Pocketbook poison created by monopolies?

Photo by Alison, Wikimedia Commons, showing young people waiting outside Apple store

Carol Forsloff---Do you search or Google?  Are you convinced that Apple products are more lasting than others?  Do you long for the next great gadget, with all its complexities and promises?  Monopolies created by corporate chiefs bring self-perpetuating behaviors that are poison to the pocketbook and a humanitarian concern in maintaining the gap between rich and poor.

Google has brought a rich array of free and time-saving programs to their search engine and other products around the world. While this benefits consumers, there is a cost to them too..  Ask the Internet user how research is accomplished, and the response is likely, "I Google what I want to find." Search terms create a mindset that continues it be "googling", as people respond to what they learn is the best and most comprehensive search engine.  Competition suffers as a result.

One of the greatest problems brought about by Google's search and use monopolies is how sites are rewarded and punished.  It is often the prosperous who survive  Penguin updates, a terminology used to evaluate sites and demote those operating outside Google guidelines. While these updates are said to be used to prevent unfair competition and toxic material, the net Google uses to catch those who purposefully abuse those guidelines often catches the innocent as well.  The fix costs money, so those who pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for it survive, while those unsuspecting site developers without the right technical knowledge, or money to buy it, may not.  This means Professor Smith's blog on earth sciences may lose ranking and readers, while a political one with factual errors survives.

Google also tracks the way people buy products as well as where and how.  So businesses are provided a mechanism for targeting sales.  This encourages the unsuspecting consumers to buy items they may neither need or want, until some advertisement tells them they do.

When a computer is shown in movies and television  it is apt to be an Apple. The local drugstore reflects the monopoly of Apple as well, with displays for items specific to Apple products over others. These product placements encourage people to believe that to be in step with the rest of the world one must pay the extra fees Apple charges for their products and then the classes necessary to learn them.  The cost to the ordinary consumer is much greater than the costs of more affordable products that may be just as useful and also easier to use.  But it does not stop there, as Apple presents its products in a secretive, almost cult-like fashion meant to create and maintain consumer passion to join its Apple ranks.  And these are often the young or the poor who are more easily seduced into believing that social and financial success comes with Apple membership

Competition thwarted by corporations created by an ever-widening chasm between company and consumer allows money to continue to grow in the hands of the few who support government entities and politicians who keep them in control.

Monopolies in the modern world flourish for lack of objection.  Perhaps it is time to use "search" instead of "googling" and to buy tech products easy to use and not costly to replace.

Google lawsuit losses and spamming show need for vigilance in blogging

Google sign

Carol Forsloff –  Should bloggers have insurance? They might consider it, although it’s expensive if a company offers coverage. That’s because people can sue Internet titans and bloggers as well. Some years ago Google lost a lawsuit that raises privacy concerns.  It also shows why Google is penalizing sites where there have been questionable practices.  And at times some of that spill over onto the innocent as well.





Bitten Bound, a media source covering celebrity material, reported on a case regarding Vogue model Liskula Cohen who became outraged at the remarks of an anonymous blogger. Cohen maintained she had been defamed by the blogger who posted photos of her, along with derogatory comments. The blog was entitled “Skanks in NYC.”





In rendering a decision against Google and requiring the Internet industry giant to reveal the blogger’s identity, Judge Madden who rendered the decision in the case declared, “The protection of the right to communicate anonymously must be balanced against the need to assure that those persons who choose to abuse the opportunities presented by this medium can be made to answer for such transgressions.”

The Seattle Post Intelligencer examined the “Skank Case” as it is now famously called, maintaining how privacy groups will likely be especially concerned about a precedent set by this case. The court had ordered Google to identify the blogger who had made what was alleged to be defamatory comments. The issue of defamation wasn’t ruled on, but the blogger’s service responsibility was examined instead.





