Microsoft Flight Sucks!

Back in January 2009 Microsoft shut down ACES Studio, the team at Microsoft who were developing the Flight Simulator game. The announcement came as a surprise to everyone, especially the large community of fans, developers and hardware manufacturers that exists around the Flight Simulator franchise. Why would Microsoft want to shut down the team that’s responsible for arguably one of the most succesful gaming franchises in the history of the personal computer? At the time there was the ongoing economic crisis, and the shut down of ACES Studio was just part of a layoff of around 5000 people at Microsoft. It seemed to me that Microsoft was trying to cut expenses during the economic crisis, but it’s unclear why they would want to shut down such a successful game like Flight Simulator. Back in 2006 when Bill Gates was showing off Windows Vista, Microsoft Flight Simulator X was one of the important games he demoed to show the capabilities of Windows Vista and DirectX 10. Up until today, Microsoft has never given a clear reason as to why exactly they shut down ACES Studio and apparently stopped development of the Flight Simulator game.

As soon as I heard about them shutting down ACES Studio, I wrote an angry email to Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer complaining about this decision. Apparently he must have forwarded the email inside Microsoft and a few days later someone from Microsoft Game Studios responded as follows:

Thank you for writing to us about the closing of the Aces Studio and the future of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Closing the studio was not a reflection of the quality of the products Aces has developed, the sales performance of the games, or the quality of the team at Aces. This difficult decision was made to align Microsoft’s resources with our strategic priorities. Microsoft Flight Simulator X will remain available at retail stores and web retailers.  The Flight Sim community will continue to learn from and encourage one another, and we remain committed to the Flight Simulator franchise for the long term.

Microsoft Game Studios is investing significant resources in many exciting and new areas of gaming and entertainment, including Windows games. We believe these future investments will push innovation, community, and collaboration to unprecedented levels and will provide more synergy with our ongoing investments in Games for Windows – LIVE as well as other Windows entertainment technologies. We have nothing specific to announce at this time, but stay tuned for more information.

We are humbled and proud of the passion and support that the Flight Simulator franchise has developed over its more than twenty-five year history. This includes you, the large community of flight simmers, as well as the vibrant third-party ecosystem that has developed around the game. We will continue to produce, sell, and support the latest version of Flight Simulator as we plan for future versions of the franchise. Thank you for your understanding of our decision and for your continued support!

Pay attention to the section in bold letters. They already had plans to change the course of the Flight Simulator franchise and make some kind of a Windows Live game instead. It would not be until the 18th of August 2010 that Microsoft would announce the development of the Windows Live based Microsoft Flight game.

The decision to shut down ACES Studio and change the course of the Flight Simulator franchise was taken within Microsoft’s Internal Entertainment Business:

Microsoft has confirmed the closure of ACES Studio, with a spokesperson commenting to IGN that the decision was made within Microsoft’s Internal Entertainment Business “to align our people against our highest priorities.”

In addition, the company noted: “You should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great LIVE experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time.”

They shut down ACES Studio even while they were profitable. Even the ACES team didn’t understand why Microsoft’s Internal Entertainment Business did what they did:

Aces was steadily evolving a property established in 1982, one synonymous with the entire genre; it had a loyal following and turned a steady profit. At around the same time, Microsoft also closed Ensemble Studios, despite a long history of strong sales and great games. It wasn’t about talent. It was about “restructuring”.

More than a year later, former Aces employee Kathie Flood is still baffled. “We simply don’t know,” she admits. “Both studio closures were puzzling, given the rabid enthusiasm of their audiences and the consistent profitability of their titles. Microsoft is a big company. The decision was made outside of the Aces Studio itself, and we weren’t privy to the details [of] how or why the decision was made. In hindsight, it provided a tremendous opportunity for us to work on our own game designs, which we’re extremely excited about.”

Shutting down Flight Simulator development and apparently drastically changing the direction of the franchise is one of the worst decisions made at Microsoft in the last few years. I can’t imagine what they must have been thinking at the Internal Entertainment Business division. I wonder if they ran this by Steve Ballmer before they actually went ahead with the implementation, because I can’t imagine Ballmer signing off on something as stupid as this. Or else he must have been misinformed.

With this decision they’ve managed to shut down and ruin one of the most successful gaming franchises in the history of the personal computer, not to mention THE BEST flight simulator that has ever existed. Nothing comes even close to Flight Simulator X; none of the competitors out there are even half as good.

When Microsoft announced the new Flight game in August 2010, I was somewhat relieved and had hope that we’d possibly get something even better than the older Flight Simulator game. So I decided to wait and give it a chance. But I’ve recently had the chance to try out a beta version of the new Microsoft Flight game for Windows Live, and the impression I got was that this new title sets back the Flight Simulator series by at least 12 years. Not to mention that it is far from being as good a simulation as Flight Simulator is. The graphics and realism have taken a serious hit and the game has been limited to just a few locations, compared to being able to fly all over the world in Flight Simulator. There’s no real world weather simulation and no air traffic control. But the biggest set back has got to be the loss of backwards compatibility with all the content created by fans and third party developers for the Flight Simulator series. This includes thousands of aircrafts, scenery add-ons, plugins and other content. This was really the power of the Flight Simulator franchise and one of the most important reasons why it became so successful. This strategy is similar to why Windows became so popular in the early days, because of Microsoft encouraging  developers to develop for the platform providing them with free tools to develop applications for it, which in turn attracted users. In Flight Simulator, even though the original game may have lacked the content people were looking for, such as specific aircrafts to fly, there were many fans and third-party developers who filled in the gaps and created tons of additional content which in turn made the game bigger and more complete. For example, I’ve been wanting a crop dusting aircraft in Flight Simulator for many, many years. I even wrote the team about it a few times. Very early versions of Flight Simulator had a crop dusting functionality in them and this was left out of the game in later versions. In the end, this aircraft was created by a fan and I finally got what I wanted and spent countless extra hours playing Flight Simulator X just because of this. If I didn’t own Flight Simulator, I would have bought it just because it would allow me to fly this crop dusting aircraft. And this is all because of the strategy that was used during the development of the Flight Simulator franchise to not only allow, but also actively support users in generating more content and building on top of the game.

However, all of this, many years of work by thousands of fans and developers, this entire ecosystem around Flight Simulator, is now being destroyed by a couple of business executives at Microsoft who clearly know jack shit about the franchise. It is very sad to see this happening, and what is even sadder is that it is being replaced by something as pathetic as Microsoft Flight.

The technical beta forums at Microsoft are filled with people complaining about the direction Microsoft is heading with Microsoft Flight. People are very, very disappointed and are asking for Microsoft to bring back ACES Studio and start developing an upgrade to Microsoft Flight Simulator X. There’s also a petition online for this, please sign it, as well as a Microsoft Flight Sucks Facebook page. Please let your voice be heard and also personally write Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer to get him to pay attention to this. Not only is it in Microsoft’s best interest to not let Flight Simulator die, but it is also in the interest of the entire industry that exists around this franchise.

This year, 2012, would mark the 30th anniversary of Microsoft Flight Simulator which was first released in 1982. It is a shame that on the 30th anniversary of one of the biggest and most popular PC game franchises, Microsoft will launch Microsoft Flight, which is such a disgrace to what Flight Simulator represented and a huge disappointment.

Shiny and Black

I launched a new design for my blog today after launching a re-design of my website weeks ago. Visually the new blog design matches more with my new website. I think this is a nice improvement on the older design while still using a similar layout. As usual I’ll still be doing some tweaking in the background in the coming days. Any feedback you have is very welcome, and if you notice issues or broken links, please let me know.

Timeless Stare

Today I launched my new website after spending almost 3.5 months working on it in my spare time. The previous site was launched in 2007, so a refresh was necessary. Along with some updated information about the services that I offer I have also updated all my portfolios and there’s a lot of new work to see. I’ve also finally written some more about my background and there are some testimonials from people I’ve worked with over the years to give you an idea of what it’s like to work with me. I’ve gotten feedback from clients in the past who mentioned that I had to “sell myself more” and talk more about my work. I could totally understand them, I’m not one to go out and promote myself or boast about my work. I find that very difficult to do, but at the same time I also realize that sometimes I have to act like a salesman in order to sell my services. So instead of me talking about my work, I choose to have some of my clients giving their opinion about their experiences in working with me.

I’m still doing a little tweaking in the background but the site is now essentially complete. In the near future, as time permits, I’ll also be updating my blog to match the design of my new website more closely. Head on over to take a look and if you have any feedback whatsoever, just leave a comment on this blog post.

If you’ve been following the news you probably heard about the recent issues Google is having with China. However it is important to get a good perspective on the whole issue. And so far I think this article on The Inquirer has really nailed it:

But we should not be surprised as it is starting to look like the whole thing is as much an embarrassment to the US government as it is to Google. Suggestions are that the same software Google uses to snoop on customers for US law enforcement might have provided Chinese hackers with their attack vector.

…

…the trend toward building surveillance capability into telecommunications architecture amounts to a breach-by-design and is a serious security risk.

…

With the automated process in place all the Chinese would have had to do was hack into it and all the information they wanted would have been available to them.

If this is true, it is running counter to the official story that claims Chinese dissidents were tricked with a bogus Trojan. It highlights the weaknesses in Google’s cloud computing plans and how the US government’s obsession to snoop on its citizens actually puts them at risk.

Fortunately for both Google and the US government, they can sidetrack the problem with a bit of spin that paints them as ‘fighting for freedom’ against the Chinese government’s attempts to clamp down on free speech.

China has been successfully squeezing Internet companies for years and neither Google nor the US government had complained much.

Yet when the future of cloud based computing is threatened then Google apparently feels it is a good idea to threaten to pull out of China.

The US government too has an interest in Google’s cloud based initiative succeeding. Instead of having to get court orders to snoop at many ISPs it will only have to deal with one company, with which it could develop a very cosy relationship over time.

However if Google’s snooping software did provide the Chinese attack vector, then it could make people less happy with both the government and cloud based computing.

So the White House now enters the spin war on Google’s side.

…

Google is onto a PR winner here. With even Reporters Without Borders hailing Google’s move, no one is taking any time to wonder how Chinese hackers were able to get into its cloud.

When Google decided it was the right thing to do to assist the Chinese government with censoring information on the Internet back in 2006, I wrote a post where I discussed the hypocrisy of the situation. In that post I wrote the following:

Similarly, Google thinks, and/or would like us to think, that they are helping the Chinese people by at least trying to provide them with the information they are allowed to view, instead of denying them access to all information, but in the process, they are willingly helping the Chinese government with committing a crime against their people. They are actually helping the government there to restrict freedom of speech and to deny the people there their basic rights.

So much for “Don’t be evil.” Google PR are making all kinds of sharp turns right now trying to explain their way out of this and making them look good, but it won’t work.

And it will only go downhill from here. Once they start doing business there and start to rely on it, the Chinese government will have more power over them and will get them to agree to even more things. Like I said before, corporations are only interested in protecting their interests, and you’d be surprised at the things they can be willing to do in order to protect themselves. In the world we live in, everything seems to be about interests and protecting them. That always seems to have the highest priority instead of moral principles and ethics. Just look at Microsoft. They are willing to fight the EU, South Korea and the US government to be able to release certain software with Windows, but gladly comply to the Chinese government’s request to censor information! Isn’t that just lovely?

It is important to remember the reasons why Google went to do business in China in the first place and why they decided to help the Chinese government with censorship back then. Because this will allow you to see through their current PR-spin bullshit about “fighting for freedom.” This isn’t about freedom, it is about protecting Google’s own (business) interests. It is about hiding the fact that they have holes built into their software that allow people, such as the Criminals in Action (CIA), NSA and other parts of the US government to snoop on people. Before this happened, Google was perfectly happy with helping the Chinese government with censorship. Now all of a sudden they feel the need to “fight for freedom.”

Also take note of the fact that money from the CIA was used to finance Google in the beginning. Google is very much in bed with the US government when it comes to cloud computing, and this is one of the reasons why cloud computing is a bad idea. If you’re new to this, take the time to read the links in this post, and if nothing else, at least read the following to understand just how far this goes: Google “in bed” with CIA.

This is what Google is trying to hide right now. It is important that we not make this easy for them to do.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time now. And today, after reading this article on Jim Gray, I thought of finally writing about him on my blog. If you don’t know who Jim Gray is, and want a little background on him, check this link. He was one of the brightest scientists of our time and a very nice human being, from what I’ve read, and seen from video interviews with him. Check out this interview Robert Scoble did with him back in 2005.

On January 2007, Jim Gray went missing during a solo sailing trip to the Fallon Islands near San Francisco. When you read enough about what happened, you’ll discover that he just suddenly, somehow, vanished from the face of the earth without a trace. There are a lot of things about this that just don’t seem to add up. At least in my opinion. And here’s why:

1. Jim Gray is a very intelligent guy. Him getting into any kind of trouble and not being able to do something about it is not very likely. Him getting into trouble in the first place, especially as a result of his own mistakes, is not very likely.
2. Jim Gray used to make solo boat trips all the time, and so I would assume he has experience with it. This was not his first time ever, alone on his boat. And again, he’s the kind of guy that should be able to take care of himself.
3. The weather on the day he went out sailing was very very good!
4. Gray’s boat was equipped with an automatically deployable EPIRB (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon), which should have deployed and begun transmitting the instant his vessel sank.
5. So, Jim Gray is smart, he certainly had experience sailing alone where he went, the weather was good, the boat had a EPIRB - what the fuck happened? How could he vanish from the face of the planet without a trace?
6. Even if something happened, one of the most massive search and rescue efforts took place after that in order to find any trace of him, just check this out:

The Coast Guard searched for four days using a C-130 plane, helicopters, and patrol boats but found no sign of the vessel.
However, Gray’s boat was equipped with an automatically deployable EPIRB (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon), which should have deployed and begun transmitting the instant his vessel sank. The area around the Farallon Islands where Gray was sailing is also well north of the East-West ship channel used by freighters entering and leaving San Francisco Bay. The weather was clear that day and no ships reported striking his boat, nor were any distress radio transmissions reported.
On February 1, 2007, the DigitalGlobe satellite did a scan of the area, generating thousands of images. The images were posted to Amazon Mechanical Turk in order to distribute the work of searching through them, in hopes of spotting his boat.
On February 16, 2007, the Friends of Jim Gray Group suspended their search, but continue to follow any important leads. The family ended its search May 31, 2007. The massive high-tech effort did not reveal any new clues.

So, what do we have here? One of the smartest guys on earth goes out sailing in a familiar location, being an experienced solo sailor, during clear weather, and vanishes without a trace. His boat has a EPIRB, which should have started transmitting a distress signal as soon as it sank, but that also didn’t happen. Perhaps it didn’t sink? Thousands of highly detailed satellite images (560,000 images from 3 satellites, covering nearly 3,500 square miles of ocean) revealed absolutely nothing! A 4 day search by plane, helicopters and boats by the coast guard as well as many others (friends, family etc.) revealed nothing. A massive undertaking by Friends of Jim Gray, revealed absolutely nothing.

