We have had discussions on REALNEO about the antitrust of Microsoft, and the harm that has caused the world, but few people remember back to 1999, when the antitrust case United States vs. Microsoft determined Microsoft's dominance of the Intel-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, Real Networks, Linux, and others. The court's conclusion was Microsoft must be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components... a decision weakened on appeal (see below).

A decade later, we have the opportunity to explore related antitrust in the computer industry further, and put Microsoft antitrust in new perspective, as the November 4, 2009, New York Times reports "Cuomo Files Intel Antitrust Suit" - "Following the lead of foreign regulators, New York's attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Intel, the world's largest chip maker."

October 7, 2009, we began our sixth year of ongoing, expansive, free, open source content management and global knowledge sharing, community building, social networking and collaboration on REALNEO. See posting Number 1, REALNEO Development Plan, from October 7, 2004, here, for links to many source documents from the planning and development of REALNEO, since 2004.

Congratulations to all REALNEO members, from day one to today! We've come a long way, since 2004, and our outcomes run far deeper than is seen on the surface of REALNEO. Six years is an eternity, in the world of social computing - we're about 8 months younger than Facebook, and a paradigm beyond - we are Real Co-op!

I was reviewing emails from last week and read, from the EPA, "EPA Proposes Tightening Standards for Lead-Safe Renovation Practices and Lead Paint Dust to Protect Children", which reports "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is marking National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week by announcing several actions the agency proposes to take to prevent lead poisoning."

Do you remember hearing anything in Northeast Ohio about last week being National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week? 

I'm pleased to see a candidate for East Cleveland City Council has joined REALNEO... finally, someone to talk with about politics on the East Side. Welcome, Ephraim Abdullah, Candidate For East Cleveland City Council, Ward 3 - Tell Us Your Vision.

Welcome to REALNEO, new REAL COOP member and recent Cleveland transplant Bill Botkin. Thanks for joining our real NEO community.

Bill's REALNEO member bio reads: "I am a transplant from Columbus as of 2 years ago. My career has spanned 20 years in the copier/mfp industry and I recently made the change to the Office Supply/Furniture Industry where I discovered Sustainability. I am looking to become more involved in the Cleveland area." Bill came to the right place!

Because Bill filled out his REALNEO user profile with useful information about himself and his employer, I found reasons to learn more about Bill and spent some time visiting his employer's website - Today's Business Products - where Bill "discovered Sustainability"... and Today's Business Products seems to have a good interest in sustainability - they list many "green products".

Since June, 2003, bio-defense industry world-leader Ronald B. (Ronn) Richard has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Cleveland Foundation, the nation's oldest community foundation. Since January, 2005, Richard has also served as a Director of Emergent BioSolutions Inc., a leading biopharmaceutical company whose marketed product is BioThrax(R) (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed), the only FDA-licensed vaccine available for pre-exposure protection against anthrax infection - www.emergentbiosolutions.com.

It recently came to my attention that one of the most serious sources of pollution in Cuyahoga County is literally in my back yard. Less than two kilometers upwind from my home are the coal and natural gas fired external boilers at the power plant shown above, at University Hospitals, operated by Medical Center Company (MCCo), polluting the surrounding neighborhoods since the 1930s.

For the 30+ years of my life spent in Northeast Ohio, in childhood and as an adult, University Circle has been at the center of my universe. What Place is at the Center of Your Universe?

 The Whitehouse.gov website has provided an advance copy of the prepared remarks of President Obama's Back to School speech, which has some parents in an uproar. I embedded the player for the speech below, and will put it in our calendar...

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South African Boerboel and Cane Corso

"O mio babbino caro" - Gianni Schicchi - Puccini - performed by Amy Irvine (August 9, 2009)

Many beautiful worlds collided the evening of Sunday, August 9, 2009, at "OPERA IN THE ITALIAN CULTURAL GARDEN", a free outdoor evening concert of favorite Italian opera classics, beautifully performed by Opera Per Tutti (Opera For All), held in the spectacular Italian Cultural Garden, in one of the greatest public parks in the world, The Cleveland Cultural Gardens, presented by the Italian Cultural Garden Foundation, Northern Ohio Opera League, and the Cleveland Cultural Garden Federation.