Within a day or so after the announcement of the “Skank Case” decision about Google, according to New York’s Daily Intel, Liskula decided to forgive and forget that anonymous blogger whose identity she got as a result of the lawsuit. It turned out to be someone she knew quite well, 29-year-old Rosemary Port. Port apparently had been angry over something she believed Cohen told Port’s boyfriend. So Port retaliated with a blog entry.





After the Google verdict and Cohen’s filing of a $3 million lawsuit for “defamation in the form of libel and intentional emotional distress,” Cohen changed her mind and advised her attorney to drop the lawsuit against Port. Later in an interview with Post’s Andrea Peyster Cohen lit a cigarette, hiding it from the photographer lens, while exclaiming her “grandma wouldn’t like it” as Peyser wrote down the quote. Intel reports an angry outburst from Cohen about the cigarette issue, the newspaper maintains leaves people wondering what really happened in the case involving Cohen and Port. Despite the complexities of this case, however, there have been other cases that raise concerns about some of the same issues of privacy and freedom of speech issues.





Several years ago USA Today reported a Florida jury awarded a woman $11.3 million in a defamation lawsuit against a Louisiana woman. Carey Bock was found guilty of posting messages on the Internet accusing Sue Scheff of being a “crook,” a “con artist” and a “fraud.” Scheff declared she had pursued the lawsuit even though she knew Bock didn’t have any money because, “People are using the Internet to destroy people they don’t like, and you can’t do that.”





Another case was Stratton Oakmont vs. Prodigy (1995)where someone posted an accusation about Daniel Porush, the President of Stratton Oakmont, that Porush was “soon to be proven criminal” and that the company itself was a “cult of brokers who either lie for a living or get fired.” Porush, through his company, argued that the fact Prodigy had editorial control over content it could be classified as a publisher and thereafter had responsibility to filter material that was defamatory. The court awarded damages to Stratton Oakmont against Prodigy.





Shortly after that decision, the Huffington Post and others wrote about how Sarah Palin, through her attorney, threatened to serve papers on a blogger, accusing the blogger of defamation for posting material about Sarah Palin’s marriage and a possible divorce. A number of writers throughout the Internet world pounced on the blogger’s story and spread it, bringing consternation and concern to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. This incident revealed that whether left or right of the political spectrum, even the politicians are considering lawsuits to stop what they consider verbal abuse over the Internet.





Are all cases pursued like this given a judgment for the plaintiff? A review of court cases by Stanford University online reveals some plaintiffs lose, and the cases themselves sometimes have underlying issues that may not be known by the public at the outset when the case is first filed.

On the other hand, the cases do present questions, and concerned experts say the cases might make a difference in the use of the Internet, since they underline the seriousness of posting defamatory material, even if it is done anonymously. The cases also reveal issues of consistency and the fact that responsibility and blame are yet a part of the controversy over what one can or cannot write about others.





And that slippery slope of blogging boomerangs as well on innocent sites, when bloggers use spamming techniques to develop backlinks, catching the innocent as well as the guilty.  All of this abuse adds up to the need for Google to be watchful, but even so in the world of the Internet, where good things are learned and yet bad things lurk, we are all in this together.

Individual behaviors, patterns may predict disease outbreaks before international agencies

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Marsha Hunt---The ordinary person may be part of the prediction of a disease outbreak even before the Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization.  Is it because you and I have special powers or is it some other reason?

What happens when you have a series of symptoms?  Like most people you turn to the Internet for answers.  You do a search for those symptoms in clusters.  Many of you use Google, one of the more popular search engines.

Then other people with similar symptoms do the same thing as you are doing.  Sometimes the searches cluster in a single location, then begin to spread to other places.  Sometimes they occur simultaneously in a number of places.

This hints at the power of the individual.  For when a number of people added together have similar symptoms and begin searching for answers this may be a signal of a major disease similarity or an outbreak.

