An academic study has found no change in US box-office sales for new movies. Given a choice between downloading an illegal copy or going to the theater, people choose the theater.

Overseas there was a difference. An average of 7% drop. This drop only takes place if there is a delay in overseas release of the movie.

This brings to light and the question of the real agenda behind SOPA and PIPA bills to give corporations control over blacklisting and suing website owners…

To read the full article go to: Mashable

After the largest display of unity and action both SOPA and PIPA bills have been shelved. Both bills were backed by Hollywood and the Music Industry, but opposed by Silicon Valley and all online tech interests. Not only that, but millions of web users and site owner too.

The January 18, 2012 Blackout sent a message loud an clear. We the people, still do have power and in these moments we finally get to see it in action.

Arstechnica has the scoop – Click Here

████████ █████ to ██████ our web. ████ ████████ don’t ████ me ███████ █████ it ██████. ████ to ████ ██████ and ████ ████

Something is amiss in our country and the whole world. A few have gained control over almost every aspect of our lives starting with a debt based system of money. Add to this an archaic educational system, un responsive government(s) and we have a recipe for disaster.

But their is a great hope. The People!

When we move in one unified direction together we can alter the very course of the future and make a planet where all thrive.

There is not a shortage of food or money, rather there is a distribution issue along with hoarding by a few.

This great article goes over the areas in our life we need to start taking control of as individuals and as communities. We must be proactive and in a creation mode to create the world we want to live in!

Please read this article linked below and share it widely.

READ: Open Letter to the Occupy Movement: It’s Time for the Ultimate Occupation

Are you aware that most of what you see on tv and in other media is controlled by a few? I am posting by permission the infographic from The Frugal Dad to help spread the information around. Click on the post title to view

Source: Frugal dad

Game Changer:

Two brothers in Canada are looking to bring internet to the other 99% of the world. Small villages and farms around the world could get internet via their existing cell phones with the worlds lowest cost tablet and new technology that reduces the data needed so even slow networks will work.

This is truly a game changer and is much needed to allow ideas and information to flow into areas isolated in many ways. Imagine the young boys and girls who might (and will) do amazing things once connected to their piers in other cities and continents!

This is an excerpt of the article. Link to the full article is below.

In the recent past, attempts to digitally link Indians has wagered heavily on widespread Wi-Fi access that simply doesn’t exist. Only a tiny fraction of Indian families have Wi-Fi at home.

However, 800 million people in India, and five billion people around the world, from all walks of life, have cell phones. In India, they pay about $5 a month for phone service. That cellular phone network is what DataWind technology, developed over several years in Montreal, keyed in on.

“We have a technology that reduces the amount of data required to go on the Internet by 30 times — that’s the core of what we do,” Tuli said.

“So we’re able to run (the device) on those low-speed networks that are available everywhere and we can afford to buy that bandwidth and sell it at a very low cost.”

The UbiSlate tablet has been in development over the past 18 months.

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20111120/canadian-brothers-hope-to-bring-world-internet-111120/#ixzz1eGKIzZ4x

Today I follow up my thoughts on “Blow Up Your TV, Throw Away Your Paper” from last week with a post from Dan Robles and the Ingenesist Project. He says it better than I can so here is an excerpt. You can read the rest on his blog.

Link at bottom of excerpt:

If we follow the Wall Street accounting model, the supply and demand for knowledge assets are cast against the factors of production; land, labor, and capital. The typical corporate human resource department looks to the community for labor units within commuting distance to a factory, and who are willing to rent their time in exchange a minimum amount of money.

But Land is Obsolete
Technology has made the idea of “land” as a factor of production almost obsolete. Knowledge assets travel over the Internet and can be deployed and organized in many ways across long distances without a factory. Indeed there are server farms and automation houses where things are made if needed – but these are hardly factors of production as they once were.

What exactly is a Labor unit again?
Machines have replaced much of what we once called “labor”. I am sitting at Starbucks where a smiling robot is the only thing missing from the age of automated lattes. The social, creative, and intellectual capital required to create, design, maintain, and serve the technology is what ushers us into the knowledge economy and the associated innovation economy.

