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Power Politics of the "undead left"
I have found memories of fighting the Power Politics of the "undead left" during the London Social Forum many years ago - lots of knotted strings of organic garlic around the top "taking the power table" to highlight the uncomfortable "undead left´s" grasping for power.
Then the ad hock crew taking away the top table altogether during the lunch break and arranging all the chairs in a circle. Their faces were a delight, coming back after lunch and it kinda/might have worked... but the splits of "not thought of here" took over and the undead were permissioned to take back the space at the next meeting.
The ESF movement faded and now is a shadow - no alt was built.
The use of cultural myths and traditions will mediate and disempower "power politics" but it's a chicken and an egg to get these embedded in groups that are already ensnared in "power politics".
The rainbow gatherings used to work this way till they were "disrupted" by the digital shift and capture by the #dotcons now the gatherings themselves are broken due in part by being organized through #failbook
The #OMN could fail from the same issue. The myths and traditions are in place PGA and #4opens. But the project does not have deep roots to weather the inrush of success. And on the other hand will likely not last the slow growth needed for the roots to dig deep.
Starting/Doing the "Risistence Expo project is unsettling for the same resion.
The idealogical swing
In the 19th century we had a fight between the conservatives vs fundamentalist liberalism fighting/feeding inhuman industrial growth which lead to a human backlash in the 20th century of social democracy – that is a mediated democracy to push humanan growth (progressive liberalism). The late 20th century neo-libreal (fundamentalist liberals) pushed us back into a 19th century world view which has brought with it the balenceing ideas of conservatism of trump and brixet.
The idea is to do it different. Socialism and ecolagisam spring to mind. If we can bring the progressive liberals back it can open the space for these other world views. If conservatism takes over then we have the revaluation of "communism" as a balance as Neo-liberalism is a inhuman deadend that we should not be repeat.
The conservatives (trump) and the radicals are both pissing on liberals for good resions. Though it might turn out that a renewed progressive liberalism (Corben etc.) might be the best path. Pee in moderation can be a good fertiliser :)
For a view of neo-liberal dealing with a political created ecological disaster this podcast is a good direct reminder http://irishhistorypodcast.ie/podcast-directory/famine/
Building alt/grassroots media networks to challenge the traditional media
Our current groups doing alt/grassroots media are to limited in there idea of what media could/should be. The is either a naivety or a dishonesty to all the current grassroots/alt media. They act and think they can be "big media" with out controlling the distribution of there content in any real way. This is in no way unusual the mainstream media is continually making this very same mistake. All of them rely on the the #dotcons which nowadays is largely the Facebook algorithm for the there content distribution.
Our current grassroots/alt media have web sites so already have one foot in the openweb, but non of their sites prominently link in any meaningful way to each other. They do podcasts so anther foot in the open web, but all their effort for outreach is inside the #silos such as Apple itunes etc. it's hard to directly blame them, though we should and will, for this sorry state.
So why are we here? On the one hand we have the #fashernista embrace of the #dotcons which most of the current crew built there careers inside. On the other we have the suicidal embrace of #encryptionists complexity and parallel "standardisation" into a pointless/shrinking in to nothingness alt-tech ghetto were our alt-geeks are.
With these issues in mind I have been outreaching to these groups for the last year, and building real working openweb linking tech as part of the #OMN project. This currently is not been getting far past their naivety/self interest/career focused thinking. Fair anufe if that is as far as there imagination/aspiration goes, but this is a clear problem for working alt/progressive/left media that urgently needs to be addressed. I will keep outreaching, if you wont to help with this outreach get in touch.
They link to meany alt-media crews at the end of each story which is nice, but no links on front page yet.
They have no links on the front page to alt media crews. They used to have a linking page inside there site, now I cannot find it? If anyone can find links can they send me a URL please. They are looking like going backwords to a more tredtional 20th centery view of what media is?
They have no links on the front page to other alt-media crews and I cannot find any links inside their site. They have source links in there story's which is not much of a step. This is a clear a failer in alt/grassroots media turms.
Open letter to 4 alt/grasssroots media groups about the openweb
DRAFT (please comment)
Building up alt/grassroots media would be nice to get a reply :)
Hi guys,
Good to get a reply about this project from you.
OMN is a network of Open Media Sites. Its a push to #reboot the openweb that most "value" you currently use has been built upon in the last 20 years. Your careers were built on the destruction of the digital commons its time to pay this back. The cost to your career is light and the openweb can and should be run in parallel to your current use of the #dotcon distribution.
The currency (value) of the web is the link without linking content (no matter how good) has little/no value online and will likely not be seen offline.
Left wing and progressive sites DO NOT LINK and share content with each other. This leads them to have little or no value outside the bubble/echo chambers. And we are surprised and depressed when we keep looseing, there is nothing surprising about this, but there is something depressing about it.
Why is the OMN different to all the other activist tech failed projects.
The top 5:
1) It's based on the #4opens, meaning it doesn't have the buy-in (sell out) issue of NGO's and dotcons and can spread as wildly as the original world wide web (www) if people start to use/build it out.
2) It's KISS, that is simple and standards based, so open to be built-out in unseen directions and open to wide creativity. It galvanises and empowers openweb projects.
3) It's not under the control of one group and is a "universal/standard based so can build and link many niches to link and thus build a real alternative.
4) It solidifies a morality of co-operation and trust rather than fear and compation. Its left wing rather than right wing. All current projects are products of right wing thinking in structure and expectations.
5) It gives the tech/grassroots #fashionista's something useful to do and promote at their events. Its hard to express the pointlessness of all the current alt-tech.
reply from one of the alt-media/grassroots groups
Aren't "existing" doing this anyway, linking all media groups together? Afraid I'm not techie enough to understand what OMN is, how it's different, or any of the points you've made, but I'm happy to go along with what everyone else decides if it can be explained in plain English!
We have done some "user story's" https://github.com/Openmedianetwork/OMN/wiki/user-storys hope this helps get away from the tech :)
This is a part list of current working roll-out https://github.com/tomspost/OMN/wiki your content already appears as links on all these sites as you post it.
All current successful projects are networks or in the case of the #dotcon social networks (closed) sudo networks.
Currently the OMN is the only bud of a network we have in place in the alt/progressive.
What dues the OMN mean for the your org
Nothing has to change in what you do if you don't want to do more.
To be part of the network you add a easy OMN sidebar/section/page to your existing site with the content flow you are interested in from any OMN site. You control what appears on your site.
At the moment the is just the one/first that covers the best of grassroots media from a UK and a bit of globle news focus so use that one http://omn.openworlds.info:8080
That's it, you can do more if you like but don't have to.
What this means is that your site will link and share content with other grassroots/alt media sites on there sidebar/section/pages.
Your content as you publish it on your site will appear (you do not have to do anything for this to work) on many other OMN sidebars/sections/pages on other sites and blogs.
It will play a role in "aggregating" the viewership of alt-media, everyone gains from this.
What we are talking about is building expanding distribution outside Facebook/twitter. You can, and should continue to use Facebook etc. what the OMN dues is start to build independent and horizontal alternative that run/expands in parallel, its working now and easy to use.
Am more than happy to help set-up the embeds in your website, will likely take 20 min.
Just in case you are worried about security of your site all scripting is striped from the articles and links and the embed is a standard plug-in that comes from the dotcon markets that 1000's of people have been using for years with out any issues.
Its mature and safe tech that just works.
Ps. if this outreach duse not work its looking like time for a bit of a kicking.... phwww..... crap.
Stupid individualism and the possibility of an alternative
Stupid individualism and the visionOntv templates.
Our templates for video journalism are designed to radically simplify and empower normal people to make coherent video news pieces using the tools they largely already have. They are successful at this if people fallow the template's – it says this at the end of most of them.
The issue that creates failure is a standard one for the possibility of an alternative, I call it this "stupid individualism".
The disparity of wealth on the surface and poverty of the underlying human condition (some would call this "spirit") is striking to many thinking and feeling people. Our shared western society is based on a hegemonic false senses of individualism, were the reality is largely faceless conformity thinly covered by lifestyle fashion. This is the bases of consumer capitalism our "wealth" is built on. The world view atomises any possibility of building an alternative and shows up in as a block in most attempts to build one.
Our templates boil down more than 30 years of experience of awarded wining fast turn around video journalism to a A4 cartoon sheet. The instructions are clear and complete, if you fallow these, after a few attempts you will likely have mastered the bases of audio visual story telling and from this point of mastery opens a whole world of creativity and real genuine individualism.
Very few actually get this far and we know this because we have trained thousands of citizen journalist over hundreds of workshops at both undercurrents and visionOntv. Why? I would put fowered my old friend/foe "stupid individualism" as the prime explanation (though would admit the are technical challenges as well).
The impotence of the template is more in what it doesn't say, the is much more information in the omissions, this is how it fits on a A4 with pictures. It distils what does work and explains this.
People do not fallow the template, often they do not even pick it up and read it, they then go onto do what THEY think is video making, they do all the bits that the template purposely omits and very few of the bits in it, the result is almost always a dis empowering mess. This is the same thing with all groups we work with.
