lonecity.com

If you are going to take away people’s rights or property, you better not let them know until it is too late. If you are going to take away people’s rights or property, then it is best to hide your intent under the banner of a fight against something so bad that no one dare oppose the fight. For example, suppose that you operate a nationwide furniture store chain and want to eliminate local competition from independent operators. You could ask your Senator to sponsor the “Wipe Out The Little Guy Act of 2008″ but it is unlikely that your Senator or the public would give you much support. A much better strategy would be to hide your intent to wipe out your competition inside a bit of legislation that appears to fight a battle that everyone would support. For example, how about the “Furniture Consumer Protection Act of 2008″ in which you tout the benefits of protecting consumers against deceptive furniture sales practices and price gouging etc. Then in the middle of the Bill you hide a provision that would allow you to press charges against anyone who tries to sell the same types of furniture that you do — effectively putting out of business the pesky independent stores across the country that compete with you. If you read the “Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008″ carefully, you will see that this is exactly what it will do. It will let government and big business take away websites (the virtual equivalent of store fronts) from individuals and small businesses — without the due process protections that exist in the current domain name resolution protection and even the current trademark law. It is a brazen grab by the big to take over what belongs to the small. Everyone should support efforts to reduce phishing and online fraud. No one should support the anti-competitive power grab hidden in this Bill as currently worded.” - Bob Connor

By now, we all take the internet for granted.  We just assume its going to work when we turn on the computer and that when we type in a dot .com its going to get us where we want to be.  The web is a great thing and it provides an avenue for everyone to get their voice heard.  My rant Blog is an example of that.  You probably won’t belive it, but right now the internet is in danger. Seriously!

Truth be told, nobody can be right about everything.  The answer to that dilemma is to take everyones ideas, mix them together, and come up with a consensus that works for almost everyone.  Then take the few who don’t agree and force them to conform with the general consensus.  The Snowe bill, an anti phishing act introduced by senator Snowe seems at its surface to be aimed at stopping phishing scams.  This pice of trash Legislation is so full of loopholes that it actually becomes a risk to free speech itself. 

The changes introduced by the bill are supposedly aimed at making it harder for a scammer to register a domain name and use that domain name to perpetrate their scam.  One would hope we all know that this won’t actually stop the scammer.  Someone smart enough to purpotrate a Phishing scam wouldn’t register the name legitimately in the first place.  What it will do is unbalance the way the domain registration and arbitration system works strongly in the favor of trademark owners.  Which by the way has nothing to do with Phishing.  As an example of this, say a Hewlet Packard spots someone re-selling an HP computer on ebay.  If the seller didn’t get explicit permission to use the trademark”Hewlett Packard” in their ad the seller is in violation of the Anti-Phishing Act of 2008.  Furthermore, for letting the seller post the listing, Ebay is also in violation.  Now HP can legally file criminal charges against the seller, Ebay, and sue for up to $6 Million in damages.  Futhering the problem, if the Snowe bill passes HP can take Ebay.com away because it is bieng used to infringe on HP’s Tradmark rights.  The icing on the cake is that HP wouldn’t even have to prove that their trademark was abused for Phishing.  All they would have to do is say their tradmark was used without permission and they’ve already won. 

The example above is probably never going to happen.  Why?  Because Ebay can afford expensive lawyers and even if they fought it out the matter would be settled.  But now think of this what about the same scenario except instead of ebay you have a mom and pop computer shop going up against HP.  Chances are Ma can’t afford all them fancy lawyers.  The end result will be a bankrupt competitor that HP shut down just because Ma can’t afford to fight back.

Presently if someone really had a grudge against Ebay they could register EbaySucks.com and rant away.  (Yes, I’m sure its already taken.)  Under current trademark law this is acceptable, and rightfully so.  The person isn’t infringing on the companies business.  Trademarks are there to prevent other people marketing similar products and confusing consumers about what they are really buying.  (Trade - Mark)  Think about the meaning of the words.  The Snowe bill will effectively kill these types of websites by allowing companies to take away the domains that contend with them without any type of arbitration.  In the end its free speech on the internet that lies in danger here.