So the prediction comes from the human behavior.  This often happens before official organizations do their surveillance, their due diligence in looking for answers as well.  They get reports of people expressing symptoms, and then they too search for answers, examining patterns throughout the world, contacting agencies, reaffirming their own findings.

So the patterns that the major organizations find may bring conclusions that people determine individually as well, making a prediction of sorts that can actually be found by analyzing search results.

These are the conclusions Kurzweil finds.  It is an interesting concept.

And what is particularly valuable is the notion that Internet behavior has the ability to bring good in the world, to bring analysis, facts that can lead to determination of disease patterns, and similarly patterns, and scientists examining them, can lead to results and treatment approaches.

All from the beginnings that may begin with you, trying to find answers to symptoms you have, joined with others like you, and making a difference in worldwide health.

Internet speeds expected to grow 100 times from Google's new network

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Carol Forsloff — For those of you struggling with the growing traffic on the Internet, the stops and starts of a highway that gets clogged, help is on the way that is 100 times faster than we have today. Here's what is in your immediate future.

Google is beginning a fiber network with its first installment of a piece that is due to take off in other cities fairly soon. Kansas City is the site of the first of this fiber network.

Folks in the tech world remind us that Internet speed has hardly grown much in the past 16 years since the outset of broadband, but things are about to change, according to Google.

This is what Google has to say on its official blog:

With that in mind, we embarked on a journey to bring ultra-high speeds to Kansas City, Kan. and Kansas City, Mo. And today, we’re excited to announce Google Fiber. Google Fiber is 100 times faster than today’s average broadband. No more buffering. No more loading. No more waiting. Gigabit speeds will get rid of these pesky, archaic problems and open up new opportunities for the web. Imagine: instantaneous sharing; truly global education; medical appointments with 3D imaging; even new industries that we haven’t even dreamed of, powered by a gig.

In the meantime, folks in the outlying areas of Portland struggle to get Internet speeds that will allow transfer of data that is fast enough to get the job done with videos and pictures. Comcast, or "Infinity" as it is now called, does not have the infinite speeds touted, as it seems is occurring in other areas as well.

But Kansas City is the first to be cutting edge in the technology of Internet future. Let's hope the rest of the world benefits soon.

The change may make a difference, so that the wonderful story, picture or moving picture might be at your Internet door in seconds, virtually as it happens, which could be the communication that will be necessary to keep up with the instant happenings throughout the world.

Horses, health, and humanity

Karin Hauenstein — From recent news, it is getting known that America is bringing horse slaughter back on its soil. What the proponents of Commercial Horse Slaughter in the U.S. are not taking into consideration is the fact that the end “product” of this industry contains adrenaline and cortisol in levels far higher than what is not allowed in beef by law and regulated by the USDA.

If you want a real education yourself, Google “Commercial Horse Slaughter” and you will get one. This abhorrent practice was ill-regulated and only cursorily inspected for meat quality, with the standards at all U.S. Commercial Horse Slaughter Plants in the U.S. being almost non-existent. Someone was protecting this industry before, but no longer. The American Horse Racing Industry was feeding it. Are they still? Officially, No. Behind the scenes and out the back gates, Yes.

In Commercial Beef Slaughter, they call it “dark cutting”. Google that and you will get an education about the toxic hormones and steroids that are making their way into your hamburgers and steaks (especially fast food beef.) It causes Cancer and other disease in humans and causes the Commercial Beef Slaughter Industry’s largest financial losses every year.

Equines and bovines are completely different species of animals. The equine senses are better than canines and their herd mentality extremely keen. It is virtually and practically impossible to kill a horse humanely in a commercial setting. The proponents of this issue are lying to everyone and the proof will come in the toxicology reports that will be mandated by the lawsuits filed against them and the USDA for attempting to distribute harmful levels of these toxic hormones and steroids to the population.