We live in an individualist society, were we are all "empowered individuals". The problem is evident in that this is our empowerment is an illusion, we are all dis empowered individuals with egos let lose on dispoling mode. We think we are empowered because everything around us that works is on bureaucratic auto pilot, we don't actually have to create anything original and lack the base skills to so when the rare option comes round. Our templates are such a rear opportunity, if you can take your mind out of dispoleing mode and fallow the instructions – the first step and a rare hopeful sign for us as trainers is a budding CJ actually checking the steps on the paper template as they go though the filming.
This "stupid individualism" is a block on many parts of building an alternative.
Some background
Looking at the tech and organising of UK alt/grassroots media
How meany sites link to anuther alt/grassroots media sits. from this list of 38 UK sites only 2 link to anuther site.
Many people find it hard to understand the underlining understandings that push projects based on flow and linking such as OMN and openweb. Here is a short list of activish projects.
Is a place for holding/hoarding closed data – this is used by the #dotcons to extract funding form "free users" when mainstream/alt silo projects finish, as 99.9% do, the data varnishes and is lost, and in this the effectiveness of any alt building is diminished. Silos do not use open licensing for content re-use. Just about every alt/grassroots media project is a silo. It's about capturing data. Its obvious that this is a unthought through issue of "churning"
Is an idea that you can be the big one, all the small fashionista websites aspire to be the big one and by doing this they are working to the logic of the #dotcon and working against the logic of the openweb. They are building a project to lock there users into their project. Portal and silo are overlapping (but different) ideas for building web projects. In the mainstream, Apple is a prime example of this working. In the alt/grassroots almost all alt/grassroots media projects are portals. It's about capturing users, just as silos are about capturing data. For a left wing group this looks much like "recreating the Soviet Union" the one party to rule the state.
Are for-profit data silos in the old days working as portals, more recently they are building out siloed networks as a pseudo networked portal. Its both sad and bad that many alt media projects unthinkingly aspire to be #dotcons
Is where ALL the value is on the open web. Without links content has NO VALUE. This is a obvious statement, its hard to understand the the lack of understanding around this simple thing.
Is a grassroots web standard that is still at the base of many of the dotcon world but is being pushed into the background of the openweb by building silos/portals in the grassroots/alt. RSS is like an open LINK with added data, thus adds value to the web. Its a powerful open tool that we still have. An API is like a geek control freak super power of RSS - the problem is in the complexity/control freak bit...
A subculture that is control/obscurity and more recently technical solutions to trust (wraparound right) this has always been a closing force on open projects. This helped to strangle the original successful alt/grassroots media projects and is pushing for the shrinking of the open web.
The unthinking desire for new/innovation/conformity. A wider subculture that churns the growth of alt/grassroots so little can grow beyond seedlings.
Are greedy dispoling of resources both human and money. The liberals that use bureaucratic funding to push out the geek/fashernista agendas over alt/grassroots projects. These are uneasy friends and clear (invisible) enemys.
Is both a technical thing of wires and frequency and an understanding of mutual aid and of "diversity of strategy". It's native to the openweb and should be at the base of any alt/grassroots media project. In the closed #dotcon the widespread use of A/B testing is a pail controlled shadow of this.
wikipedia is an example of this. It's basic stuff open source project stuff. LINK
Looking at the tech and organising of UK alt/grassroots media. Do sites link to other alt-media projects? Do they support/display openweb standards (RSS)
First DRAFT (please message me with corrections/info)
the canary
Has a RSS feed, regular updates, copyright group silo, it has no outside linking
UPDATE: site back online, no visible RSS but can find a hidden one. Its likely copyright and a silo.
(Their website is hacked/down so posted the #failbook link used to have RSS and regular updates. Anyone know what's happening? Update they hope the site is back online soon.)
Real Media
UPDATE: website back online copyright, no visible RSS feed but you can find ones. Its a a bit of an aggregater but has been suffering from poor spam control. Its pretty much a portal/silo – but could be more.
(They used to have an interesting website for the tec used, but it ended up being just a silo, they look like they are rebooting? Maybe a another silo? we shall see.)
Update they are rebooting as a linking site, lets hope its not a silo.
Has regular good content, RSS, they are a product of the #dotcon social media wave and good at it. Copyright/CC is not stated. The site is a silo with no outside linking
No RSS feed, starting to look a bit "old left" regular updates, no copyright/CC notice. A silo with no external links
The Bristol Cable - Bristol
No visible RSS feed, it kinda probably tries to obey the 4 opens maybe. It's a WP blog site in this it's a media silo with no external links.
Port Talbot Magnet
no visible RSS feed, it mostly fails the 4 opens due to copyright, data and organising. It's a WP blog site, in this it's a media silo with few if any external links.
New Internationalist - based in Oxford
Has RSS feeds, it kinda passes the 4 opens using a CC licence for its content. It links to the visionOntv project.
The Ferret - Scotland, based in Edinburgh
Looks like the old media transitioning to the new media. No visible RSS feed or copyright/CC notice. Is trying to be "open process" looks like a WP site.
Strike! - based in London
looks like a archive of a print mag? Has a RSS feed :)
Positive News - based in London
Dated looking site, hard to read, no RSS feed and a copyright notice. A silo.
Slaney Street - Birmingham
Did not load
Manchester Mule - Manchester
Has RSS feed but last article end of 2015 so not an active site. Probably for fills the 4 opens.
Co-operative News - based in Manchester
Nasty looking site and no RSS, copyrighted, its a silo
Ethical Consumer
No RSS, copyrightish, old looking site.
Marlborough News Online
no RSS, copyright
West Highland Free Press
no RSS, copyright, its a silo.
Star and Cresent - based in Portsmouth
No RSS, no copyright notice? Its a silo.
Morning Star - based in London
Has a RSS feed but its empty, copyright, silo.
Cambria Publishing Co-operative
publishes paper books?
Zed Books - London
paper books and online reading lists, no RSS I can see.
Sheffield Live!
copyright, has a RSS feed, looks bureaucratic open.
Blake House - based in London
no RSS, fashionable calling card website with out content, probably copyright?
Media Co-op
Calling card website with out content, no RSS, likely copyright.
Ignite Creative - based in Oxford
Calling card website with out content, no RSS, copyright.
Shedlight Productions - based in Southampton
calling card website with out content, no RSS, copyright.
Steel City Film and Media Co-op - based in Sheffield
its a #failbook page, maybe open?
Trafford Media & Communications - based in Manchester
(mostly a printer, but also do film production)
calling card, no site.
The Community Channel
The granddaddy of NGO media, no RSS feed, likely copyright silo.
Jammu Kashmir TV
it has content, silo?
Open Audio
Has a working RSS feed
Inform My Opinion
Has working RSS feed but it fails in my pod catcher, its a page on a #dotcon?
has RSS feed, copyright, silo?
AMP Worcs
calling card.
A Television
Half finished calling card site.
Hastings independent press
No RSS, no copyright/CC notice, a silo with no external links.
Copyright, no RSS feed, has some old school widgets which might show external links. Its a local news silo.
Has RSS feed and CC licence, no external links on front page, its a silo but better than most.
Has a RSS feed, its a silo but the is hope for it.
its a blog in the old school sense, has RSS
its a silo with no RSS and no external links
A lot of the original links came from https://www.facebook.com/jdaviescoates
FAQ - why use open websites
We need to get activist to actually use alternative net infrastructure.
Q. Its to complex to use this geek software.
A. So was Facebook when it started, almost nobody understood what twitter was for for ages – all new experiences are hard. Its actually ONLY a question of motivation then familiarisation through repartition.
Q. Activist internet site are ugly – if they just look nicer people might actually use them.
A. After bad UI is put to one side (and this can be an issue) the is a direct correlation between full user functionality and bad looking sites – you can make site look nicer by dis-empowering the user or by shaping and controlling there interactions – but freedom always looks messy just look at Facebook its one of the more messy sites out there – it overcomes this issue by good UI and familiarity – people get used to "functionality - ugliness" after they use the software every day.
Q. My activist site has no way for the "user" to be part of the site beyond limited commenting.
A. Yes activist sites are generally in the stone age of hierarchical control freakery, use sites that are web02 not web01 the actually are some projects out their. Complain to admins if the is no peer -to- peer production on an activist site, then actually use the peer production tools they set-up such as wikis and forums.
Q. Why not just use Facebook groups/ fashionable web2 site, every one is on there anyway.
A. This way leads to the death of the open internet/society LINK
Q. Can i trust activist sites with my privacy.
A. On corporate site's that most activist use, such as Facebook you can only hide from your friends not from your enermys. This is generally true for the open web in general and is something we need to understand. If you have a secret take the activist to the garden and whisper it in there ear, do not rely on any fig leafs of corporate privacy settings or promise of activist client server encryption LINK
Power polatics and the race/gender card
Deal with issues, allowing them to be pushed under the carpet has a cost.
The are real issues round gender/race politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics Then the is a the sad and bad playing of the race/gender "card" that is sometimes used when real issues become stressful.
