fractalnavel

some odds & ends thoughts over the last couple of days:

• watched “outfoxed”,  more free speech/press stuff.  not sure how valid and balanced their own point of view is, but surely their comments on fox news' relationship with far right ideology is worth paying attention to.  not so much for what it says about fox itself - their views have been pretty clear from the outset - but for what it says about large media conglomerates in general, and the dangers to press, and thus to society.  old stuff, but people seem to forget, so it bears repeating.  downloaded from bittorrent ...
• ... speaking of which, another one bites the dust - and the big one.  lokitorrent.com went under after taking substantial donations from users.  the resulting confusion and sense of betrayal is causing some backlash.  this la times article adds a bit of perspective.  note that this time, user logs got snagged in the ruckus.

  in any case, this is an issue worth following, in terms of concepts of privacy, ownership and market forces. of course, in the current political environment, there's little hope for reform.

• i got this comment from some recent mailing:

  Beneath the incomprehensive [sic] federal budget numbers -- a record $2.57 trillion budget, a record $427 billion deficit, a record $419 billion in military spending -- the federal budget is a moment of truth.

  never mind the context i pulled that comment out of, i have a way to address the incomprehenisbility: measure such figures in “gates”, which is the largest example of personally held - and in principal, personally comprehensible - fortune (bill gates wealth clock)

  while he may not be always be THE richest person due to fluctuations in the markets, he has the longest time up there at the highest level, and at a younger age (i think).

  comprehensible ? well, sort of. i was browsing wikiquote, ran into this random one:

  “When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal.”

  -- larry ellison (who ranks somewhat below gates in the "shitload of money" department)

  anyhow, at the moment of writing, that budget is about 43 gates. the military spending is 7 gates.

  now that's context.

  ---

  update: a little more generic unit might be “greatest accumulation - single person”, or “gasp”, or variants like that.  has a good ring - “the budget has risen to 43 gasps”.  but a “gates” has a geeky appeal, even if it does lack a certain panache.  but what did you expect from a geek ? ;-)