Every single head-shot horse is a “bad kill” with their autonomic endocrine systems delivering extreme amounts of adrenaline and cortisol throughout the flesh after the shot. The evidence of this is in the pulsing of the horse post-shot. Review some Commercial Horse Slaughter videos and see for yourself. This also happens in slower, dumber bovines at a much lesser rate, but is supposedly tracked and managed by USDA officials on their lines—the same USDA that is already stressed and thin in ranks because of the economic budget issues our country is facing.

The evidence that will make this “product” illegal is scientific. The Commercial Beef Slaughter Industry is already suppressing information regarding the levels of adrenaline and cortisol that are making their way into U.S. diets, causing cancer and other diseases. All of this will come to light with further scrutiny.

I thank the proponents of Commercial Horse Slaughter in the U.S. for being so outspoken with their propaganda and misinformation to bring so much attention to this issue. We all need to make a concerted effort to know exactly what we are ingesting and stay away from products that are proven harmful to our health.

Humane Chemical Euthanasia is and has always been the only humane method of getting rid of "unwanted" horses. It costs less than one month's feed and board. Rendering of carcasses is available in many communities.

Humanity cannot be legislated; toxic levels of hormones and steroids in meat consumed by humans can be. Please, consider this in the battle against Commercial Horse Slaughter.



About the Author

Karin Hauenstein is a horse activist who protests via horse rides through the country against commercial horse slaughter. Her mission is to end commercial horse slaughter in the US and put an end to cruelty against horses. Visit her website http://horseactivist.com/ at to read more about her work.

Facebook, Google, Twitter controlling news, while readers get a fraction

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by Carol Forsloff - Social media likely now controls the news and how much you read and whether you read much at all.  If you are one of those that reads mostly Facebook, Twitter and Google entries, and not the article itself, than you miss out on the bulk of the available news and information and are likely to make mistakes of judgment as a result.

News information and features are designed to educate and inform.  Sometimes they don't, but for the most part they do.  The complaint is mostly after we read something we don't agree with.  And some of that disagreement comes from not reading the information in its entirety, but just those snippets cut from social media.  The Internet, according to research, is the source of most news; but how much of it is read vs those commenting on issues about which they have read just a fraction.

The social media bookmarks are there to provide a link for the author to announce the creation of an article.  If the subject is of interest, then the idea should follow the article might be read.  The lead in a story is meant to bring interest, not to tell the whole story.  Even in a traditional news article, the thumbnail sketch at the beginning is the "teaser" with the substantive, and explanatory detail, yet to come.

Some have worried enough about social media bookmarking as the source of news that they are anticipating setting guidelines regarding it.  But the problems prevail, nonetheless.

After writing many articles online, following the advent of the popularity of social media, I have learned more and more people make their comments on Facebook or Twitter, never commenting on the articles themselves.  It is easy for an author, where the readership is tracked either on the entire site or individual articles, to know the location of readership and whether the information was read at all.

Many newswriters complain pageviews are down, yet the number of websites for news is increasing daily.   Part of the reason readership is down, has to do with the fact people just read those snippets.    In fact, it has been found that Facebook gets more than 25% of pageviews.  So more and more of these new sources, like Examiner. com or Metro.com, bring news in a few sentences.  As reading material increases in numbers, the substance within them is gone.

Some will say it doesn't take a lot of words to tell a news story, but many of the world's problems have complications far beyond a few sound bites.  Even local news has many dimensions.  But those who don't read those dimensions make mistakes and wrongfully quote material.  Is it any wonder, that experts find we know less and less with more and more material available for our education?

Next time, before commenting, read the story itself.  The writer cares enough to convey the information.  The reader should care enough to at least the broad outlines of it before giving an opinion.  Otherwise it is like attending a football game on commenting on the players moves only after the scores are posted, without knowing the nuances of the game.

Google: a force to reckon with outside of Internet search into science

Carol Forsloff -Google dominates much of the web with its search engine and modified
ones as well.  But it also is venturing into scientific projects
designed to move man rapidly into the futuristic areas we have often
thought of as only fiction.



