Matt’s Blog of Truth

Obama is in. He is looked apon as our ‘great savior’, to most. To others, he is quite literally, ‘The Anti-Christ’, with these views shared with southern ‘rednecks’ and deep Christian Americans. Either way you look at it, the U.S. is in deep, deep s**t.

The situation, as posted in my previous blog post, explaining Why the US ecomony has failed, is now playing out deeping, as I watch C-SPAN.

Yes, I actually watch C-SPAN. How depressing the situation is. I live in Washington state, so my C-SPAN airs Washington State House debate. Debates about what to do with all of this influx of Federal Funding.

I can say, I am scared. Even some House Reps agree, the situation is dire, and frankly, scary. I am no politian. I am a programmer of computer code, and a Net Marketer. But, no matter how much I try to NOT venture in conversations that I ought not care about, I do. The problem this brings to me is nothing short of depression.

I am a connector of the bits and pieces of knowledge. I read and I remember what I read, and watch and hear and feel. I remember to a depth, that it burdens me to see, specifically, how all this money the U.S. is borrowing from China is now being distributed to all the US states.

Go ahead, you only have to watch for an hour or so to get a clear picture of the situation.

One conclusion is clear to me.

BIG GOVERNMENT is will be with Americans for a long time. It has to be there, because private sectors have squandered the Housing Market, which happens to be the largest market of them all.

Can the U.S. legislature, from House Representatives, Govenors, Mayors all the way down to city planners and your CEO and Boss make a difference? It appears to me that the system is so damn complex, it is near mind numbing. We all know how long it is taking the government to pass simple laws about the Internet about spam, as an example.

It took the CAN-SPAM Act, nearly 8 years to get to where it is. And where it is, is that it does not stop spam and in fact encourages it. OptOut ( not Optin ) anyone?

You know what? Forget it. I did not cause this mess. In fact, I have a mortgage and I pay taxes.

We may well all be screwed.

Or will China bear the burden? Maybe, the U.S. is just scaring China into lending the U.S. the 1 trillion+ because China imports and exports heavily to the United States.

The economy has seen bubble after bubble, recession after recession. But, this one is global and deeply felt. It’s ‘the big one’, as in a huge quake.

Have we learned our lesson? Probably not.

Most of you know, first hand, how dreadful things are becoming for, not only the United States, but for the entire World, regarding the economy. This is a cut and dry, grass roots explanation, as to why the economy is shrinking. More importantly, why we need not go crazy with fear.

First, let’s look at how it all started. The Industrial Age has been with us for over 200 years now. But, I will begin at a more rationale point.

It begins with the creation of The Internet.

The Internet was adopted from a military network and put into public domain by Bill Clinton. This was done to stimulate and grow the economy. In 1995 the Internet was all the craze on Wall Street. Dreams of billions to be made from this new ‘virtual online shopping store’, to sell everything and anything, traditionally done with Brink and Mortar buildings. Well, the investors on Wall Street were told this was going to be HUGE, so they invested BILLIONS of dollars into Internet Start Up companies.

The problem was that these Wall Street traders and Investors were putting all their money on a hunch. The assumption was that the Internet would balloon their stocks and make them all Billions. The ballooning began around 1999 and finally crashed (burst) at around 2001. People over estimated the initial value of the Internet. Yes, some did win like; Amazon, Yahoo!, Ebay, PayPal and many more. But, over 95% of all the initial Internet start ups, which these over zealous investors had put all their stocks and bonds into, crashed. Losing them Billions. In fact, the Internet Bubble, was the biggest stock bubble in history.

So, what does this have to do with the current economic ‘crisis’, of 2008 to present day?

It is known, that when one ’stock bubble’ bursts, another bubble is formed, somewhere else in the stock market. This time in the Housing Market. Namely, Home Mortgages (big loans).

Starting in 2001 through 2004, or so, everyone noticed that if you wanted to buy a house, you could get a record low interest rate. Rates as low as 4.5% was common place around 2003-2004. The reason for this, was that all those investors, that had their stakes in the Internet Bubble, which made some millionaires and others bankrupt, moved their attention to the housing market. Some stock traders moved to avoid the Internet crash before it happened and moved all their Overly Ballooned stocks over in the Housing Market. These Internet stocks were moved in a panic, as the Housing Market has always been known to be a strong and solid sector of the Stock Exchange.

