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Documentary for Dinner: Let's Make Money (2008)

karma

Let's Make Money explores financial exploitation in both emerging and developed economies by following the hypothetical and hidden trail of an ordinary bank account depositor's money. The film illustrates that while globalization is reducing the cost of goods and services, protectionist subsidization in developed countries reduces workers in the developing world to virtually unpaid slaves in an effort to compete.

http://thoughtmaybe.com/video/lets-make-money

Privatization and real-estate speculation in the developed world are also touched on briefly but I think the filmmakers could have expanded greatly on the clear ramifications of this rather than focusing mostly on the nationalistic sentiment against foreign investment.

My favourite part of this film is John Perkins' interview. What John has to say is the key to understanding how and why the United States goes to war with countries that pose no obvious threat while propping up some of the most vile regimes on the planet at the same time.

Documentary for Dinner: The 2nd Assassination of JFK (2010)

karma

The 2nd Assassination of JFK bemoans the recent loss of funding and subsequent program terminations at NASA through interviews with retired employees and politicians in the vicinity of the Kennedy Space Center.

Despite the jobs being lost as an indirect result of NASA's de-funding I for one am quite optimistic about the future of corporate space ventures.

I am particularly tired of the time-worn argument most NASA defenders (including those in this film) eventually resort to - without NASA there would be no microwave oven and so on. This film makes that argument in one breath then in another points out that virtually everything made by NASA is done by corporate contractors. Would we really have no microwave oven without NASA? One can not really say how the course of development for any number of technologies would be affected were there no space program. I feel the argument is empty and distracting.

The film also points out that jobs in every state are affected by budget cuts to NASA but does not explore the widely accepted fact that this is by design; a tactic intended to prevent congress from shutting their programs down by putting the jobs of sizeable numbers of constituents on the line for every congressperson and senator.

Documentary for Dinner: The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001)

karma

The second film in Oliver Stone's presedential biographical trilogy, The Day Reagan Was Shot recounts how the most powerful nation on earth was reduced to a headless chicken by the actions of one nutter.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3338be80b396021bfe1a1b7e1d42cb01de9b4ab4&dn=THE+DAY_REAGAN_WAS_SHOT.avi&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.istole.it%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80

Documentary for Dinner: A Competent Democracy (2012)

karma

A Competent Democracy (newfuturemedia.net) examines the purported shortcomings of politics-based democracy and endorses a more technical approach.

While this short film feels like an abbreviated Venus Project documentary I am always happy to watch something that is more about solutions than problems.

I am reminded of Voltaire's preference for enlightened despotism:

Democracy seems suitable only to a very little country, and further it must be happily situated. Small though it be, it will make many mistakes, because it will be composed of men.

Unfortunately, being "enlightened" is dangerous as it justifies any action in the mind of the despot. Utopians feel justified in imposing their vision because they feel their vision is, by defninition, perfect. This enevitably results in - at best - trampling on the visions of others.

Wall Street Journal Says Big Screens are Bandwidth Hogs

karma

Wall Street Journal contributor Clint Boulton gaffed in a blog entry Monday titled "CIOs Beware: New Macbook Pro Will Be a Bandwidth Hog."

Clint argues that larger screens take up more bandwidth, apparently forgetting that there is a difference between screen resolution and the actual resolution content is delivered in:

...Better quality displays require more network bandwidth, which allows users to increase data consumption. Consider that experts told CIO Journalearlier this year that the new iPad, which includes a Retina display of 2048-by-1536 resolution with 3.1 million pixels, would slow enterprise networks to a crawl and increase data costs from carriers. Now imagine how a Macbook with 5.1 million pixels — two million more than the new iPad — will increase data traffic in office networks.

CIOs would do well to monitor network usage and make sure their employees aren’t watching too much high-definition content on YouTube and other data-hungry websites. CIOs whose policies for content consumption are lax must be prepared to increase bandwidth. Another option might be for CIOs to require workers who want to bring their own high-powered devices to the office to bring their own bandwidth as well. At the very least, CIOs might want to follow the lead of companies such as Google, which give employees a monthly “bill” for the IT services that they consume, and make the usage a matter of record throughout the company.

Apparently Clint is doing everything he can to meet his publishing quota, this bollocks is a continuation of his March 22 article, "The New iPad Could Create High-Speed Headaches for CIOs"

The rotten "experts" (with an s) in all this seem to be Amtel CEO P.J. Gupta who "sells software that sets alerts and notifications on bandwidth consumption."

One wonders how this technically challenged sap managed to get a gig writing articles for Chief Information Officers when he can't tell the difference between a sales pitch and objective analysis. I can see the HR people at WSJ are top notch.