| "I
neglected to mention that I was working the graveyard shift last
night, hence the late edition. Same again tonight. I have to tell
myself `think of the money' unfortunately. But once I get into a
rhythm at work it's not so bad, and it pays the bills. It just screws
up your hours.
I
didn't cover this, from the Sunday Times:
Insight:
Terrorist gang let into Britain to seek asylum
"A
GANG of suspected Algerian terrorists with alleged links to Al-Qaeda
are on the run in Britain after immigration officials allowed them to
seek asylum without tipping off security services. One has already
been caught working for a Heathrow freight firm."
Why
exactly do we have immigration officials at all, if they're not even
going to check a distributed list of terrorists and act accordingly?
What DO they do? You'd think that they were actually helping to
orchestrate and facilitate the success of the terrorists. That's what
it looks like time and time again when it emerges that there was prior
knowledge and infiltration of terrorist acts and cells, but there was
always some reason why it still went ahead.
What is
more important than stopping a terrorist act on your own turf? If
there is another reason, then isn't it part of the establishment
agenda to allow terror attacks to occur?
I saw
this
story flagged up on WRH
about Microsoft,
discussing whether or not they should be held liable for defects
in their software.
What is
interesting about all of this has been Microsoft's response to the
problem over more than a decade of widespread use of Windows.
Microsoft made $8.4 billion in profit from its Windows division
alone in 2003 FY according to the news article. Yet the agenda being
pushed in the public mind is that perhaps it's the virus writers who
should be held fully accountable, even 15 year old children.
With all
that profit, Microsoft could invest in a whole division dedicated to
working full time on patching any problems with released software.
Microsoft
however argues that it's not their fault if users don't install the
patches when they are available
""Most
organizations will tell you, if they're honest, that it takes them six
to eight weeks to deploy a given patch across a large organization
without making it an emergency," said Steve Larsen, CEO of BigFix
Inc., an Emeryville, Calif., patch management company.
"If they drop everything else, they
can probably do it a little faster.""
Can't
Microsoft be a little more proactive in making users aware of faults
with the software? Considering the damage to the economy and public
sanity that Microsoft is responsible for every time Windows
crashes or a virus takes hold, we could surely say that not addressing
a Microsoft issue can be as serious an issue in our lives as the
consequences of not addressing a product recall of food or tires.
It may
not have as serious consequences as ignoring a food warning or tire
recall- the article points out that no-one has died because of
Microsoft. But when you think about it, we rarely encounter someone
who has suffered from eating a recalled food product, or who was
unfortunate to have Firestone Tires on their Ford Explorer and suffer
a fatal accident. Most of us do use computers though, and surely
everyone who does has had one crash on them at one time or another.
When it happens, it is infuriating, because in my experience you're
caught with your pants down, so to speak. When I suffer a crash it'll
be when I have several windows open, perhaps with unsaved work or
newly discovered websites or news articles, and the site which
originally provided the link.
A crash
means I shout at the computer, use Bill Gates' name in vain, and then
re-boot and try to recover my previous train of thought and work. For
a while, it's all I can think about. It's what occupies my time -
having to deal with poor quality products like Microsoft Windows.
In fact
I probably have to spend more time in my life dealing with PC issues,
like most of you, than I have to spend even thinking about shards of
glass in a jar of jam or faulty tires on momwagons. Think about that.
The amount of time your brain has to deal with something so trivial,
but it consumes us so when we do it.
It
doesn't have to be this way, and there has been plenty of time for
Microsoft and other software companies to change the way they do
things, to make their products more robust. They've never done it,
even with all the money they make. Bill Gates is more interested in
being the richest computer geek in the world than having a reputation
for producing the finest, most robust and widely used operating system
that you can buy.
Compared
to the sort of hardware that was allegedly used to send man to the
moon, we are now on the cutting edge of technology. Billions have been
spent on research to understand how to minimise the potential harm
from car crashes, on ejection systems, on failsafe backups. How many
readers have a UPS for their computer, providing a battery backup in
the event of a power failure? Why can't fail-safe backups be developed
for computers?
Viruses
and trojans exploit security flaws whilst crashes typically come from
an unexpected event. The software is vulnerable to these because
Microsoft have not foreseen their occurrence and thus did not
incorporate any understanding of them into its software. Basically,
either they missed stuff, or they were sloppy with their choices and
outcomes in their coding. Computers are not fighter jets though.
They're not buses or cars or buildings. You can run tests on computers
and nothing fatal will happen.
The way
we use computers is a joke. We have the fastest ever processors
running them, but some of the worst software ever driving it
all. Our expectations are constantly raised with all the new
technology, but they still can't apply old techniques to figure out
why our computers crash or come down with the dreaded lurgie. If
Microsoft used some of the latest technology to identify all the
previously unidentified processes going on which cause a PC to crash
then they could improve their software. I doubt it would take more
than a nibble out of that $8.4 billion.
