The Rocky is down

I just read in the news, that the first big news paper in the US closed down: The Rocky Mountain News, also called as the "our Rocky". 230 people lost their jobs. This year would have been the 150th birthday of the newspaper. In this occasions the coworkers made a small video (18 minutes + credits) about how it inflected their lives, their dreams. It is a well made movie, very sad with a small insight in how the news work.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3390739&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1


My opinion is based on my own deductions from Alvin Tofflers books: The Third Wave

The part of the video that struck me, as I'm interested in the topic, is where they were talking about the fact, that the crisis in the news industry was new (less than 10 years old), and they couldn't find a successful business model to tackle the problem.
While the rise of the internet as the main media and news provider/advertisement tool is really a problem that appeared just around a decade ago, the problems first hints about the struggle of the paper news providers was foretold already in the 70's.
Toffler wrote, that already in the 70's individualization was an important change in the mindset of the people. This change led to a variety of new products we are enjoying now. Individualism and localization led also to the expansion of small local newspapers/weekly/monthly papers of an area, about a hobby. These small papers made it possible that the huge newspapers lost readers and needed to localize some parts of their papers to the regions they were sold to.
I think this could have been the first warning to the media industry in general, and that they should have been more aware of possible changes. From that time on, individual projects kept appearing to appeal on the specific needs of customers, which were better to advertise for a selected group of people rather than to the major public.
The first networks like the internet were created at that time. Sci-fi like Star Trek was already produced in that era. The change in access to information could have been felt. Here the question is, what strategies where implemented to stay above the water, and what new ideas where they using to stay profitable. And for me it is even more surprising, when journalist talk about this unsuspected change... It is their work description.
Though it is always easier to have a big mounth afterwards, and it is also true, that noone likes to see, how something they based their lives on slowly fades away...

it's late, I hope I wrote down some stuff, that made sense...

Beeing torn apart by Richard Bona

14.04.2008 - Richard Bona in PKO, Bratislava, Slovakia. What a concert! (Click here for interview after the concert)

First I was afraid if I wouldn't like the concert after an AIESEC conference I still feel the PCS (post conference syndrome see: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/AIESEC note uncyclopedia is not a relevant, nor trustworthy source of information! see rather wikipedia!), longing for the great OC team, but the international atmosphere on the stage made me quite fast comfortable in my position as a listener ;)

I always loved the typical African singing voice which is for me so indescribable, and now I had an opportunity to listen to it. Though I heard less from it then I expected, it was still a marvelous event far beyond my expectations. His repertoire listed mainly traditional African songs and I would say Latino type of music.

The problem on the Jazz concerts in Bratislava is mainly that you have to sit. And this concert was definitely for dancing your soul out. That's why I say I was torn apart. Should I enjoy the well positioned tones following each other by solving their mystery or let my body flow with it. I lost to my natural desire very quickly an was hard to handle in my chair, though as usual most of the audience bewared a calm had. But the clapping, screaming, whispering in the background broke through and 30 minutes before the end of the concert the whole place was clapping and singing "sen sen sen"... so much that Mr Bona and his band stopped playing for around 2 minutes and made the audience enjoy themselves.

He is a great entertainer. He put a lot of great jokes in his concert and made us laugh a lot of times. Like "only women over 40 should sing now"... silence ... "oooh, when you are over 40 in Bratislava your finished" :)

He also gave a solo to his percussionist from Colombia, to have a solo. Amazing.

At the end of the concert there was a 3 minute long standing ovation, one song where the audience had to stand, and should dance... but that was already to much for this type of people... anyway the mood was good and after another 3 minutes of clapping it was said to us, that there is going to be no more music. Central European people don't complain after this. Used to the fact, that the end, means the end, and so the people where slowly moving on.

All in all I was moving all the time in my chair, one of the best concerts of my life, hope to have a good Latino party on Friday ;)

Another one down

It's always hard to accept, that something you got used to diminishes. I heard a lot of music on pandora.com, before this happened: http://www.pandora.com/restricted
I loved that station, found some new bands I find to my liking through it, and got never bored of the music. last.fm is a pour alternative, as it happens, that I can choose any kind of music, after a half an hour I get to hip-hop or electronic music. I think they sort the artist to eachother and not the songs... or I don't know... simply it never worked as fine as pandora.

