Success Warrior: The Blog That Embraces ADHD

Saturday Video: State of the Union Subtext

Homework Help: Future of Brick-and-Mortar Stores

So,

In a rare occurrence, I have managed to finish the primary homework assignments for the week.  For the record, it is always my goal to complete everything except the minor follow-up tasks by Thursday afternoon but it has been a rare occurrence when this has happened in the last 6 months or so.  Too often, homework has carried over to Friday or Saturday and even into Sunday, which is the usual due date at 11pm.

I'm going to take advantage of this week's oddity to get a jump on next week's work, which includes tossing out the Homework Help question of the week:

Will brick and mortar shopping disappear?  Why or why not?

I'm actually not going to ask you to answer this question unless your answer is a resounding "Yes!"  If that's the case, I would love to hear your answer.

Instead, I'll answer this one and ask a question of my own that is a variation of the given question because (1) this one seems too simple and (2), as has been pointed out previously, I'm not the kind of person that just accepts what's given.

My answer:

No, and here are a couple of reasons (feel free to add your own).  First, there are some things that have to be experienced before purchasing.  Clothing seems the obvious choice to me, especially shoes.  Sure, companies have increasingly generous return policies but it's much simpler to just go to a shoe store and try them all on right then and there and walk out with the pair that feels right.  Websites can have virtual models with your measurements but even if they make them into 3D images or holograms, it won't tell you what it feels like.  Cars would be another choice that I would throw out there.  Test driving seems mandatory.

Let me amend my intitial answer by adding an "at least not in the near future" behind the "no".  This is a class centered on the Internet taken by students who are attending via the Internet.  It could be very easy to jump to the assumption that everyone has access to the Internet and a way to make payments over the Internet.  However, this is obviously not the case and it may be sometime until everyone has the Internet at their fingertips.

Now it's your turn.  Look into your crystal ball and tell me what you see for the future of e-commerce in relation to brick-and-mortar businesses?  What is on the horizon?  What do you see as highly probable?  More interesting to me, what do you see in the realm of incredible but possible?

Disempowerment

So,

I was reading articles today on piracy (copyright not Somalia) as part of my research into the topic I posted on Monday and I read something that I didn't give much thought to initially.  I was glancing over Obama's misStatement of the Union address later in the morning and I thought back to what I had read in the piracy article and felt like it had missed the actual key issue.  Here's that part of the article on copyright protection:

"The culture of the Internet also needs to be taken into consideration. Referring to the high rates of illegal downloading, Mr. Gurry said “In order to effect a change in attitude, I believe that we need to re-formulate the question that most people see or hear about copyright and the Internet. People do not respond to being called pirates…They would respond, I believe, to a challenge to sharing responsibility for cultural policy. We need to speak less in terms of piracy and more in terms of the threat to the financial viability of culture in the 21^st Century, because it is this which is at risk if we do not have an effective, properly balanced copyright policy.” (Emphasis mine - Complete Article)

The implication that I got from reading this paragraph is that by calling everyone who has ever used content that media corporations would deem as a violation of copyright, you run the risk of creating an adversarial environment.  Pissing everyone off will probably eventually come back on you but this isn't the true danger to media corporations of yelling "Pirate" every time a teenager shares a song with his friend.

What brought my mind back to the article and caused me to actually think about the problem with the pirate label were a couple of comments made by the Great and Powerful Oz in His delusional speech that is supposed to set the tone for His re-election campaign.

What tone is that?  "Ride the crazy train with me!"

Right off a cliff.

In this case, it was nothing that he directly said but something that I thought was telling, which lead my mind down a path that eventually took me back to the thought about labels.

His mind is like a mouse maze.

If he gets to the point, do we get some cheese?

Here's a couple of those innocuous sentences:

"What's at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values."

"One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. On it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn't matter."

For those of you who are Republicrats, it may not be obvious but for me it just jumps right up in my face.  Patriots, heroes, and people with values only come in two flavors, Republican or Democrat.  Independants, you're probably okay as long as you keep flip-flopping between voting for Republicans and Democrats.  Should you ever stop though, you will lose your status as an appropriately obedient part of the one percent's plan and will be an outcast.

And if you aren't with 'em serving them, you're agin' 'em a terrorist.

Here's where the 1% and their mouthpieces, Bush and Obama, make a mistake.

In 2001, the word "terrorist" had a very clear and powerful meaning.  People that blow up buildings with innocent people in them.  A level of evil that is hard to even fathom.  Terrorists were feared and hated because they were terrorists.

Since then, what have Bush and Obama done with the clear and powerful definition of terrorist?  Well, here are some of the things off the top of my head that can earn you the much-feared brand of "Terrorist":

• Not voting for a Republican or Democrat
• Worse yet, making you a level 2 terrorist, is not voting <gasp>
• Displaying a "Don't Tread on Me" flag
• Carrying Ron Paul bumper stickers
• Owning a gun
• Having more than 7 days of food storage

Hell, I live right next to a whole state full of terrorists.  In fact, Mormons in Tennesee had federal agents visit a food storage facility attempting to get a list of names of people who used the facility. 

Now, in branding people as terrorists, the hope of course is to get people to cower to perceived peer pressure and remain obedient to the system.  No one wants to be labeled a terrorist, right?

That may have been true 10 years ago but today, it has become a joke.  Everyone who isn't one of Obama's cult members or who doesn't get their "news" spoon-fed to them by Fox is a terrorist.  The word has lost all of its oomph.  It's meaningless.  Now, if someone tells you something about a terrorist, you have to ask for clarification.  "Do you mean Al Queda terrorist or do you mean Occupy Wall Street terrorist?"

The tactic used to be one of trying to get everyone to aspire to the label of "Patriotic".  As that failed, people were labeled as terrorists or, at least, potential terrorists.  That tactic has been played out as the context of the word has been watered down into uselessness.  The result of this failure to control people mentally and emotionally is obvious in things like the creation of NDAA.  If the one percent can't rely on psy ops to control the public, they'll use the military to keep all the terrorists ordinary citizens in line.  Obedience is the only acceptable behavior.  Anything else is terrorism and must be destroyed.

Attempting to change the behavior of people by applying a negative label to culturally acceptable behavior doesn't change their behavior, it changes the meaning of the word used for the label.

State of the Union 2012

So,

After a 15 minute speech with 30 minutes of rah-rah applause at how well the Great and Powerful Oz can read from a teleprompter, it will probably all boil down to this:

If you aren't part of the 1%, you're fucked.

PS - I'm listening to it as I type this and I am absolutely amazed how full of shit this guy is.  Unless you're paid to applaud, you're probably shaking your head just like I am.  I'm going to have to get the transcript tomorrow just because it will provide humorous blogging material for me.

Homework Help: The Internet and Copyright

So,

As you may have noticed, Typepad's new and improved image uploader is change that you can believe in so let's move on to the homework help questions and hope they get the dang thing fixed in the near future (even though I know you all visit for the articles).

First, the basic questions, then I'll ask my own question:

How has the Internet changed the meaning of copyright and intellectual property? 

What are the limits to what you can "own" and "sell" online?

Now my question:

What do you envision for the future when it comes to the Internet and copyright?  Both from the side of the users as well as from the side seeking protection.  If you mention enforcement, what tools do you see being used and how effective will they be?

I am incredibly curious to hear your thoughts on this issue so please take a moment to toss in some feedback.