet because it is interfering with those trying to really accomplish something constructive and meaningful
on the planet.
Thank you for your time
and consideration to this matter...
A global citizen More >
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 23 Oct 2005 @ 23:06, by uncleremus. Communication
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20 Oct 2005 @ 19:00, by oasiian. Communication
Language is truly made up of three fundamentals: Spoken, Gesured and Thought. Without all three, language is made weak, and is often misunderstood. This would be a good thing to look into. More >
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 28 Aug 2005 @ 17:52, by jhs. Communication
Going to publish some more books soon and look for a new copyright disclaimer.. Would be very interested to hear some feedback, more ideas.. etc
Copyright and Disclaimer
The concepts and ideas presented in this book are part or are given to the public domain.
It is the expressed intention of the author that the information given in all of his books may never be used to create any of the following:
- an organized religion or cult
- a system of healing, whether spiritual, emotional or physical
- any kind of financial advice
- methods or strategies to extract money from others without proper exchange
- any form of justification to intentionally inflict harm, whether spiritual, emotional or physical, to a creature, in whatever realm or body it may be dwelling
- any form of political movement or thought system.
Further... More >
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 12 Aug 2005 @ 23:48, by ming. Communication
Well, Google likes some things I do A LOT. This blog has PageRank 7, which is fabulous. But another site which I'm more concerned about is my Opentopia site. That's a site that both is intended as a service, but also to be an income producing activity. It has an assortment of openly available collections of data, like Wikipedia's encyclopedia and the Open Directory. And some more unique pieces, like the gallery of Web Cams found in Google.
Recently the site had started to look rather promising. In terms of money, that means that a lot of people come by and click on the ads. The last two months to the tune of a little more than $30 per day, or $1000 per month. That is not huge, but it is big enough to imagine I could make a living from it, if I made it better and more people came by. And the ads that the money comes from are all from Google AdSense, as that just happens to be what works best, and what most people are comfortable with.
Lots of sites link to some part of Opentopia. 3-4000. So, people are coming in from those. But the majority of people come from Google itself, from having searched on one thing or another, which exists on the site. Google had indexed a great deal of the site, so there were many entries, and the main pages got a good PageRank as well.
But, suddenly, on the first of August, Opentopia disappeared without a trace on Google. Well, not entirely without a trace. I invented the word, and it didn't exist at all a few months ago. And, today, 49,200 webpages mention the word. But, what disappeared was everything at all in Google's index that is for the Opentopia site itself. If you ask for any pages on the site, you get:Your search - site:opentopia.com - did not match any documents.
So, zippo, zilch, nothing. Not even the home page. The site doesn't exist as far as Google is concerned. Never heard of it. No pages there. No search results. No traffic.
And, instantly, my traffic dropped, as did my Google AdSense income, to around $5 per day.
Now, normally Google is my friend. I think Google is a great company. But if they basically own the majority of the web, it is also a cause for alarm. Getting dropped from Google is a bit like having your ID card revoked by the government. You don't exist. Google entries and Google PageRank is to a large degree a currency. Something you invest in and use and spend. But your account might be emptied over night, and there's no bank teller you can go and talk to.
See, Google's operation is so huge that there isn't exactly anybody home to talk to about this kind of thing. They of course can't answer everybody's personal questions about 10 billion webpages. But how about MY website? Last month it was in the top 30,000 sites on the net in terms of traffic. That's not super-elite, but it does make me somebody a little bit. But that doesn't really make much difference.
If one has an issue with Google, there is a support form one fills in. It doesn't really matter what one fills in - one gets an automatic reply back, which refers to their FAQs, explaining the basic rules for how one needs to behave if one wants to be listed in Google. I've read all of that many times, and I think I'm following all the rules. But one of Google's algorithms must think otherwise. Mind you, one doesn't get any kind of indication about what exactly might have gotten one's site banned. Anyway, the next step is that one then writes to them again, pleading for one's case, hoping that some real person might answer, and then look at it. That might or might not happen. Depends a bit on what one writes. The best advice seems to be to write a brief message which explains that maybe one might accidentally have done something bad in the past, and one has taken steps to clean that up, and would they please, please look at the site again.
The problem is that I don't know exactly what I might have done wrong. Quite possibly nothing. But there's a lot of pages on Opentopia. More than 1 million. So it is entirely possible that Google's spider has concluded that it just goes on forever, and that it is some kind of trick, or a site filled with random junk, to attract search engine traffic.
I have indeed noticed more and more sites like that recently. Sites that include random excerpts from random other webpages. Obviously generated by some program, and obviously to get listed in search engines. And some of them have probably succeeded well. So my guess is that Google has changed something, to try to clamp down on sites with large numbers of phoney pages.
And, well, I have a lot of pages that aren't terribly original. Copies of Wikipedia and DMOZ. None of those folks have anything against other sites mirroring their content, and, for that matter, they make it relatively easy to do, by providing regular database dumps. But how does Google's spider know the difference between a mirror of Open Directory and a random content generator? I don't know. That's probably not an easy problem to solve.