Wind
farms in the ocean, cars that drive themselves, techno gadgets that
help the lame to walk are just a few of the many projects Google is
involved in that aims to be creative and expanding.

Analysts
say this is a wise move and designed to keep Google that force to be
reckoned with for years to come.  It helps maintain its business and
prosperity as well.

Kurzweil
Intelligence,  an
organization on the cutting edge of scientific exploration and
research, examines Google's ventures and maintains the company will
continue to prosper because it is looking into the future and
diversifying as well.  It quotes from an article where Jay Wong, an
investment executive, as saying about Google's future value and present
ventures, "It's part of their creative culture and what makes them so
successful."

The
Android experience, http://www.android.com/that involves Google's
purchase of a small company  it made a popular purveyor of techno toys,
shows how expansive the company's view really is, Kurzweil observes, as
it sees the company continuing its pattern and doing well because of it.

BP get off my Google! I want the oil spill.

Carol Forsloff - "What are you doing that PR work for BP?" he asked.  "What PR?" I wondered. 
"Those ads you're running.,"  he told me.  But you see, there is no choice when BP
owns the "oil."

 

They even own Tina Turner, of course not the real Tina Turner with attitude, an extended version of one of her songs with their ads at the front on YouTube like many other key entertainers.  But then I sneaked.  They won't take Tina Turner from us.

"Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?" My sentiments exactly.

Now what's oil got to do with it, you might
wonder.  It's the word "oil."  Google indexes words according to search
terms and how frequently they are used, including on ads, articles and
everywhere.  Buy up those ads, sprinkle enough around on every site with
Google ads, post comments on every blog and newspaper, and you are more
than the giant of oil.  You are the king of the word "oil" or the "oil
spill"as well.

Is that fair, one might wonder; so I wondered as
well.  I recognize Google, on my web pages at greenheritagenews.com  indexes the ads according to
the topics on the page.  One of the topics is the oil spill since I have
125 original stories and counting.  I have created lots of "oil" for
search terms, but if I wrote the word "oil" or "oil spill"  the rest of
my life, and had the rest of you do it on my website and the comments;
we might not do quite as well.

We could try.  We could write
something about oil, list information about oil, talk about oil on our
faces, our backs, our behinds.  We could own it perhaps.  Or you could
just give it to me.

You could also comment on my particular oil
stories.  What would that accomplish?  Well, Google just might turn
around for a moment; and then those ads might change.

I could
choose them, like other newspapers want to do and struggle with on a
regular basis, and that's getting ads from individual advertisers also. 
Or Google would focus attention on stories I wrote, and continue to
write,  about oily places, birds covered with oil, oil still under the
water, and oil killing our hermit crabs.

Would you rather I own
the word "oil" or "oil spil," some grandmother with no axes grinding,
except, of course, fairness for all-- or BP?

You can see I am doing my part with all of these key words that say "oil."

I
want "oil"  but not the responsibility for cleaning it up.  Here's your

chance.    It's not love any more that I want all the time.  It is oil.

Let me have it.

Worries that Google is in the spy business

 

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SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 19 /PRN-USN - GHN--The worry about Google being in intelligence gathering and Wi-Spy activity is getting a Consumer Watchdog group concerned enough to ask for hearings about it. 




Because the Internet Giant has admitted to Wi-Spying Activity and new information about Google's classified government contracts, Consumer Watchdog maintains it is important for the Energy and Commerce Committee to conduct hearings into possible privacy violations by Google.

In a letter to Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Ranking Member Joe Barton, the nonpartisan, nonprofit public interest group's John M. Simpson wrote:

"Based on today's Washington Post, it appears that Google holds classified U.S. government contracts to supply search and geospatial information to the U.S. government. In addition, White House records show that Google executives have been holding meetings with U.S. national security officials for undisclosed reasons. Finally, it also appears that Google's widely criticized efforts to collect wireless network data on American citizens were not inadvertent, contrary to the company's claims."