This happen to me a year ago at the Good Social Centre in Dalston. The was a "monster" dominating process by talking over everyone with a steady flow of power politics. I was confronting him about this at a project meeting.
Activists strangely tend to have issues with direct action when it happens in there community's, they sat around looking from one "monster" to the other "monster (me)" making no judgement between the two. In the end he played the Asian "race card" and that was the end of that.
He terrorized and wrecked the space for a year before he was final excluded from space meetings. Sad and bad...
Yes playing the race/gender card can highlight a real issue but sometimes its just more power politics. And if the issue is down to power politics in the first place then this is likely the second not the first reason the "race/gender" card is used to block.
In the case above it turned out that he was a mentally ill, druggie, control freek, with a MBA in bullshit. Sadly he did have real talents, that were key to the project if he could have been helped/supported out of the nasty power politics. This was only fully understood a year latter after he was excluded from the meetings.
Ps. Truth is good, he could have played the "mental illness" card, every one would have agreed and helped him.
Alt-geek culture is broken - indymedia
An introduction to a "unspoken" problem. Everything is "pointless" in till you do something "that is not", if we keep repeating the pointless stuff were/when is the "that is not" going to happen?
An example of the geek problem can be found in the flowing and fading of radical alt/grassroots media at the peek of the #openweb
The basis of any new media is the technology it is transmitted/mediated by. In the case of newspapers this is the printing press, and for radio and TV it is access to the transmission spectrum. The open internet changed this "traditional" media which was based on a world of (vertical) analogue scarcity. As the accessing technology improved, it created a radically (horizontal) digital media space.
This was intently filled with (naive in a good sense) alt-media such as the Indymedia project (IMC). In this post I am looking at how this was killed off by internal geek/process dogmatism at the same time as its space was colonised by new/mainstream such as blogging and social media.
We are now coming full circle to where we started with closed client/server, algorithm-determined, gatekeeper, for-profit networks dominating media production and consumption. The corporate gate keeping venture capital driven (and invisible ideology) algorithm is the new printing press/broadcast spectrum that we started the century with.
What part did radical geeks play in this?
Let's look at the successful global indymedia project, which was based on open publishing and open process through a centralised server network. Before this the radical video project undercurrents, while not so open, was again based on a technical hub. They had the only free digital editing suite for production of grassroots video, thus anyone wanting to produces radical content was funnelled though this grassroots gatekeeper. With IMC, it was publishing to their hosted servers.
The indymedia network was setup in the very avant-gardist open model that was to dominate the internet for a time. Like undercurrents it succeeded because of its technical centralisation – the server was the ONLY place citizen journalist content could be published without hard technical knowledge. This monopoly was later lost to the growth of individualistic blogging platforms and later corporate social media. But what I want to argue here is that it died before this due to internal (process) pressures.
Indymedia was set up on the open, open, open, open, pseudonymous model.
* Open source (free software)
* Open publishing (post-publishing moderation)
* Open licence content (non commercial re-use)
* Open process (everything was organised on public e-mail lists, open meetings)
* Pseudo-anonymous (you didn't have to provide an e-mail address or a real name to publish)
Let's look as some of the pragmatism that allowed the project to take off:
* The project was initially pragmatic about open source as it used the closed realmedia (RM) video streaming codec and servers. But the core project was committed to the free software path where technically possible.
* Open publishing was the basis of the project, things could only be hidden (not removed) because they broke a broad public editorial guideline. Even then they were added to a background page so were still public. In this the publishing process was naïvely open.
* Open licence stayed with the project to the end.
* Open process was gradually abandoned, a clique formed then fought and split, this was the main reason the project ossified and could not adapt to keep its relevance in the changing world of blogs and social media.
* (Pseudo) anonymity was part of the abandonment of open process and led down many of the technical dead ends that finally killed the relevance of the project to most users.
Lets look at this final one in more depth
Firstly, it's important to realise that any attempt at anonymous publishing in a client server relationship even at its most restrictive and paranoid would produce pseudo anonymity. ie. you might be able to hide from your mates and your employer but you cannot hide from the "powers that be" if they are interested in subverting your server and its internet connection.
The internet is inherently naïvely open, its built that way, this is why it works. The recent Edward Snowdon leaks highlight this to the wider public view.
- the integrity of the ISP and hosting was always based on trusting a tiny anonymous minority of geeks
- the physical security of the server could never be guaranteed.
- as the project process closed the identity of these core geeks became tenuous/invisible.
In activism just as the man driving the white van repeatedly turned out to be the police/corporate spy, the invisible server admin is the obvious opening for the same role – am not saying this is what existed, rather just trying to highlight how you cannot build a network based on this closed client server infrastructure/culture that IMC became. Given the open nature of the internet, it became dangerous to push IMC as an anonymous project.
There were four fatal blocks:
- the repeated blocks and failure and delay of decentralisation of the servers to the regions.
- the blocks on aggregation, then the closed subculture aggregation that final happened as a parallel project
- the focusing on encrypted web hosting and self-signed certificates put a block on new non-technical users that proved termanaly offputting.
- the failed "security theater" of not login IP address locally on the server as a limited security fig leaf. They could simply be logged on the ISP/open web instead.
These, together with a shrinking of the core group, led to the project becoming irrelevant in the face of the growth of more openly accessible blogging and then social media.
Let's get positive and suggest some ways the IMC project could have flourished and still be a dominant grassroots project:
* The base level of the project should have actively decentralised as the technology matured to make this feasible. Every town needed its own DIY run server.
* Then regional aggregation using RSS (really simple syndication) would make this grassroots media presentable as outreach media.
* A national aggregation site could then have compete directly with the (then) declining traditional media outlets.
* Recognising that the IMC project was pseudo-anonymous at best, IMC could have built a parallel encrypted peer-to-peer gateway app/network to feed into this to provide true(ish) anonymity for publishers to this ongoing open media project.
* The decentralisation would have been a force to keep the process open by feeding though new people/energy – this would have naturally balanced the activist clique forming/closing in the centre.
* As blogging became popular and matured these could have been "ethically" aggregated into the network to build a truly federated global open media network such as http://openworlds.info is working to be.
* Social networking could have been added as an organic part of this flourishing federated network.
If this had happened, it's not too much to say that the internet would have been a different place to where it is now. The IMC project highlights some of the failures of activist/geek culture. If we are to (re)build the open web we need to learn from this and move on.
(find photo of indymedia Sheffield masked up photo)
This is sadly not a metaphor for an open media project
It should be obvious to people now that even the most paranoid centralised closed internet is only pseudo-anonymous at best. We need to learn how to live with "open" to build the world we want to see. And our geeks fighting for closed are actually a problem for us, just as much as "them".
Moveing through/past "blocking" in activism
The 4 opens
The #4opens:
Open data – is the basic part of the project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data with out this open it cannot work.
Open source – as in "free software" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software this keeps development healthy by increasing interconnectedness and bringing in serendipity. The Open licences are the "lock" that keep the first two in place, what we have ain't perfect but they expand the area of "trust" that the project needs to work, creative commons would be the start here.
Open "industrial" standards – this is a little understand but core open, its what the open internet and WWW are built from. Here is an outline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
Open process – this is the most "nebulous" part, examples of the work flow would be wikis and activity streams. The project is built on linking trust networks so open process is the "glue" that binds the links together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process
Outline of 20 years ups and downs of grassroots activism in the UK
In my expirence the flowering of the indymedia networks followed by the first years of climatecamp were the high points of activist culture. The end of climate camp was the low point of activist culture, after this the drift to NGO and fashion was wide and dissipating.
Occupy was a break in activist culture, it was the first mass "internet first" on the ground manifestation that happened disconnected to the past of activism because of the use of #dotcons tools as prime organising space. The old couture has been discredited by the failings of climate camp, the new dotcon tools had been celebrated and used well by Ukuncut etal. Were Ukuncut was a reboot of old climate camp crew, Occupy was a project of the #failbook generation in all its wide reflective madness.
Were are we now? The old left is rebooting with a broken mix of the blairite right and the Stalinist/toxic left both pulling at the radical liberal centre. Alt media content is being rebooted but the network it needs to build, to stop its drift to NGO burn out is missing. The right is ideologically bankrupt and visibly grasping, but stronger than ever.
In activism currently we are full of the biter taste of occupy and NGO worshipping of dotcoms and careerism. The working of the 21st century is potentially different to the workings of the 20th century the are groups, networks and individuals that embody this and a larger group/individuals who fight for the past century working practices.
The "certainties of the 20th century" are grasped in our frail and trembling hands, the first stage of a "network" reboot is to let go of these "certainties" one constructive path to this is to fill in the gaping activist memory hole by looking at what works and what dose not. The lost and flailing progressive alt needs foundations bridging this gap to build on.
The IS NO SHORT TERMISM HERE but the is speed and nimbleness, plenty of fun, creative motivated building to be done. Many of the foundation problems can be built in parallel as a "network" so it can happen faster than most can imagine.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Am currently working on two projects to take steps to medate the issues I ouline here:
The Witches Cauldron - open activist archive
The use of language and writing by activists has an impact.
