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PATH: BS | Technology | Internet
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Welcome
Posted by Admin
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 Welcome to BSAlert.com - This is the place to rant and rave about stuff that bothers you. Illogical things in the news, legal issues, class action lawsuits, toxic substances, government goofs, corporate hanky panky, misleading advertising, lies in politics or whatever!
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READ MORE | 20 comments since 2010-07-08 21:10:28 | Comment on this Article |
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What is Net Neutrality And Why Should You Care?
Posted by Pile
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 What is Net Neutrality and why should people care about it?
In a nutshell, NN is the idea that the Internet is a shared, global network that should not be tampered with at its base level. If you want to be part of the network, you have to respect the network. This means, if you want your sites to be accessible to everybody else, then you have to make sure your customers have access to the entirety of the Internet. You can't break it into pieces and show either prejudice or favoritism in determining which content can be accessed over your system.
Simple as that. You want in? All or nothing. Play FAIR. Treat others the way you like to be treated.
Beyond this, it's important to note that before the Internet came around, there were plenty of private networks created and run by private companies. They could do what they wanted. But the Internet was created by taxpayer money and made wide open to anybody because it was a public resource. Because nobody "owned" the Internet, it prospered and eventually became the default network.
Now private companies want to take control of it and slice it into pieces and charge extra for parts, or deny you access to parts of it if the content isn't something they agree with. That's really bad.
Net Neutrality opponents argue that Net Neutrality is anti-freedom-of-speech, but they are lying. What they really mean, is that they believe they should have the freedom to deny you access to content over their network, and if you don't allow it, you're denying them their rights. It's a bizarro, irrational argument.
Why do some companies want Net Neutrality abolished?
Simple. They can make more money charging their customers for access. They can shut down competitive Internet services so they're the only game in town. The abolishment of Net Neutrality will cost consumers more and offer them less choices.
The Net Neutrality fight is split clearly along party lines.
The Republicans and the Libertarian parties are in favor of abolishing Net Neutrality. Their corporate benefactors have paid them well to push a variety of narratives convincing people it's a good thing to get rid of. To them, it's about money and control. Their idea of "freedom of speech" is refusing to carry anyone else's traffic on their network if they can't monetize it the way they want.
The Democrats have been the only party to consistently fight to protect the neutrality of the Internet. If you care about this issue, there is a party you can vote for that will protect it. Remember this in 2018. It's really important if you want full access to information, news and everything else.
It's quite popular to say, "both parties are the same" and they both are pawns to special interests, but not all parties are equally beholden to special interests, and the Net Neutrality issue is another clear example of this. If you care about the Internet, protest, contact your representatives. If you don't want to have to keep doing this over and over, vote for people who have a clear respect for the Internet. Pay attention to which parties are easier to reach and more attentive to your needs.
Some corporations are being deceitful.
You may on occasion hear that AT&T or Verizon is in favor of Net Neutrality. In reality, they and other large providers have spent millions to shut it down. Now they're muddying the waters trying to re-define what Net Neutrality means. If they can't get it abolished, then they'll write their own series of bills that re-defines what NN is, and includes the loopholes they want to filter and control traffic on their network. No matter what they say, the large providers are not friends of Net Neutrality. Beware of ANY legislation they propose which supposedly "protects" the sanctity of the Internet.
VOTE IN 2018! |
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"Vagina Institute" Poorly Disguised Sham
Posted by wizeGurl
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[Sex] |
 Finally...a group devoted to serious scientific study of female sexuality. "The Vagina Institute specializes in collecting and processing, data and information about the vulva and vagina." Or is it?
As if the serious grammatical error in the very sentence describing the institute's mission weren't already a dead giveaway that something is up here, it takes about five seconds to figure out that the site is a gigantic fraud...not-very-good porn and, what's more, propaganda for various ineffective techniques to "enhance" women's naughty bits poorly disguised as clinical study of real medical and sexual issues. (URL withheld because we don't want to help its page rank...Google it if you must see for yourself.)
I've got no problem with porn, and hey, the Internet is unregulated...if you want to put up a site suggesting that poontang is ugly and needs dubiously effective, costly fixes at the earliest possible opportunity, have at it. But come on...let's at least be honest about it. The sad thing about this site is that a few women might actually come here looking for information about their vaginas and whether they are "normal," and come away convinced that they need to spend thousands of dollars on "natural, non-surgical solutions" before any guy would ever deign to look at them down there. (After all, everyone knows that looking is the #1 priority for guys when they've got a willing naked woman on their hands.) This site is no different from spam telling you how to make your penis bigger, except that it's not as up-front about it. |
READ MORE | 4 comments since 2012-07-08 03:21:40 | Comment on this Article |
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Myspace Picture Leads To Arrest
Posted by Pile
(11200 views) [E-Mail link]
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| Here's a suggestion to you kids out there. I know it's a tough life for you, with parents and school and all that stuff. But if you're running around toting a backpack and car containing hashish, marijuana, compact digital scales, packaging materials, bongs, 4 knives, over a dozen hypodermic syringes, gun powder and potassium nitrate, you might not want to call attention to yourself with a picture of you smoking from a Bong on Myspace. Just a thought. Getting busted trying to make homemade bombs might be a drag, not to mention the whole, "Look at me world, I smoke pot" Myspace attention grab. |
READ MORE | 1 comment since 2006-06-12 10:41:22 | Comment on this Article |
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Short Toots
Posted by wizeGurl
(13268 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Essential Factoids]
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- A school in Colorado has banned flag-waving. Plus, apple pies have been ruled "Too sticky" for the cafeteria's floors.
