DISQUS

Obviously, I hope you're right, but you must understand my skepticism, I mean, all these companies who pay out the ass to power their office complexes could save millions by switching their office parks and buildings over to solar and wind power and they're forever not doing it. Why?
If W is right it's because they're hopeless addicts addicted to oil. What if they're hopelessly addicted to Microsoft too?
Or do they have their hands tied by some high level corporate doctrine which says, 'Don't fuck with the big boys and your accounts with them, or else.'

Hum, this is weird. I have noticed of late that nothing is changing. 2007 and well over 90% of the computers, whose owners I meet, are PCs running some version of Windows. Maybe there's a movement somewhere, but I'm just not seeing it. I'm always an oddball with a mac wherever I go. But people are always impressed and look favorably on the mac, but they just don't ever make the switch, ever—they'll buy iPods but not iMacs.
Then I think about that full page ad for a company who wants to convert your home to solar power in a 1978 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine that's in my attic, if you need to see it. Here we are in 2007 and well over 90% of the homes you walk into will still be getting their power from the toxic power factories, because old man Bush had his way with Reagan who had his way with Carter.
The other big one of course is our cars - 2007 and well over 90% of our automobiles are still burning toxic gas to push ourselves around when fuel cells and even diesel engines where known to be a better way to go at least as far back as the 1930s, but old man Ford had his way with the patents.
Oh sure, I can definately see how Microsoft has done it, the same way the auto and oil industries did it (Gates had Clinton, or was it Gore, in his back pocket?). And I definately see how they'll hold on to it, just the same way. It seems to work.
Please tell me things can change. Please tell me we can overcome our oppressors. Just once. Pleeeeeeease...

I agree with you that they are providing a cool cultural site for people to interact with each other, you can't deny that, but I also understand the other side because it's not those people's fault that they are paranoid about big corporation exploitation. You see it everywhere you turn, to not see it would be akin to walking around with blinders and earplugs.
To say that MySpace is exploiting people by not paying them for their content would be ludicrous, like you say, but the people you mention, their concerns seem founded when you consider that MySpace is absolutely databasing, cataloging, and doing every market research technique in the books with everyone's MySpace interactions.

Wow! That's cool! I experienced very similar thoughts and feelings when William recently unveiled his new songs for me. Steps in the right direction, because that's what's important. It's all about the steps, because, it's all about the journey, not the destination. It's not about getting to Heaven, like they tried to teach us when we were young. In God's world it's about finding Heaven, and Hell, along the way to eternity, where there is no final destination, just more Heaven and Hell to weed through. Ah, the truth be told. Did you see the movie, Cars? "Life is a highway. I want to ride it all night long."

I know that pine!
Been hearing it every night on my walks to the shed for a cigarette to haggle over the future with, eerie really, but serene. I think this is one of the reasons people like to drink more, to combat this feeling and push it away. Me, I'd rather embrace it and that's what I been trying to do lately, that, and trying to establish the Helping Friendly Bookstore a presence in the Amazon.com community.

The world today seems absolutely crackers,where
where nuclear bombs could blow us all sky high.
There's fools and idiots sitting on the trigger.
It's depressing and it's senseless, and that's why
I like Chinese. I like Chinese.
They only come up to your knees,
yet they're always friendly and they're ready to please.
I like Chinese. I like Chinese.
There's 900 million of them in the world today.
You better learn to like them, that's what I say.
I like Chinese. I like Chinese.
They come from a long way overseas,
but they're cute and they're cuddily and they're ready to please.
I like Chinese food. The waiters never are rude.
Think of the many things they've done to impress,
there's Maoism, Taoism, I-Ching and chess,
so I like Chinese. I like Chinese.
I like their tiny little trees.
Their zen, their ping pong, their ying and yangy.
I like Chinese thought. The wisdom that Confuscious taught.
If Darwin is anything to shout about,
the Chinese will survive us all without any doubt,
so I like Chinese. I like Chinese.
They only come up to your knees,
yet they're wise and they're witty and they're ready to please.
I like Chinese. I like Chinese.
They're food is guaranteed to please.
A 14, a 7, a 9 in thine cheese.
I like Chinese. I like Chinese.

--Monty Python

Okay. Religion sucks ass! Go Pagan! Witches rule! The Holy Grail is the only thing worth the trip.

It is corporate capitalism that you speak of.

Hezbollah is a political organization with a military who kidnapped 2 Israeli people as a political manuever to insight Israel(a political, corporate capitalist state, not a religious state) in order to get Israel to bomb Lebanon for having joined the ranks as a corporate capitalist state.