The use of language and writing by activists has an impact.
Possessiveness "us-them" is a root failing in open structures that cant be avoid, BUT, best not to feed it.
"Bring your flyers, posters, leaflets, newsletters, news clippings, video footage, photographs, banners, artwork and disobedient objects, and display them in the open spaces."
"your" is possessive the sentence makes just as much sense with out it.
"Bring flyers, posters, leaflets, newsletters, news clippings, video footage, photographs, banners, artwork and disobedient objects, and display them in the open spaces."
In the second one this is less "us and you" and "one telling the other what to do."
When working with/in open structures best to just take all the "pointing" words out. Sentences generally work fine with out them.
Just had a "discussion" about this for the expo.
participative facilitation teaches thisparticipative and inclusive
Activism and flaring egos go hand in hand
Activism and flaring egos go hand in hand
Well that almost went well with editing the headboards for the activist project. Shame on us all for it degenerated into shit behaver for the last 45 min.
Its understandable X wanting a say on the project – an open way to do it would have been to say lets make some changes to this KEY doc and discus it for a bit. Then do it.
The doc had been though at least 4 drafts and was waiting for a polish at this stage. This drafting had shaped it as a "open process" with out the "you-me" that often peppers language. The definitions (subjects) were all outside on the boards rather than in the intro. This left open and inviting space to take part.
At this stage while all ready over time the way people acted was like lighting a match to a messy explosion. When Y attempt to mediate then closed the job half done, with Z coming in blind, a nasty mess was (hopefully) resolved in a nasty way. We did not need this to happened.
Open process is not a solution but it helps.
Open Spaces and words we use
Why do all alt/grassroots events have the same speakers
I start to understand why all alt/grassroots events have the same speakers. Looking about you send out invites to everyone who has done it before. To reach out to new people would be taking a risk, would be hard work to hand hold them though the process. The lack of time and resources leaves little focus than to just repeat the past. This is a hard realization and incite into poverty.
Am starting to feel slightly ashamed of not knowing this before. ideas please, we do need to fix this.
Not a #conspiracey rather a #fuckup we are only human.
"To be honest you should be commended for putting it all together in the first place. No one else is doing it and it's essential. Every form of direct action is worthy and amazing given the world we live in."
"1 a bit of mentoring goes a long way
2 offer expenses and look for some funding - either grant funding or crowdfunded
3 offer speaker training events"
Your idea would work if we had the time and the funding, time is relative but funding for alt/left is tiny and hard to get. Almost all left'ish funding is dispelled in #NGO and #fashernista pointlessness. Ideas for diverting some of this waste might be a start? Actually it is a good time to try this, who is up for it?
Find and Join the OMN
How to re-boot grassroots media to help to re-boot the open web to create real social change
We need to get our current dispurate and weak activist sites to link to each other, then get NGO's to do the same. Then push out news river embeds to more mainstream sites to expand the network.
This project needs to be run as a non-branded open network based on open social and technical standereds.
The social side is based on linking flows of information.
Of course you can and should be all of the above, but to aid expansion and growth this is not insisted on.
The first two paths are easey, the last more complex:
* Producers, this is any web site that puts out an RSS feed, this is most sites on the internet [tick]
* Consumers, are at a basic level very easy to do using a javascript sidebar code or a custom CMS plug-in using the javascrit plugin the barrier to upkeep is slight so this can spread easily. [half tick]
* Aggregates are slightly more complex as they will need custom codeing, this all ready exists in a basic form for Drupal and Wordpress and the miro project. [needs work]
As the production side is already solved and the consumers side is relatively trivial this only leaves the Aggreaters as a steep path to take. We have a small budget to kick this off and is technically feasible.
The second part needed is actually the more complex one, how to get groups and individuals to implement open cooperative working practices. The issues that have to be bypassed/addressed/ignored:
* Geek culture is infeactured with encryption and fake technical privacy, this is fading with the victory of failbook and its fellow dotcoms and the disintegration and fading into obscurity of the geek privacy projects. But this will comeback and bite at the OMN as it grows out and builds the basic open tech. So we have to harden the project against this agenda by codeing the opens into the foundations of the project.
* The Trots and the Authoritarian tendency left jumping on the band wagon, this is solved in the same way as the geek problem as they actually share the same pathology of the 20th century illusion of control.
* NGO's this is solved by moving to fast for them to react, if we get bogged down this might become an issue of co-option. Keep moving fast.
To sum up build soled open foundations and keep moving fast.
How would the project look/feel
The open web and the sites that make it up would look much like they look today.
But the OMN project would socialise linking and sharing to create a network out of all the small disparate bits that make up the remains of this fading open web.
Production and consumption sites would gain a sidebar containing realtime updating links to "tag" based rivers of relevant content.
Aggregating sites would contain rivers of subject based content that they would sive and add value to be re-tageing. And creating meta articles linking to original sources. The feeds that production and consumption sites display would come from one of these aggreating sites.
The network would grow out organicly based on subject:
* a aggregating site could only handeal so many feeds before the human moderates are overwlemed this would lead to specialisation and a hirakey of subject aggreaters that would organicly mirror the existing real social interest groups.
* we would end up with specialisation, and a shifting network of overlapping bottom, middle and top sites which would all find ordnances and drive traffic back to the producing sites that feed the network.
* bottom sites would aggregate mostly original producer sites, middle sites would aggregate a mixture of original sites and tags from subject based bootem sites, finally the top sites would aggregate tag based feeds from the middle sites.
How would this look to the "users"
* It would be much easer for "normal" users to find relevant content on subjects that they are interested in, they would be introduced back to the open web by links on #failbook and #juduceserche engine. This growth of traffic would re-energise peoples websites and inspire the upgrading of meny moribund website projects and a move away from current hegemonic dotcom aggregation of #failbook and its siblings.
How would it affect "producers"
* publish ones and your content appears on 100's of sites driving traffic and commenting back to your blog/website and away from #failbook atel. The open web is being straggled by the pay to view throttling on these copurte silos, its a no brainier to move to escape this now. With the increased trafic you can put energy into upgrading your existen website to make it more relevant, the OMN would be active in providing the open tools and plug ins to make this happen.
What would this look like from tech prospective:
KISS open industrial standards based on trust and redundant data roll-back back functions to Handel the breakdown of trust that will happen some times.
RSS will be used as a database object exchange format, a tagging taxonermy will be used to shift and create the flows of these objects. Subscribing to tag based RSS feeds will be the bases of the trust network.
Open databases will hold duplicate meta data linking back to the original source of the RSS object.
*** the is a creative way of making the consumption of content more transparent and develop/user friendly – this will be talked about later ***
RSS feed aggregation would be base on trusted, strate through or moderated ie adding to a moderation cue in the aggregating sites.
3 months to build the seed aggreaters and basic javescript embeds/plugins
6 months to build out the seed networks
9 months to major launch
12 months to being a real alternative and play a role in saving the open web.
Food for thinking:
If you think this sounds oldfaserned you would be right it is, its the basics that needs to happen to create a pool of metadate enhanced media objects. What happens after this? for ideas will add some links:
Looking back, looking foward, Village Hall or Church Hall
Am writing this for people who are actively leave the mainstream 9-5 society and move into disrepute subcultures to live their lifes.
Issues of group organisation crop up reugally and are generally badly resolved leading to a consistent life sapping churning of bad will and trails of failed groups.
For most people directly in these subcultures this is not an important issue as the majority just dip in and out of this shifting social soup for them the mainstream is a easy fall-back. They are less likely to notice and by the time they do notice the churning of growth and decay, they are ready to leave back to the (dulling) safety of the mainstream. Rinse and repeat is a apt description of the passing of each short generation, and the a causation of alt-culture haveing a bad reputation in the mainstream.
Over the next few posts am hoping to have a look at a few different groups am involved in that are at different stages of "crises". Lets look at two concepts from the 19-20th century first:
Small groups of a less radical nature tend to use one of these organising structures for their spaces (the wikipedia links need filling out)
A village hall, is a non commercial space for community events that is a open space for for all the social/political/cultural activity a community holds in common. Its a "neutral" space for groups to build community cohesion. It will generally be run by a elected community of members of an active and open local group.
A church hall will share many of the same uses and structures but will have a tendency to be more narrowly focused in the areas the church has negative attitude. Ie. a Catholic church would probably not host a meeting of groups supporting abortion issues, more conservative churches would not host the young socialists or the anerakist black flag legal support etc they may have issues with other religions usesing the space. In general the would be "moralistic and idealogical" restrictions on the open use of the community space that would highlight some parts of the commnerty and disadvantage others. The final arbiter would probably be a the head of the local management committy reporting to the vicar would would be sacturned by the church hiracky.
The recsion we have overlapping Village Halls and Church Halls in most villages should be obvious for these two short paragraphs. In the 20th century both of these older institutions were supplemented by a third more modern institution that directly replaced the church focus and expanded on the role of the village hall in larger urban arrears.
The community centres grow out of the spread of ideas about social justice and the value of couture in the middle of the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_centre (this link is more filled out and worth a read)
In the late 20th century these areas were then degraded by commercialisation, their community empowerment focus becoming lost (must pay way).
