I'm awake and organizing

One day I'll actually begin writing a blog of merit, with ideas and words and moderately-well written prose, but for today I am a cleaning machine.

Murdoch is kind of a Murdick...

In response to http://mashable.com/2009/08/05/murdoch-chargy-news/

Well, I guess if he wants to charge for his content rather than get revenue from the other proven methods and the ones still being tried that don't directly cost the information consumer, he has that right. However I think he'll be surprised at just how marginal his information product becomes when 90% of his current consumers opt for other venues. He seems to think that people will pay a premium for scoop content from celebrities, and I think he must not have looked at who views that kind of thing--people with little money to spend on such things. No one needs the breaking news for a fee when they can wait a few minutes and see t on MSNBC or E! news. I guess you can't teach an old dog how not to drown in his own excrement. I stopped using WSJ for anything meaningful beyond wrapping glassware since he took it over from Dow Jones, and the more barriers he puts up to accessing his information properties, the less his information will become "consumed" by me and a vast majority of his other "current" consumers. The only place this has worked is in the music industry, where people are willing to view songs, which they listen to over and over again, as "product," and it hasn't worked very well, despite the best--or in most cases, worst--efforts of the RIAA. I doubt anyone will ever want to buy articles from the WSJ or shows from Fox on a mass scale because most of these are one-offs, read casually then forgotten or disposed of immediately after consumption. I'm fine with him doing it, though. The effect will be to strengthen the burgeoning movement against conservative hypercapitalist corporate autocracy while marginalizing the views he has imbued his information properties with. Putting his mindset behind a wall you have to pay to see means he just put himself in a cage in a Zoo. "Come see the Cranky Old Fossil--his Ideas are as addled as his soul is curdled!" Thanks for throwing a spoke in your own wheel. Now maybe we can get back to the business of dismantling your putrid empire of greed and larceny....

I have some beautiful friends.

And one of them succumbed to the wishes of her many followers and supporters and has decided to start a blog, which can be read here. Sapna and I share a history together (no, not like that, not that I didn't want to once upon a time), a history I'l lshare the bits I remember that are safe for public consumption one day. But for now I just want to let anyone who ever chances to read me that she is brilliant, and worth the read, far more than I am. Check here soon for a story from the deep drk past of Sapna in her early days at Barat College.