Author: BrianR

More Truth to Power Sen. Edwards

via AlterNet:

Sen. Edwards campaigning in New Hampsire:

“Real change starts with being honest — the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It’s rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It’s rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it’s rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They’ll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are — not for the country, but for themselves.”

“[The system is] controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it’s perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don’t stand a chance.”

It’s a structural argument, and Edwards didn’t pull punches in calling out his fellow Democrats, saying: “We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other.” The rhetoric was a clear signal that Edwards is going to beat the drums of reform as a contrast to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

I heard part of this quote today on NPR. They did a really bad job describing the details and context of this statement. Both local NRR (WUNC) and national NPR introduced this statement like, ‘Oh now.. haha… here he goes again with his risky “rhetoric”.’ [sarcastic NPR misquote done for comedic outrage effect]

Feh! What he was really doing was speaking truth to power! Good for him!

My View on WiFi in Chapel Hill News

A short opinion piece I wrote appears on the front page of todays Chapel Hill News. Its called Wi-Fi for the People. Its about my recent efforts to bring public WiFi to Chapel Hill, the new WiFi pilot project slated to start September 1, and the Chapel Hill Wireless Tailgate Parties.

In the article I reference two Orange Politics posts I wrote. Chapel Hill WiFi Pilot needs different Hotspots and Where is the Wifi?. A big thank you to the Chapel Hill News and Mark Schultz for agreeing to publish My View. Its wonderful when our local paper helps citizens learn about important new resources in town. Even better when they help encourage us to help our town improve them.

Stay tuned for more info about the Chapel Hill Wireless Tailgate Parties…

MuniWireless blogs about Wireless in Chapel Hill

Carol Ellison over at MuniWireless.com has written a post called Turning infrastructures into true community networks. Its about our work in Chapel Hill to bring attention to new public wifi hotspots. Hopefully on September 1 we will have five new public WiFi hotspots sponsored by the Town of Chapel Hill.

The post also mentions me and Orange Politics. Pretty cool. 🙂 Plus the Chapel Hill Wireless Tailgate parties. These are events at each hotspot I plan on holding. More info to come.

Thanks Carol and MuniWireless.com!

Share the Chapel Hill Wireless Map

April/May of last year (2006) I created the WordPress blog and Google Maps mash up Chapel Hill Wireless. The goal was to help people find wireless hotspots in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, North Carolina. Since then Anton created Durham Wireless and Zach created Asheville Wireless. Plus lots of other things have happened. Now we are on the cusp of the first Town of Chapel Hill public WiFi pilot project. I believe this is only the tip of the iceberg. Public WiFi is just the beginning.

But today I added all the locations I had on ChapelHillWireless.org in a new Google Map. You can go to this Google map page, click on share this link, and copy the code to embed it on your site. Hopefully this will be a good way to spread this valuable info.

Now that editing this map is super easy I plan on adding lots more info to the little pop up box. Maybe even photos and video. 🙂

View Larger Map

If you misplace this post you can always find it on a page linked at the top of the site.
http://www.yesh.com/b2/chapel-hill-wifi/

Note: WiFi hotspots on the UNC campus are not included on this map. Those hotspots are not open to the general public. (People not directly affiliated with UNC) When I find a map of WiFi on campus I’ll blog about it.

Justinsomnia's WordPress install hacked

Justin has an amazing post called Search Engine Marketeers are the new script kiddies. I recommend that ALL WordPress bloggers read it. Especially if you use Dreamhost. (even you non geeks) Basically someone hacked a WordPress theme file on justinsomnia.org and inserted key words to influence Google Ad words. This caused justinsomnia.org to be removed from Google’s index. Thus making it impossible to search Google and find justinsomnia.org.

Cool thing is Justin investigated, found out what happened, and discovered who did it!

…the last two days felt uncannily like the Borne Ultimatum. Without the punching.

AT&T Spies on you AND Censors Speech

Last week AT&T got caught cutting part of a live Perl Jam concert when singer Eddy Vedder criticized President Bush.

During the performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast:

– “George Bush, leave this world alone.” (the second time it was sung); and

– “George Bush find yourself another home.”

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

via Perl Jam website

AT&T spokes people have denied, spun, and apologized. Turns out this wasn’t the first time they’ve done this.

One fan who contacted The Times Friday said AT&T’s Blue Room webcast bleeped the sound during performances by the Flaming Lips and the John Butler Trio at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee in June.

via LA Times

Nor was it an accident. A “crew member” who worked on this live video feed has spoken to Wired magazine saying,

“I can definitively say that at a previous event where AT&T was covering the show, the instructions were to shut it down if there was any swearing or if anybody starts getting political. Granted, they didn’t say to shut down any Anti-Bush comments or anything specific to any point of view or party, but ‘getting political’ was mentioned.”

As if helping the American government spy on its own people wasn’t enough these Net Neutrality deniers are guilty just of what we thought. They have no intention of keeping the Internet free for all to use equally. Its is now very clear that AT&T intends to let us plebes use THEIR network how THEY see fit. Does that sound very American to you?

So iPhone owners… is this enough for you to reconsider using AT&T?

More Info:
AT&T Gets Caught in its Own Spin Cycle

Crew Member: Previous AT&T Show Had “No Politics” Policy

AT&T apologizes for censoring performer webcasts (LA Times)

Pearl Jam protests censoring of Lollapalooza webcast (LA Times)

Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room