How the fuck is this possible? It is astonishing to me that apparently nobody has asked this question before. How the fuck is this possible? I mean, what are the odds here?

If you ask me, there are two options here. Either Jim Gray went hiding all by himself, tired of the world and just wanting to be left alone, or, he was abducted. Nothing else makes sense. Apparently someone, somewhere, was in need of a seriously smart database expert to help solve their problems.

If you think I’m kidding, think again.

After receiving a lot of feedback from my previous post on Canon Quality Control sucking bigtime, I thought it would be good to write an update. Before you read on, please read my previous post including the comments to make sure you know where I’m coming from.

A day after my previous post, I noticed that I got banned from the forums at DPReview. And my thread on that forum where I discussed my blog post got deleted as well. Apparently the moderator(s) there, whoever they are (Phil Askey?), don’t like the fact that I seemed to have enough courage to question the many issues Canon seems to have with their DSLR products. Even though I mentioned that the basis of my post was not only because I had experienced issues first hand, but also that I had noticed a trend on the forums where you had posts discussing focus issues every day. And to this day, this trend continues, as I have shown in the comments section of my previous post. Click here to check for yourself. As you will also notice from the feedback I got in the comments section of my previous post, there are many who have issues and agree with me, and you will find many more posts with similar issues by just searching on Google. Today I even noticed a thread on DPReview, where the poster said:

Seems every other thread you read here is about a camera and/or lens not focussing properly or some other issue that results in lousy photos. I’ve had lots of good examples of bad photos

I’m glad I am not the only one who noticed.

I also got feedback from a few professional photographers operating some of the popular digital imaging sites online today, and they also wrote to me in agreement. I noticed however that very few of them talk about these issues openly. And indeed it seems many are afraid to speak up, perhaps afraid to hurt their relationship with Canon or others. Who knows? I was surprised to find photographer Lloyd Chambers courageous enough to post a comment on my previous post where he just honestly admitted to the many issues with Canon lenses, even mentioning:

I would estimate based on my own experience that somewhere between 30-50% of brand new pro-grade lenses have at least mild optical issues, and some, like the 70-200/4 have moderate to severe ones-.

The 30-50% estimate is roughly what I thought myself based on what I have seen online. And I don’t know about you, but that’s A LOT. If this is true, it proves Canon’s quality control is bad. When I browsed around Lloyd’s website, one thing made me understand how he could speak his mind so freely:

Diglloyd.com accepts no manufacturer advertising.  Much content is free [free articles, blog] , but paid reviews help finance the site. Equipment used for paid reviews is purchased through normal retail channels; manufacturer discounts are not accepted.

It’s easy to be honest when you don’t accept ads or other gifts from manufacturers. You don’t have to worry about losing income, losing deals or hurting your relationship with them. I wish more people could be like this. It’s easier to trust Lloyd’s reviews on his website because of this.

But on DPReview? I mentioned issues and got banned. Perhaps there are things we can conclude from this. But I’ll leave that to your own imagination.

But again, what is very clear is that Canon has a major quality control issue on their hands, and every day users write to complain about it, as I have shown here. And again I have to remind you, this is just on one site, searching on Google reveals lots more.

Microsoft is at it again. Back in 2006, I had already written about them stopping support for Playsforsure on new devices, which meant that people who bought music using Microsoft’s Playsforsure DRM infection, would not be able to play their music on new devices, including Microsoft’s own Zune player. This was called one of the more massive screwings of customers by Microsoft.

Well it looks like Microsoft has outdone themselves this time, because they are going to stop supporting their MSN music service:

Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it’s done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.

MSN Entertainment and Video Services general manager Rob Bennett sent out an e-mail this afternoon to customers, advising them to make any and all authorizations or deauthorizations before August 31. “As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers,” reads the e-mail seen by Ars. “You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play.”

This doesn’t just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize, it also applies to operating systems on the same machine (users need to reauthorize a machine after they upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, for example). Once September rolls around, users are committed to whatever five machines they may have authorized—along with whatever OS they are running. 

This means that people who invested their money in music from MSN store will soon find that their entire music collection is unusable. To me, this is simply unbelievable. This is another clear example of what happens when you buy DRM infected products. And it further shows why piracy seems to be a better choice these days. Also check out this article:

Today, MS is saying that come August 31, a week or four shy of the two-year anniversary of the night of long knives, you will not be able to re-authorise your music. That means that the music is yours to keep. On one PC. As long as it doesn’t crash. Or you don’t update your OS. Or something doesn’t just decide to stop the music playing. If you do any of these things, you just lost your music permanently.

Basically, MS is stealing from you. It has your money, but you can’t have access the services you bought any more. So they are stopping, and legally, you are screwed. Microsoft has got your money though.

We have been saying for years that ANY sort of DRM is unacceptable, and this goes to show you exactly what we mean. Anyone who bought music from MS just got screwed, period, without recourse. It also proves what we have said for almost the same amount of time, Piracy is the Better Choice (R)(TM)(C).

MS has once again proven that if you steal the music, legality aside, you get a better product. Legally purchased music is demonstrably worse than pirated music. There has never been a case that I am aware of of a pirated copy deciding not to play any more because someone in Redmond decided it was inconvenient. You just get a better product, cheaper too, but also illegal.

Read my previous post on this subject to find out how you can recognize DRM infected products in the future so you don’t waste your money on the long term.

Another thing that has me amazed, is that I cannot understand how consumers seem to be so tolerant these days. It seems companies can do to consumers what they want and even rip them off, like Microsoft is now doing, without them even saying anything about it. Such a move from Microsoft should at least have sparked some major PR issues for them if not lawsuits. But consumers these days appear to have a very high level of tolerance. I recently also wrote about the bad quality control at Canon, with regards to their DSLR products. And there you see a similar problem, consumers are having issues with the products not working well, even out of the box, and many are complaining, but it looks like they just accept it for some reason as being normal. When has it become normal for a company to massively screw so many customers on such a large scale, as Microsoft is doing? When has it become normal to buy a DSLR and finding out that it does not work (well) as soon as you power it on? When has it become normal to buy a lens for your DSLR and finding out it only takes soft pictures and doesn’t focus well?

One thing seems to be clear, and that is that if companies are able to do this with customers, it’s because the customers are stupid enough to let it happen.

It looks like everywhere you look on the Internet, you come across messages from various users complaining about their Canon photography gear. The forums at DPreview for example are filled with posts about camera bodies giving the ERR 99 error message, dying very soon after purchase, can’t focus correctly out of the box and have to be sent in for calibration etc. Similarly for their lenses, there are so many instances of lenses front or back focusing, producing soft images, misalignment, too much chromatic aberration and flare. And these are the more expensive bodies and professional L lenses! They cost a fortune. At prices between $4000 and $8000 for a professional 1D body, and prices between $1400 and $2500 for a professional L lens, you would expect the hardware to perform really well. But apparently not if it’s made by Canon.

I can’t imagine spending $8000 on a 1Ds Mark III body and notice that it doesn’t work well within a few days of getting it. And yet, this is a situation many people have found themselves in. Just search on the Internet. It’s simply incredible. And Canon seems to get away with it too.

Take the autofocus fiasco with the 1D Mark III camera for example. That is just an excellent example of the bad quality control, or the complete lack of something resembling quality control at Canon. It took them months to fix it and a complete recall of all 1D Mark III bodies sold. And then, you find out that it is still not fixed. What a mess.

With such bad quality control, it doesn’t matter what products you deliver and specs that make you look better than the competition don’t matter either. What’s the use of being the only one with a 21 megapixel camera, when it looks like more than half of them don’t function correctly out of the box? When you buy a body or lens from Canon, these days you have to pray that you get a good (enough) copy.

The 40D body doesn’t even have the micro adjust feature so you can adjust the autofocus of lenses that front or back focus slightly. So the only option you have is send the body and lenses back to Canon for calibration. In my opinion, even the consumer level DSLR has to have micro adjust capability for lenses, especially if you can’t seem to make your lenses autofocus correctly out of the box, like is the case with Canon.

And now they are rumored to be working on the 5D mark II body. If that body doesn’t have as much focus points as the Nikon D3/300 (or very close), if it doesn’t have micro adjust for lenses and if it doesn’t have weather sealing comparable to the 1D bodies, they don’t have to release it at all in my opinion. Because Nikon is going to be a much better alternative, as it already is right now. Weather sealing on the Canon EOS 40D is laughable. It’s incredible that Canon even claims that the 40D body is weather sealed. That is simply a big lie.

Canon needs to get their act together ASAP in order not to further damage their reputation, or what remains of it at this point.

Update: Also, do NOT buy the Canon UV Haze Filters. Save your money. They claim that it prevents haziness, but forget to tell you that it also causes some really beautiful internal reflections  in high contrast situations and bright light. In certain situations it also causes loss of contrast in images. Totally unacceptable. And this even when used with L lenses. Most people claim to buy them to protect their lenses, but protecting your lenses can’t happen at the expense of image quality. To this day I wonder why Canon even sells them.

Update 2: Just in case you think I have something against Canon, you should know that I currently own close to $20,000 worth of Canon photography gear. I do however think that they should deliver more quality than they currently do.

Update 3: I also forgot to mention the many instances of camera bodies arriving with dirt, dust and even oil on the sensor or in the mirror box. I actually had one 40D myself that arrived with a big black piece of dirt on the sensor. Way to go Canon!

Update 4 (April, 21 2008): Photographer Lloyd Chambers posted a comment below that is certainly worth reading. The link he provides is further evidence that you cannot seem to trust lenses from Canon and even Nikon these days (Also check this related thread on DPReview.) I like his conclusion:

Don’t assume that your brand-new lens (or one you’ve banged around) is optically good. Test it and see for yourself. Today’s modern lens designs are outstanding, but real lenses must be manufactured and transported, offering many possibilities for theoretical performance to drop considerably.

If you find that your new lens is optically out of whack, you might be able to exchange it for another copy—one good reason to work with a reputable vendor. Or you can send it in for service, which nearly always resolves the problem (in the author’s experience). Both approaches require retesting the lens; there is no guarantee with either approach. The risk in sending it in for service is exceeding the return period of the vendor. Be sure to be as specific as possible about the problem, including photographs that show it clearly. This will help ensure that the problem is fixed.

Lloyd also sent along some more interesting links:

• Optical misalignment with the Canon EOS 24-70/f2.8L
• Focus Accuracy
• Lens Mount Misalignment

And here’s his take on the Canon 16-35mm f2.8L II:

In my view, images from the 16-35 II which have not been corrected for color fringing are unacceptable at 16mm, at least with some subjects, such as the white birches in the test image. I am sorely disappointed at Canon’s assertion that chromatic aberration has been “virtually eliminated”. The claim is so much at odds with the rendered images that one can only marvel at Canon’s brazenness. While we can’t expect too much from an ultra-wide zoom lens, we can expect realistic assessments of imaging performance from the manufacturer.

Owning a copy of that lens myself, I can only confirm this, and I was equally surprised when I saw the first results when using the lens. Finally, I want to add that this part of Lloyd’s comment below:

I would estimate based on my own experience that somewhere between 30-50% of brand new pro-grade lenses have at least mild optical issues, and some, like the 70-200/4 have moderate to severe ones-. Fortunately, in most cases these are correctable with a trip to the service center.

roughly matches with what I’ve seen so far online. Lloyd gives some good tips in this article for when you purchase a new lens.

Even after the release of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Vista, the operating system has still not improved much. It is practically as slow and resource hungry as it was without SP1. So it’s no surprise that business still aren’t upgrading to Vista. The only reason why Microsoft has managed to sell as much Vista licenses as they have up till now, is because new computers come with it preinstalled. If it weren’t for that, sales of Vista would have been a lot more tragic than they are right now.

From the beginning I and many others have said that the prices were also extremely high for all versions of Windows Vista, with the Ultimate edition being the worst. I wonder what those who bought the ultimate edition got for the extra money they spent, because up till now, Microsoft has failed to deliver anything of extra value to those users. Recently they’ve been trying to cut prices as well, and you have to really appreciate the PR speak here:

Microsoft made the announcement on its website, in the form of a Q &A with Brad Brooks, corporate vice president for Windows consumer product marketing (must have a big business card).

Says Brooks:

“Windows Vista has been on the market for more than a year now, with more than 100 million licences sold in its first year. While this is great progress … we’ve observed market behaviour that suggests an opportunity to expand Windows stand-alone sales to other segments of the consumer market. Over the past year, we conducted promotions in several different markets combining various marketing tactics with lower price points on different stand-alone versions of Windows Vista. While the promotions varied region to region, one constant emerged – an increase in demand among consumers that went beyond tech enthusiasts and build-it-yourself types.”

So as you can see, Microsoft has “observed market behaviour that suggests an opportunity to expand Windows stand-alone sales to other segments of the consumer market.” Do you know what that means? I think the “observed market behaviour” was the behaviour of people not wanting to buy Vista. I think what he was trying to say was: “We noticed Vista isn’t selling well and are now forced to lower prices of stand-alone licenses so we can hope to sell some more of it since people don’t seem to want it, unless they have no choice but to accept it with a new PC.” It’s not selling, and they have no choice but to lower the exorbitant prices they were selling Vista at.

Recently Gartner explained why Vista is broken:

Microsoft’s operating system (OS) development times are too long and they deliver limited innovation; their OSs provide an inconsistent experience between platforms, with significant compatibility issues; and other vendors are out-innovating Microsoft. That gives enterprises unpredictable releases with limited value, management costs that are too high, and new releases that break too many apps and take too long to test and adopt. With end users bringing their own software solutions into the office… well, it’s just a heck of a sad story for Microsoft.

Those arguments probably don’t surprise you. (See Should Microsoft Throw Away Vista? and Vista Never Had Its Moment in 2007.) But the Gartner analysts offered several more points to show how Windows is in a whole new world of hurt. High on the list is Windows’ complexity, its lack of modularity, its hardware footprint (particularly on low-end PCs), and the increasing movement to Web-based and other OS-agnostic applications.

When I tried installing a fresh Windows Vista SP1 copy, I was surprised to find out that a problem I mentioned a year ago during installation still existed.  This is what I wrote back then:

One area where it’s clearly visible how they rushed to get Vista finished by cutting out as much functionality is the Setup routine. If you’re not lucky, you might be presented with a message during Setup that it could find no supported hard drives to install Windows Vista on. It turns out that this happens when no partition on your hard disks is set as active. But here’s the thing: You can actually partition your hard disks during the setup procedure and format them, but somehow, Microsoft forgot to provide a small button somewhere where users can actually set an active partition after they have partitioned their hard disks during setup! How stupid can you get? So you provide the functionality to partition and format disks, but not to activate a partition, even though this same setup routine requires it to continue! Simply fucking amazing. I can’t tell you how much this frustrated me. I had to quit setup, then find out why I was getting this “no drives supported to install” message (THEY COULDN’T EVEN JUST PROVIDE A CLEAR MESSAGE SAYING THERE ARE NO ACTIVE PARTITIONS!!!), download a bootdisk CD to load another partition utility to activate a partition, then load setup again and continue installing. Needless to say, it took quite some time to figure it out.