To summerize I urge everyone to write their congressman and quash this bill.  Hopefully this senator can find himself a good telephone and then hang himself with the wire…  Seriously this isn’t the first piece of anti-internet legislation he has been involved with, and its downright shamful that he had the nerve to pitch it as a consumer friendly anti-phishing bill.  I’d much rather have the guy in office who just got busted for whoring it up.  He may have hurt a few people’s religeous sensability, but he wasn’t hurting everyone. Snowe is dangerous.  He is risking damage to the world economy and may even succeed in breaking the internet. 

With the presidential elections in the air alot of social topics are finding the way back into the news.  Everyone seems to want to know what their candidates think about abortion, immigration, capitol punishment, racism, and the economy.  I’m far from an expert any any of those fields, but perhaps its time we got the oppinion out there of someone who isn’t an expert.  What I’ve decided to blog about today is immigration.

Picture for a moment a scene from COPS where an officer drives by an alleyway and spots a gang hanging out.  The same typical scene plays out everyday in virtually every low income area in america.  The cop stops by to hassle them a bit while checking to see if they are up to no good.  From the officers point of view he sees a group of boys hanging out somewhere they shouldn’t be and a high probablility that they are about to commit a crime.   From the boy’s point of view they feel like the cop is out to get them. They invision racial profiling and any number of other concepts as why this cop decided to “Pick on Them.”  Most of these boys will see things the way the cop did after another 20 years or so.  assuming they live that long  They’ll look back at all the dumb things they did as kids and feel smarter for having grown out of it. 

This same scenario exists for illegal immigrants living illegally in the united states.  Every day they hear about more bills and legislation meant to “pick on them.”  The big difference is that the gang kids eventually grow up, get into better societal circles, and realize their mistakes.  Immigrants on the other hand get trapped into small divided communities where everyone has the same problem as they do.  They don’t get the opportunity to grow through the benefit of good social interaction.  The law continues to get harsher hoping they’ll go away.  Just like the gang kids though they don’t really have anywhere else to go.  If they fit in the country they came from do you really think they would have come here?

I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here and openly admit to everyone that I am not a great person.  I really don’t care whether we let them in or kick them out.  All I really want is for the problem to go away.  When I make my decision as to who I will vote for it doesn’t have anything to do with the candidates oppinion of abortion.  It doesn’t have anything to do with anything that doesn’t affect my bottom dollar.  I’m going to vote for whomever promises me the biggest tax refund.  Provided I think their claim is legit.

Illegal immigration hurts my pocketbook.  Money I pay for taxes goes to healthcare, public roads, emergency services, ect.  The more people who are drawing on that tax budget without paying into it the more it costs me.  Illegal immigrants are using the same roads and the same emergency services as the rest of us.  They just aren’t paying for them.  So the billion dollar question is how do we fix the leak in the budget?

Here is my approach:  Run a background check on anyone who wants to be a legal U.S. Citizen.  Make them pay for it.  If they can pass the background check let them in.  That way we can start charging them taxes.  We should eliminate deportation and instead jail anyone caught without papers.  Not to be mean, but as incentive for them to get legal and start paying taxes like the rest of us.  We can even run the background check and get them papers while they wait in a cell.  This will take a good portion of the criminal element that exists here without legal papers and eliminate it.  The millions of undocumented illegals will provide more than enough in additional taxes funds to cover any major flaws in the idea.  I know the reason alot of illegal immigrants don’t get legal is because of the exhorbitant cost.  There isn’t any reason it should cost more than a background check and a printed ID card. 

 For those of you who “Wish they would go back to their own country.” Think about it like this.  Why are the ones that really bother you here?  They came across the border to sponge off our economy and send money back to their families in other countries.  If we offer papers freely, and start charging taxes here is how it will go.  The ones that really want to be a part of the United States will get papers and pay up just like a good citizen.  The ones that are here to Sponge off our economy will either stay here illegally, or they will leave.  With threat of harsher punishment they will have a real motivation to either conform or leave.   Its different to come here and live illegally if all they have to fear is deportation. 