They also suffered from the suffocation of bureaucratisation with was a produced of mid 20th century thinking and organising.
We have 3 of the more traditinal mainstream approaches to a "space for the community" with the "romanisations of the past" thinking we are currently rebooting older ideas, the idea of a village hall is coming back (and in more conservative circles church halls are being re-introduced). Its good to think for a moment that they were products of their time and place and will need rebooting in a form that is appropriate for the different 21st century thinking/society we live in today.
Q&A of the OMN autumn 2015
A DRAFT (copy and paest of a chat useing realmedia as an example)
this needs a edit for sense, but my back ach dusent alow this so out it goes
We need an Executive summery of why visionontv failed.
- we didn't de-brand fast anufe
- we went nimble anufe to be relaverent.
its going to be a struggle to reboot grassroots media with out highlighting both of these
its fine for brands to be "periphery"
the is no excuse for lack of nimbleness.
We built generations of p2p tech against the flow of failbook and its activist NGO takeup.
Now - we can only aggregate YouTube videos
yes but that's ok, in the interim, As our tools are broken
If we could spread the realmedia WP install up this would be easer to explain the p2p side of OMN
With out working tools - we can only build proxy sites to hold space.
Youtube play's list are one
Q. The question is: what can people do NOW
Its a chicken and egg - we have to use the tools we have while making clear the tools we need.
Yes YT embeds are a tool we have – Q. but they should not be attached to the 1400 video account of a particular media project
A. Get embeds from the visionOntv noid of the OMN with an explanation why is far from perfect.
Q. it looks like we're doing it to promote our work?
OK this is interesting
we're not, but that's what it looks like
need to avoid the whole branding thing for this
in terms of the interface, what's the difference between an embedder (of an aggregator) and an aggregator - is it a completely different UI or a different use of the same UI
Q2: If I as an aggregator like RealMedia's agregation, it would be natural to merge the two - or why don't I just add to RealMedia's? In other words, isn't there a desirable and natural tendency towards centralisation?
Other way up - as an aggregator, I like RealMedia's aggregation, minus their videos about endangered animals, so I take those tags out, and become a subset
Then I add a few tags which I think are missing, creating a new and I think better aggregator
but Real Media has a publicity budget, so no one knows about mine....
etc etc etc
Yep to last one, you can create a new aggregated but each stage in the line adds a delay. So Realmedia embeds will update before your one.
Its also based on trust - which you gain by doing.
Why trust a site that is slow and dues not add anything
The can be a badging syteam
I am adding stuff - taking away dross IMHO and adding content
Our site has 233 embeds, imports 124 feeds and exports 23 feeds etc
why don't we have mother ship that any aggregator has access to?
The new site will have lots of low numbers.
But the same content, 10-20 min to a few hours later.
Q. so the first and biggest always wins?
Only if the put huge amounts of real value into tageing and moderating.
Which had s work. With out that a smaller sight will be faster and better.
why wouldn't i want to better use my time by helping RealMedia's or mother ship's aggregation rather than creating my own?
You can - the is a tendency to specialise thus the will always be a better site than general news sites if you are pashernate (and peopulr who put the work into aggregation will be pashernste)
So Realmedia will likely stay a nich site for its subject - I can't read it for example.
but why don't people build their aggregation inside another aggregator?
The OMN has a "market" mechanism of checks and balances built in. Will be very hard to stop geeks "improving" these out...
They can
If the aggregate allows it users (embeds) to retage with no or fast moderation then you can build a aggreater inside an aggreater. Just like we can post our stuff to failbook and theurtube.
If your passionate build your own.
The is a server/bandwidth/moderation cost for every RSS feed you add.
Q. archive.org has a centre - how is OMN different from that plus some aggregation tols?
so it's about shared cost
And trust and shared passion - the whole is bigger than the parts.
Its a leep for the verticals... Thus the resistance.
Like the open internet
"a leap for the verticals" - Im clearly trying to establish "a leap into what exactly?"
(btw i find realmedia's content incredibly dull as well!) but i was hyposthetising
ok im going to assume for now that this can't be explained
This n the 4 opens...
Which is the opens that the regional internet was built on
Portals are pre web.
Pre web is a failed strategy...
no one is thinking pre-web
Q. ok the data soup - stuff gets in there by api?
so it's add your stuff, and get the ability to filter out other peoples'
ok the aggregator closest to source is best....
closest to the general soup
Have been thinking about this
People think the is a centre yo the OMN that will look after things. The is none.
You are Completely responsible for who you link to and the data. The is no centre to take care of you or this.
The is massive redundant linking and data storage.
The is roll-back if things go wrong
You can put a feed on moderation if you aren't sure. But this will increase your workload and slow your updates so better to be sure.
Its a trust network.
Trust and risk are yours. The is no centre to meditate this trust
If you can't build trust then you will have a uphill struggle making aggregation work for your media project.
This is the hard jump for verticals.
Imperfection - is. Roll back in a complete failer or retag for a miss step.
Things happen you react to them. Rather than you reside first before things happen.
Its the original IMC of publish then moderate.
Of courses "verticals" can still use it, but they will be slow and plodding.
Just put everything on "moderation" and don't trust.
Or if your sensible a mixture of the two.
A good site will link well and let the data flow. Tweaking here or their. Unlinking if trust is broken and not addressed.
I find it hard to understand the verticality view point thus dearly directly address it.
Hope the helps, interesting for me to glimps the vertical view
To recap verticals can and will play a roll in the OMN but the exciting sites will be the ones that let the data flow through good linking based on trust.
The latency of layers of aggregation will push sites to specialise in subject - the best sites will be a group of trusting focused sites that each specialise.
Feeding a trusted middle site.
Top sites are easy to build but very hard to add value.
Bottom subject sites are harder to build and add a lot of value.
Easy to add value.
The latency is important as its the driving force to link to the site closed to the bottom you can trust
You can have a easy to site that has perfect content but is late to update.
Or you can have a fast updating middle site on a subject.
I would look more at middle sites
My mum would look at a top site.
So to recap the skill in running an aggreater is to link as close to the bottom as you can trust. For you core news feeds then maybe get tag based feeds off middle sites to widen your coverage into full news feed.
A valence of building trust/handling/moderation.
Archive.org is a top down categorisation of knowledge in a signal place. The is little flow.
It has no need for trust
Its an archive not a news site.
Do you rember the crap conversations we had about the hive website were they got rid if the network and whent vsck to a signal site. That's archive.org were is the value of a network, its hard for verticals to see.
On the subject of the OMN YouTube account - somebody would be responsible.
Q. With your top, middle and bottom sites, you're implying a topography, which can be drawn as a graphic, presumably
It's a hierarchy, without value attached to different ranks - hmmm
Yep the value is nebulous, just like the original internet nobody thought it would work because it had NI identity, no security and was completely based on open trust
Much like early indymedia
You could explain the projecting a way that verticals will understand. With moderation though out ect.
No centre/nobody responsible/built on trust
Its a good idea that's needed and will likely work well
Its hard to understand that the OMN is just open standards... Everything eles is up to the users/producers. The OMN dose/is nothing.
The outcome is a framework for linking, taging and outreach.
The framework is just structure, no content.
Q. so where is the content soup?
Yes it shapes how people cooperate. It Push greed and selfishness to the edges as much as it can
Q. what does?
The framework bounded by the 4 opens.
Its stored across hundreds of sites around the work, its backed up in many university's, archives and on your local hard rive if you wont it.
World (thousand, hundreds of thousands) and some one in this will keep a surviving backup. Thus nobody is responsible to do it. Though they can and will because that us what some people do
Its KISS
Couldn't be simpler
Has complex outcomes though...
Just like the internet.
Torrents already do this to an extent. But as the content is mostly stolen nobody keeps it.
Thus is fades.
This is of courses the text content and meta data. The video/audio/images
Would be more complex, a bit more "centralised" but still completely diy.
Can boot strap by yseing wikicomns and aracive.org so can be put to back of mind for s year or two.
Because storing lots of text in a database is easy. Big media needs more work.
Not impossible but hard to boot up the project and deal with it in the same diy way.
So aggregation is text and meta data. Media is still stored on original servers. Can build sine simplistic caching in to keep it running and scaling at boot up as needed.
That become a issue if we are very successful, nice problem to have.
Media storage of video/audio/images are left "more centralised" in partner silos - wikicomes/archive. Just to start otherwise we gave bug technical issues of scaling at the front end.
Keep it KISS
For example archive can seed torrents so can be the bases if torrent streaming. But that's later. Just use youtuve vimio embeds to kuckstat. Don't make people jump to meany hoop to soon. And all thus stuff can run in parreral anyway.
OMN is much less centralised than torrents. But we keep media in cirpurate silies and friendly NGOs to help boot up.
In that the media will be more "centralised" than torrents
Can do torrents at the same time but s distraction for me.
This idea is based on computers and storage getting cheaper each year so people can host big databases. This is what's happening.
Thinking. The most underplayed part of the OMN is the 4 opens...