It is corporate capitalism that has no good sense and no concern for the quality of life. It is corporate capitalism that is raping the environment are repressing and starving third world countries for the ability to treat their constituents to McDonalds, Wal-Mart, oil-burning heat and automobile travel and all the rest of our so-called modern conveniences.

It is corporate capitalism that strangles advancement and progess. The technologies to manufacture and distrute power without pollution are suppressed by corporate capitalism because there is a better bottom line in raping the planet.

It is corporate capitalism which sacrifices better health and healing for the sake of their exorbidant bottom lines in the pharmaceutical industry.

This is what Hezzbollah, Al-Queda and all the other terrorist groups are fighting. THEY ARE NOT FIGHTING ANYTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION!!!!
Greed and corporate capitalist power mongers are what is destroying quality of life. Religions are merely waiting for their respective saviors to save them from this evil beast controlling the planet. And they are not fighting anyone over these beliefs. They are fighting people over money and corruption in the corporate capitalist world.

The only difference between me and a terrorist is that I understand that every time you try and fight corporate capitalism you make them stronger. The best way is to work with it and love it and get out when it blows, because it will. It will never ever stop caring only about the bottom line, and that is where doomsday prophecy comes, not from religion. The Book of Revelation was not originally a prophecy of future times. It was reworked from a recorded history of how power and greed destroyed the Atlantean civilization!

In that case, my feeling has been that the whole MySpace thing was marketed solely for the purpose of databasing information about everyone and that Rupe must have other financial interests in monitoring individual's interests.

You answered your own question already because what Rupe sees in MySpace is exactly what you say, cheap plastic community, and cheap plastic community has been selling out the ass everywhere for at least the last thirty years. Cheap plastic shit outsells everything else in the pop, hip-hop and rap music world, as well in Hollywood, the book industry, WalMart, the auto industry, Microsoft, video games, prescription drugs, the slip-shod construction of strip malls and cookie-cutter condos and townhomes... just to name a few. Cheap plastic shit sells, sells, and sells more and more to more and more Americans every day and it has strangled the rest of the planet and it is all George Bush's fault.

A sports page? Hunter would be squirmishing to hear of a new sports page that didn’t ramble around to digging deeper into the mechanisms at play in the universe which in turn play themselves out on the ballfield. For instance, why did Matsui, a ballplayer from Japan, suddenly break his wrist and with it a very long streak of ballplaying, effectively paving the way for Cabrera, a ballplayer from the Dominican Republic, to have a shot at the limelight in New York. What's really going on in the world to make this freak accident happen?

Yeah, yeah, I know, odds are every ballplayer's gonna eventually do something that makes some bone, joint, ligament or muscle pop, but it does't make any scientific sense that the wind blows based on odds. You can formulate for days, and the wind will still blow when it wants to blow. I suspect that this all must have something to do with the rise of the Spanish-speaking people in this country. Something big is happening here with this now, but it's not just that, because, even though we don't see a battalion of ballplayers coming over from China, certain Macintosh computers are being distributed around the U.S. urging you to default to using the Chinese language. Why not make some of our computers default to Japanese? not enough Japanese-speaking people for it to be cost-effective, or, maybe because Apple computers are being made in China now, and that brings us to that whole thing about eveything for here being made there, and the magnitude of debt we’re racking up to such a reputed fierce bunch.

This all sounds like great news, cause it's gonna be what saves our asses, cause we EuroAmericans need so badly to broaden our horizons. We’ve had our collective heads stuck so far up a big, fat, ugly, shit-stinkin' asshole disguised as the American Dream, that we could use a little broadening of our culture. This is all okay for us loser EuroAmericans because people like the Chinese , the Mexicans, or even the Saudis, like us, because we are, or used to be, or sometimes are, or have the potential to be, a creative bunch. That must be because of that old Chinese axiom, "one gets creative when stuck in shit." But, all joking aside, what more of us EuroAmericans outta do is to orient our creative skills around more universal concepts such as the Chinese Dragon, or the I Ching, or the Hunab Ku, or the Tree of Life, or the Holy Grail rather than strangling ourselves wrapped around so tight in our images of the American Dream and what religion our salvation belongs to, or what ‘utterly depraved’ madness can be absorbed from the news channels, or what canidate can save our asses in the Senate or Congress elections, only to watch them get beat down by a system magnificently manipulated over the years to magically elect whomever it goddamn well pleases, better yet, whoever offers it the best strategy for power and control.