What the f$%^ is this douchebag talking about?
Blogs are known to be a free-for-all for "expressive" content, but according to a new report by ScanSafe, a vast majority of blogs host content that is considered "offensive" and potentially "unwanted." ScanSafe's Monthly "Global Threat Report" for March 2007 says that up to 80 percent of blogs host offensive content, ranging from "adult language" to pornographic images. The company suggests that businesses should be aggressive about preventing users from accessing some or all of this material. And of course, they'd hope that you'd use their products to do so.
ScanSafe says that it discovered the "offensive" nature of blogs by analyzing more than 7 billion web requests coming from their corporate customers. In doing so, they apparently learned that the so-called blogosphere is a lot like a George Carlin performance: diverse, sometimes entertaining, and loaded with "bad words."
Is anyone actually surprised by this? Well, I guess in our defense, Bane has not exactly been a good ambassador to the rest of the world, seeing as how his blog is single-handedly responsible for half of the depravity on the Internet. This would be a good time to educate the mainstream media about what the world of blogging is really like. It's not really all that profane, rather it's just filled with a lot of hot air and navel gazing.
The real knee slapper in the "report" was that you can lose sensitive data by going to the wrong website. Well gee, if you use an outdated browser, specifically one that supports ActiveX (we don't know any of those, do we?) then you might have a problem. You might have it because you never bothered to keep your software up to date enough that people can't totally pwn your computer. *Sigh* It's self-serving propaganda like this which makes you stand back and realize just how much crap there is that passes for "news" from the tech press.
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What a bunch of prigs,
Not that I agree with him much, or found him that personable when I bumped into him, but Noam Chomsky put it best when he said newspapers and boradcast news merely cater to their advertisers by trying to draw in the demographics said advertisers are looking for.
Most advertisers are looking for that all-ellusive college educated technocrat with disposable income. Advertisers assume this demographic have had their moral, political, and ethical norms "refined" in political correctional institute that take young, impressionable minds and churn out drones for the evolving platonic republic of the drugstore intelligentsia's dreams.
Blogs appeal to the rest of us. Even the hardened Left discern the corporate trappings of most industrial output of "news sources". They know it's a rigged game in which buisinesses, politicians, and parties of "national interest" work with news reporters to make news reporters look good while reflecting the PR rhetoric of the buisiness, politicans, et al.
News reporters know that dialectical narratives (scandal, shock, missing white women, fairy tail weddings, doomsday scenarios, et al) seem to sell. So thus, if they can't fit the story into a pre-fabricated narrative, odds are it might as well not exist at all.
Hence the fact many, even the typically unimagintive and maleducated, are coming to grips with the fact this shit don't jibe with reality.
The blogosphere has arisen to fill this gap in the demands unproduced by a capped out, unresponsive news-manufacturing cartel.
It's simiply penis envy on parr of the typewriting industry versus the computer industry. Decentralized, bottom-up news and entertainment is the wave of the future, and the top-down, cartelized infotainment industry of the last century is unable to cope.
It's part of the reason the phone companies are trying to get congress and the EU to criminalize creativity and IP evasive media that is gurgling up from the ethers of cyber-space, by segmenting and corporatizing the hitherto neutral and free market of cyber-space.
Phone companies and telecommunication providers have yet to figure out a way they're comfortable with in order to generate revenue from a sought-after demographic that shows less and less interest in traditional venues for infotainment.
While they have demographic advantages in the fact the majority of the population is 40+ and concieve of infotainment along the traditional lines developed in the 20th century. This is ultimately a losing proposition to stake your fortunes upon, as long-term trends indicate cyber-friendly generations used to the freedom of choice created from their bottom-up medium.
Just as credit cards were scoffed at by department stores one day until the day came they could no longer balance their books without them, so too will the telecommunications industry be forced to come to grips with the fact a bottom-up market catering to the unadulterated thirsts and demands of consumers is already the wave of the future.
Oh, and thanks for letting me post a blog entry here in your comments section ; )
Blogging is as chatting was. Use it, abuse it or moderate yourself accordingly.
Pretty much it's about you, now isn't it?
Pretty much...