One thing that might make a difference is Google SiteMaps. Essentially one generates a map of one's site and tells Google about it, and it might help their spider do a better job at indexing it. I haven't used that feature before. I'm thinking it might be helpful if they know exactly how many pages there are, so they don't think they're just beeing tricked by some auto-generated content.
Well, I don't really know. I thought I was pretty knowledgable about this kind of thing. But now I'm an outcast, pressing my nose against the window, trying to get a glimpse of what everybody else is doing inside in the warm Google livingroom.
Well, luckily I can write about it here on my Big Ass PageRank 7 WebLog. But it still isn't fair. More >
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12 Aug 2005 @ 23:00, by ming. Communication
It is sort of weird with a blog. It stays there even when you're not paying attention. I was busy the last few weeks, and didn't post anything, and didn't even check my comments. But still, about a thousand people are looking at it every day. OK, that's probably to a large degree because Google serves us a lot of my old postings, so it obviously isn't all folks who deliberately go and see what ming.tv has on today. But it is still a little strange, to have a lot of visitors when one is not there.
And that's where the organization of a blog is maybe not completely appropriate. You know, it shows your latest posts first on the front page. So, is it like I've been saying the same thing every day for the last month? Do my last couple of posts suddenly gain an unintended higher importance? Are thousands of people coming by, thinking, "Why did he post exactly that, and then nothing more?" I don't know.
On the other hands, there are aspects of how blogs are accessed that make it no big deal that you're not there for a while. A lot of people read blogs through blog aggregators. So, they don't lose any sleep over the fact that you haven't posted much. And the moment you post something again, they'll notice. They don't have to go checking everything day, wondering.
Likewise, this blog is part of a blog community in the New Civilization Network. Meaning, that a bunch of members watch the blogs there through a simple blog aggregator in the member area. So, they notice too right away when you post something again, and don't lose much sleep either, if I don't do it for a while.
But, still, I personally lose a bit a sleep about not blogging. A feeling like one is letting people down. That a lot of people go in vain and look for your postings, and there's nothing there. In reality, it is probably much fewer people than it feels like, but, well, it is just a feeling, not necessarily a fact.
Likewise, I'd also always have some mental obstacles to blogging again, if I haven't done it for a while. I've lost the thread, for one thing. And then I'm wondering if somehow my first posts would be particularly scrutinized. Why does he show up after a month and then post THAT? Well, the feeling goes away quickly, and I don't really worry about what anybody thinks. But the starting and stopping is a little difficult. More >
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 15 May 2005 @ 15:32, by ming. Communication
It seems to be an integral part of our culture that we're inundated with phony messages that pretend to be useful information, but that really isn't.
The way it works is often that the more loud and visible and important a message is presented to be, the more likely it is to be complete irrelevant junk.
That's obvious in my e-mail inbox. Any message that is marked as URGENT, IMPORTANT, READ IMMEDIATELY, or that has its priority flag set to high, is almost certainly worthless spam.
And the more a message is written with strange words in small print, trying to be invisible, the more likely it is that it is covering up something you actually ought to know.
Most products you buy come with voluminous pieces of text which serve no useful purpose other than legally covering the asses of whoever produced it. They're usually in the smallest possible font and in a language that is meant to discourage you from reading it. But it will state that it is very important that your read it carefully. The text will usually either outline some monstrous contract you're entering into by accepting this product, or it will outline a lot of horrible things that could happen to you if you use it. Both of which might or might not be important or useful. You can't easily know.
I don't know anybody who routinely reads all the Legal Notices, User Agreements, Terms of Use, etc that they're presented with. Even if, legally, they implicitly have agreed to a lot of stupid things when they clicked on OK, or took the shrinkwrap off a package. Like that you won't sue the company that made it, or they own everything you do with that product, or something.
If I buy a piece of equipment, like a computer, it is quite normal that it might come with a thick booklet, which is nothing but legal stuff, talking about nothing but radio interference and electrical standards, in a bunch of different languages, page after page after page. And that they actually altogether leave out the instructions for how to use the computer.
People who consume pharmaceutical drugs have gotten very used to going right past all the small print. Even if it is stated in the commercials. "Might cause irreparable kidney damage", "Has caused cancer in laboratory animals". They actually say that on TV in the commercial, but very quickly, in a voice that makes you tune it out. But they can legally claim that they told you, and you were warned, and it is your own fault.
Advertisements are of course full of misdirection and false information. That is, the message that actually is conveyed isn't the truth, and it isn't what you need, and it isn't what would actually be useful to you.
The advertiser can claim that they didn't do anything wrong. They just show you some beautiful or fun images and some nice words, and the legal stuff is covered in small print somewhere. The cigarette ad shows you the freshness of a mountain spring, or high society elegance and beautiful dresses, and if you somehow end up thinking that has something to do with cigarette smoking, and that you'll be cool and fresh if you smoke, they can say it's your own fault. And that they included the warnings they were supposed to. But none of those communications actually convey anything very useful.
