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AN UBUNTU MONKWeb Log 01/19/2011
My hope is to infect as many computer users as I can with the joy of UBUNTU, the LINUX-based, DEBIAN platform-based free and open source operating system that is used by tens of millions of people across the world. UBUNTU, being free and open source, isn't marketed for sale and profit, so it is difficult to determine the actual number of UBUNTU users in the world.
In America, it seems that very few of us encounter a perspective of the world, or resource for facts and figures, that is not filtered through a giant corporate media conglomerate. Thus, the views of most Americans are very limited--reflections of the processed and filtered information and perspectives of corporate media. Fewer and fewer professional journalists are employed by such corporate conglomerates. Most of the news stations in the United States are owned and operated by only four or five giant media corporations. Editorial censoring and shaping of news depends very much on the advertising affiliates and what they want to be seen and heard by their consuming audiences. News programs have become marketing tools to shape information so that advertisers' spots can be most beneficial to the advertising corporations. In short, because of extremely concentrated corporate ownership of most of our communications media and extreme control of government officials and campaigns through lobbying and campaign funding, WE, THE PEOPLE, have virtually no control over the behaviors and actions of our branches of government. They are all controlled by corporate profiteers and market behaviors. None of our markets are free markets, but are also controlled by monopolies and oligopolies, with few controls or regulations to limit their power.
None of these elements exist in viewer-, reader-, and listener-sponsored public news stations on radio, TV and the Internet. Some public stations are funded through a blend of public and private contributions, such as National Public Radio, and the corporate influences can be readily seen. Most of our alternative news resources, which are completely financed through listeners and viewers, are fairly small, but are currently accessible through the freedom of the Internet. With the recent rubber-stamping of the COMCAST/NBC merger by the Federal Communications Commission, this freedom may soon end, and corporations will, like in all other media, be able to control the content and message of their services offered over the 'Net. And what is allowed, may no longer be free, but subject to charges and fees. We may be seeing the end to "Net Neutrality".