"As history has repeatedly shown, alliances between the U.S. intelligence community and giant corporations that collect data on American citizens can be a toxic combination where the U.S. Constitution is concerned,"  the letter said.

In a June 9 letter to the Energy and Commerce Committee, Google director for public policy Pablo Chavez asserted that Google "mistakenly included code in our software that collected samples of 'payload data'" from private WiFi networks. But review of a patent application from Google covering the gathering of WiFi data published Jan. 28 shows that the data collection program was a very deliberate effort to assemble as much information as possible about U.S. residential and business WiFi networks.

The letter continued:

"...what the patent does show is that Google's recent claims about how the Street View program was designed are not accurate, and that the company always intended to collect and store the 'packets' of wireless data that contain so-called payload information.

"The patent makes repeated reference to 'capturing' packets, including paragraph [0055], which states that the system will enable geolocations so long as the equipment being used 'is able to capture and properly decode a packet...'

Consumer Watchdog says White House visitor logs show that Alan Davidson, Google's Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs, has had at least three meetings with officials of the National Security Council since the beginning of last year. One of the meetings was with White House senior director for Russian affairs Mike McFaul, while another was with Middle East advisor Daniel Shapiro.

It has also been widely reported that Google has been working in "partnership" with the National Security Agency, the very same government body that illegally intercepted the private communications of millions of Americans during the Bush administration.

"This raises serious questions about whether Google has engaged in a reckless effort to amass private data without giving any thought to the possible misuse of that information, and whether it can be trusted to safeguard the information it collects from the prying eyes of the U.S. government,"concludesConsumer Watchdog, a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer advocacy organization.




 

Dr. Google's top ten doesn't give complete medical information

 

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Editor - Is Google the way to get the best advice on sports medicine?  A study in a recent journal says the information on the Internet is quite incomplete and varies widely, so folks don't get the whole picture.

A study published in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS) describes how Internet users don't get the information they need from the Internet and need to ask questions as well of health personnel.

"The reason that we decided to undertake this study is that patients are presenting to their physicians office with increasing frequency armed with printouts of information obtained from the Internet," said Madhav A. Karunakar, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., and one of the study's authors.

The researchers go on to say, "Physicians and patients should be aware that the quality of information available online varies greatly. Additionally, physicians should be prepared to discuss this information with their patients in order to ensure that it is not misinterpreted."

Three-quarters of the U.S. population has access to the Internet, and more than half of those people go online for health-related information at least once a month, but they don't get the health information that is needed because health information has grown faster than the Internet in terms of Internet use.

The study's authors chose ten of the most common sports medicine diagnoses, reviewing the information online about them, including medial collateral ligament, rotator cuff tear, etc.

After this the researchers proceeded to review the top ten search results for each diagnosis, looking for how complete the information was about these conditions, its correctness and clarity of information.  They also looked at the information source, whether it was an institution, individual news source, doctor, or commercial enterprise.

Nonprofit sites scored the highest in terms of content, followed by academic sites, including medical journal sites and non-sales oriented sources such as WebMd and eMedicine.

The least accurate information sources were newspaper articles and personal web sites. and among the worst those with financial interests in a given product for a given diagnosis.

"About 20 percent of the sites that turned up in the top ten results were sponsored sites," Dr. Karunakar says. "These site owners are motivated to promote their product, so the information found there may be biased. We also found that these sites rarely mentioned the risks or complications associated with treatment as they are trying to represent their product in the best possible light."

The study's authors suggest that patients be counseled to avoid commercial Web sites, with the exception of the most reputable sites, such as WebMD and eMedicine, and similar sites.

"Despite its shortcomings, the Internet is the future of how patients will obtain information to make their healthcare decisions," says Dr. Karunakar. "Therefore, patients and physicians need to make sure they are getting that information from reputable, accurate sources."