- In a speech given in Washington, D.C., President Bush said about democracy, "One of the great things about America, one of the beauties of our country, is that when we see a young, innocent child blown up by an IED, we cry." Apparently, in monarchies, dead children are met with laughter and merrymaking.
- A study in Michigan found that children behave better, and sleep more soundly, after their tonsils are removed. It helps if the parents threaten to take them back to the hospital and have other parts cut out if they don't straighten up.
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Bumper Sticker Store
There's a huge mutiny in progress over at Reddit.com. This is an Internet-first as far as I know and it'll probably be big news soon. The company fired an employee that was responsible for helping a bunch of moderators of different subs, and left them in chaos. They decided to make their part of Reddit private, and then in solidarity hundreds of other moderators joined and have been turning off parts of Reddit one-by-one since yesterday.
These days everybody is using Facebook. But did you know if you pay to promote something, you might actually hurt your business and waste your money? A diligent Internet truth-seeker shows you in this video that all is not what it seems when it comes to advertising on Facebook, and even Facebook itself is at least indirectly involved in phony and fraudulent activity.
It's no secret I like Reddit. I myself run a few popular subreddits. But like many, it's impossible to have a love-love relationship with this site. For every cool section, there's another one that makes your skin crawl. For every person you can relate to, there's eighteen dozen who appear to be Tourettes-infected-6-year-olds. 
If you've been wondering where we've been to these last few months, not cranking out as many stories as we usually do, it's because we've been working on a super secret project that is now time to be revealed. 
A huge Internet outrage has erupted in the wake of GoDaddy's latest commercial leak online of what was apparently going to be their Superbowl commercial. Which has now been pulled.
Virginia's Supreme Court on Friday upheld the first US felony conviction for spamming. The spammer will serve nine years in prison for sending what authorities believe to be millions of messages over a two-month period in 2003.
A 27-year-old man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail.
Oh, you've seen live webcams. Some of them weren't even porn...there were baby pandas to watch, Swiss Alps to check weather conditions on, even live executions in dangerous parts of the world that you really wish you hadn't seen. But you've never seen this kind of live webcam before. It's so suspenseful...so shocking...that you might just not be able to handle this much excitement.
Google's popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they're in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.
Spamming scumbag Jeffrey Brett Goodin has been convicted under the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act, the first person in the U.S. prosecuted successfully under the law. He is facing a sentence of up to 101 years in a federal prison after being found guilty of numerous illegal acts. According to prosecutors, Goodin was convicted on multiple counts in addition to the CAN-SPAM conviction, including wire fraud, unauthorized use of credit cards, misuse of the AOL trademark and attempted witness harassment.
Their web site states, "The Church Of Googlism believes a convincing argument can be made stating that the search engine Google is the closest mankind has ever come to experiencing an actual Deity. It is the ultimate bridge between people and information.
Roger Duronio was paid a salary of $125,000 by the bank and was expecting a bonus of $50,000. When he only got $32,000 he decided to take revenge on the bank, prosecutors claim.
Online dating is a huge industry now. So big that some claim it's a huge marketplace for fraud and scamming, which is prompting lawmakers to consider passing legislation to regulate more of these activities.
A recent study by McAffee company, Siteadvisor.com has revealed some interesting data: that virtually all the search engine results contain links to sites that install adware and subversive programs. Ok, that's nothing new, but some search engines are "cleaner" than others. 
A neat site online called GasBuddy has compiled an interactive U.S. map showing gas prices by county. Unfortunately, the more desireable, more populous places seem to have the highest prices, so unless you're keen on living in Utah, you probably will have a hard time finding a fuel bargain. But the site does break down listings to individual stations by price so it's worth a look.
New Orleans mayoral candidate Kimberly Williamson Butler is not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed--or the most honest. Her campaign website featured a lovely header with a photo of Butler smiling in front of a charming French Quarter scene. The only problem was the large Disney trash can on the street, revealing that Butler was smiling in front of 
It seems that in addition to the warrentless spying that the NSA has been doing on American citizens, in clear violation of U.S. law, isn't the only way they've been keeping an eye on us. There was also the illegal cookies.
A new web site has been launched in Los Angeles with the noble concept of allowing people to e-mail others anonymously and notify them that they may have been exposed to a sexually-transmitted disease.