Imagine how I felt when I was presented with that same message that Vista could not find any supported drives to install itself. And this, while right before that message, it presented me with a list of hard drives and partitions, and allowed me to actually select a partition to install to!! I lost more than an hour troubleshooting and trying to find out why it was doing this. And this time, it appeared that the problem was a USB memory stick that was attached to the PC. Only after I had removed it did the install continue. This is just an incredible example of the bad quality of the product.

I think Gartner is right about everything they said of Windows Vista. It has become slow and bloated. Everyday I hear about more people around me who switch to Mac OS X, because it is so fast and requires a lot less resources. Others are sticking with Windows XP for now. Microsoft has to do something totally radical if it wants to stay in the OS business. I think that the only good option they have is to start from scratch and build a new operating system from the ground up, without any backwards compatibility for current software and older hardware. That new operating system could then be released with a virtual machine containing an image of a licensed copy of Windows XP or Windows Vista so that users will still be able to use their older software inside that virtual machine. But for the new OS, everyone will have to at the very least recompile their applications, or significantly rewrite them to be able to run natively. With this approach, the new OS will be free of bloat, and as a result use a lot less resources and be a lot less complex, while at the same time it can be built according to today’s standards. It will also enable Microsoft to be free to innovate instead of being limited by the existing infrastructure and compatibility issues.

And if there are still smart people working at Microsoft, they are already looking into this.

Bill Gates essentially admitted recently that Windows Vista sucks. He even laughingly joked about it:

In a fairly frank interview with Gizmodo, Gates was asked if he thought there any Microsoft product that “could have had more polish.”

…

Instead Gates replid: “Ask me after we have shipped the next version of Windows”.

The implication is fairly obvious. Bill thinks that Vista could have had more polish when it hit the shops. He can’t say so now because that would undermine Vista’s already flagging sales.

And here is the video so you can see for yourself.

I’ve written a number of articles about how badly I think Windows Vista sucks. I had warned about it sucking even before it shipped. Microsoft did such a half-assed job, people all over the world are suffering because of it every day. I’m just glad I didn’t pay for it, because I’d have felt so much worse if I had. Especially when you see Gates laugh about it while you know you paid $400 for junk and him making huge profits from it.

And pay special attention to the fact that he can’t talk about how Vista sucks until “after we have shipped the next version of Windows.” In other words, he can’t talk about it now because otherwise nobody would want it. So he’s pretty OK with knowingly selling crap to everyone, and getting richer from it while joking about it on stage. This is even worse compared to when he said that he was against DRM and that DRM was bad for users, while failing to notice that most Microsoft software and hardware products shipping at the time included DRM. Products he was responsible for.

That’s Bill Gates for you, people!

The second part of the movie “Steal This Film”, which I wrote about before, is now available for download. You should check it out.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you already know what I think of Windows Vista. And it’s not just me, but many others are dealing with issues with Windows Vista every day. If it’s not the defects in the software, then Microsoft just decides one day that a couple of thousand users are using illegal copies of Vista and puts their computer in reduced functionality mode – something that they can only attribute to their stupidity and are now trying to fix in the first service pack for Vista.

The last few weeks I’ve been dealing with another issue that seems to be widespread as well. As if Vista isn’t already very slow compared to Windows XP, for some reason, certain processes in Vista just like using lots of CPU time making it look like you’re running Vista on a Pentium CPU with 64MB of RAM. These processes, depending on the time of day, atmospheric pressure and possibly positions of planets in our galaxy, can be any one of “TrustedInstaller.exe”, “msnmsgr.exe”, “iexplore.exe”, “explorer.exe”, “msmpeng.exe”, “slsvc.exe” and “searchindexer.exe.” Sometimes, when I am not very lucky, I can even see two of the processes fighting eachother for available CPU time while my entire machine slows down. I’ve become used to running Vista with task manager open all the time to keep an eye on what’s going on when I suddenly can’t open a goddamn window without waiting 2 minutes. You think it’s just me? Just do a search on Google, and look at how many people are suffering! And these are just the people who write about it! When grandma can’t open a new email window at home in a reasonable amount of time, she’s not likely to know what’s going on, let alone post about it on the Internet.

I can get so furious about this. At this point I’m just waiting for Microsoft to release Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista next week, and hope for their sake that it will fix this issue among so many other issues. The entire industry is disappointed with Windows Vista, and they have good reason to be disappointed. Windows Vista is a lemon, it’s worse than Windows Me at this point. And all of this was to be expected. It should never have gotten released so quickly as so many, including me, have argued in the past. I can’t even begin to think of recommending Vista to anyone. Everything is just slower in Vista. If I didn’t have to reinstall loads of software, I’d have gone back to Windows XP in a split-second. If the service pack fails to address these issues, I am going back to Windows XP the next day.

I can’t imagine the support nightmare of running this OS in an enterprise environment. May god have mercy with the IT staff of companies that decide to switch to Vista.

My new website has just been launched at www.kareldonk.com. Feel free to take a look. It contains the latest information about the services I have to offer as well as updated portfolios. I’ve been working on the site in my spare time for about 2 months now, and it was about time I could finally have my own work-related website to direct potential customers to. Until recently, I didn’t even have my own businesscard. This also partly explains the lack of frequent updates on my blog for the last 2 months.

Any feedback that you may have is ofcourse very welcome.

Internet lawyer and European patent attorney Arnoud Engelfriet (blog) has a very interesting website called Ius Mentis where he has a wealth of information about law as it relates to technology. Everything is explained in a way that makes it very easy to understand, often including examples you can quickly relate to. It’s well worth checking out.

It looks like Windows Genuine Crapvantage is causing trouble again for Microsoft. It seems it has been marking the Windows Vista and XP installations of many people as illegal, causing the operating systems to go into reduced functionality mode. This is not the first time this is happening, and many people, including me, have warned about the possibilities of these things happening. I can’t tell you how furious I would have been if I had to deal with my OS going into reduced functionality mode when I need to get things done. Fortunately, I won’t have to deal with this kind of stuff because there’s a nice crack available for Windows Vista activation (just search for the Vista Activator FF 2.1.2.1.2).

Microsoft has disappointed a lot of people, including me, with Windows Vista. It’s a very mediocre OS release and has many issues. People are calling it the second Windows Me, and that’s exactly what it looks like. This is what the head of Acer thinks about it:

The head of Taiwan-based personal computer maker Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, hit out at Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, saying that the “entire industry” was disappointed by it.

“The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista,” the head of the world’s fourth-biggest PC maker told the Financial Times Deutschland in its online edition on Monday.

Never before had a new version of Windows done so little to boost PC sales.

“And that’s not going to change in the second half of this year,” Lanci said.

“I really don’t think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista,” he added.

…

“Stability is certainly a problem,” he said.

And when he says that the entire industry is disappointed by Vista, he’s not kidding:

Sales resulting from demand for Vista however are not as high as had been expected by some. A major memory producer, Samsung Electronics, said that the demand for memory chips due to the launch of Windows Vista had not materialised as expected. Charles Guo of JP Morgan said that major vendors were sceptical about the increased demand due to Vista so were prepared for potential disappointment.

Just ask Dell:

Amid significant customer demand in the United States, the computer maker said on Thursday that it has returned to offering the older Windows version as an option on some of its consumer PCs.

Starting immediately, Dell said it is adding XP Home and Professional as options on four Inspiron laptop models and two Dimension desktops.

And here’s more:

ALTHOUGH WE knew that Vista sales were mixed for Microsoft, according to Reuters there appears to be a drift backwards to XP.
The wire said that some consumers are seeking out machines equipped with the more compatible Windows XP and PC makers and retailers are re-introducing the OS into product lines. HP, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba are all offering XP machines.

Craig Rabe, owner of the Computer Cafe, an independent computer store in Arlington, Massachusetts, said he received so many complaints about Vista he stopped selling machines loaded with the software.

This is something to be ashamed about. Think about it, Windows Vista is available and people still want a much older Windows XP. There’s even significant demand for it. Why is that? When you realize the many issues Vista has it becomes easy to understand. Issues such as incompatibility with many applications and hardware, difficulty to find good working drivers for certain hardware, the fact that it’s just bloated, works SO MUCH slower than Windows XP on the same hardware (simple file copy operations can take 5 times longer and even more, video and sound playback are much slower), uses more battery power and computer resources, is infected with loads of DRM crap and on top of that costs a fortune.

Microsoft has everything working against Vista right now, and with stupid unnecessary crap like Windows Genuine Crapvantage making things worse, they’re only hurting themselves even more for the long term. The product is mediocre at best, and they still insist on the extremely high prices. Isn’t that just suicide? They’re only making their suicide note even longer. I continue to see more people around me switching to Mac OS X and Linux, and I never thought I’d see the day where Microsoft was actually helping people to make the switch.

While the RIAA is still busy suing children and dead people, music companies are now looking more and more at distributing their music without the use of DRM. It looks like people are finally becoming wiser:

Almost two-thirds of music industry executives think removing digital locks from downloadable music would make more people buy the tracks, finds a survey.

The Jupiter Research study looked at attitudes to Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems in Europe music firms.

Many of those responding said current DRM systems were “not fit for purpose” and got in the way of what consumers wanted to do.

Despite this few respondents said DRM would disappear in the near future.

…

The study revealed that about 54% of those executives questioned thought that current DRM systems were too restrictive.

Also, 62% believed that dropping DRM and releasing music files that can be enjoyed on any MP3 player would boost the take-up of digital music generally. However, Mr Mulligan pointed out that this percentage changed depending on which sector of the industry was answering.

Among all record labels 48% of all executives thought ending DRM would boost download sales – though this was 58% at the larger labels. Outside the record labels 73% of those questioned thought dropping DRM would be a boost for the whole market.

Among all those questioned, 70% believed that the future of downloadable music lay in making tracks play on as many different players as possible. But 40% believed it would take concerted government or consumer action to bring this about.

They’ve been talking about this in private as early as late 2006, but most likely much earlier. And it looks like changes could come within months:

Executives of several technology companies meeting here at Midem, the annual global trade fair for the music industry, said this weekend that a move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format from at least one of the four major record companies could come within months.

…

But behind the public posturing, there are signs of a new appreciation in the industry for unrestricted copies, which could be sold as singles or through subscription services or made freely available on advertising-supporting Internet sites.

– EMI Group last week said it would offer free streaming music on Baidu.com, the leading Web site and search engine in China, where 90 percent of music is pirated. EMI and Baidu also agreed to explore developing advertising-supported music download services. EMI this summer licensed its recordings to Qtrax, an ad-supported music distribution service.

– VirginMega and FNAC, two of the top music retailers in France, said last week that they would sell DRM-free music tracks from independent labels. DRM is a “pain in the neck” for consumers, Julian Ulrich, general manager of VirginMega, told Warren’s Washington Internet Daily, a newsletter. The 350,000 songs, Kennedy said, is a sizable amount.

– Yahoo’s experiments ? last year it offered a handful of tracks from Norah Jones, Jessica Simpson, Jesse McCartney and Relient K without any digital restrictions ? will continue this year, David Goldberg, head of Yahoo Music, said during an interview at Midem. Two of the major labels, Sony BMG and EMI, agreed to the tests in 2006.

– Amazon.com, the Internet retailer, is looking into starting a digital music download service that is DRM-free, MusicWeek magazine wrote Jan. 6.

“In 2007, the majors will get the message, and the DRM wall will begin to crumble,” the journalist Antony Bruno wrote in Billboard magazine this month.

That could change the equation for Apple, which has dominated the sales of both Internet music and digital music players. Apple does not share or license the DRM that its products use, thus restricting music sales to its own products. Apple representatives would not be interviewed for this article.

Reading the last part of the above quote, it was absolutely no surprise that this month, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs came out playing Ghandi, pretending not to like DRM and trying to promote a DRM-free distribution of music. Charlie Demerjian basically took care of Jobs here, but allow me to have my take on it as well. Here are some quotes:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

…

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven?t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.

…

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

So all of this begs the following questions:

• Couldn’t Jobs “imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats” back in 2003? Couldn’t he see that “in such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players”?
• Couldn’t he see back in 2003 that “DRMs haven?t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy”?
• Couldn’t he see how DRM free music would overall lead to more sales of music and be more positive for music companies back in 2003 when he sold out to them with iTunes?

We all know he could, because if he couldn’t he would have to be pretty retarded for someone in his position. So what happened back in 2003, Steve? In case this is all still a mystery to the reader, back in 2003 this was purely a business decision for Jobs, and it still is today when he pretends to be the Ghandi of the music industry. Jobs could care less about what users want and if DRM is good or bad, he saw an opportunity to make money including DRM in iTunes, mainly by locking out competitors, and he took it, largely ignoring issues it was causing for users. And because of that, Jobs and Apple made loads of cash in the last few years at the expense of consumers. He would have continued to do so, if it weren’t for the fact that music companies are now looking at distributing music without DRM. What this means for Jobs is that suddenly, even more companies will be able to freely distribute music, and Apple won’t be able to lock them out anymore. So before all of this happens, Jobs made a 180 degree turn and now pretends he doesn’t like DRM. And the public largely bought it too. “WOW! Steve Jobs doesn’t like DRM! Finally! Someone important on our side! Way to go Steve Jobs!” They fail to realize Jobs is just a hypocrite looking at his own interests. It’s the same thing which I discussed about Google here. The fact that Apple is now getting sued to death because of DRM in various countries around the world also helped.

Let’s also not forget the fact that Bill Gates made a similar decision as well which I wrote about before:

Even Bill Gates sounded stupid when he admitted DRM sucked for users, and that he is against DRM that ties content to a single device, but somehow failing to notice that the technology is being included in the latest software and hardware products from Microsoft, for which he is still responsible. What?s going on exactly?

They’re all just hypocrites. And now that DRM is starting to die, I’m sure everyone at Microsoft is absolutely happy with the fact that they spent all that time crippling Windows Vista and other products with DRM “features” while it may not be used that much anymore in the future anyway. Looking at all the issues it is causing for Windows Vista now, I’m sure they’re almost bursting into tears at Microsoft right now. You could have used all that time for better purposes, huh guys? Microsoft now has to go through loads of problems because of DRM in Windows Vista and it’s backfiring heavily. Recently Bruce Schneier wrote his opinion about Windows Vista, and it doesn’t look good at all. Many users are reporting issues with Windows Vista largely having to do with DRM. And while many industry analysts were very optimistic about Windows Vista sales before its release, it’s now becoming clear that Vista is selling much less than Windows XP:

Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista at retail stores significantly trailed those of Windows XP in each product’s first week on shelves, according to new figures from NPD.

