I found this fascinating quote today:
From yesterday’s edition of the Jackson Free Press comes the following article about ZZQ102.com, the current home of our very own popGeezer’s Playlist Program [airs M-W-F at 7 PM ET/6 PM CT]:popgeezer.com, popGeezer.com, Sep 2009
You should read the whole article.
The House Judiciary Committee's hearing on the controversial Performance Rights Act (H.R. 848), set for March 10 at 10 a.m., will include testimony from Smasking Pumpkins vocalist and lead guitarist Billy Corgan, according to an agenda released by the committee on Friday evening (March 6).
NAB Radio Board Chairman Steve Newberry and Patrick Communications President Larry Patrick will be making broadcast's case against a proposed performance fee, at a hearing by a House panel scheduled for Tuesday. Meanwhile, NABOB is urging the Congressional Black Caucus to oppose the new royalty, saying it could dampen minority ownership. "By making stations even more unaffordable, this legislation would put the dream of ownership further out of the reach for African-American entrepreneurs trying to enter the radio industry," NABOB Executive Director and General Counsel Jim Winston wrote in a letter to the caucus. Radio & Records (3/9) , Radio Online (3/6)
Also expected to testify during the Capitol Hill event are Mitch Bainwol, chairman/CEO of the RIAA; Paul Almeida, president of the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO; Stan Liebowitz, Ph.D., Ashbel Smith distinguished professor of managerial economics, University of Texas at Dallas; Larry Patrick, president, Patrick Communications; and Steve Newberry, chairman of the NAB Radio Board.
When I began my national talk show in 1988, no one, including radio industry professionals, thought my syndication would work. There were only about 125 radio stations programming talk. And there were numerous news articles and opinion pieces predicting the fast death of the AM band, which was hemorrhaging audience and revenue to the FM band. Some blamed the lower-fidelity AM signals. But the big issue was broadcast content. It is no accident that the AM band was dying under the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which choked robust debate about important issues because of its onerous attempts at rationing the content of speech.
After the Federal Communications Commission abandoned the Fairness Doctrine in the mid-1980s, Congress passed legislation to reinstitute it. When President Reagan vetoed it, he declared that "This doctrine . . . requires Federal officials to supervise the editorial practices of broadcasters in an effort to ensure that they provide coverage of controversial issues and a reasonable opportunity for the airing of contrasting viewpoints of those issues. This type of content-based regulation by the Federal Government is . . . antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. . . . History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee."
Today the number of radio stations programming talk is well over 2,000. In fact, there are thousands of stations that air tens of thousands of programs covering virtually every conceivable topic and in various languages. The explosion of talk radio has created legions of jobs and billions in economic value. Not bad for an industry that only 20 years ago was moribund. Content, content, content, Mr. President, is the reason for the huge turnaround of the past 20 years, not "funding" or "big money," as Mr. Clinton stated. And not only has the AM band been revitalized, but there is competition from other venues, such as Internet and satellite broadcasting. It is not an exaggeration to say that today, more than ever, anyone with a microphone and a computer can broadcast their views. And thousands do.
Mr. President, we both know that this new effort at regulating speech is not about diversity but conformity. It should be rejected. You've said you're against reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, but you've not made it clear where you stand on possible regulatory efforts to impose so-called local content, diversity-of-ownership, and public-interest rules that your FCC could issue.
I do not favor content-based regulation of National Public Radio, newspapers, or broadcast or cable TV networks. I would encourage you not to allow your office to be misused to advance a political vendetta against certain broadcasters whose opinions are not shared by many in your party and ideologically liberal groups such as Acorn, the Center for American Progress, and MoveOn.org. There is no groundswell of support behind this movement. Indeed, there is a groundswell against it.
The fact that the federal government issues broadcast licenses, the original purpose of which was to regulate radio signals, ought not become an excuse to destroy one of the most accessible and popular marketplaces of expression. The AM broadcast spectrum cannot honestly be considered a "scarce" resource. So as the temporary custodian of your office, you should agree that the Constitution is more important than scoring transient political victories, even when couched in the language of public interest.
We in talk radio await your answer. What will it be? Government-imposed censorship disguised as "fairness" and "balance"? Or will the arena of ideas remain a free market?
Mr. Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host.
“Now we know what Barack Obama means by ‘unity’ and a nation working ‘as one.’ It means it’s his far left way and no other way. If he had his way, the President would have us all reading the New York Times and listening to left-wing Air America. He knows his only opposition to enacting a radical left-wing agenda is conservative talk radio."