If I buy pack of cigarettes, it carries a message in bold letters telling me I'll die painfully of Emphysema or something like that. Which isn't overly helpful if I plan on going home and smoking it. It might be more useful to tell me that if I get plenty of exercise, eat healthy, take extra anti-oxidants, and drink plenty of water, it might be a good idea. And, by the way, that I would probably be a good deal healthier if I didn't smoke, or I smoked less. There's not a word about that. It is either mountain fresh elegance or it is instant death. Both of which are untrue.
We supposedly operate in a free market economy where a lot of things should sort themselves out by market forces, by supply and demand, by many people making little decisions on values. And the theory is that the people who make economic decisions in principle are perfectly informed. I.e. they make the correct value decision based on their situation. So the price of bread or gasoline would sort itself out, and if something is too expensive one either produces more or alternatives emerge, and so forth.
The trouble with that is that a large amount of the available information is false. Most companies have a huge budget for producing false information, so it is usually the misleading stuff that is most prominent.
Ideally our economy would be a bit like ants operate. You walk around, and the other ants give you simple messages. There's food over there, the anthill is over there, we have some dead ants to remove over there, we've got eggs over here. That works great for ants. But for us humans it is unfortunately much more complex. And most of the messages are misleading. There's tasty and healthy food over there, there are good deals over there, sign this contract without reading it, you're gonna be beautiful, you're gonna die. Most of it isn't correct, and it is meant to trap you into somebody else's self-serving business plan or political agenda.
Even when authorities of various kinds try to be helpful, it rarely works well. Most company cars and trucks in the U.S. have a sticker on the back bumper that says "How's my driving? Call 1-800...". What the hell is that supposed to mean? Should I call that number and say "Your driving is fine, your cornering is a work of art". I think it is meant for reporting bad driving, but that's not what it says. Most elevators carry the same one sign that says something like "If this elevator fails to operate, don't be alarmed, press the button marked 'Alarm'". Hey, I'm going to press the button marked 'Alarm' exactly because I'm alarmed that I'm stuck in the elevator, not for any other strange reason. Who invented that awkward sentence?
We're surrounded by signs and messages. Colorful, bold, verbose communications that people have been paid for writing and manufacturing. But rarely do they actually say the things we need to know.
The only reasonable anti-dote I can think of, other than most of us somehow getting very educated in honest and effective communication, would be to overlay a collaborative grassroots information network on all of it. Which is the kind of stuff that tends to happen on the Internet, and which will become more prevalent as more technologies become available. You know, instead of relying on somebody's advertisement you research it on the net and find what other people are saying about that product or company. Instead of relying on the company telling you about their products, you rely on enthusiast communities that catalog everything that's worth knowing. Instead of just ignoring somebody's terms of purchase, you might run into an independently produced cleartext explanation of what they say. Instead of just believing what is the "cheapest" or the "best" from a colorful message, you access some comparative database that tells you so. Instead of relying on road signs, you look up the route on the net before you leave.
It is still a bit too much work to find it and access it. Ideally you should be able to bring up that kind of stuff instantly and anywhere. Which might come with location based services. You see a building and you click on it and hear what other people say that it is, rather than relying on the sign by the door. You see a product or a brand name, and you click on it and hear what information other people have gathered about it.
We might very well get to a point where most of the phony information becomes irrelevant, however expensively produced it is, because we bypass it right away. I.e. you never rely on it, but you instantly access an unbiased cleartext overview of what it is about. Nobody would buy a product based on its ad or its packaging in the store, because they would always know if it really is the best choice.
If we could do that well enough, a lot of otherwise well-established businesses would suddenly fail, because it would be clear that they aren't producing anything useful, and they can no longer cheat. But at the same time economic activity could operate at a much higher level, because more people would make more informed decisions, so value assessment and exchange would be more productive. More >
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8 May 2005 @ 12:22, by swanny. Communication
I know I started another thread called "Strange Week"
and I suppose this may be supplemental to it, but it occurs
or suggests, what it?... well perhaps the "global sensorium"
suggests to me that what I may be expericing is the "pyshic fallout" from the great shift that occurred 5 months earlier.
Yes there was the intial shock and outpouring of grief and
dollars but it was said that months later the earth was still
"ringing". Now I suppose it is a matter of disposition and perhaps "belief" to suggest that we are subject to the great forces of nature at work around us but I myself feel we are and the "effects" of this quake may be the apparent...
hmmmmmm ???? well call it a "disturbance in the force" if you will that I am picking up on.
The only reason I suppose that I make note of it perhaps is the unusual "quality" of the behaviors it seems to be eliciting. These or some of these are behaviours and such that I don't seem to have words for. These unusual qualities of behaviour are perhaps no cause for concern but I wonder if there may be an "opportunity" here to make some real "progress" in ??? well I'm not sure.
Perhaps for us to admit say that a change of some sort has occurred or is occurring on a "global scale" and that rather than perhaps try to control it persae we can acknowledge it and perhaps try to understand the inherant message therein.
How ironic it is for instance to read the news today to see
Herr Bush saying that the Russian occupation of it neighbours
is and was the "greatest wrong" and yet here he stands an occupying force in Iraq. The apparent "unconscious hypocrisy" is just to blatant to ignore. Oh well.
Or maybe its just me. More >
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