The market research firm’s data showed the number of copies of Vista purchased was nearly 59 percent less than the number for its predecessor XP, looking at the first week of sales. Revenue was also down, but less dramatically, with the dollar value of first-week Vista sales off 32 percent from that seen with XP.

Even our beloved Steve-O told analysts recently they were a little too excited about the effect Windows Vista would have on Microsoft’s financial results for 2008. It’s no surprise that Windows Vista is doing worse than Windows XP. If you’ve been following the news for the last few months, and certainly if you’ve been reading my posts here, it was to be expected. Vista just has too much working against it right now. Most of it is discussed in my review. But problems are still being reported, largely having to do with application incompatibility. The claim has been made that Vista breaks 90% of games, and it seems to be the case indeed. I know I can’t run Quake 4 on Vista because it keeps crashing at the “loading” screen. Apart from that, hardware manufacturers are still struggling to make their drivers work in Windows Vista. Not only Creative, but also nVidia can’t yet release working final drivers for their latest products. In Creative’s case, here is why:

Creative said on the matter, “The changes to the audio implementation and subsystem were quite major, requiring a fundamental rewrite of the driver model and features to take account of the lack of direct hardware support” and continued, “Additionally, removing DirectX 3DAudio hardware support required a work-around, in the form of Creative Alchemy, which was available before Vista hit the retail shelves to restoremulti-channel EAX audio.”

…

Creative also cited a change in WHQL procedures by Microsoft that have been “time consuming” and resulted in further significant delays.

Changes to the audio and video subsystem were indeed quite major in Vista. And we already know why: Because of the DRM features that were included in Vista. Peter Gutmann has all the details here.

Windows Vista is looking to become the next Windows Me at this point, but let’s hope Microsoft can do something about this in the near future. But to be honest, it doesn’t look very good and Microsoft has really made some terrible decisions with Vista that are going to cost them dearly.

A year ago I wrote about Google’s hypocritical decision to help the Chinese government with censoring information in China. There was no doubt that this decision was made based on pure business reasons. They sold themselves out to the Chinese government expecting to be able to gain (more) access to the big market in China, even against their own principles. A quote from my previous post:

Don’t be evil? Sure, but everyone forgot to ask the important question. Don’t be evil to whom exactly? It appears the answer is: “To our shareholders.” Just like I wrote before about Microsoft, Google is now a corporation, and they are going to have to keep shareholders happy. That stock price has got to keep going up! Doing anything to make shareholders upset is suicide.

So do you think that Google, similar to Microsoft and Yahoo, are going to want to risk losing business in China? I doubt it. For all their good intentions, Larry and Sergey don?t have the balls to truly not be evil.

…

Google thinks, and/or would like us to think, that they are helping the Chinese people by at least trying to provide them with the information they are allowed to view, instead of denying them access to all information, but in the process, they are willingly helping the Chinese government with committing a crime against their people. They are actually helping the government there to restrict freedom of speech and to deny the people there their basic rights.

So much for “Don’t be evil.” Google PR are making all kinds of sharp turns right now trying to explain their way out of this and making them look good, but it won’t work.

And it will only go downhill from here. Once they start doing business there and start to rely on it, the Chinese government will have more power over them and will get them to agree to even more things.

Not very long after that, Google started waking up to reality in China. Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders, had to admit that “Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense.” A quote:

As Brin noted:

“Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense.”

It made more sense from the start. It seems that they are taking such a position now only because the Chinese government is coming with even more, and quite likely far reaching, demands which could explain why they suddenly started blocking more of Google’s services.

Ofcourse, I saw that coming way in advance (I seem to be saying this more often these days in my posts), as you can see from the previous quote above.

And very recently, almost a year later, both of Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, admitted again that the decision to censor information in its search engine in China was bad for the company:

Google’s decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday.

Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its “Don’t be evil” motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets.

Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: “On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative.”
The company has only once expressed any regret and never in as strong terms as yesterday. Mr Brin said the company had suffered because of the damage to its reputation in the US and Europe.

Last year in a speech in Washington Mr Brin admitted the company had been forced to compromise its principles to operate in China. At the time, he also hinted at a potential reversal of its stance in the country, saying “perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense”.

And ofcourse we all know that the reversal never came. They still seem to be happily censoring information in China and doing business with the Chinese government as much as possible. Also pay special attention to the following remark by Brin:

“On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative.”

This is a clear indication of how they evaluate these decisions at Google. “On a business level.” So when the Google founders talk about the decision being bad for Google, it’s purely on a business level. They could care less about ethics, about doing what’s right, about living up to their “Don’t be evil” slogan, and about principles. As long as things are good for business, they’ll go ahead with it no matter what. And this was ofcourse their motivation to help censor information at the very beginning as I wrote. But when they don’t get what they want from the Chinese government, then suddenly the “principled approach makes more sense.”

So remember, it is very important to know why Google regrets censoring information in China. Not because they came to see that it was against their “Don’t be evil” slogan and that it was a bad thing to do, but because they didn’t get the business results from it that they hoped to get.

And when you know this, it is also easy to understand why there has since been no reversal of that decision. Since this is purely about business, a reversal would mean losing even more business, so that’s not an option. If this was about doing what’s right, about living up to their false “goody two shoes” image, they would have reversed their decision a year ago already.

So when you hear about how good they are at Google, remember this. Also don’t forget about the many times that they have already been caught censoring information on their main search engine as well. And don’t forget about the fact that they are in bed with Criminals In Action (CIA) and seem to be helping the CIA with a lot of questionable things. I guess it’s a result of accepting money from the CIA to launch the company. Why don’t Page and Brin talk about that?

Google’s “Don’t be evil” slogan officially became the equivalent of Fox News’s “Fair and Balanced” slogan a long while ago.

Now that Windows Vista has officially been launched and is available, I want to give my thoughts on it as a product. And as you can see from the title of this post, it’s not going to be very positive. If you’ve been reading my previous posts on Windows Vista, you already know most of the problems I have with it.

One of the reasons why it is such a big disappointment is because of what we were promised during PDC 2003. Windows Vista as it is today is just a fraction of what it was supposed to be. Essentially it is just a big service pack to Windows XP as far as I’m concerned. When you’ve installed it, apart from the new Aero interface and changes to the Start menu, Control Panel and Windows Explorer, most users won’t notice any difference between using Vista and using Windows XP. There’s no feature, on the surface, that would make any user want to have Windows Vista. And a lot of reviews that I’m seeing online seem to agree with this:

With the full release of Vista of our collective doorstep it seems that many techies are wondering if they should jump on the Vista bandwagon. HardOCP brings us its Windows Vista Ramblings and concludes that the only reason to upgrade is if your ego demands it, and in fact common sense suggests holding for now until some of the kinks have been ironed out.

Meanwhile bit-tech has put up its Windows Vista review and it sings something of a different song. The review covers an explanation of all the varieties of Vista available and a thorough look at various components, but the end result remains the same, there is no need to upgrade for now.

Elite Bastards has gotten somewhat more specific with its review of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition and comes up with very similar conclusion, namely that Vista includes some nice new features, gamers will have to upgrade at some point if they want to play DirectX 10 games and that there is no pressing need to upgrade any time soon. This review also touches on the problem of driver and application compatibility, something early adopters of Vista are going to have to be very wary of.

I saw this coming way in advance:

So far there’s nothing really special about Vista in my opinion. It looks like Windows XP with some new features built-in, like searching capabilities and a new user interface. Most of the work seems to have been done in technology working behind the scenes. Mostly things that will make error reporting much better and will improve the stability and security of the OS.

…

So apart from technology on the back-end that has been improved and updated a little, the only changes on the surface seem to be the UI and the search features. It takes some time to get used to the new layout of the UI and the new icons. I’m now waiting for Beta 2 to see what is going to be really exciting about Vista. Right now it seems that it will certainly be an improvement compared to Windows XP, but it won’t be something revolutionary.

To be honest, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 is good enough to last 2 more years as it is now. Maybe longer. It’s good enough to be able to compete with Mac OS and Linux on the desktop for 2 more years with minor updates. There was no need to rush Windows Vista out so soon, apart from pressure from businesses who signed up for Software Assurance. The fact that Microsoft did release Windows Vista the way they did will have more negative consequences for them than positive ones. Even on those same businesses who were crying out for Vista to be released soon, because they are the same ones who will now refuse to implement it because of the quality and incompatibility issues. Like I wrote before, I wish Microsoft had taken the time to truly make Vista the OS that they promised us:

I am however disappointed in the fact that they keep pulling great features out of Longhorn. WinFS is one of them, and other smaller things like the sidebar have also disappeared. And it seems certain features that do stay will be much simpler compared to what was originally planned. If it was my decision, I would have taken as much time as is needed to get everything out the way it was planned starting in 2003. Microsoft should just push the release date for Longhorn to 2007 or early 2008 if this is what is needed. I believe Windows XP has enough potential to carry on until that time with another service pack. Windows XP SP3 could have IE 7, .NET Framework 2.0, the latest version of Media Player and other software updates. Microsoft could even add some new themes to refresh the UI.

Instead, they cut down on many features and basically did a rush-job to be able to RTM Vista in November 2006. Vista is now available to the public for merely a day, and there are already 5 updates available which are bug fixes. Even the DRM functionality in Vista already seems to be cracked, which shows how half-assed the implementation probably is, no doubt because of the rush-job they did. And I’ve had a couple of different issues while using Vista as well. Sometimes my laptop just hangs after waking up from hibernation and I have to turn it off and on again. I also get random crashes of rundll.exe sometimes and “COM Surrogate” quite often. After some crashes of rundll.exe I can’t restart or shutdown the PC using the options in the Start menu. They just don’t respond. So I have to turn off the PC by pressing the power button and hold it long enough for the PC to turn off without Windows shutting down properly. Internet Explorer also tends to crash sometimes.

One area where it’s clearly visible how they rushed to get Vista finished by cutting out as much functionality is the Setup routine. If you’re not lucky, you might be presented with a message during Setup that it could find no supported hard drives to install Windows Vista on. It turns out that this happens when no partition on your hard disks is set as active. But here’s the thing: You can actually partition your hard disks during the setup procedure and format them, but somehow, Microsoft forgot to provide a small button somewhere where users can actually set an active partition after they have partitioned their hard disks during setup! How stupid can you get? So you provide the functionality to partition and format disks, but not to activate a partition, even though this same setup routine requires it to continue! Simply fucking amazing. I can’t tell you how much this frustrated me. I had to quit setup, then find out why I was getting this “no drives supported to install” message (THEY COULDN’T EVEN JUST PROVIDE A CLEAR MESSAGE SAYING THERE ARE NO ACTIVE PARTITIONS!!!), download a bootdisk CD to load another partition utility to activate a partition, then load setup again and continue installing. Needless to say, it took quite some time to figure it out.

Then there’s the issues when using multiple monitors. Sometimes this just produces weird results. One time I was trying to configure different resolutions on both screens, when both of them just went black, and there was no way to do something about it. I had to turn off the PC again without shutting down properly to be able to get back to a working display.

And then there’s also the fact that Vista just feels much slower and bloated in a way. The Aero UI certainly makes things feel smoother, but things like Windows Explorer generating thumbnails for folders containing videos and images are just too slow and resource intensive. This was MUCH faster on Windows XP on the same machine. Windows Media Player also works slower and feels much heavier when using it, to the point where I sometimes just resort to using VLC because it works faster, uses less resources and gives smoother video playback. This is probably a result of the DRM “features” that have been introduced with Vista. It also has an impact on the quality of sound and video playback even on high end systems.

Let’s also not forget all the application incompatibility problems that are being introduced with Windows Vista due to the implementation of new security features like User Account Control (UAC) which in my opinion could have been left out of the OS. A lot of applications refuse to install or don’t work properly after installation unless you give them full administrator rights. Users are going to have to deal with an insane amount of dialog boxes being presented because of the new security features, to the point where it can actually impact productivity. Sometimes it can take as much as 5 times longer to simply delete a file, compared to Windows XP, because of all the dialog boxes with questions that you have to answer. This will simply train users to click on the “Allow” buttons so they can continue to work, and won’t actually stop viruses and spyware getting installed. It also impacts the user experience because the UAC dialogs just take over the whole screen everytime in a hard and rude way. It takes away a lot from the gracefulness of the Aero experience. Vista also switches to the Basic theme everytime an application is used which is not compatible with the Aero theme, and this happens quite often for me and is really annoying. In the case of the QuickTime ActiveX control, when this is loaded in a webpage in one of the tabs in Internet Explorer, Vista switches to the Basic UI, but doesn’t switch back to Aero when you close the tab containing the ActiveX control. You have to close the entire Internet Explorer window with all the tabs you had open, in order for Vista to switch back to Aero. And that is quite annoying as well.

So it’s no surprise that Microsoft now seems to be in a hurry to fix issues with Windows Vista:

Reckon you won’t upgrade to Vista until the first service pack is released? That’s looking likely to be the second half of this year, according to Microsoft’s latest email blast.

The company has put out a call for “customers and partners (to) actively test and provide feedback on Windows Vista SP1 to help us prepare for its release in the second half of CY07 (calendar year 2007).”

…

However, the Redmond clarion call declares that “regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues as are the primary focus for the Service Pack.”

So, yes, the still not-yet-released Vista has “high impact issues”.

At least they admit to the “high impact issues.”

In my opinion, they should have waited and tested everything a lot more and release a product with more quality in the end. Almost everyone is going to wait now for the first service pack release before they consider using Vista, and even then, will wonder what the benefits are that they will get from using it. The DRM “features” in Vista and the fact that it is so expensive won’t help either. And by the time the first Service Pack for Vista comes out, companies will wonder again if they should go ahead and deploy Vista, or if they should just wait a year for the next release of Windows, which is already planned for 2008. The only way they’ll get people to buy Vista is to not sell Windows XP anymore and to make certain software only available for Windows Vista, like DirectX 10.

With Vista, Microsoft has given a unique opportunity for the competition to catch up with them because of various reasons. The most important reasons are the fact that the quality of the OS isn’t very good, the absurdly high prices, the fact that there is no (compelling) reason to upgrade, the anti-consumer DRM “features” and locking down the OS with Software Craptection Platform which will backfire on them. People are already writing about the fact that Apple should now take a chance and start supporting Mac OS on third party hardware:

THE INTRODUCTION OF Microsoft Windows Vista and its’ many confusing and progressively expensive flavors has opened up a er, period of opportunity for Apple (formerly Apple Computer). Will Steve Jobs take a really bold chance to increase his market share or just play it safe with his little fiefdom of iPods, iTunes and forthcoming iTV?

Operating systems may not be sleek and sexy to Steve, since he realizes he can make more recurring revenue off of music at a dollar a pop than selling decent hardware.

However, Vista is being beaten like a dead horse by the mass media ? most of them already are enthralled to the God of Jobs if you read between the lines, so Microsoft could make nuclear fusion work tomorrow and they’d give it a lukewarm review at best. The consensus view out of the babbling punditry is “Don’t buy Vista today, unless you have to buy a new computer tomorrow.”