So, as a result of all this heavy Investment into the Housing Market, that sector of the market flourished. There was literally Trillions invested into Housing and Real Estate, which lowered Interest Rates, which got people to buy more and more homes. The formation of yet another Stock Bubble was beginning to take shape.

All was good and great. The situation was healthy. People were able to afford their dream home, while Stock Investors were making bank on their investments. This is what is known as a growing and healthy economy.

But, something happened.

Something called GREED.

Things were going so well for the Housing Sector, that major lenders (banks) began looking into ways to make even MORE money. The idea was that, since the market was doing so good, they could then begin to lend money (mortgages) to people that were previously off limits, or considered high risk. In other words, the banks began to give Home Mortgages to lower income families, with the risk that the borrowers may not be able to pay back the loan.

This high risk lending is known as Sub-Prime Mortgages, as I am sure you have now all heard about. Sub-prime, meaning a chance the loan could go sour and force the home buyer to go into foreclosure, which costs all parties involved, grief and wasted money.

The major banks, all at once and at a high rate of speed, sold these sub-prime mortgages in the TRILLIONS on dollars.

So, the drama was to begin.

It was not until 2007 that their were problems found in two major banking institution, known as Lehman Bros and Bear Sterns. They had what is known as TOXIC ASSESTS. Meaning that all their investments were bad, known to be lent to people that were on their way to foreclosure. TRILLIONS of dollars in Toxic Sub-Prime Mortgages were never going to be paid back to the banks that lent them out.

The problem then becomes a viral effect, because not only are the banks that sold these toxic loans are now in trouble, but all the Stock Share Traders on Wall Street ALSO put money into Sub-Prime Mortgages. So, now the banks and stock traders were in deep, deep sh**.

Once news of this was put out to the public, Wall Street went into a panic and pull out all their investments they had in these major banks. And well… here we are today.

If the banking system itself is full of Toxic Assets, then the Core Financial System is corrupted. This created a paranoia effect, where other banks were suddenly afraid to lend any money, to anyone! Banks that were not directly impacted by the Sub-Prime Toxic Money, froze all lending, which crashed the economy.

If money does not move (liquid), nothing happens, so the Stock Market begins to crash/stop. It stops breathing and slowly begins to die. All due to a couple bad banking moves and forcing everyone else to freeze all their money and stop the economy from breathing. I like to think of this as someone going through a panic attack and not able to breathe, for fear itself, has engulfed them.

So, what has been done to stop the situation from becoming worse?

Enter the US Federal Government Reserve Bank.

Before, the markets were free with NO government regulation. That is what everyone wanted, including the US Government! People do not like Big Government telling the free markets what to do. But, there was no choice. Money HAD to be injected into the Banking System or a collapse was to ensue, very very quickly.

So, that is what they did. The US Government passed the TARP Bill which gave the failing banking system Billions and now to date TRILLIONS of Federal Reserve money to the banks and told the CEO’s of all the major US banks to STOP the credit freeze and use this Federal money to start lending again, to get the economy breathing again.

President Obama took the ‘federal reserve money injection’ a step further by, not just bailing out those that cause this mess in the first place, but to use this opportunity to invigorate ‘green technology’ and jobs, restructure health care and fix the US infrustructure like bridges and roads. Obama is taking a major gamble, and hoping that HIS investments will pay off, in the long run.

I believe they will. Obama is a smart man. He even understands computers and the Internet age. Just take a look at his website. He was the first President to put all his policies on the table for all to read. He put it all out there on the Internet.

Now, let us pray what he has done with the additional TRILLIONS borrowed (mostly from China) and see if it does anything for the greater good. I think it will.

Thanks for reading.

Many argue that the reason Linux and F/OSS fails — fails in terms of what? — is that the community is too fragmented.

This could not be further from the truth, at the same time, is absolutely true.

On one front, they argue fragmentation leads to confusion and non cohesiveness. In other words, the big corporate computer companies like Microsoft, Sun, Apple and IBM, to name a few, are successful, because they operate under a single banner. Their own corporate banner. The ‘boss’, or Board of Directors, tells their employees what to do, and they do it. This leads to cohesive products that sell and get consumed — hopefully — by millions of people.