The rest is just KISS RSS aggregation
Q. How do you stop porn appearing on your site. You link to a site you trustvnot to put porn on your site
Hard sell... But visionOntv has and real media have both proven it can be done etc.


text:
They used to spend afternoons bashing into each other in the backyard and now Pat Sio wants to follow big brother Scott into Super Rugby.
But first the powerfully built back-rower is aiming to emulate Scott's junior achievements and win selection in the Australian under-20s side for the world championships in June.
While Scott was in Melbourne preparing to play for the ACT Brumbies against the Melbourne Rebels, Pat was finishing his first camp with the national squad.
The brothers - Pat is taller but Scott is heavier - spent their Christmas holidays ''trying to choke each other out'' in wrestling sessions in Sydney. The park down the street from their house was another venue for their wrestling sessions.
Now Brumbies prop Scott is the inspiration driving Pat's bid to make his first Australian team.
''It's always good to aim high … I look at [Scott's achievements] as a challenge,'' Pat said. ''I reckon I'm up to the challenge … we both have the same goal - play for the Wallabies.
''Scott has taught me a lot of the things he's learnt at the Brumbies. He thinks he's faster than me, but I've got him covered … we're always competitive.''
An Australian under-20s squad spent the past week training at the Australian Institute of Sport at the first camp with new coach Sean Hedger. The initial squad of 50 will be trimmed to a smaller group that will prepare for the junior world championships to be held in France later this year.
Sio failed to make the Australian schoolboys teams, but has his sights set on a Super Rugby deal and under-20s honours.
Canberra duo Tom Staniforth and Andrew Robinson are also pushing their names forward for selection.
Both played in the Australian Schoolboys team last year and Brumbies coach Jake White has invited them to train with the Super Rugby squad.
''I've just learnt to go harder and go faster by training with the Brumbies,'' towering second-rower Staniforth said. ''I'm still getting bumped and smashed [by the older guys], but I'm really lucky and that's the only way you learn.
''When I look into [my goals] too much, that's when I get worried and don't play well, so I'm just having fun now.''
Robinson had to sit out the majority of work at the camp after injuring a shoulder in the Brumbies Q Sevens tournament last weekend.
The Tuggeranong Vikings back hopes this will not affect his chances of winning a spot in the final 28-man squad.
''It's frustrating, but hopefully I get a chance to show them what I can do,'' he said. ''Getting picked for the under-20s is my major goal for this year and then hopefully have a successful season with the Vikings.''

subset: commoncrawl


text:
He believed that the media and entertainment revolution was going to come through your TV set, not your computer. Levin began a big cable-based two-way broadband experiment called Full Service Network in 1994. Time magazine, interactive games, movies on demand, home shopping, access to an AOL competitor called Pathfinder and more would all come through your cable connection and a very powerful set-top box. It would be superfast and leave competitors in the dust.
Six months after it started, FSN was DOA. It was too expensive, too early and impossible to roll out nationwide. Big, big miss. Pathfinder hadn't found its way, either.
As loud and as over the top as Ted Turner was, Jerry Levin was the opposite: quiet, cerebral, erudite, Levin was the son of a rabbi and a University of Pennsylvania lawyer, who earned fame as the programming director of HBO and eventually CEO of Time Warner. But he will go down in history for engineering probably the worst merger in the history of mergers: Time Warner with AOL. It's hard to lose $100 billion in market cap, but Levin did it.
Think back to 2000. The world is going crazy for the Internet and AOL looks like the go-to company. There are very few true Internet companies, and AOL has 30 million Americans subscribing to its service. Its stock is in the stratosphere and it's everyone's darling.
Levin looks at his assets at Time Warner -- the finest portfolio of magazines in the country, cable franchises in terrific locations, a crackerjack movie empire and HBO, which is making money hand over fist. But Levin can't get no respect; his company is "old school." He realizes that the future isn't going to come through the television; it's going to come through that squeaky little home computer, and the biggest asset around is … AOL. So he decides to merge with The Cool Kid on the Block.
So he leads the merger, but the majority partner isn't the bigger company, the better-run company, the more profitable company. Oh, no, the control goes to AOL! In the classic photo at the close of the deal, AOL CEO Steve Case is wearing a tie, which he probably rented, and Levin has shaved off his moustache for the first time in memory, and he's open collar, probably the first time he got caught without a tie.
Levin manages to anoint himself CEO, but Case manages to outstrategize the strategist, trading his overpriced stock for the security of merging with real stock, with real earnings and assets. Later it would be shown that too much of AOL's advertising revenue was from startups that would vanish when the Internet bubble burst.
But give Levin credit: He shepherded a major corporation, one that defined itself around the printed word and advertising, into an age based more on electrons than atoms. What he didn't foresee was that the princes of the empire wouldn't play together, and that "synergy" was just another word for "lose money."
Along the way, the AOL stock went from $90 to $10, and all those precious stock options went up in smoke. Jerry Levin was the fall guy.
Still, what Turner and Levine did was bring the world of content to the world of technology. There's always a debate between the content and infrastructure guys as to who is king. Both Turner and Levin figured out that without one, the other is less valuable. If you could own content and could co-opt distribution, you would be unstoppable.
Both men were the first to understand that a geostationary satellite signal beamed to cable head ends would upset the traditional powers. Having their own content along with their own access would give them a supposedly unbeatable hand. Levin later decided that he needed another set of weapons, via AOL, and he and his company would pay dearly for them.
Levin just assumed that Steve Case would eventually blow up and he would be The Last Man Standing, continuing to build The World's Greatest Media Company. He who the gods would destroy they first make angry -- and arrogant.


text:
Lt Maynard G Weppner, B-25 Bombardier, 321stBG,447thBS, MTO
1945 — Corsica
F/O Maynard G Weppner arrived on Corsica 22 Feb. 1945 and was flying Combat Missions against the Germans in N Italy the very next day ! He was with the 321st Bomb Group, 447th Bomb Squadron, in the 57th Bomb Wing and 12th Air Force. B-25 Mitchell Medium Bombers in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations. He was soon commissioned as a "" LT. "" and managed many Missions in a short span of time.
Stories and photo's from his son, Mark Weppner. More to come !
321stBG Historian, Barbi Ennis Connolly PRINCESSBARBI_B25@msn,com


text:
A COUPLE from Berkeley are using their recent successes on a national TV series as a springboard to expand their popular bed and breakfast.
The Vale of Berkeley Guesthouse last year appeared on Channel Four's "Four in a Bed", a TV show pitting family-owned hotels against each other from across the country.
Owners Harri and Claire Chiba, a former IT salesman and fitness instructor respectively, opened in May 2012 and since then have seen positive reviews grow for the guesthouse, even becoming ratings-website Trip Advisor's number one bed and breakfast for Berkeley.
In addition they have recently been awarded a "certificate of excellence" by the website, which is only given to the top ten per cent of establishments consistently achieving outstanding traveller reviews.
Not ones to stand on their laurels, the Chibas have already drawn up plans to increase the number of rooms they can offer as well build a brand new kitchen after buying the attached red-brick house next door.
They plan to knock through the wall and create three extra bedrooms, meaning a total offering of nine as well as relocating a brand new kitchen set to be finished and open for business by the new year, at a cost of around £60,000.
The site, which includes a one-acre garden, will be able to hold 18 guests when finished and a few part time staff might be taken on to help with the workload.
Mr Chiba, 49, said currently half their trade was from travelling contractors in the area to carry out work while the other half was largely wedding guests using nearby landmarks for their nuptials, such as Berkeley Castle.
"I would say we're very optimistic, we have launched a new package specifically for weddings, which will help with the extended guest house," he said.
"Business is going very well, given that we are new to this to be rated as first in terms of places in Berkeley when others have been going longer than it is great.
"We have had the plans drawn up and hoping to start mid September worth the guest house hopefully reopening after the Christmas break on January 5."
Mr Chiba added that they were even considering opening a new bed and breakfast nearby when the works were completed on the current building.


text:
Baton Rouge police arrested a Zachary man Saturday accused of injuring a police officer while she was trying to break up a downtown fight that began after the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade.
Police Lt. Don Kelly said in a news release the Police Department booked Christopher Hensley, 18, of 23456 Pony St., Zachary, into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on one count of battery of a police officer.
About 2:45 p.m., two men started fighting near the intersection of Florida and Lafayette streets, police Lt. Don Kelly said in a news release.
An 18-year-old man later identified as Hensley was seen throwing a beer can at another man, but when the 41-year-old police corporal tried to arrest the can-throwing man, he punched her in the face, Kelly said.
At least two bystanders, including an off-duty police officer from north Louisiana who was visiting Baton Rouge for Mardi Gras, helped arrest Hensley, Kelly said.
The officer, whose name was not made public, was taken to Baton Rouge General Medical Center for treatment of lacerations to her eye and face and was later released, Kelly said.
Police were not sure exactly where the incident occurred, but believe it was near the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center hotel, Kelly said.
Kent Fontenot, of Zachary, said he did not see the fight from his eighth-floor hotel room at the nearby Hilton, but did see the aftermath and response from Baton Rouge police.