And now my second source of quality media deceased. www.stage6.com a.k.a. stage6.divx.com. I loved that site a mass of high quality movies, from the early 50s, through documentations and animes... and if you were lucky, you could get a glimpse on the newest movies (of course because of the copyright issues they tried to delete the illegal stuff as soon as possible).
Features included high speed download, high quality movies, full screen view, no limit for the file length. And the possibility to save the movie on your hard disk.

Thank you for delivering a whole lot of quality movies. Thank you for the hours of movie, I have been seen because of you. I hope you will be resurrected soon!

Some more info:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/66198-divx-and-stage6-chock-full-of-fail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage6

-> As I see in the divx forum, a spark of the spirit lives on... 1 month to wait to see the truth: http://newstage6.com/ <- well a few days after I wrote this post the idea was banned on copyright claims, according to my knowledge. :( Will see what veoh.com has to offer... or some other sites... please give a note, if you know of a good provider

"Emotional security" or when things change

I'm very sad in the last weeks, cause I lost a point I could lean on emotionally. I believe that most of the people have habits they don't give up, because they are used to it and feel secure doing/experiencing them. Such habits, moments can relate to experiencing the same situation for a long time, or just a few moments which carved themselves in our minds. Some of the situations I value: is a shower with hot (not boiling) water on my skin, as I used to go to the thermal baths quite often in my childhood - this brings quite pleasant memories back. Or simply sitting before the computer and hearing music which is in harmony with my feelings. This is more like a dull feeling of comfort. A feeling of something I know and am sure, that nothing can surprise me or hurt me when I do it.

I lost such a secure point in my life this year. After so much talk about climate change and such this year I finally admitted that it can be true. The second sunny warm winter in the south of Slovakia. How sad for me. If you live your whole life with four seasons than you can't really imagine, how could it be without one of them, how could it change. And now it is here. While the spring is still full of the birth of life - bloom, animals appear, the summer is hot as always - giving the feeling of freedom and joy, the autumn amazes me with all its color and gifts I miss the winter. I miss the snow.

The nature died this year also. The trees lost their leaves, the flowers disappeared as most of the birds and animals, but the country didn't disappear before my eyes under a white layer of snow. Except of x-mas and New Years Eve there was no snow or snowing around. I miss the feeling from my childhood, when I made snowballs, enjoyed the falling snowflakes.
I shouldn't romanticize the memories too much. But the though of snow comforted me. And this feeling is missing this year. If I would go into the wiccan believe - though the sun was killed in autumn this year again, his body was never buried. The cycle of life lost from it's beauty.

I want to see real winter in my hometown again.

Thomas Barrett - The Pentagon's new map for war and peace

A new way of thinking on war for me. Not really a surprising idea, the problem is I didn't hear about it, yet. Wars in the past were started to get territories, usually the main powers were accepting the changes on the world maps, and if some citizens didn't agree, then they were executed... Well we are trying to establish a more "democratic" world in the last century, which means, that the citizens who disagree with the new situation shouldn't be butchered without consequences. But on the other hand we want as few as possible resistance on the conquered territories.
I think the sentence, which describes the presentation the best is:
"Don't plan for the war, until you plan for peace."
The presentator enforces the creation of a new force in the US army, which would specialize on "peacekeeping", it should be an open platform, which means that it should after a while be based on international cooperation rather then a US specialized force. The goal of the force should be - gaining trust, help at the rebuilding phase and give the possibility for a clean start. Anyway, the idea, how I understood it, sounds good, has of course it's possibilities in misusing, but generally looks fine for a positive non-zero outcome. (I will try to not forget and write on the non-zero outcomes another blog entry)

MANDATORY WATCHING!!!

The woman in the movie below talks about the steps getting to a dictatorship like Hitlers Germany and Stalins Soviet Union. She also compares the happenings to what happens now in the USA. I do not have the information verified showed in this clip. None of it. Anyway it is interesting to hear.



A Czech article I found this video in: Senátní návrh zákona č. 1955 kriminalizující názory, blogy, knihy a svobodu projevu vůbec po celé Americe
And look for articles/blogs about: "The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act". This is my best lead for now. Looks like a quite radical law...
I don't know for sure where to look for government stuff in the USA, but I think this is the right spot to read what it is all about: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/~c1108XuTgZ::