Capital is arbitrary… Read The Rest on Ingenesist Project

Blow Up Your TV, Throw Away Your Paper……

Song writer John Prine’s words from Spanish Pipedream seem more relevant today than they did in 1971, 40 years ago. Not that he is saying that you should become a Christian. Rather that you should go out and find your spirituality, and ultimately control of you own life, on your own. Unplug, disconnect and free your mind (sounds sort of Matrix-esc).

Chorus from Spanish Pipedream:

“Blow Up Your TV,
throw away your paper
Go to the country,
build you a home
Plant a little garden,
eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own”

Many people seem to have woken up and are starting to say “I’m not gonna take it any more!”. Wall Street and the Banks are the current target and for good reason. If there are modern day pirates then they float on concrete seas and the wind in they’re sails is the freedom to pillage the american populous at will via Washington DC.

I won’t take anything away from these folks camping in the street and protesting as it’s simply part of the way things need to play out. But it’s not the solution, the end all, nor the future. Trying to bring back jobs, create jobs in the image of our past experience, is part of the problem. The people will still be beholding to a boss and a system that is falling apart. The current (and past) systems of consumption and manufacturing are no longer sustainable (there’s that word…).

We are moving into the age of Information, knowledge is king. Online social media is driving the connections between people who may have never met if the Web didn’t exist. The speed of innovation on this knowledge sharing is staggering. The power that is in the hands of the world’s other 99% is still not fully realized by these same people.

I was lucky enough to run into and start following Dan Robles on Twitter and then on his website: Ingenesist. He is part of a group of innovative thinkers who are helping to form the new ideas for our future in business, consumption and information. I highly recommend you read his blog and share it widely.

He recently posted an interesting article on “A Better Way to Occupy WallStreet“.

This short paragraph sets the stage:

“Here’s the trick. Wall Street is built on a foundation where the factors of production are land, labor, and capital.  All we need to do is shift the factors of production to something else. We don’t actually need to shift Wall Street, we need to shift ourselves.”

What at thought! Take our power of choice, information and use it differently. We bend, not the spoon… (yes, another Matrix reference…)

We can use the internet to create a new economic circle that is outside of the old systems yet effects them.

Following Dan I met another interesting blogger who brings it a bit more “Home” and into the physical world. Robert Paterson’s blog had an interesting post titled: “Freedom 99% – A movement to decouple from the 1%ters who control our lives #freedom99%”

“…But the best action to take is to get free from their control. To break their power by making their business no longer viable. We can do that by reducing their incomes by no more than 15%, for such an attack on the bottom line takes them into bankruptcy.

This is all you need to do – reduce the profits consistently by abut 15%. Conversely we get free of their grip and we re-allocate money to the rest of us in the 99%.

Food is a good place to start. Robin and I have shifted about 90% of our buying to the local producers and to local distributors…”

We have two sides to the equation. One is the World Wide Web connecting a global community with a common goal of creating the new world. The other is more immediate; where we spend our dollars. Focusing on buying local for our food and even supporting local manufacturers (small clothing makers, furniture, etc.) is not only good for our health but also brings to and keeps more money in your local community. Robert even goes on to suggest we move toward local fuels for heating. Efficient pellet stoves and heaters for our local schools and government buildings that efficiently burn biomass.

Very quickly our communities and individually we take back control and help our community become stronger.

For a long term shift in power and moving a vast amount of the global wealth to “the other 99%” Dan Robles suggests a new way to look at what is valuable:

“First, we need to build a knowledge inventory of all the useful stuff in our brains and integrated by geographic proximity so we all can find each other. This is how we’ll mimic land and labor. Next, the knowledge inventory must be anonymous until the point of transaction – this is not for privacy concerns, rather, we need to do this to create scarcity (nothing personal, Zuck). This is how we mimic “capital”.”

This may seem esoteric and non-specific enough for many to understand. But believe me, there are many things coming together on the Web for information and research for the masses that are already setting things up for a huge change in the world. I will bring evidence to this blog in the near future.