Even Microsoft’s own Jim Allchin wrote to Gates and Ballmer before about wanting to use a Mac:

“Mr. Allchin says, I’m not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers, both business and home, the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. … I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.”

And from here:

“In my view, we lost our way,” Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft’s platform and services division, wrote in an e-mail dated Jan. 7, 2004. The e-mail was presented as evidence late last week in the Iowa antitrust trial, Comes v. Microsoft Corp.

“I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products.”

And it seems today that still very little has changed. It’s sad that Allchin will be leaving Microsoft with Vista being the last version of Windows he worked on, because it’s a disappointment. He did a much better job with Windows XP. And he’s not the only one who would buy a Mac. Check out this hilarious email exchange between Microsoft executives who were drooling all over Mac OS Tiger:

Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was fucking amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.

As you may know, Mac OS Tiger introduced the features promised for Vista way back in 2004, and now in 2007, Vista is still having a lot of difficulty giving us what Mac OS has had for so long, but what they promised way before Mac OS actually had those features. As a longtime Microsoft fan, all of this makes me sad, just like Charlie Demerjian. I can only hope they change course very soon, but I’m not seeing anything that points in that direction. As a developer I remain excited about the various new technologies available right now and coming out soon, but with an OS as mediocre and expensive as Vista, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Like I wrote before, if my clients don’t want to use it or it is too expensive for them, I’ll have to look at developing on other OS’s in the near future. I’m also not willing to put up with the DRM crap and the high prices for Vista myself and might be forced into looking at alternative OS’s in the near future as well.

The lack of quality in the software might also be caused by the fact that employees at Microsoft don’t seem to be very excited or motivated these days to create superior products. This is a result of the various issues at Microsoft among which the bureaucracy that seems to exist there now. Apart from that, employees also don’t seem to be compensated very well for their work, and aren’t happy because of it. Why can’t Microsoft create an environment for their employees similar to Google? Why can’t they invest in the people who the company depends on the most to create kick-ass software? Why can’t they keep those people happy and attract even more of them? Instead, top managers and partners seem to be getting more financial compensation than they deserve right now, while the rest of the employees are being neglected. In addition, I’ve heard stories of employees at Microsoft getting “fired” from their team and having to join other teams because they had the guts to point out obvious flaws inside the software the team was working on. That kind of stuff is just amazing.

What are you doing about all of this, Steve-O?

We have to be increasingly more careful with where we get our information from these days. It seems that it becomes more and more difficult to be able to rely on the media, even the mainstream sources. A lot of people still believe that if something is reported in the media, it has to be true, and if it’s not reported, it’s probably not true. They fail to realize that the media is being used more and more to form public opinion instead of objectively informing the public. It’s being used to manipulate people into doing and thinking what those in control want them to do and think. This is largely being done by selectively reporting the news, reporting half truths, lies or just opinions that are not based on facts. Selectively reporting the news also means that there’s a lot of information that never reaches the public. It’s a form of censorship.

I’ve written about this before, and two important documentaries that you should see on this subject are “Orwell Rolls in his Grave” and “Outfoxed.” The traditional media such as TV, radio and print are slowly being taken over by a small number of corporations with just a few people at the top deciding what to report. Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp alone reaches 80% of the world population, and he’s now also taking over large websites on the Internet. Other corporations such as General Electric Capital and organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are also busy buying what remains of independent media. And then you also have corporations on the Internet such as Google who have been caught censoring information many times already. Even Microsoft and Yahoo are actively and willingly helping the Chinese government with censorship and limiting freedom of speech. And it’s still not enough, because the Chinese president wants even more control of the Internet:

CHINESE PRESIDENT Hu Jintao said that his glorious socialist government should be using the Internet to “guide public opinion”.

He wanted to see a “healthy online culture” which was dedicated to protected the government’s stability. According to the Xinhua News Agency Hu told officials at a meeting of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo that whether China could cope with the Internet affects the development of socialist culture, the security of information, and the stability of the state.

He added that the Chinese internet regulators should “use advanced technologies to better guide public opinions” and “promote online products that can represent the grand Chinese culture.”

As if he’s not been “guiding” public opinion enough already with the help of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. In this case, “guiding” is more like manipulating. It’s the same thing the Pentagon is already doing:

The Pentagon has formally declared psychological warfare on the American people by announcing it will engage in propaganda and indoctrination by using the Internet and media to “set the record straight” on the war on terror. Recent history clearly indicates this is just the latest outreach of an insipid brainwashing agenda that is totally unlawful and anathema to the U.S. Constitution.

In the past, the military or the government did not announce that they were planting surreptitious propaganda to target U.S. audiences, they did it secretly and for a very good reason – because it was and still is illegal.

…

The new program is simply another wing of the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence , publicly announced after 9/11 but simply the latest incarnation of a PR brainwashing scam that spans back decades. The OSI exploited legal loopholes by planting its propaganda in foreign newspapers that would later be picked up by U.S. newswires. In today’s environment even that seems quaint, with the Pentagon openly and proudly shouting from the rooftops that they will knowingly violate the law to indoctrinate the American people.

Perhaps the most alarming case of the military’s information tentacles burrowing their influence deep into media circles in recent years was in February 2000, when another branch of the same Pentagon propaganda bureau, Psychological Operations Command (PSYOPS), had placed their operatives “in the news division at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters as part of an “internship” program starting in the final days of the Kosovo War.”

FAIR speculated that the purpose was twofold, one to directly propagandize the American people via CNN and also potentially to allow the “military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against the network itself,” because the “military needed to find ways to “gain control” over commercial news satellites to help bring down an “informational cone of silence” over regions where special operations were taking place.”

With the knowledge that government propagandists were utilizing U.S. news network hubs at CNN to run what was described as a “vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory,” and that this took place over six years ago – just imagine how infested today’s networks and newsrooms are with paid agent provocateur propagandists whose sole job specification is to orchestrate methods of mind control over the population of the United States.

In October 2005 Government Accountability Office investigators concluded that the Bush administration’s secret policy to pay off influential journalists to plant fake news and positive spin on Bush’s policies was illegal and that the “administration had disseminated “covert propaganda” in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.”

They’ve been doing it in Iraq too. It’s a form of mind control or manipulation. If you can control the information someone gets, you can control or manipulate his thinking and his decisions. Also check out this link.

This same approach has already been used for “marketing” by a few corporations. A while ago NVidia was caught hiring people to post positive remarks about their products on message boards. These people had to post 50-100 messages on various boards in an hour. Their job was to first earn the trust of visitors on those boards, and then go on to promote NVidia’s products to them. Recently Sony also launched a blog to promote their portable gaming device, the PSP, making it look like someone else was running it and later had to admit they were behind it. So even when you’re reading blogs, comments on blogs, message boards and product reviews on websites like Amazon.com, you have to be very careful with trusting that information. Here’s an example of a review on Amazon.com, supposedly done by an 11 year old:

Reviewer: White Tiger “Tiger”
Wow, this toy is great! I am eleven years old and I think you should buy this! I will write about it in the following.

First of all, this toy is PURE FUN! I love how it never gets boring because there is SO MUCH STUFF IT CAN DO! I love having it guard the hallway, and then having it tell me how many times that there was an intruder. And its walking isn’t bad at all, I use my robot on carpet and it works great for me! The only thing is walking backwards, it barely moves when it walks backwards. I give this toy 5 stars for “fun”!

This toy has a great educational value. There is so much stuff to learn and get the hang of, like what shift buttons to press and which combos to do. Also, programming it is very educational. This toy gets 5 stars for “educational value”!

For a robot, this thing is pretty durable. It is sturdy and doesn’t break when it falls or bumps into something. I gave “durability” 4 stars because of his head. His head seems to be very fragile and is knocked around easily!

Now, some things to take note of:

When (if) you purchase this toy, be sure to make sure that you have a pretty BIG ROOM for it that doesn’t have alot of LARGE OBJECTS. This is because on “free roam” mode, the robot can bump into things easily (but his sensors touch the surface and then he goes around the object).

Make sure that the room(s) you decide to use RoboSapien V2 in have exebtionally GOOD LIGHTING. In my family room, I have an overveiw light and lamps, I prefer the lamps and the robot works great with both. Just use the thing you like the most (lighting wise) and see if RSV2 works in it. You will beable to tell if he can’t because he will say “lighting to low…”

One more thing. This guy takes alot of EXPENSIVE BATTERIES. 6 D’s and 7 AAA’s. Be aware of that. He has a 4-6 hour lifespan, so batteries will be used up quite a bit.

I just told you about the cons of this toy. BUT, don’t be sad that the toy has cons because it only has THREE CONS. It has over ONE HUNDRED PROS!!!

I totally recommend this toy all in all! Enjoy!

Does that sound like an 11 year old? I have my doubts. There seem to be companies that are specialized in this kind of “marketing” and who knows how many corporations they are now working for.

From my IT background, I know that there are three important things that are needed in order for information to be useful:

1. It first of all has to be correct
2. It has to be complete
3. It has to be timely

The first one is pretty obvious. If information is not correct, you’re going to be making the wrong assumptions and decisions based on that information. This would be the case when you’re just being lied to and are being fed wrong information on purpose. The second one is also not hard to understand. If you get information that is not complete, even though it is correct, you’ll still be making wrong assumptions and decisions because they would be based on an incomplete understanding of things. This would be the case when you have selective news reporting and are being fed information based on a specific point of view. This information might be true, but you don’t get the other side of the story or even the complete picture of the one side, and are being manipulated into having certain opinions about things. And finally, information has to reach people on time in order for it to be useful. If people find out about things too late, they won’t be able to act on it at all, or not as effectively as they could have if they received that information on time.

It seems you have to be really careful with where you get your news and information from and have to be really paranoid about the sources. You also have to go out and look for alternative news and information as well to get the other side of the story and make sure you’re not getting a distorted view of things. Usually you would expect to be able to rely on the media to do this for you, but as you can see, that won’t happen very often anymore. It can take a lot of time to do your own research, but even if you have the time, it will still get more difficult to find certain information because of all the manipulation and censorship going on. It’s good to be aware of all of this, and I want to highly recommend visiting the links above to my previous posts on this subject.

Update February 3: I came across this article on BBC with some interesting bits as well:

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military’s plans for “information operations” – from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

Bloggers beware.

…

The declassified document is called “Information Operations Roadmap”. It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

…

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military’s psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

“Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience,” it reads.

“Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” it goes on.

…

Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories – all supportive of US policy – were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

But the true extent of the Pentagon’s information operations, how they work, who they’re aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.

The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to – and the grand scale on which it’s thinking.

It reveals that Psyops personnel “support” the American government’s international broadcasting. It singles out TV Marti – a station which broadcasts to Cuba – as receiving such support.

Who knows how many websites and bloggers are now being controlled by them. Again, be careful with where you get your information from!

Charlie Demerjian continues to give Microsoft a hard time regarding the new DRM technologies introduced in Windows Vista. It seems Microsoft officially responded on the official Windows Vista Blog to a paper posted by Peter Guttman not too long ago. Read Demerjian’s article before you continue to read this post.

It’ll probably be no surprise to you when I say that I agree with Demerjian. Microsoft has basically confirmed everything Peter Guttman wrote in his paper, but tried to make it either sound like they were doing the consumers a favour or that they had no choice but to go along. In short, they tried to put a positive spin on it, probably hoping to brainwash everyone.

Although their response reads like PR-speak, it is certainly better than that one time when they tried to put a positive spin on WinFS development being halted. It seems they still haven’t learned much from Robert Scoble. I know there are lots of smart people working at Microsoft, but these days they seem to be letting me down a lot more often.

Demerjian already pointed out some issues in Microsoft’s response on their blog, but when you read their response, there are so many more issues I can point out. For example, Microsoft says:

Associating usage policies with commercial content is not new to Windows Vista, or to the industry. In fact, much of the functionality discussed in the paper has been part of previous versions of Windows, and hasn?t resulted in significant consumer problems ? as evidenced by the widespread consumer use of digital media in Windows XP. For example:

• Standard definition DVD playback has required selective use of Macrovision ACP on analog television outputs since it was introduced in the 1990s. DVD playback on and in Windows has always supported this.
• The ability to restrict audio outputs (e.g., S/PDIF) for certain types of content has been available since Windows Millennium Edition (ME) and has been available in all subsequent versions of Windows.
• The Certified Output Protection Protocol (COPP) was released over 2 years ago for Windows XP, and provides applications with the ability to detect output types and enable certain protections on video outputs such as HDCP, CGMS-A, and Macrovision ACP.

Notice the attempt at trying to make people think the DRM technologies in Vista don’t matter much since such technologies have been in Windows ever since Windows Me. It’s the standard “Hey, it’s been in previous versions for over X years and nobody had any issues with it!” argument, which should lead people to have a reaction similar to “Well gee, I guess if it has been in Windows for so long, and I never even noticed it or had issues because of it, it can’t be that bad…” It’s comparable to slowly passing laws without people knowing about much of it, and then enforcing them all much later when it’s too late and pretend like nothing is wrong because they’ve existed all those years and nobody had any issues with them.

They’re only going to be able to fool people with this who don’t bother to think about it long enough. I don’t care if this technology existed and was included ever since MS-DOS 5.0!! It doesn’t matter. What matters is when it’s being used! That’s the issue here. It’s going to be used now, and people are going to start having to deal with it as a result! The fact that it existed for 7 years in Windows is irrelevant! In addition it’s gotten much worse because the technology got more advanced, and it will only get a lot more worse once the Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB – formerly Palladium) technology gets ready in the next version of Windows and they start using it for DRM enforcement.

Here’s another blatant lie:

Will Windows Vista content protection features increase CPU resource consumption?

Yes. However, the use of additional CPU cycles is inevitable, as the PC provides consumers with additional functionality. Windows Vista’s content protection features were developed to carefully balance the need to provide robust protection from commercial content while still enabling great new experiences such as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray playback.

For those of you running Windows Vista, start Windows Media Player and play a random MP3 audio file. Go into Task Manager and look for a process called “mfpmp.exe” with description “Media Foundation Protected Pipeline EXE.” Notice how much CPU it uses. On my machine it fluctuates between 10% and 20% CPU time. Other users are seeing even larger consumption of CPU resources, just check out this comment.

And now the question for Microsoft: Why exactly is mfpmp.exe needed to play an MP3 file, when you say the content protection technology is there for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray?? What additional functionality am I getting, exactly, from mfpmp.exe when I play an MP3 file? As it is now, the content protection technology just uses more resources while providing no benefits at all to the user, just like Peter Guttman wrote in his paper and we’ve all argued before. No wonder there are sometimes gaps in the audio on my PC, which by the way ran much faster on Windows XP. I thought Vista was about more robust video and audio playback?? Even high end systems have these issues. I find myself using VLC to play video files more often now because Media Player feels so slow and bloated. Even when playing MP3 files, VLC uses much less CPU resources compared to mfpmp.exe and wmplayer.exe combined!

