Christian Montoya // Decktonic

#musicfortoday Legend of Zelda medley performed by lftkryo on...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:14:54 -0400

#musicfortoday Legend of Zelda medley performed by lftkryo on the Chipophone.

Decktonic - Message (New Demo)

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:41:45 -0400

Decktonic - Message (New Demo):

I did a massive rework of my song, “Message.” Please listen and tell me what you think.

The first iteration of Stella Artois’s new campaign, “She Is a...

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:23:32 -0400

The first iteration of Stella Artois’s new campaign, “She Is a Thing of Beauty,” features a classic image from fabled photographer Bert Stern, whose 1962 pictures of Marilyn Monroe have already entered the 20th Century lexicon. You want a new hallmark in print photography? Here it is!

via Mother New York

The Tichborne Case

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:30:18 -0400

The Tichborne Case:

Another great read, courtesy of Wikipedia.

#musicfortoday Lime - Cutie Pie

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:00:00 -0400

#musicfortoday Lime - Cutie Pie

"According to researchers at the University of Denver, couples who lived together before they were..."

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:00:00 -0400

“According to researchers at the University of Denver, couples who lived together before they were engaged have a higher divorce rate and lower marital satisfaction than those who waited until they were married, or at least engaged, to shack up.”

- 5 Widely Believed Dating Myths (Science Says Aren’t True), #1

Ground Zero Mosque, Part II: The Anatomy of a Globalist Propaganda Operation.

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:03:21 -0400

Ground Zero Mosque, Part II: The Anatomy of a Globalist Propaganda Operation.:

Read this.

Outsourced Call Centers Return, To U.S. Homes

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:02:42 -0400

Outsourced Call Centers Return, To U.S. Homes:

azspot:

Home workers, such as Quigley-Hogan, represent one of the cheapest models for customer service. There are an estimated 60,000 people doing call center work from home.

“It provides a lower cost point than other traditional means of onshore customer service,” says Chris Carrington, who runs Alpine Access, the Denver-based company that Quigley-Hogan works for. Carrington says the low overhead of having home-based workers allows him to charge 20 percent less for the same services provided by brick-and-mortar call centers in the U.S.

“We don’t have big buildings and we don’t have all of that infrastructure cost, and so we’re able to pay our people more and as well as lower our price for the customers we serve,” he says.

Even with these cost-cutting measures, American workers are still the more expensive option. But industry watchers say so-called home sourcing will continue to grow as companies look for quality that used to be harder to afford.

Neo-Feudalism and the Invisible Fist

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:39:32 -0400

Neo-Feudalism and the Invisible Fist:

azspot:

“The sleekest revolutions,” notes Barry Lynn, “are won not at the barricades but in the dictionary.” To control the terms of a debate is to control the outcome. This is certainly true of the term “free market,” a term which has come to mean almost its opposite, and hence a system which is manifestly unfree. The claim that our markets are not free is a serious one, and should only be made on serious evidence, just the kind of evidence that Barry Lynn provides in Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction.

The surest sign that a market is free is that it is competitive; there should be a rich variety of products provided by a vast number of firms, a situation which affords entrepreneurs many opportunities to enter the market and workers many places to sell their labor. And when we waltz into our local Wal Mart, that is what we seem to see. Alas, it is an illusion of competition rather than the reality. For example, if you want eyeglasses, you can go to Pearl Vision, or Lenscrafters, Sears Optical, JC Penney, Target, Macy’s, Sunglass Hut, or buy frames from 25 different manufacturers. Surely choice and competition prevail in this market. But no. All of these are one company, the Italian conglomerate Luxottica. And as with glasses, so also with so many other products. Most of our beer—even some that try to pass themselves off as “craft” beer—is provided by just two companies, ImBev of Belgium or the South African Brewing Company. Proctor & Gamble provides 75% of razors, 60% of detergent, 50% of feminine pads, etc. Even what few companies remain in each market often engage in collusion rather than competition. Wal Mart, for example, appoints one company as a “category manager” to allocate shelf space for all the “competing” companies.

Another sign of a free market is the expansive space it provides for entrepreneurs. But from 1948-2003, self-employment in America dropped from 18.5% to 7.5%. Indeed, among developed nations only Luxembourg has a lower rate of self-employment than we do. There has been a new “enclosure” movement, as the spaces that used to be occupied by small retailers, farmers, and manufacturers have been colonized by the conglomerates.

So how did we get to a situation where the “freedom of markets” has come to mean “servility” and corporate control? Lynn recounts this history, but those who expect a neat tale of “conservatives” versus “liberals” (Lynn prefers the term “progressives”) will be disappointed. Rather, the two cooperated to produce the servile state. In our colonial history, open markets were the means to escape the network of feudal dependencies that governed European systems. In the open market, small landowners and laborers could freely trade their produce and gain independence. Hence, the early Republic kept a watchful eye on the corporate and financial powers. But that care began to break down with the Civil War, as the government directed millions to industry, and the corporations were able to free themselves from control of the states and gain new privileges, even becoming, in a bit of Supreme Court legislation, “legal persons.” For the rest of the century, the “Robber Barons” consolidated their hold on industry after industry to become the dominant force in society and government.

"Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the..."

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:01:40 -0400

“

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell.

”

- The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves

Pitchfork Reviews Reviews: trying to get the vibe right while DJing the launch party for a communal workspace for internet startups

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:15:39 -0400

Pitchfork Reviews Reviews: trying to get the vibe right while DJing the launch party for a communal workspace for internet startups:

i play Fancy Footwork by Chromeo and Lisztomania by Phoenix, i wish i could disappear right now, if one-year-ago-me looked into the future and saw future me DJing and playing Chromeo he would kill himself preemptively, i am issuing an internal apology to all the past and future incarnations of me for being weak-willed and giving in and playing this song. i mean i even kind of like the song but this is just embarrassing

Bitrman + Ice Blue Pocket!

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:18:34 -0400

Bitrman + Ice Blue Pocket!

8BIT CONSTRUCTION SET!

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:16:01 -0400

8BIT CONSTRUCTION SET!

8 things I wish I knew before starting a business

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:57:44 -0400

8 things I wish I knew before starting a business

By posting this video, I am not condoning any of the content of...

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:56:00 -0400

By posting this video, I am not condoning any of the content of said video. via Cheese’n’Beer Records

f***yeahelectronicmusic: Daft Punk Swedish Television Interview...

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:32:07 -0400

f***yeahelectronicmusic:

Daft Punk Swedish Television Interview (Rare and HQ)

Intel CEO Blasts Obama Administration, Says Anti-Business Policies Are Killing The Country

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:54:44 -0400

Intel CEO Blasts Obama Administration, Says Anti-Business Policies Are Killing The Country

Catfood Dogfood is here! Download it for FREE from iTunes

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:03:27 -0400

Catfood Dogfood is here! Download it for FREE from iTunes

Piled higher

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:41:09 -0400

While holding an annual iftar, mayor Bloomberg recently said, “And above all of that, we are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose. There is nowhere in the five boroughs that is off limits to any religion.” And this is an absolute dirty lie, because I can think of three places that are certainly off limits to two religions: schools, stadiums and abortion clinics.

"Tophoven said there were centers of radicalization all over Germany and Europe, but that most -..."

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:55:59 -0400

“Tophoven said there were centers of radicalization all over Germany and Europe, but that most - working under the guise of mosques and Koran schools - were focused on indoctrination rather than militant training.”

- Hamburg authorities shut down mosque suspected of radicalization