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Top 10 Censored Stories of 2003: Utne

The January/February 2004 issue of Utne magazine features the Top 10 censored stories of 2003, as compiled each year by faculty members and students at Sonoma State University in California.

1. Bush Insiders Plan For A New American Empire
You saw this one on Ask-Steve.com in June.

2. Homeland Security Threatens Our Civil Liberties
You saw this one here in July.
[See also: Senator Orrin Hatch wants to destroy your computer and SHUT UP!: The preemptive war on free speech and independent thought.

3. U.S Illegally Removes Pages From Iraq U.N. Report

4. Rumsfeld's Plan To Provoke Terrorists

5. Unions Under Siege

6. FCC Hands Corporations More Control Over Internet

7. The U.S. Defies Nine International Treaties

8. Uranium Weapons Used In Iraq Despite Known Risk To Soldiers And Civilians

9. Afghanistan Sees No Relief From Poverty, Sexual Inequality, And Civil Disruption

10. New Threat Of Colonization In Africa

Top 10 Censored Stories of 2003: Utne

The return of the Internet: Salon.com

A Dec. 24, 2003 article in Salon.com says that "The Net, it turns out, still matters."

Howard Dean's online machine
"After what Howard Dean did on the Web, candidates are now taking the Web very seriously."

Electronic voting in the crosshairs
"Electronic touch-screen voting machines seem like a fabulous idea... The only problem is, the machines don't produce any physical proof (a so-called paper trail) of an accurate election result... Fortunately, there's some sign that lawmakers are beginning to worry about paperless machines."

SPAM SPAM SPAM
"Condolences to anyone trying to have a serious discussion via e-mail about erectile dysfunction this year"

Time to learn Hindi or Mandarin?
"Two U.C. Berkeley researchers calculated that some 14 million white-collar office jobs in the United States are "vulnerable" to offshoring, outsourcing and near-shoring."

Hollwood's copyright craziness, and iTunes to the rescue
"Have the lawsuits slowed the illegal music trade? The expert consensus is that they seem to have had only a minimal effect: Trading volume has decreased slightly, if at all... if, in the long run, 2003 is seen as a turning point in the music business... the shift will probably be thanks to a man named Steve Jobs rather than the RIAA's lawsuits."

Genes Inc.
"Fears that tinkering with our genes may make our descendents better looking and smarter, but less human were a bit overshadowed this year by all the happy hoopla around the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA."

President Bush's war against nature
"In 2003, the Bush administration's assault on the environment became so pervasive and virulent as to be almost comic. Programs to weaken regulations, increase pollution, and permit more logging went by the Orwellian names 'Clear Skies' and 'Healthy Forests.'"

SCO attacks Linux
"In the world of open-source software, Microsoft has always been public enemy No. 1 -- but this year the SCO Group, a small firm in Utah, seems to have dethroned Bill Gates... But even if SCO doesn't manage to invalidate the GPL, its attacks could very well contribute to a climate of fear surrounding Linux -- a possibility that will surely be savored by the folks in Redmond."

Hydrogen to the rescue?
"...some environmental groups saw the focus on a coming hydrogen economy... as an industry-giveaway ploy to avoid regulating automakers and polluting industries right now. Even China, in its first such attempt at regulation, adopted stricter fuel-economy standards than the United States.

Anita Borg
"The technology industry lost its most prominent, respected and effective advocate for women in 2003: technologist Anita Borg. Borg, who died of brain cancer at age 54 on April 6, founded the Institute for Women and Technology as well as the Systers mailing list, where a generation of women in computer science met and learned from each other online."

Read the full text here: The return of the Internet -- Salon.com

You can't go right with AT&T: The Ripoff

AT&T Wireless must be getting desparate for money. It was only a matter of time, I suppose. You can't abuse your customers and overcharge for your inferior services for too long and not feel the backlash. It seems they're attempting to compensate for their customers leaving in droves by trying to double bill the few of us remaining.