There’s just no way Microsoft can explain away all of this. You had better own up to these issues in an honest way and start satisfying your customers soon because it’s only going to work against you. What happened to all the smart people at Microsoft? Even Bill Gates sounded stupid when he admitted DRM sucked for users, and that he is against DRM that ties content to a single device, but somehow failing to notice that the technology is being included in the latest software and hardware products from Microsoft, for which he is still responsible. What’s going on exactly? Stuff like this makes me feel like I live in Wonderland.

I’m expecting to meet Alice any day now.

In a previous post I mentioned how I would never, ever, buy HD-DVD content and that if I did, I hoped I would get struck by lightning that very instant. Well it looks like I might have to take that back, and probably risk getting struck by lightning in the future too.

It seems the porn industry has decided that HD-DVD will be its format of choice over Blue-Ray. And as you can imagine, that has basically decided the faith of Blue-Ray:

Quite famously in the war between Betamax and VHS the latter won especially because the adult industry preferred it. If you’ve been around long enough, you probably remember that the very early home video rental stores were primarily responsible for driving Betamax out of the market. And those stores carried almost exclusively pornographic content.

And it seems one of the reasons why the porn industry favours HD-DVD is because Blue-Ray disks cannot be replicated:

One of the big problems they have with Blu-ray is its expense, followed by its market share. “Blu-ray has superior quality, yes,” said a spokesperson for porn studio Bangbros, “but HD DVD is easier to produce, cheaper to produce and there are more HD DVD players in homes than there are Blu-ray players, for example in the Xbox 360.”

Pink Visual heavily complained about the fact that Blu-ray discs cannot be replicated and a range of other studios, who did not want to be mentioned by name indicated that the cost of going with Blu-ray cancels the technology as a possible HD solution for this industry. “Only bigger studios can afford Blu-ray, and even then it’s not economical,” we were told.

So it seems I might be buying HD-DVD content afterall in the future. As long as I can easily replicate the disks, as the porn industry seems to require, I won’t have an issue with it either.

As crazy as this may sound, we’re heading into a time when it seems like piracy is going to be the better choice compared to legally owning content. The Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian explains why this will be the case in a recent article. Head on over and read the article. If you haven’t yet done so, also read a recent paper by Peter Gutmann which I also discussed here to learn about the details of the content protection technology in Windows Vista and the latest PC hardware.

I am never, ever, going to buy HD-DVD content. Ever. If I ever buy HD-DVD content I hope I get struck by lightning at the very instant. And this ofcourse just like the fact that I never bought music from Apple’s DRM infected iTunes, even though I do own an iPod Nano. Instead, I’m just going to rip CD’s and download MP3 files because that’s much easier to do for a whole number of reasons, one of which is that I can actually backup my music when and however I want, and can easily use it on almost any device I want, however and whenever I like.

If you read Demerjian’s article, and Gutmann’s paper, you’ll be amazed at how stupid Microsoft and all the people behind these copy protection technologies actually are. This is going to backfire on them in so many different ways it’s kind of scary. It’s amazing that they actually expect consumers to put up with all of this. It’ll be even more amazing if they actually get consumers to put up with it too. They’ll probably have short term success with selling this HD-DVD crap to consumers, but on the long run it’s going to be a lot more difficult as consumers begin realizing they were screwed and experiencing the disadvantages of the copy protection technologies first hand. Kindof like what seems to be happening to Apple’s iTunes. Perhaps now that AACS copy protection technology has been cracked, people might still buy HD-DVD content because they know they’ll still be able to make copies and remove the restrictions.

But it’ll still be too much of a hassle and it seems piracy is still going to be the better choice. I don’t usually like to make predictions for the new year, but in this case I’ll make an exception: I predict that traffic at The Pirate Bay is going to increase significantly in 2007. So to the crew at The Pirate Bay, if you guys are reading this, make sure you plan ahead for the growth and start preparing some extra servers and bandwidth. You’re going to need it.

Peter Gutmann has written up a paper analyzing the costs that are being introduced with the content protection mechanisms in Windows Vista. You can read the paper on his website here. Most of what’s in his paper is not new information to those of us following the development of Windows Vista, but he does a good job of summarizing a lot of the disadvantages of the new content protection mechanisms in Windows Vista.

Keep in mind that a lot of the things discussed there are also still at their version 1.0 stage of development, and it will only get worse as this technology matures. You can compare it to the way Microsoft changed Windows Genuine Crapvantage and Product Craptivation in Windows Vista and made things more complex for systems administrators in the end. Apart from the technology being in its infancy, much of it was also left out of Windows Vista because it wasn’t ready yet. This includes large parts of Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB). So if you think what is discussed in that paper is already really bad, this is to remind you of the fact that it’ll get much worse in the future if Microsoft continues their current policy.

Gutmann also mentions the following:

Note A: I’ll make a prediction at this point that, given that it’s trying to do the impossible, the Vista content protection will take less than a day to bypass if the bypass mechanism is something like a driver bug or a simple security hole that applies only to one piece of code (and can therefore be quickly patched), and less than a week to comprehensively bypass in a driver/hardware-independent manner. This doesn’t mean it’ll be broken the day or week that it appears, but simply that once a sufficiently skilled attacker is motivated to bypass the protection, it’ll take them less than a day or a week to do so.

This is a certainty. Just look at how Windows Media DRM continues to get cracked everytime, and look at how Microsoft’s latest anti-piracy efforts were easily bypassed. The only thing they achieve everytime is make the system a lot more complex and difficult to manage, not only for themselves, but also for end-users.

Not only that, but as Gutmann writes, all these extra “features” just make the software more bloated with no benefits to the end-user, and as a result requires faster hardware to run on:

Note C: We already have multiple reports from Vista reviewers of playback problems with video and audio content, with video frames dropped and audio stuttering even on high-end systems. Time will tell whether this problem is due to immature drivers, or has been caused by the overhead imposed by Vista’s content protection mechanisms interfering with playback.

If you upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, you need faster hardware to be able to do the same things you did on Windows XP with slower and cheaper hardware. And that mostly because Microsoft added loads of software that does absolutely nothing of real use to the end-user and could easily have been left out.

One of the few things in Gutmann’s paper that gives me hope for the future is the following:

I know from the Microsoft sources that contributed that many of them care deeply about providing the best possible audio/video user experience for Vista users and are quite distressed about having to spend time implementing large amounts of anti-functionality when it’s already hard enough to get things running smoothly without the intentional crippling.

I always wondered if the team working on software like Genuine Crapvantage, Product Craptivation and the other Software Craptection Platform stuff goes to work very motivated every day knowing what they have to work on. In a previous post, I also asked if the Most Evil Team at Microsoft were proud of their work. If these people are really distressed about all of this, why don’t they take action? Why continue to work on these “features”? What is our beloved Steve-O (pictured on the right) doing these days? Even Bill Gates himself recently stated that DRM causes too much pain for end users:

Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which “causes too much pain for legitmate buyers” while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are “huge problems” with DRM, he says, and “we need more flexible models, such as the ability to “buy an artist out for life” (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.

So this leads to the following question I want to ask Gates: “Why did you then allow this technology to get into Windows Vista and other Microsoft products??” Surely he was in a position to not allow this technology to make it into any final Microsoft product if he really thought that it was bad for users. Does this make sense to you? Not to me. It’s just more stuff that points to how bad Gates screwed up during Windows Vista’s development.

All this content protection technology in Vista is going to make users dislike using it. I know it will make me dislike using it if Windows keeps degrading my user experience everytime I load some unsupported and “potentially harmful” (to the content providers, obviously) software. As it is now, things like User Account Control (UAC) are already giving me a hard time when I use Vista. For example, compared to Windows XP, I have to click an additional 3-4 times to delete a file in Windows Vista thanks to UAC, while it also seems to take 5 times longer. And with the high prices for Windows Vista, it will only make it less attractive.

Let’s also not forget a recent study by Forrester Research, that showed that sales at Apple’s DRM infected iTunes Music Store have dropped off dramatically during the first half of 2006:

December 13, 2006 (Reuters) — Sales at Apple Computer Inc.’s online music shop iTunes Music Store dropped off dramatically in the first six months of 2006, according to a recent survey.

Since January, the number of monthly iTunes transactions has declined 58%, while the average size per purchase declined by 17%, leading to a 65% overall drop in monthly iTunes revenue, U.S. market research group Forrester Research Inc. said in a report on the results of a study of North American consumers.

“It is too soon to tell if this decline was seasonal, or if buyers were reaching their saturation level for digital music,” Forrester said in the report, which was published for Forrester clients last week and made available to Reuters today.

There has been some controversy over what the results of this survey actually mean, but if it really shows that sales at iTunes have declined that much, it might be because buyers were reaching their saturation level for DRM infected music. What might have happened, is that buyers are only now beginning to realize the limitations of content they buy at iTunes. The reason why they are realizing it now is probably because they are experiencing it first hand. After about 2-3 years, most of them might be upgrading their computer, or upgrading to newer iPod models or even different devices and are beginning to discover how “easy” it is to move the content they bought on iTunes over to new devices. Most of them will likely be learning a very hard lesson too. And perhaps that is what has resulted in a decline of sales through iTunes.

And if Microsoft continues with their current policy, the same thing is going to happen with all of their DRM infected products. Apart from Windows Vista, that also includes their Zune music player. People might upgrade to Windows Vista initially, but if they later discover the limitations being imposed by all the content protection software, we might see a similar decline in Windows Vista sales after some time. And just like iTunes, it won’t be clear if Windows will ever be able to recover from that since it might already be too late. Once consumers have learned the hard lesson, they aren’t likely to go back.

Things haven’t been going well with the USA for a long while now, and recently it has only become more clear. If people were doubting certain developments before, they are going to find it increasingly more difficult to ignore what’s going on these days in not only the USA, but around the world. Most people don’t realize what’s going on because they can’t see the big picture. Unless you keep yourself updated on a daily basis and keep recent events in memory, it’s not easy to see the big picture. There often is a long period of time between events and most people are too busy with daily activities to remember certain information and be able to connect the dots. The example I often like to use is the frog in a pot of water. If you would throw a frog in a pot of hot water, it would try to jump out immediately. However, if you put the frog in a pot of water and very slowly increase the temperature of the water, the frog doesn’t notice the small increases in temperature and eventually dies when the water becomes very hot.

And basically the same thing is happening in the USA. Slowly but surely all kinds of things are being put into place that ultimately lead to a goal in the future, which is the transformation of the USA into a police state. And it seems most Americans are too occupied with their daily activities to even notice what’s going on around them. Indeed many of them don’t even seem to care about what’s going on. If they aren’t too busy working 2 to 3 jobs to be able to pay their bills every end of the month, they care more for having fun and wasting their time on unproductive activities. To be honest, this is not just a problem with Americans, but people in general. But in the case of Americans, it allows the people in control to gradually take their freedoms away while they are too busy to notice.

Not too long ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill that authorizes Bush to spy on US citizens without the need for a warrant while at the same time making it more difficult to legally challenge such actions by the government:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday that would provide congressional authorization for President George W. Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program but subject it to new rules.

…

“Hidden in the fine print are provisions which grant the administration authority to maintain permanent records on innocent U.S. citizens, granting the administration new authority to demand personal records without court review, and terminating any and all legal challenges to unlawful wiretapping,” said Rep. John Conyers, top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

Shortly after that, the Senate approved a detainee bill that not only enables the US government to torture suspects and prisoners, but also makes it impossible for them to challenge their detention:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday gave final approval to a bill for tough interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects, as President George W. Bush prevailed after a series of setbacks on his detainee policies.

…

The bill sets standards for interrogating suspects, but through a complex set of rules that human rights groups said could allow harsh techniques that bordered on torture such as sleep deprivation and induced hypothermia.

It establishes military tribunals that would allow some use of evidence obtained by coercion, but would give defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them.

The bill also expands the definition of “enemy combatants” mostly held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to include those who provide weapons, money and other support to terrorist groups.

After a high-stakes negotiation, Bush got much of what he wanted in the bill to continue the once-secret CIA program of detention and aggressive interrogations of suspects that critics said amounted to torture.

…

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said the right to challenge one’s detention was fundamental in American law, and the Supreme Court would reject the plan if it were stripped.

“This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American,” said Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee’s top Democrat. He said it was intended to choke off access to Guantanamo to “ensure that the Bush-Cheney administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful abuses of power.”

As soon as the bill was passed, the US government moved ahead quickly to implement it:

Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that “no court, justice, or judge” can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.

Beyond those already imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, the law applies to all non-U.S. citizens, including permanent U.S. residents.

The USA can now pick up anyone it labels as an “enemy combatant”, including US citizens, and ship them to Guantanamo Bay without a trial. These people can then be held there for as long as the US government wants, they can be tortured there and there’s nobody who can do anything about it. You can’t even go to court. It’s just incredible when you think about it. How could something like this be approved by the Senate? Not only that, how could most Americans just fail to realize what this means and do nothing about it? Where are the protests?

Some are calling this a total rollback of everything America stood for, and I have to agree:

The Senate has agreed to give President Bush extraordinary power to detain and try prisoners in the so-called war on terror. The legislation strips detainees of the right to challenge their own detention and gives the President the power to detain them indefinitely. The bill also immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for torturing detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year.

Bush saved himself with that as well, since he was the one who gave the CIA authorization to detain and torture people:

WASHINGTON: The CIA has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including a directive signed by President George W. Bush, that have guided the agency’s interrogation and detention of terror suspects.

The CIA referred to the documents in a letter sent last Friday from the agency’s associate general counsel, John McPherson, to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union.

The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one of them is “a directive signed by President Bush granting the CIA the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees,” the civil liberties union said, based on its review of published accounts.

Others are calling this a constitutional shredding:

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, “unlawful enemy combatants.”

…

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush’s list of “terrorist” organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an “unlawful enemy combatant” and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.

It is a constitutional shredding. It’s more easy to understand how all of this is possible when you realize Bush said that the constitution is “just a goddamn piece of paper.” Now when you know all this, you might want to worry about who the US government actually thinks is an “enemy combatant”:

There has been a great deal of discussion about the Military Commissions Act of 2006, recently passed by both houses of Congress, and most of it has to do with the provisions allowing torture of alien detainees, that is, of non-citizens apprehended in, say, Afghanistan or Iraq, and their treatment at the hands of their American captors. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner, all Republicans, grandstanded for weeks over the torture provisions, then capitulated. Another “Republican maverick,” Arlen Specter, zeroed in on the real issue, however, when he said the bill would set us back 800 years by repealing the habeas corpus protections against arbitrary arrest and jailings ? and then went ahead and voted for it, anyway. [Editor: You just can't make this stuff up.]