Face it, its not the fact that they are here that really bothers you.  Its the fact that they are here living tax free without fear of the law, while you and I are both paying taxes and following regulations every day.  Its time we opened up the borders and put everyone on a level playing field.  The United States would not look like such an attractive destination to the third world if we make it so life is just as difficult here as it was where they came from.   We could finally get back to the great capitalist society the united states was meant to be.  People with great ideas would flock here where their capitalist intentions could flourish.  People who want to be a drain on society would find it hard to compete in a more driven society.  Eventually the bottom tier of our population would start to emmigrate away, making a better life for those who are willing to work hard and conform.

For more than half my life I have worked in and around the traditional brick and mortar retail business.  I’ve gotten to know the trends and can easily see when items will sell or will not sell.   Sadly with the massive growth of the MegaRetailer Walmart and the bursting out of the internet into retail markets, many traditional retailers don’t have alot to look foreward to.   Traditionally a store’s sales plan would be calculated by taking last years same day sales, adjusting for a few economic factors, then adding a few percent for the growth in the community and in trademark recognition.  All in all you could pretty much expect that the sales plan would be a few hundred or a few thousand more than it was last year.  The trend I’m starting to see is that retailers are no longer able to make these increase plan goals.  The brick and mortar system will probably never die but I think it has reached saturation and many retailers will start to plan on making less if they want to survive.

It is with that knowledge that I have started my own foray into the business world looking at online retail as the way to make my fortune.  Everywhere I turn I see the potential to make money.  Many investors were scared away by the big DotCOM bubble burst, and thats a good thing for me.  The problem with most dotcom business models is that they based their ideas on the possibility of infinite growth. To take for an example pets.com they saw astounding increases in sales after launching their website.  Everyone wanted in because everyone wanted a part of the massive increase. The underlying problem is that every day there are a finite number of people who will buy a bag of dogfood online.  At launch pets.com hadn’t come anywhere near that capacity.  Still with massive growth they fumbled right past the point of saturation and found themselves with more goods than they could ever hope to sell.  This same situation plagued most dotcom startups until massive failure swept the market.

One of the most important things to have in business is your brand.  Anyone can tell you that pets.com is a million dollar name.  Even if the company behind it folds and folds again there will still be people every day who type in the name looking for that bag of dog food.  Likewise, everyone has heard about the guy who registered some short easily memorable domain name and sold it for millions.  But what has happened to the entreprenuer who wants to start an online business.  What do we do now that there isn’t any stellar names left.  In recent years companies that once made profits by registering domains for end users have taken to buying up domains.  At first this was to mark them up and soak end users for the profit.  It sucks, but I agree with their entreprenurial spirit.  However now many have gone one step too far.  Instead of marking up and selling the domains at a profit some companies have begun refusing to sell.  One of these companies name media has gotten to the point where they have registered tens of thousands of names and they are holding them for ransom.  So far they haven’t broken any of the rules, but were only talking the rules that exist today.  If these giant companies who aren’t playing fair continue to grow at some point the internet itself will break. 

Instead of bieng able to build a brand small business owners will have to buy visitors from companies that own all the brands.  The benefit to small business is completely gone and soon they won’t continue offering their products.  Business are there to make money and having to pay for each person who walks through their doors just doesn’t make sense.  (except to the guys getting paid)  As business starts to decline because companies can’t effectively market their products at a gain, the internet will stagnate.  Our only option is to change the way people find what they’re looking for online.  I like the type in “something.com” setup and I’d hate to see it go away but the nails are already in the coffin. 