He estimated between 20 and 30 police cars, at least 15 police motorcycles, and other officers on bicycles and horseback swarmed around the scene within minutes.
He said he thought someone may have been shot, so he came down from his room to find out what had happened.
"I was checking their demeanor and they were fairly calm," Fontenot said of the police at the scene.
Clay Morris, of Hernando, Miss., who said he originally was from Baton Rouge, was sitting near the Hilton at the intersection of Florida and Lafayette when he saw a crowd gather near Poor Boy Lloyd's Restaurant.
"We heard a bunch of people yell, 'Fight! … Fight!' like they do in junior high," Morris said, adding he did not see the punch or can-throwing incident.
Pretty soon, police started pouring in from all directions, he said.
"They had it well covered," Morris said of the Police Department's response. "They owned it."


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About the Book
When told I had two weeks to live, all my expectations for a future of retirement, self discovery, and life with future grandchildren had to be readjusted. Riddles perplexed me: What legacy could I leave? How could I communicate to grandchildren who weren't even born yet how important they were to me and how much I wanted to be a part of their lives? In response to my children's desire to have me write about my life, how could I select from a lifetime of experiences something meaningful about a life that was not spectacular?
in June 2010, at age 55, I discovered I had a rare Stage IV incurable cancer. Months of chemotherapy caused debilitating weakness, transfusions, hallucinations, and coma, but at the end of the summer, I was still here. Gaining strength throughout the winter and spring, I took a class in "Writing Your Memoirs" that triggered the solution to the riddles.
The assignment to write about something I had always wanted to become seemed a triple win. The essays I wrote revealed who I am, celebrated events from my life with my husband and children, and conveyed to my future grandchildren my deep desire to share in their lives. The events captured in these essays have brought me the greatest satisfaction of my life - everyday joys that knitted together a love shared with children and husband.
This book was inspired by the many times my children and I spent in the kitchen whipping up all kinds of meals, desserts, and even unused concoctions just so they could enjoy the pleasure of mixing. Chemotherapy again is disrupting my life but I hope it will buy me the time to complete a series of these vignettes to leave as my legacy, capturing snapshots of a life filled with simple yet joyful moments shared with the ones I love and who have loved me.
Features & Details
- Category Children
Standard Landscape, 10×8 in, 25×20 cm
28 Pages
- Publish Date Nov 13, 2011
- Tags Cookies, Magic, Dragon, Baking, Grandchild, Grandma, Grandmother, Grandparents, Cooking
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Good plan.
Oh Mighty Wing
geez much better training for your first then what I did for my first. I know you have a busy schedule but have you thought aabout changing tho's 4's to at least 5's???
the 4's eventually become 5's...
no pushing me along to fast there lady! I don't want set-backs... and I like feeling good. I'm at the highest mileage I have EVER been at.
Your toughness is made up of equal parts persistence and experience. You don't so much outrun your opponents as outlast and outsmart them, and the toughest opponent of all is the one inside your head." - Joe Henderson
no pushing me along to fast there lady! I don't want set-backs... and I like feeling good. I'm at the highest mileage I have EVER been at.
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away...(unkown) • Go With The Flow • Thyroid Support Group
Ditto on the congrats!
I thought of you when I was running on the trail during my last long run, heading towards the city. I thought of how that 20 miler you talked about will take us into Philly and how that will be the first time that I've run into the city like that. I'll be excited and freaked out all at once.
S&M Collector
I KNOW ME TOO!!!! I'm totally excited!!!
The Greatest of All Time
Anybody got an 8 week plan?
I meant like a real plan and stuff. Not this ultra nonsense.
and here I thought you were ragging on me asking about an 8 week earlier in the thread You really thinking of running a marathon in early October?
I am registered for Chicago which is on Oct 12. I am barely back to running (see sad log). I think I need to baby it one more week and then start ramping it up.
Surprisingly I still feel a good amount of speed in my legs. I am pretty sure I could still go sub 20 for a 5k, but I am just too scared right now to go intense.
I am sure I could finish. But I don't want to risk further injury and miss Monkey. Am I making sense?
I saw your log. If it were I ( and it's not and I know you didn't ask but I'll say it anyways) , I'd do it as a training run KNOWING that there is a good chance of DNF. Dh did that with a marathon last year. Well her didn't DNF but he didn't come close to anything he was really happy with. However 4 weeks later he took off an hour and 10 minutes giving himself a nice PR (for him).


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Bio of Major John J Weiler
1839-1919 — United States
John was born and raised in Stark Co., Ohio August 20, 1839 to William Weiler and Anna Elizabeth Filson. As of June 5, 1860 he was still living with his family in Lawrence Township, Stark, Ohio working as farm hand.
Two of his brothers served the Union Army, enlisting in the state of Ohio. Joseph F Weiler was 25 when he died at the battle of Murfreesboro, TN on January 1, 1863 & Luther Hamilton Weiler was 20 when he died at the battle of Athens, AL on September 4, 1864
At the age of 21 John enlisted in the enlisted in the Whitley County Volunteers at Columbia City, Indiana, April 21, 1861 under the first call of 7500 men. He was in Co. "E" of the 17th Regt. when organized. He climbed the ranks from Sergeant to Major during his 4 year of service.
John fought in 219 battles during the Civil War; among them is Wilsons Raid, for his service in this battle Robert H.G. Minty recommends John receives a promotion to lieutenant-colonel. John is known for the death of John A Washington, for this service young Sergeant Weiler received the thanks of Simon Cameron Secretary of War and a pistol and belt which belonged to Col. John A. Washington. Also the capture and return of Terry's Texas Rangers battle flag. While he served the Cumberland Army he was part of Wilder's Lightning Brigade.
John married Emaline Williams on February 11, 1864 in Whitley Co, Indiana. They had 4 children. In 1869 John moved his family to Green, Wayne, Ohio. In 1870 John is a farmer with a property value of $12,800. In 1872 & 1873 he served as trustee of Green Township. In 1880 John is working as a Rail Road Agent.
John attended the 17th Indiana Wilder's Brigade Reunion held September 7, 1887 in Greencastle, IN. He received a silver brigade badge. He also attended the Co E 17th Indiana reunion in 1911 and held again September 1912 in Columbia City, IN.
In 1887 John and his family moved to Jefferson City, Washington Co, TN. Then they moved to Dallas, TX in 1889.
John was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, first listed in the Davidson Post, No. 490, Smithville, Wayne, Ohio in 1884-1885 where he served as commander; then Patton Post, No. 26, Johnson City Tennessee in 1888-1889 where he served as Adjutant; later he was a member of John A Dix Post, No 11, GAR (Organized 1885) in Texas from 1889-1910 and served as the Junior Vice-Commander in 1896-1899. Then he served as Adjutant in 1900-1904. He was a delegate for Dallas for the 18th National Encampment in 1903.
In 1893-1894 John and partner George W. Clayton were proprietors of Clayton & Weiler Manufacturers of Cider. In 1896 John owned an Ice Cream Parlor. In 1897-1899 John again is an Apple Cider Manufacturer. 1900-1903 & 1909-1910 John worked for Colonial and U.S. Mortgage Company as a loan inspector. In 1904-1905 John was the proprietor of Linden Hotel. 1906-1908 John worked as a Laborer at the fairgrounds.
May 29, 1913 Major John J Weiler was living in Tropico, California. He wrote memoirs of his time in the service that were published in "Souvenir, the Seventeenth Indiana Regiment: a history from its organization to the end of the war, giving description of battles"
John died September 24, 1919 in Glendale, CA and is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Cemetery office confirmed that this burial is unmarked; The plot information is confirmed at Section C; Lot #13; Space 21.


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So, for fun, I'm trying to write my own maya/max/blender style 3d program in python.
In my current simplified implementation all 3dObjects in a scene are stored with unique names in a dict.
I want to parallelize the graph traversal early on so I don't make single threaded assumptions later in my code that lock me in.
I am going to use a (hopefully) simplified 3dsMax type architecture where:
There are multiple types of objects and modifiers
Each modifier/object type will have a different number of properties that could include lists of other objects
A friend of mine says that using an embedded database might be a good course of action. Especially because of my goal to support multiple full character rigs in a scene... Or maybe because he knows how to use a database, everything looks like a case to use a database.
Either way, I started doing research on databases and wow... Information overload and so many to choose from.
From what I've read, I would certainly want something embedded, and in-memory, but I don't really understand what else I would need. Transactional/thread-safe/concurrent?
Is a database really a good idea in this case? Or should I just roll the multi-thread logic myself?
If someone here with some experience could point me in the right direction, I would be most grateful.


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It's interesting watching the primaries from across the pond. To me and almost everyone else in the UK, it's like a freakshow of Republican loonies who, thankfully, wouldn't stand a chance of winning an election here, at least not without pretending to be less ridiculously right wing than they are. There are a number of interesting things about elections in such a huge country. I think I quite like the idea of a caucus like they had in Iowa last week, although it's not really clear to me what happens with the results of all these votes. They only give one preference so it's not amazingly democratic, but with a few changes and some clarification it could be good.
