Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Slanting the news same-same Freedom of the Press

They have been all over Facebook and Zuckerman over the accusation of slanting the "Trending" column by dropping conservative stories.  A Congressional hearing is promised. 
   Not that I approve, I'm conservative too, but the United States has been blessed with slanted news reporting since the founding of the Republic.  Look at the New York Times.  In the 1930's they supported Soviet communism.  "I have seen the future and it works".  In the 1950's they supported Fidel Castro, strongly enough to make him dictator of Cuba.  In the 1960's they backed North Viet Nam.  They published the Pentagon Papers in order to destabilize the Nixon administration.  They published a leak from CIA about tapping Osama bin Laden's satellite phone, result, Bin Laden ditched the phone and went back to messengers. 
   I don't see much difference between want the Times does and what Zuckerman is accused of doing at Facebook. 

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Birds of a Feather, flock together

NPR came on the clock radio this morning with a tear jerking piece.  Since the sequester, civil servants have been taking furloughs, not getting raises, having to conserve office supplies, having more work to do and fewer people to do it.  Awful.
  And morale is down.  No raises, and lots of criticism is just crushing the tender egos of the gov'ment workforce.
  And it's all the fault of that nasty sequester.
  And all of the civil servants interviewed for this piece were government union representatives.
  It's just terrible that the civil servants, who enjoy better salaries, benefits, and retirement than ordinary working stiffs, have to forgo a raise.  It's a good thing they have NPR to plead their case to the public.  On the public's nickel no less.

NPR was hitting on all cylinders this morning.  After that plea for the poor down trodden civil servants they launched into an attack on Facebook.  According to NPR, Facebook spend some $10 million (chickenfeed) lobbying Congress on the immigration bill.  Something to do about H1B visa's.  The reporter didn't bother to explain just what Facebook was lobbying for, but she was sure it was evil.  H1B visa's are a deal to let high  tech workers, most often computer programmers, into the US.  US union people are always against H1B 'cause they think it lowers American worker's wages.  US companies are always in favor of more H1B visa's cause good programming talent is hard to come by and bringing it in from overseas gives them a bigger pool to fish in.

Non political that NPR is, very non political.  And government funded.


Monday, April 1, 2013

Too many software guys with nothing to do

Facebook clearly has too much spare time.  Just to keep busy, they rearranged my "timeline"  Now the text is on the left and the photos on the right.  Used to be the other way round. 
  This is a constructive use of software development resources?