On the other front, this fragmentation is exactly the reason F/OSS is being adopted by millions of Internet Businesses and not just the Open Source enthusiasts. This fragmentation is F/OSS’s greatest strength and greatest weakness. Wrong. Anyone that claims this to be true, is mostly talking about MONEY and not much else. They are talking about Market Share, which translates into more money. Yes, when there are 500+ Linux Distributions to choose from, can become a bit bewildering.

But, that is all changing.

Ubuntu is making Linux Desktop ‘come together’ and Red hat has long offered a certified, Enterprise Level, Linux Server. The industry is only growing, month after month. If you read this recent article about Ubuntu’s continued success on the Desktop and Server fronts, you will see there is cohesion, thanks to Canonical. Canonical being the for profit company behind Ubuntu.

Now, F/OSS is strong on both fronts. Not only is it so fragmented, that it has so many contributors, that no ‘for profit’ corporation could match. The closest example of any corporation even coming close is Microsoft. But, now Linux and Open Source is developing, completely naturally with no pressure to do so, based on businesses backing the software. Examples include; Red hat, Novell/SUSE, Xandros and Canonical/Ubuntu.

This is not to mention smaller Linux backers like the company Everex, that produced the gOS. Linspire, which was acquired by Xandros. Let’s not forget Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrake Linux, a French Linux backer.

There are so many companies and individuals contributing to Free and Open Source, that it is nothing short of something special. Something unique and not seen before in humanity. All of humanity, connected through the Internet, breaks down the geographical and language barriers. American, Chinese, Japanese, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Spain and well, the entire world, contribute to GNU/Linux.

What this means, is that all this fragmentation benefits every Linux backer.

For instance, if someone contributes to the code base of the Linux Kernel, benefits every — all 500+ Linux distributions — that utilize the Kernel. If, someone contributes to any of the thousands of Open Source Projects, results in every Linux Distribution being able to update their software.

Now, you tell me, if fragmentation is a curse? It clearly is a blessing.

This comes as a big win for F/OSS. Russian Government has mandated laws, that all of their schools must use non-proprietary, that is to say Open Source software, by the year 2010, or those schools must pay, on their own, the fees of the proprietary software.

So, in other words, Russia is the first Nation to, make into law, the use of Open Source in schools, or the schools themselves must pay, not the Russian Government.

Not, a bad deal, considering Open Source is Free of charge and, in most cases, better quality software.

Read the original article here.

P.S. This coincides nicely, with the resent article, that basically said that China Demands Source Code. Also, in a recent Microsoft move (a bad move at that), decided to activate Microsoft’s Genuine Copy Protection for, MS dubbed, Anti-Piracy Day. For that entire day, probably a Billion Chinese computers were put into limited functionality mode, with a long threaten pop up license, stating that they are thieves and are doing illegal things with MS software. Namely XP or Vista.

So, MS is just shotting themselves in the foot. This only pissed off the Chinese, and probably raised Apple’s market share a point or two, perhaps even a few Linux shares were raised as well. Let’s hope MS continues to have more, Anti-Piracy days to come!

Going from bad to worse, seems to be the subject as each day passes. Sure, the very foundation of America’s economy, that being the credit system and lending confidence. Threatened by greedy people, in power are taking advantage of people that didn’t know any better, the whole world will and is feeling the affects of this lousy Wall Street trading.

Our economic infrastructure is failing before our eyes. It is happening faster than we have time to stop and think about what to do about it. Congress and the House of Repsentives along with Bush are all passing bills based on snap judgement, making them dangerous. The 700 Billion, now actually 850+ Billion, bail out did nothing to help Wall Street, which is in it’s 7th consecutive slump.

We are feeding the flames with fear.

Fear is contagious. Fear is all over the Internet and News.

Fear that by 2050, the carbon foot print we press on Earth’s atmosphere, marks the point of no return.

Fear that investing in anything, not just in mortgages, is freezing the credit and lending system, of which the US economy depends.

