Wednesday, November 17, 2004
One of the consequential factors that is shaping the politcal and even the economic situation around the world is that we are living in what we called a post-institutional society. That is a society in which the fundamental institutions and even 'morals' are fast dissappearing. Among the casualty of the so called post-institutional effect is the decline of the state itself. Some scholars would think that this is manifested in the control of 'violence' as we know it to warlords and mafias. Yet it is not so simple. Just because there is a post-institutional effect doesn't mean everything will be in such a dissaray. What facilitates a post-institutional society is the level of exchange of information in which economies are formed and decided and the way government acts in such forums. As the physical world becomes crowded out to the virtual world the post-institutional effect creeps ups and unravel such forms and institutions such as work, family, the church, and even democracy itself. As that continues to happens energies and forces continues to bubble up and vent itself in anarchic violence and rippling political changes.
News about Russia developing supposedly bigger and more powerful nuclear weapons does not mean that we are returning to a cold war nor is it credible to assume that they are needed to contain terrorism despite terrorism itself is a global threat but because terrorist thrives in a world that is more likened to their existence and growth. Developing nuclear weapons only in short summary points out that the only way terrorist will thrive is in a world in which there are more people living in poorer conditions that legitimizes the former presence.
Geopolitical situations is perhaps the best way to understand where are we heading towards terrorism. Terrorism or how they will be portrayed should there be another World Trade Center attack reflects a world that is dependent on a resource that is heavily prepared and marketed in the Middle East-oil. We hear everyday in the news how the Al-Queda linked resistance is growing in Iraq which has forced Bush to ante up the amount of troops Iraq with 12,000 more.
Even if their is another arms race,a lot which was based on global freedom and world justice whether one is a Marxist or not has very much been upsurped from any realistic political arguement needed to be taken seriously. The element of technology is the ability to map and draw down everything regardless of dimensions. What facilitates technology besides human ethics and law is the ability to elude it. There is no doubt that the use of nuclear weapons supposedly again if there is an arm race will not unlikely occur. There will given the way Bin Laden eluding the US and the unpredictable growth as I continue to argue of the Al Queada not only among the Muslim world but pretty soon splinter off to more 'secular' groups. At any rate Bin Laden, Madrid, and the World Trade center is only the first and primary stage of things yet to happen. As these groups continues to grow the need and hunger for the development of tracking devices and even nuclear weapons(even if they are handheld) increases and the use for them as well. It is sad to say that we have just not kept up with the times as far as how we should set the variables of certain arguements among many issues that society have to face day in and day out. It is because with this and the energies associated with the use of and need for high tech warfare makes certain more terrorist attacks in the US.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Speaking of things getting bigger, google.com market value has surpassed that of yahoo.com to 51 billion dollars whereas Yahoo is at $47 billion dollars.
Finally, just as when you think things are getting real nasty in the search engine market right when Microsoft announced that it has indexed over 5 billion web sites Google.com underscored them by announcing that they have indexed over 8 billion websites. Yet it is too early to tell who is going to be the big winners among the three giants of the internet industry.
On the one hand, I am glad I have more storage in my Yahoo and Hotmail account but there other things,on the other hand, they have improved upon such as eliminating junk and unwanted mail from my email account that has more than made up for things for the extra space. If you try Gmail by Google that offers close to 1000 MB of storage , you would probably like not only the unusally more storage but also what is displayed along its advertisement stuff that is related to what is in your email. The problem with that would be an invasion of privacy due to having the dubious similarity of spyware.
What makes the search engine ticks from what I understand is their services besides just placing a keyword and trying to get one out of eight billion sites out there but there are search engine related services such as this blogger I am using or Deja News both by Google. Either way this would have a lot of effect about other issues such as the job market and government taxing policy. It would be silly and short sighted to assume that any tax policy of either cutting or raising taxes would create or stimulate jobs for those who are in more need of them. Such policies would no doubt have the effect of doing the reverse of what it has normally intended to do so.
Then there is another issue such as p2p. The latest from what I have been keeping up on Kazaa is that there is a problem of the RIAA using the Sherman Network supposedly Fast Track technology and the issue of areas of what constitutes freedom of speech. What about other p2p sources such as xdrive.com* following in the footsteps of the big three companies--Yahoo, Google and Microsoft allows user to upload 5GB of movies, music, doucments, and pictures on to their servers that can be shared virtually throughout the world. These are more tangible things being exchanged on a massive level that no matter how the internet takes over relies on things that we do everyday in the physical world. This does not mean that there is a slow down of the virtual world crowding out the physical one but that such lags are only reminescence of some strange and more advance form of technological innovation that would probably hits the market some time soon.
*What makes using xdrive interesting is that you can use it on your browser you don't have to download it like Kazaa on your desktop.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
You can try submitfire.com in which your site is added to over 3,000 search engines including the major search engines as well. It also monitors link popularity and checks your page for broken or damaged links. The cost is only $7.95 a month.
You can also try hitscheap.com where as you can order thousands of hits for very little money. For example, if you want 1,000 bulk visitors it would cost you only $1.99 or if you want 25,000 bulk visitor hits that will cost you $17.99. However if you want to order more targeted traffic, it will cost you a little bit more such as for the same 1,000 hits of "untargeted" traffic in which case 65% of hits goes to the US, 25% to Euroepe and 15% to Canada that will cost you about $2.49. You can also order target US and Uk hits which cost you still slightly more.
Another place that is good for traffic is blizg.com. This is mainly for blogs but you can add their metatags or metadata tags generated for your website to get a feel which blogs or "sites" that is closer to you. Then after you do that just 'ping' and you are now on their servers.