We all want security for ourselves and our loved ones. But Change is the nature of the world. Embracing it and being just slightly ahead of the curve can put you in a position of being secure in yourself and the knowing that you can adapt and be part of making these changes rather than feel like being on the receiving end and taking what you get.

This brings us back to the current situation of “60′s style sit ins” on Wall Street. Those in the street are feeling the changes but reacting to the 1% who are also feeling the changes and trying to hold on to what they know. It’s natural to protect what you have and have spent a long time building. It is said that it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his income depends on him not understanding it.

Sometimes we simply need to let go to get to the other shore.

Where to begin? Such incredible sadness in our house today.

Steve Jobs made that dent in the world that he was looking to do. He affected almost everyone on the planet in one way or another. Either directly by a product or indirectly by virtue of changing the technology industry forever.

Our journey with Apple and Steve began the day I received my first Mac in 1991. A used SE. Prior to that I would not touch a computer. I was not enamored with DOS. But a Mac… Now I could do this.

I didn’t’ know anything about computers, Apple, Steve or Woz. I only knew I liked this box and it made my life as an entrepreneur easier. Over the years I have had a number of Macs. We currently have 3 Macs in our house, 2 iPhones, 2 iPods, and Airport Extreme and a lot of Mac Software. The iPhone 4S will be a member of our family when they arrive later this month.

Notice I said “member of our family”. I know… It’s an inanimate object. But, it is integrated into our life so closely and everything we do each day that it is like a part of us. Our Macs are our window to the world and a way to communicate across continents with folks we would never meet otherwise. However you slice it, our Macs make us money. They are part of the business and the virtual world we work in. The connections we make are real and many times lead to meeting in person or via online live video. With the iPhone 4S we will even more closely knit ourselves together around the world with new or better communication abilities.

Did Steve see this in the beginning? Did he know with is uncanny sense that we would arrive here and find him waiting for us to catch up? Is he now leading the way to a place we all must go someday?

I don’t have proof but it seems somehow fitting that the new iPhone is called the 4S. Many folks where disappointed that it’s not called the iPhone 5. In retrospect I imagine they are feeling a bit sheepish right now. 4S = For Steve

S

Being part of the Apple Family for 20 years and attending events like MacWorld, watching Steve give his famous Keynotes we, Faith and I, felt like he was a friend and neighbor. We drank the coolaid, dove into being Mac Fans and loved every minute of it. We will continue to do so.

I never met Steve in person, shook his hand or thanked him directly for his contribution to my life. Maybe someday in some far off dimension I will have that chance. But I think he knows. How could he not? Today, just 24 hours since his passing the world seems shook to it’s core and not just Apple Fanboys are feeling it.

I have read only a small portion of the blogs and news article as well as the videos talking about Steve Jobs. I will link to a few at the bottom of this post for you. Walt Mossberg is one of my favs. If I could only have been a fly on his shoulder all those years he had with private, off the record meetings with Steve…

In the end, we are still here. And Steve would like us to keep moving forward like the Apple Team did, led by Tim Cook, at the Tuesday event. They knew the score for Steve. They even had a chair with a reserved sign on it for him.

People like Steve Jobs challenge us to be better, be creative, to make the world a better place. To bring magic into it. This is what Steve did for many of us. Helped us be like little children again and believe. For those who never understood the culture and fanaticism around Apple there is no explaining. You feel the magic or not.

No, there won’t be another Steve Jobs. Apple will be fine for the next 5 years as the plan is set and the vision imparted. After that the team at Apple will have to come into their own. Just like each of use must if we want to achieve anything in life.

Thanks Steve for inspiring us and giving us great tools and toys to play with. You will be missed!

“Don’t be sad because it ended, smile because it happened” Dr. Seuss

The WOZ on Steve 

Wald Mossberg – The Steve Jobs I knew

Ars Technica Article

This Post has been moved to my Photography site www.redrockimages.net

Just seemed more appropriate.