For
those events which are still unforeseeable but still cause a crash,
why can't our computers have a fail-safe backup? How much can it cost
to make a computer that has enough hardware and software to recover
from a fatal event and take you back to where you were? Can't we have
a secondary system running on a 10 second delay, that gets alerted
that a problem is coming up in a particular module and deal with it
before the problem manifests.
There is
much debate over whether time travel is possible, but with computers
we could use the benefit that, in theory, time travel might offer -
that of knowledge of what is to come. Computers seem to be the only
area where this can be achievable. With everything else, there are
unknowns. Whether it be a car crash, a production error or even the
weather, the chaos factor has a major influence on events. With
computers though there are a finite number of possible events, ones
and noughts that you can identify and track. Everything else is being
identified and tracked these days - pets, cars, shoes, human beings -
why not what our software is doing?
The
situation that we have instead is one where we suffer for incompetence
and profiteering with a total lack of redress. This policy is
condoned and even sponsored by our governments when they buy Microsoft
products and the expensive shackles they come with.
The suggestion
that we are controlled and exploited by the ruling elite seems a
little less preposterous when you think about it.
Finally, an
extract from an email I sent to a reader, edited ever so slightly.
"Israelis
seem to be shepherded into pursuing and supporting the very policies
that the State was set up to prevent for all time. The carnage of
World War II and the suffering experienced was a powerful driving
force behind the founding of the State of Israel. In the modern age,
we learn about the sometimes brutal tactics of the Israeli armed
forces against the Palestinian people. Considering the disgust turned
to sympathy for the new State of Israel, how can so many people in
Israel be so deluded? What happened to `Never again?' It must be a
force more powerful than individual thought to have them act this way.
The idea of a `conspiracy' behind so much of world events is
disingenuous though. I would rather call it an agenda.
Those
who rule us have done so for generations, centuries. At that level a
long-term policy of planning must be used. Why do affluent families
plan who their offspring will marry? Forward planning. They don't
CONSPIRE to have a Rothschild marry a Rockefeller for example. It's
their agenda to keep things their way and retain control. Over the
centuries they have developed influence around the world and co-opted
most financial systems. Their agenda is to keep things working in
their interests. They are the patrons of the institutions around us,
from government to Foundations, as supposed benefactors and as the
oppressors. Nothing we do is without the boundaries having been set by
the world around us, which they control. Few thoughts we have are not
framed by the paradigms shaped by the surrounding environment -
education, the media, advertising and our peers, who are themselves
framed by the same things.
Consider
how much information your brain is bombarded with every day. And then
consider how much of that information has been delivered on a medium
that was sponsored by a corporate interest. From the fliers that come
though your door with the junk mail in the morning, to the big
advertising billboards on the street. Radio, television, newspapers,
company newsletters, corporate websites etc. No business will pay to
provide information that is not in their interests to give out.
For
state television, it is slightly different - they essentially do what
is in their interests to avoid flak from the government or to comply
with the legal requirements placed upon them.
In
short, almost any information you are provided with is because it is
in the interests of the provider, or there is a legal requirement to
provide the information.
How much
information do you receive every day that is first and foremost in
YOUR interest? And what would corporate interests have to say that is
in their interests? Especially considering what they have had for so
long and what they could lose if we wise up and get our self-respect
back?
I think
that with this kind of approach to the situation, one need not discuss
who owns what newspaper - it's not a case of what the media won't
cover. What we should be looking at is what they systematically DO
cover. What we ARE regularly told about. It's not the real news. It's
not what's going on in the world.
If a
newspaper phones up a member of parliament and asks them to confirm a
policy that was enacted months or years earlier, they can make the
news by printing a `shock revelation' on the front page. The news in
the newspapers is not news. Ask people where they find out the
important issues of the day, how they follow what is going on in the
world. Do they talk to different people in different countries? Do
they use the internet? Or do they read the newspaper or watch the news
on television? I bet they rely on the mainstream media.
The
entire press could gang up on Tony Blair and tell us, say, "Blair
to give away control of social security payments to the EU". It
doesn't even have to be based on fact but it could be based on some
tenuous comment or statement somewhere. But if the press decide that's
what they'll do, even if it is nowhere near the truth, then that's
what we think the big issue of the day is. There is much more that
just isn't covered in the corporate media at all.
Why do
Downing Street get irate when the press start a story about something
that isn't on their schedule? Because it detracts from what they see
as the important issue of the day. Whatever is on the front page is
what the reader will think is the issue of the day. Public
consciousness is controlled by the media."
-
Editor |