You've heard from me how AT&T Wireless lost cell service to an entire service area for at least four weeks (where both my home and office are located) and wanted to keep billing me (and all their other customers) as though nothing were wrong [see You can't go right with AT&T, August 11, 2003]. Now they've decided to start cutting off people's cellular service and tell the customer they haven't received payment. This is what they've done with me, overcharging me $270 in three months.

I attempted to make a phone call using my mobile phone yesterday and, instead of the party I dialed picking up, I got an AT&T customer abuse agent (this my more accurate term for what they call "customer service agents"). I told them I was in a hurry and asked why my call had gone to them instead of my intended number. The rep smugly informed me that my cellular service had been suspended for lack of payment. Since this had just happened last month and I was 99% sure payment had been made, I didn't react well to this. The rep assurred me that the account was three months delinguent and that I needed to pay them $270 if I wanted to be able to use my cell phone. Having no choice as I had to make my call, I stood on the street corner with credit card in hand and paid them their extortion money. Then I had to call back literally six times before my service was restored and I was able to make my phone call. Each time they told me that it "could take up to 24 hours," and each time I told them that it damn well better not take more than 10 minutes. The entire ordeal took about 45 minutes.

When I returned to the office and pulled up my bank account statement, I found that I had not missed a single payment and that all payments had cleared! It wasn't even a matter of a check getting lost in the mail or misplaced. I had made all payments electronically, they had accepted them — and simply decided that they needed to charge me double for those three months. This despite the fact that their service is terribly overpriced compared to the competition.

If you have AT&T Wireless now, dump them before they waste more of your time and money. If you are considering getting a cell phone for the first time, or switching providers, avoid AT&T Wireless like the plague. They are not to be trusted and their service is not to be relied upon. If my experience is not unique, and I can't imagine it is, you will be abused, ripped off and left in the lurch when you need your cell phone most.

RSS: Really Streamlined Surfing

RSS is hot, and I'm not talking about Repetitive Stress Syndrome. I'm referring to Rich Site Summary, also known as Really Simple Syndication. Or as I call it, Really Streamlined Surfing (which may actually help prevent Repetitive Stress Syndrome!). You've no doubt seen links on sites (like this one) that say "RSS," "RDF," "XML" or "Syndicate this site." This is RSS in action and many hail it as no less than the future of Internet publishing.

RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS...
XML.com

Some see RSS as no less than the replacement for e-mail as the online publishing platform of choice:

...some e-mail publishers are starting to think the unthinkable -- giving up on e-mail and moving to other means of reaching subscribers. Yeah, that sounds pretty radical. But with e-mail under siege and no relief in sight, radical measures are required. It's time to move on to something that's (we hope) spam-proof... With e-mail on a rapid decline, RSS is the heir apparent.
Editor & Publisher

Adam Curry has some interesting ideas and, while I don't agree with all of them, I can wholeheartedly agree with this:

I like this model best because it requires both sides of a conversation to commit to the relationship and simultaneously allows for either side to break it off if desired. Just unsubscribe if you're on the receiving end, and stop publishing if you're the sender. Pub/Sub [publish/subscribe] also makes email lists and groups simpler. Just let new subscribers actually subscribe to your message flow!
Adam Curry's Weblog

Imagine that! Actually being able to unsubscribe when you want to. As it is now, I still get e-mail newsletters and other notifications that contain no information on how to unsubscribe. Others require you to send an e-mail from a specific e-mail address — a huge hassle if you have multiple e-mail accounts. In far too many cases, the burden is still placed entirely on the user to jump through the hoops necessary to unsubscribe. RSS fixes that all that.

"E-mail is dead, period," declares Chris Pirillo, the Internet entrepreneur who distributes about 400,000 e-mail newsletters weekly. "I don't care what kind of legislation goes through, people aren't signing up for newsletters anymore. People are assuming that every e-mail publisher is a spammer."