Fear that our president and future leaders are too stupid to do any good for the system as a whole, is on the minds of anyone following the 2008 elections. Which started in 2001 when the terrorists not just properly places the right airplanes to take down 2 iconic buildings meant to withstand such an attack, but more dangerously, committing the attack at a time when America could not have elected a president so indifferent to everything and having no fear of failing.

How much worse can we as Human Beings be, when it comes to just about everything we are doing, as a whole?

The environment is polluted, corruption and greed may lead to another economic depression and all of this ruled by leaders that only care about self image than being real.

Of any time I have lived, or read about, the present and near future, could not seem to be more fucked up than ever before.

So, to rid my thoughts of such pessimistic views that only lend to pollute my soul with real fear, I’m focusing on Open Source and doing what seems to work for me. Computer Programming.

If indeed every industry, on a global scale, will be effected by the economic situation, GOOD can come of it. Good in each area that is currently completely fucked up, almost to the point of suicidal thoughts.

Good can come toward fixing the Environment

If it is all about money, the reason why no one cares to research and mandate alternative energy production. Maybe the draining of Trillions of greedy dollars will force us all, particular the governments of the world, to find cheaper ways to produce electricity. Gas is too expensive to drill and refine, so maybe, finally, we can do what we have all been talking about. Getting off our dependency on Oil, foreign and domestic.

If we can not afford to drive to work, because we have no more jobs, maybe that is a good thing. No more emissions!

If we are on the verge of bankruptcy, maybe finding alternative ways of doing just about everything we do, will be the GOOD that comes from the current economic mess.

Fear of going broke will give us a better Leader

The war in Iraq is draining billions a day. Having a president that cares little about anything, MAYBE will scare us into electing someone that does care. Someone with a soul. Someone that care about the under privileged. A leader that, even though a Black man, will destroy all past visions of slavery and racism. A person that comes from a race that was once enslaved, is not sent to us by a greater power now offers his wisdom to fix what whitey seemed hell bent on trying to destroy.

Open Source is more than just Software

Now that we won’t be able to afford Microsoft soon, and forget affording Apple. Linux and Free and Open Source Software can be a new way of computing. MAYBE, building a super computer, able to calculate inventions to fix the economy. Or ways to figure out ways to produce clean energy.

Whether marketed or not. Linux already runs Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange, for one. Openness can extend further than just the idea of sharing knowledge about how to make a better Operating System.

Openness in the media and in the blogosphere, to analyze everything our future president has to say, allows us to Openly talk about it. Maybe the Internet can finally do what is was meant to do, besides try to sell you something. Maybe, the Internet will finally educate us.

Google or God? Either way, may it save us all.

The title says it all. The most populated country on the living earth, DEMANDS source code.

In case you need some statistics, China has 3.7 BILLION people, Second comes India, with 3 billion. Compare that with USA entire population of just 300 million. That makes China almost 11 times more populace, than the great energy drinker, of which the USA is. Also, USA is trying to get more rich by exporting jobs to China and India, which in turn makes China and India richer.

Now, this exporting is not the real concern here. The exporting to the Chinese gives their directors (dictators) and policy makers, IDEAS. Ideas of grandiose proportions, not unlike the USA. But, these ideas will be applied not on the scale of the USA, but on an 11 times scale, based on China’s population. China already has built the three gorges dame (the largest in the world) to power the rising cost of energy needs, which all ready indicates that China is ‘ON THE RISE’ in terms of fuel consumption, therefore GROWTH.

Why America is now concerned about China’s rise, as a threat, is so missing the point, because America is the one making the country rise beyond it’s deep traditional ways.

So, what does this mean for the Open Source world? A LOT my Linux friends.

It means that for one, China is tired of being suit by Microsoft, for pirating, of which, the Chinese government can’t stop. Windows XP, for example. However, Linux is free of charge AND Open Source, which the Chinese demands. Why? They want to make sure the USA government is not implanting software into Microsoft Windows, a USA company, ship them to China so the USA government can spy.

So, thank you Microsoft, out source away, because in the end China, a budding technological country of tradition has an eye for freedom and with mix of Communistic paranoid thoughts, they WANT TO SEE THE SOURCE CODE.

Linux and China equates to big markets for Linux adoption.