WELCOME ABOARD the Neverending Ocean Cruise!

Welcome to the deep end,
Glad To Have You Here
...where we find shorter spaces between us.
-- Bobby Ocean

Thursday, May 26, 2011

MAKING A FEDERAL CASE

IT WAS 5 - 3 AGAINST THE ECONOMY AND THE NEWBIES.

The United States Supreme Court just steered clear of a tie by one vote and rendered a decision to uphold an archaic Arizona law that, in the name of Justice and Fair Play, takes a clear stand on the Illegal Alien situation. The Law is the Law, no matter that it was passed during the Middle Ages, and punishment must be dealt.

One imagines for a moment the guy applying for the job as State Punisher. Must be able to numb remaining vestiges of human spark and swing 20 lb metal mace, hairy shoulders required.

In their limp stab at highest intelligence, our Supreme Court, in a vote that shouldn't have been close, decided to deal the punishment out to the very citizens of their own Nation (no matter that their nation's President objected). Maybe, because they own a brick and mortar address, they're just easier to locate and extract money.

Well, who ARE the Bad Guys supposed to BE, anyway? Somebody had to decide -- those with no money and no passport, or those with no money and a business.

Should be easy. The people who have entered our borders without the usual government agencies haven't played fair. Like the Big Banks and Wall Street cheats, they must be punished. So, to teach them a lesson, our representatives and legislators carefully chose to uphold a Rule, dragged out of the previous century --or perhaps before, I don't know, maybe it just sounds that decrepid.

This Rule is the State Punisher's Iron Spiked Ball-on-a-Chain. It punishes U.S. businesses. Right where it hurts, too, in the economy. "Shame on border crossers," says the United States S upreme Court! "We'll shoot our free market resources right in the foot, that oughta teach 'em! We're sending in The State Punisher to go after his fellow citizens, the same ones who have been paying for our health Insurance. Seems they had enough left over for hiring immigrants. Those people are not here in the US legally, and are very probably, desperate as well!"

Opponents of the law, including the Obama administration, argue that the old Arizona State law "steps on the traditional federal oversight over immigration matters." Uh, tradition? THAT'S what wa sstepped on.

Ultimately our businesses have to pay the price for Government Pecking Order?

What happened to "E Pluribus Unem?" Somehow, I don't think the guys making the rules at the top ever got around to learning the meaning of that inscription on the Statue Of Liberty, written in Latin.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

FRONT LINE LINKS UPDATE


 FROM THE AFRICAN CONTINENT TO YOUR NEW LAPTOP:

LINK WITH POSITIVE GROWTH IN ACTION: 
 "Once I put my 8-year-old son to bed under a hot and sticky bed net after his first full day in Africa, we consumed more than our fair share of Nile Specials, which we consider the best local beer..."
They earned earned it, as you discover.

LINK WITH GOOGLE GROWTH HERE:
 CAREFUL WHAT'S EDGING TOWARDS YOUR THIGHS -
The online evolution continues with an abrupt burst so powerful as to render security software archaic AND make Microsoft obsolete in one blow. Google is on the verge of releasing its new laptop, the Google Chromium! Think about that. Google with it's own laptop! Does this require a security clearance?

LINK WITH SUCCESSFUL BROADCAST RADIO:
This dude's still bringing it. Into the most magic, guarded spot in the known universe, your imagination, as accessed by broadcast radio, namely KOIT FM and HD1, based near his studio in San Francisco.

From time to time this blogger can be heard in the role he made uniquely his own before they told him he couldn't do that stuff, the part of Bobby Ocean, a friendly old-school-but-cool radio DJ, playing his metro's favorite music, a diverse blend of hits much more like an extremely hip, current take on Top-Forty than the Light Rock under which they are known.

By request, a few of the upcoming Bobby Ocean ON-AIR dates.

    May:
        Tuesday the 24th, 3 - 8P
  
    June:
        Tuesday 7th, 10A - 3P
        Wednesday, 8th,  10A - 3P
        Tuesday, 14th,  3 - 8P
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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

NETFLIX TOPS FACEBOOK AND YOUTUBE AS WEB TRAFFIC LEADER

McLuhan Was Right
I've said it here before: the language of the internet is video. The data to back up that statement seems to arrive daily.