Guy, this quote of Sir Winston Churchill - July 1952 - is for you... and is featured on a new service of the UK National Archives website, releasing UK UFO files. From the UK National Archives website:

The files contain a wide range of UFO-related documents covering the years 1981-1996.
Find out more about close encounters, stray satellites, bright lights and Britain’s very own Roswell – Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk.

While I was sitting behind Food On The Move, at St. Clair and East 140th, where a friend works, I noticed a pear tree in the lot next door, full of rippening pears. While the lot is well tended, and does not appear "vacant", the lone pear tree is the only occupant. And nobody seems to notice it is there, despite its bounty of free food. There are 100s of pears on the tree - in a market, they would be worth $100s. This lot could contain dozens of pear trees - perhaps 100s - producing $10,000s in income for the owners and those who tended them.

The US Marine Corps decision to ban social media, citing concerns for operation and mission security, is an issue every employer wrestles with, but banning social media is on excessive response, one that forfeits important value for social media, including military recruiting.  Employers, military or otherwise, should develop fine-tuned policies on social media, not comprehensive bans or unqualified endorsements. 

I believe the actions of "Blackheart Cleveland" as an association and some "members" individually consititute some variation of Cyberterrorism, Cyberstalking, Cyberharassment, and/or Cyberbullying. It appears Blackheart Cleveland exists to disrupt the business of REAL COOP and attack REALNEO members personally, to cause personal and financial harm to members. I believe this is illegal.

Since our founding, in 2004, REALNEO has become a groundbreaking free, open source social network of global interest – recently recognized as one of the top networks of our type in the country, by the Knight Foundation.

In 2008, the members of REALNEO.US formed REAL COOP, an Ohio legal cooperative, which now owns and operates REALNEO.US and REAL.COOP. We are unique in the world of social computing, and a global innovator in the evolution of information systems.

From the REALNEO.US homepage:

Thanks to Laura McShane for posting this morning a comment linking to Will Allen's "Good Food Manifesto" on his Growing Power blog. I, and millions of other people, became aware of Will last Sunday, when he was featured in the New York Times Sunday Magazine article "Street Fighter", but folks who follow local foods best practices surely knew of Will long before.

Over the past 20 years, I've spent most of my "professional" time as an entrepreneur, with world-class expertise conducting multi-dimensional, multi-client relational comparative data and best practice analyses of any aspects of the world's largest and best global enterprises, environments and systems, and developing and consulting on innovations and total quality improvement. This work has generated a wealth of knowledge on large general systems, with a unique expertise in information systems and telecommunications. REALNEO is a product of this highest level expertise, drawn from the best practices of the best organizations on Earth. What REALNEO has developed for Cuyahoga County - what has been generated out of the REALNEO-generated Real Cooperative - takes general systems innovation to a whole new level of making us the brightest greenest place on Earth. So, we really do have a purpose to Cuyahoga County owning the Breuer, and the vision is beautifully expressed in this great rendering above, to be REAL COOP citizen headquarters of the open source capital of this brightest greenest state of Earth.

Michael Moore says goodbye to the old General Motors and offers some really good advice to President Obama.

He offers nine really good suggestions for the GM makeover (that'd be our taxpayer makeover of GM). The first one sets the stage well.

Who would deny a patient his meds? If you think about realNEO as a means to strenghten social well being, where a diverse community of individuals is welcomed... This is an interesting perspective: BLOGS AND THE RISE OF THE GLOBAL CHEAP VITAMIN

Information technology pioneer and visionary - and Oberlin graduate - Marc Canter helped me launch REALNEO.US, in 2004... from San Francisco. Now, five years of social community and technology building and innovation later, I've convinced Marc to personally return to Northeast Ohio to collaborate with government, citizens and organizations in the community to make the open web a core economic and social strength of our region, at the global level.

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