The other thing which interests me about American politics is the way in which so many people have been duped into voting for a party which doesn't have their best interests at heart. Here we are in a recession caused by a lack of regulation and a small state, so that banks can screw people over and not get punished, and people have been convinced that regulation is their enemy and that cutting public spending even further (except for the military of course) is the best way to cut the deficit and get out of the recession. I really don't understand how people can think that.
And don't even get me started on campaign finance! Here are these millionnaires with their millionnaire friends running campaigns which cost millions to run, and getting campaign donations from huge corporations who obviously want a return for their money, and political analysts in the press and on TV saying that certain candidates will have to drop out because they don't have enough money, and not seeming to realise that this is a problem! What happened to the votes counting, not the money?
And now we have this new 20 minute advert attacking Mitt Romney, a thoroughly unpleasant person who, remarkably, is probably one of the more moderate candidates of the pack, which will cost $3.5m to air in South Carolina. Here's the trailer (yes, a trailer for an advert):
Newt Gingrich in particular has been constantly attacking Romney, questioning his conservative credentials, and saying that his measures aren't radical enough (which seems like a contradiction to me), and this ad seems to be along those lines. But some of the lines from this film are pure gold:
Capitalism made American great. Free markets, innovation, hard work, the building blocks of the American Dream. But in the wrong hands, those dreams can become nightmares. Wall Street's corporate raiders made billions of dollars. Private equity leaders getting rich at the expense of American workers!
Mitt Romney became CEO of Bain Capital the day the company was formed. His mission was to reap massive rewards for himself and his investors.
Well, yeah!? That's what CEO's are supposed to do, that's what capitalism is! In fact companies are legally obliged to try and give the biggest returns possible to their shareholders. What, did you expect the CEO to worry about workers' rights? How very un-capitalist of you! Did you expect him to carry on operating these companies when they stopped making a profit? Well that would seem to go against the doctrine of the free market, wouldn't it? In fact it sounds like you wanted the workers to have some kind of control of the company, so the profits didn't just go to the 'greedy investors' and the companies didn't close leaving people without employment. It sounds a lot to me like whoever made this video wants to take control of the means of the production. Romney is obviously far too capitalist for them, I wonder what they'll make of the other candidates. [/facetiousness]
It's almost as if the thought process goes like this:
1. Free market capitalism leads to happiness.
2. Romney's actions at Bain Capital did not lead to happiness.
3. Therefore Romney did not act as a free market capitalist.
And that's just how the Tea Party became so popular. Because idiots don't know what's good for them. Anyway, I just wanted a rant.
The should vote for this guy instead, at least he seems to know what's going on:


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How ConcurrentHashMap is implemented in Java
ConcurrentHashMap putifAbsent example in Java
See Core Java for Inpatients for more details about how to use this method effectively:
one more thing I want to share Javin...
interviewer was possibly expecting a simple answer, such as:
•if the whole map is synchronized for get/put operations, adding threads won't improve throughput because the bottleneck will be the synchronized blocks. You can then write a piece of code with a synchronizedMap that shows that adding threads does not help
•because the map uses several locks, and assuming you have more than one core on your machine, adding threads will improve throughput
The example below outputs the following:
Synchronized one thread: 30
Synchronized multiple threads: 96
Concurrent one thread: 219
Concurrent multiple threads: 142
So you can see that the synchronized version is more than 3 times slower under high contention (16 threads) whereas the concurrent version is almost twice as fast with multiple threads as with a single thread.
It is also interesting to note that the ConcurrentMap has a non-negligible overhead in a single threaded situation.
This is a very contrived example, with all the possible problems due to micro-benchmarking (first results should be discarded anyway). But it gives a hint at what happens.
public class Test1 {
static final int SIZE = 1000000;
static final int THREADS = 16;
static final ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(THREADS);
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
System.out.println("Concurrent one thread");
addSingleThread(new ConcurrentHashMap ());
System.out.println("Concurrent multiple threads");
addMultipleThreads(new ConcurrentHashMap ());
System.out.println("Synchronized one thread");
addSingleThread(Collections.synchronizedMap(new HashMap ()));
System.out.println("Synchronized multiple threads");
addMultipleThreads(Collections.synchronizedMap(new HashMap ()));
private static void addSingleThread(Map map) {
long start = System.nanoTime();
for (int i = 0; i < SIZE; i++) {
map.put(i, i);
System.out.println(map.size()); //use the result
long end = System.nanoTime();
System.out.println("time with single thread: " + (end - start) / 1000000);
private static void addMultipleThreads(final Map map) throws Exception {
List runnables = new ArrayList<> ();
for (int i = 0; i < THREADS; i++) {
final int start = i;
runnables.add(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
//Trying to have one runnable by bucket
for (int j = start; j < SIZE; j += THREADS) {
map.put(j, j);
List futures = new ArrayList<> ();
long start = System.nanoTime();
for (Runnable r : runnables) {
for (Future f : futures) {
System.out.println(map.size()); //use the result
long end = System.nanoTime();
System.out.println("time with multiple threads: " + (end - start) / 1000000);
@Saral Saxena, great comment. Yes, you are right on single threaded environment, ConcurrentHashMap is tough slow than Hashtable and HashMap. On scalability front, it achieves using concurrency level by dividing Map into segment, with each segment having its own lock.
Thanks Javin,..As I have shown in the above example the two methods simply add 1 million entries to the map. the first one is run in the main thread, the second one is run with an executor service that has 16 threads. To try make to help the CHM, I count with a step of 16 (so one thread will put 0, 15, 31 etc, the second thread 1, 16, 32 etc) which should reduce lock contention and associate each thread with one lock (there are 16 locks, based on the hashcode of the key modulo 16). Note that the effect is more pronounced with more threads (with 100 threads, the sychronized version really suffers).
In your code snippet, doesn't the "synchronized(map)" part actually lock the map? If you want your example to be relevant, shouldn't the if {} else {} be without the synchronized() block?
Hi @mattnguyen, if you don't synchronized then that code snippet will create data race, where one thread calling get() getting null, just before another thread putting value, which result in overriding that value. synchronized is required to get the desired functionality, i.e. only insert,if not present.
Did any one really faced questions like How ConcurrentHashMap works or internal implementation of ConcurrentHashMap in Java interview? is that a real question or hypothetical?
8. ConcurrentHashMap doesn't allow null as key or value.!!
Then how the putIfAbsent will work, the example you gave..if(map.get(key)==null)
@suresh, yes I faced these questions in an interview recently
Does ConcurrentHashMap uses ReadWriteLock internally for allowing multiple thread to read and block only for writers? I am not sure, but thought this may be a good question here.
@Anonymous, ConcurrentHashMap doesn't use ReadWriteLock, instead it uses multiple tables (arrays) known as Segment, each with there own lock. This concept is known as lock-stripping, this means, you don't need to lock whole map during write operation, only relevant segment gets locked. This is optimized for more reading than updating activity. Even a call to size() may perform poor because, in worst case a call to size() may lock all segment for calculating entries in each segment and then adding them up. As I said, ConcurrentHashMap is optimized for multiple readers with few writers.
Just want to high light one important limitation of ConcurrentHashMap, client side locking is not possible as there is no lock, which can guard whole map. Though this limitation is somewhat addressed by adding ConcurrentMap interface and providing atomic function for compound operations e.g. putIfAbsent(), remove() or replace(key, oldValue, newValue)
Don't use ConcurrentHashMap, instead create your own concurrent Map by using ReentrantReadWriteLock and high performance Map based on your need e.g. EnumMap, primitive maps from trove library.
"concurrent retrieval may not reflect most recent change on Map"
That's imprecise and misleading.
From the Javadoc:
"Retrievals reflect the results of the most recently completed update operations" (for put() and remove()).
"For aggregate operations such as putAll and clear, concurrent retrievals may reflect insertion or removal of only some entries"
on one hand, you have said that CHM has concurrent reads and THREAD SAFE writes, on the other hand you said "Since update operations like put(), remove(), putAll() or clear() is not synchronized".
if updates are not synchronized then how come it has thread safe writes?
Hi, I have littlebit confusion about this.
You mentioned that only portion of map is locked while put operation is going on. I assume the segment in which map is putting entry is getting locked.
Does it allow get() (read) operation on that segment?
Because you mentioned:
"because, during put operation whole map is not locked, and while one thread is putting value, other thread's get() call can still return null"
this means get operation is allowed on locked region?
you also mentioned:
"because you got to lock all portion of Map, and effectively each reader will wait for another writer, operating on that portion of Map"
which means read operation is blocked by write operation.
I found these two statements ambiguous and I started getting confused.
hey can you please explain how it actually work. What is tree been node, how it allow multiple updates, how it increase size, why we need to declare initial capacity for performance.
Hello Navrattan, rest of things about ConcurrentHashMap is same as HashMap except that it divides the map into segments and lock those segments instead of locking the whole Map. You specify size at the start to prevent resizing because that is expensive as it involves creating a new array and copying content from old array to new one.