Liberal opposition mainly centered around the morality ? or, rather, immorality ? of torture, but the debate largely ignored the ticking time-bomb at the heart of this legislation, scheduled to go off, perhaps, in tandem with some future crisis, e.g., another terrorist attack on American soil: the redefinition of the “unlawful combatant” concept that lays the foundations for this administration’s reconstruction of the gulag. Here is the new, broadened definition, as enunciated in the legislation recently passed by the House:

“The term ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ means ? (i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or associated forces); or (ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the president or the secretary of defense.”

It doesn’t say “alien” or “terrorist,” although it specifically includes members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It says “person” ? any person, including American citizens. As Bruce Ackerman, professor of law at Yale and author of Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism, puts it:

“Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”

Congress has now granted the president the powers of a dictator. The rest of the story of our slide into absolutism is merely a matter of filling in the details.

…

One suspects, however, that this administration will not be so easily deterred. To begin with, they won’t have to deal with a judge or bad publicity, because the “trial” will be conducted by a military tribunal, operating in secret. Secondly, the defendants will stand trial without benefit of constitutional protections normally afforded to all American citizens. I say “normally” because I am still living in the world before the passage of our modern-day Alien and Sedition Act, at least mentally. But it’s a new world, now.

The exact contours of this strange new world are vague, but they are fast coming into painfully clear focus. As the president equates criticism of the Iraq war with “enemy propaganda,” and the neocon media blares away at the theme of “dissent = treason” ? or, as Glenn Reynolds puts it, “they’re not antiwar, they’re on the other side” ? it isn’t hard to imagine that we have a few sedition trials in our future.

My expectations are dire, although this could simply be my own subjective impression, a mood that will pass. I can’t help feeling, however, a sense of gathering dread, attached not just to the Military Commissions Act but arising out of the political atmosphere surrounding its passage. I never could understand ? in the sense of share ? the fear of authority that emanates from my Arab friend every time he sees someone in uniform. Now, however, I am beginning to feel it myself ? as we all will.

Yep, it’s like Olbermann says: “Americans can kiss their freedom goodbye.” Ofcourse, this is all because the government has to take all of these measures to protect the freedoms of the American people, you see. Those damn terrorists just can’t stand all the freedom in America!

The real reason for all of this is to have better control over the American people. As one can clearly see, it is not to protect their freedoms because their freedoms are actually being taken away and their constitution is being systematically weakened. The US government is expecting things to get worse in the near future, and these measures are to ensure that they will be able to take care of anyone standing up to them. It’s like I wrote in a previous post, with the growing opposition including the 9/11 Truth movement and the income tax opposition, they are going to want to be able to stop these people somehow. Nothing will be easier than to simply label them terrorist supporters and as a result treat them like “enemy combatants” so they can be detained and shipped to Guantanamo Bay.

As you can imagine, Guantanamo Bay is soon going to be too small to be able to detain all those Americans there. But not to worry, the government is already on it. American prison camps are on the way, and they’re being constructed by none other than the mighty Halliburton:

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush’s “unlawful enemy combatants.” Americans are certain to be among them.

How could that even be going on, you ask? Well it appears this was “enabled” by the Military Commissions Act:

Re-elected Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul joined Alex Jones on air last week to discuss the fallout of the midterm elections and what he sees transpiring over the next two years. He ended by ominously warning that if something is not done soon to overturn legislation such as the Military Commissions act, the law officially allows for citizen concentration camp facilities.

Not only are they building new camps, but they even seem to be restoring old internment camps, possibly to use them again in the future:

One of the last acts of Congress was to send President Bush a bill that establishes a $38 million program of National Park Service grants to preserve Japanese POW internment camps in Hawaii, California, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho. Is this really in the name of historical interest or does it dovetail with programs on the books to intern hundreds of thousands of dissidents in a time of crisis?

…

Precise details of exactly what the “restoration” of these camps will entail remain absent from news reports, but suspicions will undoubtedly be cast as to whether making the camps accessible again to process people in whatever form is part of a wider agenda to set up a network of internment camps that will be used to forcibly detain American citizens under emergency provisions.

During the Iran Contra hearings in the 80′s, previously classified information came to light about Continuity of Government (CoG) procedures in times of national crisis. The masterminds behind these programs were Oliver North, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and the Rex-84 ‘readiness exercise’ discussed the plan to round up immigrants and detain them in internment camps in the context of uncontrolled population movements across the Mexican border.

The real agenda was to use the cover of rounding up immigrants and illegal aliens as a smokescreen for targeting political dissidents and American citizens . From 1967 to 1971 the FBI kept a list of persons to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the “ADEX” list.

Since 9/11 shadow government and CoG programs that were outlined in Rex-84 have been activated, including mass warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. The internment camp program is being readied for execution following the announcement on January 24th that Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Brown and Root) had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps.

…

Following the news first given wide attention by this website, that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root had been awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency, the Alternet website put together an alarming report that collated all the latest information on plans to initiate internment of political subversives and Muslims after the next major terror attack in the U.S.

The article highlighted the disturbing comments of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who encouraged torture supporting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to target, “Fifth Columnists” Americans who show disloyalty and sympathize with “the enemy,” whoever that enemy may be.

Respected author Peter Dale Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.”

Daniel Ellsberg, former Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense, called the plan, “preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”

…

Under the enemy combatant designation anyone at the behest of the US government, even if they are a US citizen, can be kidnapped and placed in an internment facility forever without trial. Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has spent over four years in a Navy brig.

In 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.

Okanogan County Commissioner Dave Schulz went public three years ago with his contention that his county was set to be a location for one of the camps.

Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps. Actors scream out that they have constitutional rights as they are handcuffed and hauled off to the detainment facility.

This is all part of the process the US government seems to be in right now of “tooling up” for what’s to come in the near future:

The Bush Junta has quietly “tooled up” to utilize the U.S. military in engaging American dissidents after the next big crisis, with a frightening and overlooked piece of legislation that was passed alongside the Military Commissions Act, which greases the skids for armed confrontation and abolishes posse comitatus.

…

Morales traced the ancestry of the bill back to “Operation Garden Plot” and the United States Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, now de-classified programs dating back to the 80′s which outlined how the military would be involved in suppressing domestic civil disobedience in America. The groups listed as potential non-conformist troublemakers included tax protesters, militia groups, religious cults, and various other general anti-government dissenters.

…

Morales said that the authorities know full well that a widespread awakening is taking place and so the Defense Authorization Act was essentially part of a move to try and “tool up” for the reaction that will take place after their next lunge to destroy what’s left of American liberty.

Morales speculated that the trigger event for the push to use the U.S. military against American dissidents under the bill was right around the corner.

Others are seeing these recent events as a move by the Bush administration towards Martial Law:

Public Law 109-364, or the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007″ (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a “public emergency” and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.”

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is “martial law.”

…

For the current President, “enforcement of the laws to restore public order” means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against “disorderly” citizenry – protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.

…

The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called “illegal aliens,” “potential terrorists” and other “undesirables” for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That’s right. Under the cover of a trumped-up “immigration emergency” and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

…

Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19th, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007′s Defense Authorization Act contained a “widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order WITHOUT the consent of the nation’s governors.”

Again, when you look at the growing civil unrest in the USA, it’s quite easy to understand why the US government is taking these steps. They know what’s coming and seem to be preparing for it. This civil unrest is only going to get worse when Americans find out in the near future about the plans for the creation of the North American Union, which the USA will be a part of, and which will mean the end of the USA as we know it today. Execution of these plans seems to be making a lot of progress as well, and it’s all being done mostly in secret without notifying the American people of what’s going on:

There he stood, a man with a captive audience of fellow anti-American neo-cons bent on one world government. His mission: to lay out the military and security integration of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The date: September 13, 2006. The place: Banff Springs Hotel, Alberta, Canada. The forum: a secret meeting of the powerful elite, a meeting that all of a sudden become not so secret. The man: Donald Rumsfeld, point puppet for the Bush administration?s planned integration known as the North American Union. This is serious government collusion behind the backs of the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It is government for the elite, not government representing the people.

Completely in line with the Bush administration’s current policy, this is being done without Congress officially knowing about it, even though it seems that this will have far reaching consequences for the USA:

Journalist Jerome Corsi has received the first documents pertaining to a FOIA request asking for full disclosure of the SPP office in its activities towards creating a Pan American Union.

According to a report by World Net Daily, the documents reveal that the Bush administration is running a “shadow government” without congressional oversight in conjunction with Canada and Mexico under the guise of a program “to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation.”

Corsi asserts that a wide range of US administrative law is being re-written in stealth under this program to “integrate” and “harmonize” with administrative law in Mexico and Canada. The documents contain references to upwards of 13 working groups within an entire organized infrastructure that has drawn from officials within most areas of administrative government including U.S. departments of State, Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Health and Human Services, and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Corsi has further reported that at a recent high-level confab in Banff, an assistant U.S. secretary of state, Thomas A. Shannon , chaired a panel that featured a presentation by Prof. Robert Pastor, author of a book promoting the development of a North American union as a regional government and the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.

The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan American Union networked by a NAFTA Super Highway has long been a Globalist brainchild but its very real and prescient implementation on behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations has finally been reported on by mainstream news outlets.

After nearly ten years of reporting by Alex Jones and the rest of the Patriot Movement, the establishment press is finally covering serious reports on the plan for a Pan-American Union, based on recent articles by Human Events columnist Jerome Corsi.

…

“Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form.”

This admission is as historical as it is concerning – the CFR moulds the foundational policy for the elimination of American sovereignty and it is passed as executive law within weeks. It is once again evident that the true vestiges of power lie within the ranks of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission who act on policy decided upon by the big brother of multinational semi-secret steering societies, the Bilderberg Group.

…

The NAFTA Super Highway will allow vehicles, people and goods to travel from Mexico, into the heart of America and up to Canada with little impediment, effectively erasing America’s borders wholesale. Coupled with Bush’s blanket amnesty program, the Pan American Union is the final jigsaw piece for the total dismantling of America as we know it.

The NAFTA Super Highway? Yes, the NAFTA Super Highway:

WASHINGTON ? Rep. Ron Paul, a maverick Republican from Texas, today denounced plans for the proposed “NAFTA superhighway” in his state as part of a larger plot for merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a North American Union.

“By now many Texans have heard about the proposed ‘NAFTA Superhighway,’ which is also referred to as the trans-Texas corridor,” he said in a statement. “What you may not know is the extent to which plans for such a superhighway are moving forward without congressional oversight or media attention.”

But fortunately, some congressmen have taken it upon them to officially get these developments discussed in Congress:

WASHINGTON ? While several members of Congress have denied any knowledge of efforts to build “NAFTA superhighways” or move America closer to a union with Mexico and Canada, four members of the House have stepped up to sponsor a resolution opposing both initiatives.

Rep. Virgil Goode Jr., R-Va., has introduced a resolution ? H.R. 487 ? designed to express “the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union (NAU) with Mexico and Canada.”

“Now that Congress is preparing to take up the issues of the North American Union and NAFTA superhighways, we are moving out of the realm where critics can attempt to disparage the discussion as ‘Internet conspiracy theory,’” explained Jerome Corsi, author and WND columnist who has written extensively on the Security and Prosperity Partnership ? the semisecret plan many suspect is behind the efforts to create a European Union-style North American confederation and link Mexico and Canada with more transcontinental highways and rail lines. “This bill represents a good first step.”

But will that help? I doubt it. Congress has already proven to be easily manipulated into supporting any boneheaded policy the Bush administration can come up with. It might be a bit more difficult to convince the American people about these ideas though, which is probably why all of this North American Union planning has been happening behind the scenes. It’ll probably remain that way until another big crisis that will help to “convince” the American people to choose for a North American Union:

Robert Pastor, a leading intellectual force in the move to create an EU-style North American Community, told WND he believes a new 9/11 crisis could be the catalyst to merge the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

Pastor, a professor at American University, says that in such a case the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP ? launched in 2005 by the heads of the three countries at a summit in Waco, Texas ? could be developed into a continental union, complete with a new currency, the amero, that would replace the U.S. dollar just as the euro has replaced the national currencies of Europe.

This is ofcourse similar to 9/11, the catalyzing event or new Pearl Harbor, which was needed to “convince” the American people about the need for the USA to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Does this help to make you realize why the US government feels the need to “tool up” as I discussed earlier? If not, how about this:

In May of 2005, a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) task force released “Building a North American Community”, a blueprint for merging the United States, Mexico and Canada into one country called “North America”. The plan, which is being implemented via the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement signed last year between the leaders of the three countries, will destroy the sovereignty of the USA. The United States will cease to exist as an independent nation. The United States Constitution , including the Bill of Rights, will be extinct. Implementation of such a plan is, therefore, by definition, an act of TREASON. No other word fits the crime.

…

One has to wonder if the professors that the globalists are conning into spreading the glory of driving a knife into the back of America have any concept of what they are doing. This author is of the opinion that most college professors live in an academic bubble insulating them from the real world consequences of their actions and of the implementation of their pie-in-the-sky socio-economic theories and beliefs. Most of them, trapped by their own inflated opinion of their intellect, sadly, do not have a clue. Perhaps these people at Arizona State University would not be duped into teaching TREASON 101 if they had a clue, if they were given a copy of The United States Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Perhaps these professors need to be taught a lesson.in the rights and responsibilities of being an American.

It seems to me that most Americans would normally not choose to part with their constitution and the opposition against the North American Union in the future might be huge. All the more reason for the US government to make sure they can keep the opposition in control in the near future and all the more need for some kind of crisis to get people to accept those plans. It’s probably in that light that we should view recently developments such as this one:

DALLAS The first of many surveillance cameras has been installed in downtown Dallas. Once the system is up and running, the Dallas Police Department will be able to monitor 30-percent of the business district.

Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle says, “It will create an environment where people know they can’t do anything unlawful in the central business district, because the fact that the cameras are going to take away their anonymity.”

Or how about this:

OPINION In July last year, San Francisco began installing video surveillance cameras to monitor the public streets. What quietly started as a pilot program with two cameras in the Western Addition has quickly expanded, with more than 30 cameras throughout the city. The Mayor’s Office is seeking to install 22 more cameras at a number of locations, including heavily trafficked areas such as the 16th Street and Mission and 24th Street and Mission intersections.

Aah yes, nothing to worry about, ofcourse. It’s just to protect your freedoms and for your own safety. Privacy? What privacy? Oh wait, it seems they are actually doing something to protect your privacy:

The US Government signalled some willingness this week to address concerns over citizens’ privacy, but also launched a scheme which will analyse secret airline passenger risk profiles and keep them for 40 years.

The US Government released guidelines which it says will protect the privacy of US citizens in an era of increasing data collection and information sharing by and between Government bodies.

Congress had previously mandated greater information sharing within government and law enforcement, but there have been concerns that that process undermines individuals’ privacy.

…

Meanwhile, however, the US Government began a planned scheme this week which creates risk assessments of airline passengers, assessments that passengers can ever see and which are kept on file for 40 years.

