Tech consultant for Olympia, Lacey, And Tumwater

The reason Rupert Murdoch might win the battle against Google

There is one piece of information that I have yet to see in the debate over Rupert Murdoch pulling his content from Google. He own Fox news and they have an insanely huge pull with people. Fox news viewers are the worst of the right wing wackos. These people do not think. They just do whatever the pundits at Fox news tell them to. The reason Bush was able to cause so much destruction is the same reason why Obama has had such a hard time fixing things. The right are kind of Borg like. The left will debate and scrutinize things until well after the proverbial bell has rung. Liberals (I’m a liberal myself) can’t get anything done because they can’t ban together as one. For the Dems it means nothing to have a majority because they won’t ban together on anything anyways. The right however will. They will do it every time without even thinking. This is why they always win when screwing over the American public and the Dems always loose when trying to fix things.

So back to the whole Rupert Murdoch thing, this is why he can win this. Notice what he has done to news? Gone are the days of the non-biased news anchor. Everything is either far right (Fox) or far left(MSNBC). A news network has no chance of ratings if they try to compete with silly things like journalistic integrity. That is a goofy pipe dream in today’s times. So now we have to depend on getting our news from search engines. Read from enough sources and you get an idea of where the truth might be. However, imagine if Rupert Murdoch used Fox news to make Bing the right wing search engine and Google had to become the left wing search engine to compete? This would make the news even more partisan then it is already!

Don’t think he has the power to do this? Think again. We liberal douchebags don’t call them Fox News Zombies for nothing. As I have already said, Fox News viewers do not think. They let Bill O’Reilly do that for them. Imagine if Fox got their 7 million viewers to all switch their browser favorite to Bing and remove Google as their default search engine all at once. Imagine if they put up a link to the “Bling add on” right on the top of every page on the Fox News site. Fox can make Bling the default search engine for right wing wackos in a second. Don’t think they can’t or you give them more power than they ever had before.

People always ask me what I want for Christmas. Of course no one really wants to get me the strange rare metal cd’s I have asked for over the past several decades. If you do feel free to check out my Amazon wish list HERE. However, for the people that would rather get me something else I have some suggestions.

Last spring I got into a wreck that messed me up enough that I have not been able to be as active as I used to. I used to ride my bike to and from work almost everyday. I have not replaced my bike since the wreck and because of that have put on some extra weight. So many of my shirts no longer fit! Well, I also now start work at 12:30. When you work during the day at a school there are less shirts that are appropriate. So I need some new shirts! So here are some shirts I would like, but would also be appropriate for my job.

Please ONLY get 4X in the size!

• The Metal Shirt <-Not what you think. Very nerdy!
• Echo base <- Star Wars awesomeness
• Cantina Band <- Parody of the Rock band video game
• Insufficient Memory <- I have what?

Please check with Sherri (my wife) if you are worried about duplicates.

Yeah, I know my readers are not used to me posting stuff that is actually personal here, but I will get back to my usual rants and diatribes soon I promise. This is a very rare personal post.

So I think it is time to start calling out the Twitter spammers. Now some may think this is to embarrass them, but this is not the case. Not all Twitter users are tech savvy enough to know that what they are doing is wrong. Does the band The Destro know that this is a total douche thing to do? I would guess not. In fact, they may not even know that their account is sending out these obviously spammy messages. Their account may just be hacked. Also please keep in mind that most bands do not run their own social networking profiles. Normally it is run by someone in management, the label, or even a wife. So calling them out for being a dirty spammer might get them a response of “Holy crap, we had no idea! Thanks for letting us know this was being done.” Calling someone out for being a dirty spammer can help them if they come by the mistake honestly. So this is NOT a witch hunt!

However, if they are actually a dirty spammer this let’s everyone else know not to trust the account. Now there are several other things you can do to help stop spam on Twitter if the person gets out of control.

1. Forward the message to @spam on Twitter

2. Go to their profile and click the link on the right side of the screen that says “Block” or “report for spam”. This is in the “action” section of the side panel.

3. Send a public message to the person that this is being done. Why public? Because the person may not see it, but their friends might. Imagine one musician getting a text message from a friend letting them know their account is being used for sending out spam. Artist then calls person in charge of account and spew fire. You did them a favor. Also, if they are a true dirty spammer they need to be flogged publicly.

Now of course there will always be a debate on what is spam. I send messages promoting interviews, reviews, and photos I post online. Some follow me because of those messages and some think of it as spam.

A few of the messages in the screen shot above are from people playing Twitter games. This is a pet peeve of mine and I hate it. It gets in the way of why I sign up for Twitter. I only want conversation and have major issues with these games and what funds them. The entire funding structure that supports these types of games on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace is to trick people out of their money. That’s dirty. So to me it is spam, but people that enjoy them have no clue it is looked on by most as very slimy. There are options on most of these games to NOT send out messages to people you follow. If you play games like this please check these options or you risk really pissing people off.

The last type of spammer listed in the screenshot above is barely a spammer at all. It’s just annoying. This is the person who sends a DM to thank you for following them. Again, this floods the persons inbox with messages that get in the way of conversation. I understand that this is the most innocent of all the douchey things people do on Twitter. So this is more of a warning that it is NOT something you should do. Many find it annoying and it will get them to unfollow you or even report you as a spammer.

No hard feelings if you are on the screenshot above. Just a public request to stop doing it. I will soon be unfollowing these people and deleting their messages from my DM inbox so I can get back to just conversation. But hopefully I don’t have to do this. My hope is that they came by this with honest intentions and just stop doing this. Please re-tweet this if you hate Twitter spam like I do. Thanks.

UPDATE: This just in. Just seconds before this blog post was to go live, @radiochick1620 sent me a message letting me know she was hacked, her password has been changed, and I again recommend you follow her. Since this is the whole point of this post I claim victory! This is how it is done people. This is how you kill Twitter spam. Let people know!