Pirillo's Lockergnome has begun actively directing subscribers away from e-mail subscriptions, touting RSS... instead as a foolproof way to avoid the spam bottleneck.
internetnews.com

The attraction for me is the ability to organize and browse all my favorite news sites and Weblogs without annoying ads and unnecessary clutter. After trying a couple of RSS feed readers, I cracked open my wallet for the clear winner — FeedDemon from Bradbury Software, maker of TopStyle Pro, the best CSS editor (and more) on the market. FeedDemon is well designed, feature-rich and fun to use.

If you haven't discovered RSS, dive in! You won't look back — except to wonder how you ever got by without it.

The elusive T-Mobile HotSpot support number

If you use the T-Mobile HotSpot wireless Internet access service, let me spare you the nightmare I just went through. Put the customer support number in your cell phone address book! The number is 1-800-981-8563.

I'm working on a couple of deadlines today and can't afford downtime. My wireless connection dropped and none of my normal tricks worked...

How you found me in the last 24 hours

I don't know if anyone finds this as interesting as I do, but here are a few of the words and phrases that people searched on in the last 24 hours that brought them to my site. I have linked each phrase to the corresponding page of the site:

lowry mays bush
Replace the Hard Drive in a Toshiba Notebook Computer
Media + Desensitization
master of your domain
ask steve
celebrity hangouts las vegas
Cuss Control Academy
why not to shop at wal mart
women use men's restroom long lines
posting photos from cell phones
American accent in New York
tools riaa uses
launchcast problems
never assume malice stupidity
t-mobile wi-fi card
contacting yahoo
flu vaccine preparation
atm machine TOOK MY CARD
Take back your time day
respiratory hygeine

Response from Yahoo!Mail Plus Customer Care

Well, dear readers, I continue to get requests for help and reports of Yahoo!'s failure to properly support both their e-mail and their music streaming service. I went to bat, sending them a request for help with your various problems, including a link to my post and your comments. Following is my message and their reply.

Original Message Follows:

Rhapsody rules the online music world

It has been almost exactly four months since I posted my original entry about Rhapsody, the streaming music service from RealNetworks. I despise the Real player and format as it is terribly inferior to everything but Quicktime, but Rhapsody has proven itself to be the runaway winner of its category.

As I expected, they've continued to expand their music library—they added 71 new albums on December 17th alone. The streaming has been almost flawless.

If you haven't tried it, yet, consider giving it a shot now. If you know someone already using it, ask them to get it for you for Christmas as they have a special gift offer right now where you get 3-months of service and 10 downloads for $24.95.

Rhapsody

[Update - 2007.01.17: Rhapsody now officially sucks—bad. Version 4 is loaded with bugs and they're making no attempt at all to fix it. You'd be far better off going with Yahoo Music. Or you can try a couple of very interesting new players in online music: Pandora and finetune.]

MusicMatch Jukebox 8 is a mess

MusicMatch Jukebox used to be the best MP3 playing and ripping application on the market. No more. Ever since I installed version 8, it has stopped working altogether. Not only that, but I couldn't even kill the process with Ctl+Alt+Delete. When I tried to uninstall it, it said I couldn't because it was in use. I rebooted my machine and was then able to uninstall it. Then my CD-ROM drive and DVD burner disappeared from my system. I rebooted again and they reappeared.

It is unfortunate, but MusicMatch now seems to be a bloated, poorly-coded, bug-ridden mess. I honestly hope they get things straightened out, but until they do, I'm not going to play with fire.

Yahoo! support is lacking

There have been a number of pleas for help posted to my entry on Yahoo! Mail Plus. Many people have expressed the same frustration I have — you don't get a response from a human until you've responded to numerous computer-generated auto replies. These template replies are almost without exception useless and a complete waste of time.

Unfortunately, I am not an expert on Yahoo! Mail Plus and can't offer much assistance. Instead, I've forwarded Yahoo! support the entire text of (and a link to) the original entry and asked them to respond to each of the folks who have posted questions. We'll see what happens. If those of you that posted here get a direct response, please pass it along so I know how it turns out.