Feo: This is the seed that will wither
Posted by Feo Amante on Jan 31, 2004 at 10:44
(24.130.231.153)Re: This is the seed that will spawn Big Brother (Amaranth Rose)
Okay, my two cents.
This is not the seed that will spawn Big Brother. This is why and I'll illustrate my point with 9-11.
9-11 happened, consequent government investigation revealed that various government agencies had bits and peices of an entire puzzle that would have given us fair warning of what was to come. Enough to prevent it? No one can ever say, but the information was there.
What wasn't there?
Cooperation between the NSA, FBI, CIA, INS, and the Pentagon to name a few. Within the Pentagon? Navy, Airforce, and Army don't cooperate as they should, preferring instead, to get credit for derailing the evildoers, when that happens. So everyone had their little puzzle peices and no one had an accurae idea of what was going on. This - DESPITE the fact - that bin Laden terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center before, and did considerable damage.
Now there is Bush's wonderful Homeland Security Office. Whoop de doo. Big Freaking deal. Another bureaucracy.
The FBI's wonderful Carnivore, developed throughout the Clinton administration, as well as certain hard coding that Intel allowed into their CPUs (and AMD, in possible boast mode, did not), to track PC users better, obviously does nothing to protect anyone from terrorist acts or those wild and crazy viruses that attack several times EVERY SINGLE FREAKING YEAR!
As a Republican I'm for less government. The less the better - to a point. I carry that over to my ever growing fondness for Linux - for it's bare bones approach (in most applications and O/S). That said , I still use Windows because it remains way ahead of Linux in most user friendly things (Linux has only itself to blame as, for years, Linux geeks took the clique-y POV that they didn't want anyone in their sandbox that didn't like working in root and text. GUI was for LOSERS!).
So yet another government program comes down the pike to save us from ourselves. Will I be a part of it?
Hell no! The U.S. government has yet to show me that they have any capacity to run a project efficiently. You can talk about our wonderful military, but I'm a veteran: I've seen the monumental waste of that disorganized organization and there isn't a single commander or General in the Pentagon who isn't to blame. Our military is powerful only because we throw far more tax money into it that it can bleed out.
I bought my computer from a company and I'll trust said companies to fix the problems that arise.
Why trust MS, Symantec and the rest of the "Corporations"?
Let me throw a few words at you and see if you know what I'm talking about.
Packard Bell
Compaq
Quasar
Montgomery Wards
Grants
American Motors
Chrylser
Texaco
Every one of these companies was huge, vast, tremendous. They had world wide infrastructure. They all came crashing down. Compaq, the #1 selling computer in the world only 5 years ago, is now owned by Hewlett Packard. Chrysler is owned by Daimler-Benz. the rest are owned by noone. They weren't worth saving.
Even a company as currently powerful as MS can be wiped out in the next 5 years through its own ineffiency. 2004 could be the year that Linux with all of the bells and whistles finally makes a flawless O/S. MS's legendary $40+ billion reserve could be nothing more than book cooking.
Who knows?
One thing I know for sure though, no matter who wins and who loses, they will do so by serving the customer or losing their customers. When MS does more bad than good, its customers will go elsewhere.
When a government program fails miserably, the party that voted for it will keep the wounded, or even dead animal aloft - because to do otherwise might affect them or their progeny's elections.
Nothing has more inertia than a government program.
And most of them are dead weight. The fact that we actually have so many various security beareaus in the first place reveals a flaw.
So I won't be getting some government agency to "help" me with my computer's security. Not because I'm worried about Big Brother, but that I have too many damn Big Brothers as it is, fighting with each other and mucking everything up.
Follow Ups:
- Re: Feo: This is the seed that will wither Shasta 31/1 12:25 (0)