 So what do you think?  Is creating some sort of anti-monopoly domain law the only way to turn things around.  One thing I came across while researching for the article I wrote on fidel castro was an interesting concept he put in place while ruling in cuba.  He made it a law that nobody could own more than 5 acres of land.  This puts an interesting spin on the domain monopoly idea.  If we were to limit the number of domains any one entity could own to say 200 or so every business or individual could reasonably compete and we still wouldn’t be unfair to the registrars and companies that are presently monopolizing the domain names.  They could keep the names they really want but they would be forced to concider what names they really want.  The older brother is hogging all the toys even though he doesn’t have time to play with them all.  Its time mom reached back and made him share with the younger siblings…

Generally in the mornings I watch a part of the news to see how the traffic and weather are going to treat me.  I commute for over an hour each day and I like to be prepared for what is to come.  Usually this ammounts to me listening to the reports while I get dressed with the television in the background.  During this past week I caught a comment about Fidel Castro resigning in the scrolling text across the bottom of the screen.  I think the name Castro probably drums up different feelings in me than it does to most americans.  I decided he would be a good topic for my latest blog.

It would be in poor taste for me to stand up and declare whether I think Fidel Castro was a good person or a bad one.  History shows that he has done many things that a god may condemn him for.  The very thought of guerilla warfare brings ideas of bombings, murders, torture.  You get the idea.  However if you stand back and look at his life he has always done what he belives is right.  As a young man he rebelled against and eventualy overthrew the leadership of his country.  He didn’t do this out of a viscious desire for power, but rather out of a bitter distaste for the current regime. 

Once in power Castro made policy to make Cuba better.  He started importing oil from the soviet union to improve the economy of his country.  He may not have thought this one through entirely as the oil refinerys in cuba were built and owned by the United States.  When they refused to process the oil that he was importing because it was coming from a communist country, Castro found himself in the middle of an international affair.  Again, to the dismay of practically everyone in the USA, he made the decision to do what he felt was best for Cuba.  He appropriated the oil processing plants.  This was done in much the same way as the government here would take your house or land if they needed to build a highway.  You would get a check for how much they figured it was worth and you would be thrown out. 

The decision for Cuba to become a communist country really didn’t have much to do with communist beliefs.  Rather the United Stated Presidency forced Fidel Castro into it by pressuring him to do things that were in the best interest of the USA instead of the best interest of Cuba.  By siding with the soviet union, Castro gained the external financial support Cuba needed and avoided the fine print that would have come along with US Support. 

 A while back I watched a documentary about the Cuban trade embargo.  The whole thing was supposed to make you think about how the embargo has made life terrible in cuba because trade is restricted.  The point the director was trying to make was obvious.  However after watching the show I walked away with a different feeling.  To me Cuba looked to be a paradise free from the financial enslavement that the big cities offer us.  The people of Cuba embody the spirit that once made us great. 

I would like to site an example from the documentary.  The name escapes me at the moment.  If I needed someone to weld something and there was a welding wire shortage we as americans would go to great lengths to import welding wire.  My project would wait until the wire became available.  If it never came available my project would probably never be finished.  In this documentary there was a man in this situation who did bodywork on cars.  He took apart a chainlink fence and straightened the wire to use for welding.  In all my years I’ve never met even one person who had that kind of spirit.  I know that strength resides in me, but I feel life wither away at it.  This strength that made us great in the 1940’s and 1950’s has long since died for the average american.  Any employer can attest to what I’m saying here.  When is the last time you found an employee who just finds a way to get a job done even when it seems impossible?  I’m not talking about a business owner who is doing it because of the financial incentive, but an employee who is doing it just because they know it needs to be done.

One thing that I and Fidel Castro have in common is that we were both  born into religeous families and grew to be devout atheists.  I think this perspective has shaped the way I see things.  Instead of viewing his leadership with fear and hate as most americans do I can see the reasoning behind the way he ruled.  The trade embargo set against Cuba has over the years put cuba out of the minds of the average joe.  Most would only think of cuba as the place that exports those illegal cigars.   I won’t stand up and say that Castro was a good man.  I won’t even say he was a brilliant dictator, as a true genius would have found a way to avoid things getting bad.  The Cuban missle crisis, the Trade embargo,  The assasination Attempts.  In fact most of his dealings were like the thoughts of a child.  The usa won’t play with me, fine I’ll go play with russia, na na na…  What I will say is that I respect him.  To stand up against the big bully known as the United States for his entire life through multiple assasination attempts and rule in a manner that he believed in takes guts.  He must have a set of cajones that any man would be proud of.