Because of our seemingly insatiable demand for quickly accessing information and entertainment, we search constantly, online and through many other different mediums, finding one satisfying morsel after another.

It reminds me of the prehistoric cave dwellers in Jean Auel's series of "Children Of The Earth" novels written several decades ago, beginning with "Clan Of The Cave Bear." The denizens were always foraging for roots, plants animals and other valuable items as the season's changed. Staying alive through winters meant shopping for supplies in the huge super warehouse of Nature.


Is that quest in our DNA? Do we not feel the urge to stock the pantries in our lives, with not only food and clothing but knowledge, protection and even entertainment? Have we not all learned about our "fight or flight" responses, buried deep inside our sense of survival, itself almost forgotten in the stupor of a safe, organized "society?" Do we not try to insulate ourselves from what fears the future may hold?

The quest, if it's any good, will take us into new areas, places we haven't been before. With safety in quantity and an the sheer numbers of people in an organized society, we explore now, not to find safety from predators as much as to find what's there that we can practically apply in our lives.

These journeys of ours into finding answers, from mundane to profound, have made monstrous successes out of Clans (companies) that bear the most simple, easy-to-remember downright childish monikers, almost as if they were all made up Cave Dwellers, or Paul McCartney in the 70s - Google, Yelp, Yahoo.

Used to be Yahoo was the number one search engine (or online Phone Directory) but then Google poured it on and took the leader position. But that was yesterday, and in this rapid growth phase, 24 hours can be the equivalent of last century's decade. Things change fast.

We wake up to find YouTube is the number one video search engine today. There's that pattern again - videos, videos, videos. This culture of generations in which we find ourselves living, while offering vastly individual tastes, shares a consistency in our hunger for stories. Stories told online, in pod casts, blogs like this one, and, of course, videos!

Which brings us to the latest stats on our online horse race. We have a new leader.

It's Netflix. According to a new report released Tuesday, Netflix, Inc. has taken its place at the front of the pack. It is now the single largest source of Internet traffic in this hemisphere, leading a huge spike in digital entertainment that represents nearly half of the bytes flowing to online consumers in North America.

Videos, again.

In Europe, BOTH non-recorded, entertainment performed in real-time AND previously recorded shows available for download share two-thirds of the online peak traffic with BitTorrent holding as top-used application.

We, on this planet, have become a gathering of the tribes who cluster in Social networking, who regularly go Web surfing and to whom file sharing is commonplace, like a trip to the produce section.


“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium / that is, of any extension of ourselves / result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” -- Marshall McLuhan
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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

DIGITAL DEJA VU

Advances in Radio Alternatives

Every now and then we get an experience or two that has such a tang of familiarity that we almost recognize it as having happened once before. Saw an item in the online radio trades that struck me exactly that way.

From Inside Radio, another nail in the Satellite radio coffin:

Headline:    PANDORA SPEAKS, AND TELLS A JOKE.
"Six years after launching a service designed to allow users to
personalize their music listening experience, Pandora will do
the same in the spoken word realm. Pandora today launches a
comedy clip service that lets users tailor their channel to
their own sense of humor."

Isn't that the way the satellite radios started off? Remember, there were two at first, and they PROMISED never to merge. They kept that written promise for as long as they could. Then they didn't.

They competed with each other. Each bragged of roughly 200 channels. Hungry channels that had to be fed music and entertainment so the satellite radios could continue making new receivers, installing them in new autos and upping the ante on their bragging rights. They made no money and accrued enormous debts, both.

And, we got the doubles of the usual - 50s on channel-five; sixties on six, and so on. Nothing really changed when the two birds became one under the chauvenistic stock-manipulative dictates of their leader whose vast entertainment experience seemed to begin and end with the whimperings of Howard Stern.

There was jazz, world music, ranchero, a Stones Channel, Oprah, Rap, even Bob Dylan became a DJ and got into the act, thanks to Lee Abrams. Satellite buttons punched up sports of all genres, from car races to ball games. There was every brand of news you could imagine. And dramas. And audio books. Still, there were always more channels to fill... and no money.

There were comedy channels, too. Just like on Pandora now. Only thing is, you must subscribe to the satellite channels and pay a monthly premium. The online music box is free.

And, today, they have more options than any other broadcast facility, including plenty of comedy choices. Listeners can create as many personal channels as they like.

Something more for Howard to whimper about...

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