Further, there’s something eerie, Big Brother-like in Obama’s actions. He will deny it, of course, but this is an attack on Limbaugh’s and all conservatives’ right to free speech. He wants to set the stage for the Fairness Doctrine. And he’s doing it through character assassination."
“I said the day after the election that Rush Limbaugh would become public enemy #1 if the Obama administration had its way. The attack on him personally and on all of conservative talk radio generally has officially begun.”
By Scott Gilbertson January 27, 2009 12:05:46 PM
First there was the menu item in Google's Mac version of Picasa — among the sync options is something called "Google Web Drive," which currently does nothing — and now both Google Blogoscoped and Google Operating System, have dug up more evidence pointing toward GDrive's seemingly imminent arrival.
You might be thinking, what's the big deal? Why is TGDaily so excited they want you to throw away your hard drive (recommended only for hyperbolic journalists)?
After all, DropBox and its ilk already offer pretty much what GDrive is rumored to be — it just isn't Google doing the file hosting.
Aside from Google fan boys finally getting what they've been salivating over for years, what advantages would GDrive offer? Well, according to what Google Blogoscoped discovered last week it looks like Google may be planing to slowly turn Google Docs into a web interface for GDrive.
That would mean that, assuming it works like DropBox, in addition to the storage and sync features, you'd get the web-based document editing tools of Google Docs. If that doesn't tickle your fancy, presumably client-side software for Windows and Mac would mean you could work on your documents in traditional desktop apps as well.
Sync clients would also mean that you essentially have a local backup of your documents, making for quick easy access even when there's no network connection.
The advantage of such as scenario is that the PC you're using at the moment becomes increasingly irrelevant — you can always sync all your docs onto any PC for anywhere access to your files. As Gadget Lab points out, that's a huge win for the thriving netbook market, where manufacturers sacrifice drive space to keep costs down.
It's also a win for anyone who uses multiple PCs, since the biggest hassle of having two machines is keeping your files in sync (never mind that tools like Subversion, CVS and rsync worked out most of these problems ages ago).
So what's not to love? Well, for one thing DropBox already does all that (except for the Google Docs integration), but the real issues are the same ones that DropBox faces. There are two essential problems with the whole cloud computing paradigm that no one has really solved.
The first is trust. It's one thing to trust your e-mail to Google, it's another thing to trust the company with the entirety of your digital life. Forget problems of security and privacy, even the basic issue of server downtime leaves many people cold.
The other big issue with online storage is that, for most of us, documents like spreadsheets, word processor files and the other formats that Google Docs understands are not what's taking up the majority of space on our drives. Is the fabled GDrive going to store and sync my 200 or so gigabytes of mp3 files? For free? Somehow I doubt it. What about movies? If you're like most of us GDrive will likely affect only your Documents folder — maybe four or five gigs worth of files, but hardly a substitute for your hard drive. Microsoft's Live Sync service already offers exactly that and it hasn't changed the way we use Windows, nor has it made us throw out our hard drives.
The fabled Google Drive might be handy for those of you who want a better way to sync files to Google Docs, but it probably isn't going to replace the hard drive. TGDaily's fantasy of a network bootable GDrive will be great when fiber optic lines reach our doorsteps, but, in the mean time, most of us have work to do, and unless you want to spend all day booting up, we suggest hanging onto your hard drive. And if you don't feel like waiting for Google to get around to GDrive, there's always DropBox, Windows Live Sync and myriad of other options already available.
See Also:
This video highlights some of the most interesting services released or acquired by Google in the past 10 years: from web search to search ads, from image search to Google News, from Gmail to iGoogle, from Google Earth to Street View, from YouTube to Android and Chrome. And these are only the first 10 years. For more information visit the 'Google Operatiing System" blog. A good watchdog for all the products and news about Google.
"All men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these
are life , liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."There is a theme among great leaders and visionaries that we are not to settle for a life lived by default but we are to strive to live our Dreams. I believe we all need to be reminded from time to time, and sometimes more often, to shake things up and go after the life we want. Later that night I received an interesting email and video from someone out of the blue with this to say...
"A Google search on "unalienable rights" led me to your blog. Please forgive my writing you unsolicited. Last year I set to music a few lines from the Declaration of Independence, recorded them with my family's help, added some images, and posted the result.
My hope is that it might help kids learn a little of the Declaration"
