Centralized world power and Net censorship

Centralized world power and Freedom of Speech cannot coexist!

We live in a small world where the actual power structure is hidden and centralized. On the other hand, the Net is all about freedom of speech. Clearly, centralized power and the Net cannot coexist. It is obvious that centralized power is well entrenched so naturally it is the Net that has to back off. This backing off manifests itself in many ways such as malware, P2P clogging, complexity and cost of Internet access, sluggish roll-out, non standard components, obsolescence, information overload, lack of customization and so on.

But the most sinister factor is Google's dominance. The lack of competition allows Google to stick to its keyword centric syntactic strategy where it is able to censor websites much more easily. This SIGNAL vs NOISE kind of censorship is able to confuse even the most determined searchers. In any case, Google is more about Ads than about Search.

The only way to bypass such censorship seems to be to search on the basis of authors as opposed to keywords. This is the only way to keep the SIGNAL NOISE ratio from getting out of control. What is more worrying is not ideology, it is spin. This is the reason we should give up even on authors and follow only individual commenters. The logic is that authors are looking for numbers and only spins see propagation.

To follow individual commenters, we can click on their names, which is usually a link to their website or a page containing other comments made by them. We can also try and Google their name. Savvy commenters pick quirky (hopefully unique) screen names for this very purpose.

But never mind, here too, our rulers have found a way out: botnets. The common perception is that botnets are moronic spreaders of spam and some of the less moronic botnets even try and phish out our passwords. To a certain extent this is true because email is the purest form of addressability so our rulers need spam to dilute it. And also financial scams and economic hardship have forever been used to keep people under control. That such actions keep the insurance and security companies humming is welcome too.

In actual fact, botnets are highly sophisticated networks which are not only able to unceasingly dodge detection but also troll ALL forums and add to the NOISE everywhere. Even complex captchas are no deterrents to these sophisticated bots. It is amazing how many of the comments posted are actually from sophisticated trolls that never be exposed because these behave like human commenters and come from innocent IPs. Recent studies have confirmed that botnets use SEO techniques to capture search engine traffic on controversial keywords.

Moral of the story: Suspect anything and everything because PERCEPTION CONTROL is the biggest game in town.

Internet Censorship Alert

Internet Censorship Alert: Alex Jones exposes agenda to 'blacklist' dissenting sites (March 14, 2010) As I predicted, the Obama Administration is trying to shut down the Internet - at least the parts he doesn't like. Barack Obamas regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein has stated that he wants to ban conspiracy theories from the internet. Think about what this means - Every video, every website, every blog, every email, that exposes or just criticizes the government for any reason whatsoever could be labeled a "conspiracy" and taken down. Your home could be raided in the middle of the night, and you could be carted of to jail for criticizing the government. All they have to do is call it a "conspiracy theory". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAWmBLFodE

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Option ARMs, Who Thought Up these Time Bombs?

Option ARMs, Who Thought Up these Time Bombs?
Trader Mark
August 13, 2008

http://seekingalpha.com/article/90765-option-arms-who-thought-up-these-time-bombs

I read about the option ARM as the cover story October 2006 [Nightmare Mortgages]. Another absolute read.

As to the latter article - what's an option ARM you ask? Well after Alan Greenspan lowered rates to HISTORICAL lows, the golden era of adjustable rate mortgages was birthed. Why adjustable? Because despite historical low fixed rates you could only buy so much house at each income level with fixed rates in the 5% ranges. So we needed to find something more to qualify more buyers and goose home prices.... adjustable rate mortgages were the hot thing. But when adjustables with 10% or 5% down disqualified too many people we moved to a new era - the 0% down adjustable rate mortgage. This was dangerous territory - keep in mind the adjustable rate was many times at a teaser rate far below the "future rate" once it adjusted upward. Now I'm a well read person so I knew about this part - but not until I happened upon the BusinessWeek article did I learn about a new invention - the option ARM. This was for the person they could not qualify at 0% down, with teaser rate. So the Frankenstein was created - a mortgage where you don't even pay enough to pay down interest - at the end of each month, you make your payment, and the difference between what you would pay on a normal mortgage and what you paid on this mortgage is added to the principal. Meaning you OWE more on the house each month. Ridiculous you say? Nope! Not if the home price goes up every month, preferably at an annualized rate at 20% a year as we know all homes do! It's GENIUS. (on Wall Street)

The super cool part is we package these loans, mix them up with a bunch of other mortgages, sell them to "super smart" hedge funds with "sophisticated risk" models - along with institutional buyers across the world - and call it a day. Everyone wins.
Posted by amolpatil2k at Thursday, August 14, 2008
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