A programme has been identified by digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which collects information about individuals, stores it in a database and performs a risk assessment about whether or not the individuals concerned are likely to break US law.

“Personally identifiable information is collected to ensure that people and cargo entering or exiting the United States comply with all applicable US laws,” said a privacy impact report on the Automatic Targeting Scheme (ATS). “Relevant data, including personally identifiable information, is necessary for CBP to assess effectively and efficiently the risk and/or threat posed by a person, a conveyance operated by person, or cargo handled by a person, entering or exiting the country.”

Information will be gathered and stored on US citizens and foreigners, including EU citizens. A major source of data will be passenger name records (PNR), themselves the subject of data protection controversy in Europe.

Hmmm no, I guess not. Notice how they claim to be protecting the privacy of citizens with so called “privacy guidelines”, while at the same time collecting even more personal information from them and storing this for at least 40 years. Now where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Microsoft came up with the same stuff not too long ago and I wrote about it here.

Expect it to get worse. Just check out what’s happening now in London:

POLICE and councils are considering monitoring conversations in the street using high-powered microphones attached to CCTV cameras, write Steven Swinford and Nicola Smith.

The devices are used at 300 sites in Holland and police, councils and transport officials in London have shown an interest in installing them before the 2012 Olympics.

The interest in the equipment comes amid growing concern that Britain is becoming a “surveillance society”. It was recently highlighted that there are more than 4.2m CCTV cameras, with the average person being filmed more than 300 times a day. The addition of microphones would take surveillance into uncharted territory.

The Association of Chief Police Officers has warned that a full public debate over the microphones? impact on privacy will be needed before they can be introduced.

It might already be happening in the USA as well while people don’t know it. Kindof like how Americans found out much later about all the NSA wiretapping going on. Plus, did you also know that the FBI can listen in on your conversation through the microphone in your mobile phone, even while you are not using it and while it is turned off? No? Then just check out this video. Still, only 66% of Americans think their government is spying on them. I would have expected it to be much more. I guess most of them are still not aware of Echelon (video). Even the Internet is being monitored. I wrote about this before in more detail. And when they check your webbrowsing history, they might be just as surprised as this principal:

The student was sent to the Principal’s office to face disciplinary measures. Steiner Ranch Elementary Assistant Principal Amy Moore was reportedly surprised that the school’s IP filters hadn’t blocked the sites.

“They should have,” the Principal said to Mark while at the office.

He says that his principal checked the web history in his school web account, and was ‘surprised.’

“I was going to websites that tell the truth about 9/11. She thought it was all a conspiracy; I confronted her,” Mark said. “‘No, it’s all the truth,’ you know. Bush– and its not just him, a lot of other people– and they’re just trying to cover it up.”

The assistant principal then told the 10 year-old, “Don’t talk back to me” before sending him to sit in the hall and later back to class.

Yep, it appears visiting such websites and even having certain opinions can get you kicked out of class these days. Well at least they don’t taser students yet. Oh wait, they do. I guess that’s a lot better than being run over by police on horses.

With all of this in mind, it seems the destruction of the USA is well underway:

Relatively few Americans are aware that the destruction of the United States is well under way. How can this be? It is because the federal government wants to entangle us in a North American Cooperative Security Act with Canada and Mexico.

This act will be used as a stepping stone to build a North American Union similar to the European Union. Our borders with Canada and Mexico will be erased, and we will be subjected to rulings from an unelected NAU governing body. We will lose our sovereignty and our constitutional protection.

Some are suggesting that the USA, as defined by its founding fathers, no longer exists:

The same kind of government that fires its own lawyers for doing their constitutional duty. Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned the task of bringing Salim Hamdan to a guilty plea before the unconstitutional military tribunal that President Bush created for Guantanamo detainees. Instead, Cmdr. Swift did his duty and defended his client, winning in the US Supreme Court. The Bush administration retaliated by blocking Cmdr. Swift?s promotion, which killed his military career and sent the chilling message to all US military and government attorneys that constitutional scruples are career-enders in the Bush regime. Anyone who stands for the US Constitution is against Bush and his neocon regime.

The Bush regime is proceeding exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded. First, eliminate every person of conscience and integrity from the government. Second, redefine duty as service to the leader: “You are with us or against us”–a formulation that leaves no place for duty to the US Constitution. Patriotism is redefined from loyalty to country and Constitution to loyalty to the government?s leader.

Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to Hitler?s drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify Germany?s right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of the Nazi elite to rule over the German people. Neoconservatives use “American exceptionalism” and “the war on terror.” There is no practical difference. Hitler cared no more about the peoples he mowed down in his drive for supremacy than the neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled American soldiers and 2,747 dead ones.

When Bush, the Decider, claims unconstitutional powers and uses “signing statements” to negate US law whenever he feels the rule of law is in the way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to Hitler, the Fuhrer, who told the Reichstag on February 20, 1938: “A man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of his people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or to a particular democratic conception, but solely to the mission placed upon him. And anyone who interferes with this mission is an enemy of the people.”

“You are with us or against us.”

Others seem to be a bit more optimistic and have compiled a list of 10 reasons why you won’t recognize America in 10 years:

The New Torture Bill
House bill H6166 (yup?) signed by the president, introduces, per the New York Times, “a dangerously broad definition of ?illegal enemy combatant??could subject legal residents ? to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal.” It essentially broadens the term so that it can be applied to “whomever a military tribunal says so,” to paraphrase freedomunderground.org.

The PATRIOT Act
This law expands the government?s surveillance ability involving American citizens, particularly on-line and over voice communications via the use of wiretaps. It also greatly expands the definition of “terrorism” and allows the government to enter and search our homes without them informing us.

The REAL ID Act
This bill requires all U.S. citizens to carry a federal I.D. card to, as stated by CNET.com, “travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service.” Americans will hear some variant of “Your papers, please.” Will we accept it as necessary for our protection?

…

North American Union
The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America website states that it “was launched in March of 2005 as a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater cooperation and information sharing.” Reading between the lines of the lullaby rhetoric, the president has signed agreements with Canada and Mexico, without congressional approval, to merge the three countries into a single North American Union. Prepare yourselves for the formal dismantling of the United States as a sovereign entity.

…

Suppression of Dissent
The government began revoking the tax exempt status of churches whose pastors do not genuflect to the administration. The homes of whistle-blowers are raided by the BATF or similar organizations. Surveillance of peaceful demonstrations and the compilation of political profiles of peaceful demonstrators by police in New York (as reported by the ACLU).

But it seems everyone agrees that all of this can only end in one way:

BIG PICTURE – The US is widely adored as the world’s greatest empire, yet few realise that the emperor has no clothes. As the masses look up to the nation in admiration, they are fooled into believing that it is swimming in wealth; the reality being that it is up to its eyeballs in debt. The US economy is living on borrowed time and judgement day is inevitable. No nation in history has ever managed to escape such economic imbalances and I suspect the US won’t get away with it either.

So if you’re Bush, what do you do when you know all of this? You buy land in South America to ensure you’ll be able to get the hell out of the USA when things start to get really bad:

Buenos Aires, Oct 13 (Prensa Latina) An Argentine official regarded the intention of the George W. Bush family to settle on the Acuifero Guarani (Paraguay) as surprising, besides being a bad signal for the governments of the region.

Luis D Elia, undersecretary for the Social Habitat in the Argentine Federal Planning Ministry, issued a memo partially reproduced by digital INFOBAE.com, in which he spoke of the purchase by Bush of a 98,842-acre farm in northern Paraguay, between Brazil and Bolivia.

Well let me assure that Argentine official that it was absolutely no surprise to me! And most certainly not to any reader of this post, I’m sure.

But speaking of the bad US economy, it seems that not only Americans are going to feel the consequences of that, but the whole world. This is easy to understand when you realize the influence the US dollar has in world economy. Any serious issue with the US dollar is bound to have an impact on world economy. And unless you’ve only been listening to the mainstream media (What else are they lying about?), you probably already know there are serious issues with the US dollar.

When you see stories such as the following, you can probably already see trouble ahead:

SHANGHAI ? The Chinese yuan rose to a fresh high against the U.S. dollar Monday as reports cited officials urging diversified investments of the country’s $1-trillion in foreign exchange reserves.

The central bank’s official “parity” rate for the yuan was set at 7.824 per dollar Monday morning, compared with an official rate of 7.8331 on Friday. The yuan has gained about 3.5 per cent against the dollar since the current foreign exchange system was set up in July 2005.

…

Meanwhile, China’s state-controlled media have carried reports noting the potential risks from the dollar’s overall decline to the country’s $1-trillion foreign exchange reserves, which are thought to be weighted toward U.S.-dollar denominated Treasuries and other investments.

Those reports have helped fan market speculation that a sell-off of dollar assets by China might drive the dollar’s value still lower.

It seems the US dollar is facing an imminent collapse and that much lies in the hands of the Chinese:

Even as the stock market is hitting new record highs almost every day, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department are quietly coordinating a devaluation of the dollar that the Bush administration hopes will be a slow decline rather than a dollar collapse.

This week, in an unusual move, the Bush administration is sending virtually the entire economic “A-team” to visit China for a “strategic economic dialogue” in Beijing Dec. 14 and 15.

…

The Bush administration wants to get China’s cooperation in preventing a dollar collapse. That’s the conclusion of John Williams, an experienced professional econometrician, who writes the “Shadow Government Statistics” blog.

…

Williams has re-created M3, a money-supply measure whose data the Federal Reserve simply stopped publishing after issuing a technically worded March 2006 announcement.

Williams reports M3 is currently growing at close to a 9.6 percent rate and trending higher, compared with an 8 percent rate early this year, when the Fed quit reporting the measure.

“The Fed is pumping liquidity into the U.S. economy,” Williams told WND, “and the Fed evidently did not want the markets to follow too closely what the Fed was doing with the money supply.”

China today now is holding a historically unprecedented $1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. During the Thanksgiving holiday, an announcement by China that their central bank planned to diversify foreign-exchange holding away from the dollar caused the dollar to drop in value on international currency markets. Since then, the dollar has hit a 20-month low against the euro.

Some are linking the fall of the dollar with the introduction of the Amero with the creation of the North American Union. The Amero will then be positioned as the solution to the devalued US dollar, but not before those in control and in the know have benefitted from their early knowledge first, ofcourse:

As the dollar goes into free fall and the housing market accelerates in sales yet plunges in price, the quickening of an agenda of economic catastrophe allied to the “solution” of predatory globalism and the creation of a North American Union is afoot, and it spells potential disaster for the livelihood of all Americans.

Home prices have dropped 24% in the last year and most of that fall has happened in the last six months. The dollar has devalued around 35% against its level six years ago and is being trounced by the Euro and Sterling.

A false impression of a rosy economy is being spun with the rise of the stock market. Former fed chief Alan Greenspan’s doubling of the money supply and Bernanke’s promise that the money supply will be doubled again leads to only one outcome. Common sense tells us that a dollar sink is inevitable and if the housing market isn’t the place to put all these devalued dollars then that excess will chase the stock market. Taking into consideration the devalued dollar, the stock market is really at about 6,000 – not 12,000.

While most Americans don’t even know what’s going on, stock traders are already urging for a move to the Amero:

In an interview with CNBC, a vice president for a prominent London investment firm yesterday urged a move away from the dollar to the “amero,” a coming North American currency, he said, that “will have a big impact on everybody’s life, in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.”
Steve Previs, a vice president at Jefferies International Ltd., explained the Amero “is the proposed new currency for the North American Community which is being developed right now between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.”

The aim, he said, according to a transcript provided by CNBC to WND, is to make a “borderless community, much like the European Union, with the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar and the Mexican peso being replaced by the amero.”

Along with the fall of the dollar, business in the USA seems to slow down:

The dollar suffered sharp falls on Thursday, hit by reports of weak US business activity and a benign inflation picture.

The euro rose 0.7 per cent against the dollar to $1.3247 by late afternoon in New York after data from Chicago purchasing managers indicated that business activity in the Midwest unexpectedly fell last month.

Sterling rose to its highest level against the dollar since its ejection from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992 as UK house prices continued to show rapid growth. The pound rose to $1.9699 before edging back to $1.9658, almost 1 per cent up on the day. The yen also gained, up 0.5 per cent against the dollar to Y115.77.

Still others are making good profits because of this:

British investors and homebuyers are rushing to cash in on the plunge in the dollar, which hit a 14-year low of $1.98 against the pound last week and could breach the key $2 mark within days.

The greenback?s decline hit the FTSE 100 index of leading shares because big firms such as Pearson, the publisher, and Carnival, the cruise operator, make most of their sales in America. These will now be worth less when converted into sterling. However, investors have found other ways to profit from the rout.

Top-level corporate insiders have also been selling their stocks in abnormally high quantities:

America’s corporate chiefs are unloading their own stocks at one of the boldest paces in 20 years.

In cases of the very rich, such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s top brass, the executives are selling a whopping $63 for each $1 of stock they bought, says a report by Bloomberg.

In November alone, leaders of public companies dumped $8.4 billion worth of stock they owned as insiders, most of it awarded as compensation, bonuses or other management incentives.

But the vast majority of the executives put their windfall cash to work elsewhere, with just $133 million being plowed back into purchases of more company stock.

Analysts say a take-the-money-and-run flight from their own companies signals a growing lack of confidence in the economy’s future course, as well as fears of a possible global meltdown if the Iraq crisis escalates across borders.

It’s also a good time to take profits, with the Dow Jones industrial average up nearly 15 percent this year, the S&P 500 ahead 13 percent, and the Nasdaq 11 percent higher.

…

Billionaire Paul Allen also sold off 28 percent of his stake last month in DreamWorks Animation SKG for $224.2 million, keeping about 21 million shares.

Insiders at Seagate sold $311.8 million in November, while Google insiders unloaded $182.1 million in the four weeks.

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and its co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have usually led the insider-selling parade with sales of hundreds of millions as the stock rose steadily to break the $500 mark.

I don’t know about you, but when I see this kind of stuff happening, it looks like they are expecting things to get really bad soon. Why else try to cash in as much as possible right now? Even companies in the UK are slashing their IT budgets for 2007 because they seem to be worried about world economy and are expecting something bad:

UK BUSINESSES are so worried about the world economy they are slashing their IT budgets just in case it all goes pear shaped.

…

Some of the reason is that UK companies spent too much last year, but it is also because they are worried that the world is becoming a more dangerous and unhappy place.

Again, I doubt they’re doing this just because they want to look cool and hip. If you also take note of the fact that a former World Bank Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner is seeing a global economic crash in the near future, it becomes really difficult to ignore all of this:

Former World Bank Vice President, Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has predicted a global economic crash within 24 months – unless the current downturn is successfully managed. Asked if the situation was being properly handled Stiglitz emphatically responded “no,” and also drew ominous parallels to the development of the NAFTA Superhighway and the North American Union.

Stiglitz caused controversy in October 2001 when he exposed rampant corruption within the IMF and blew the whistle on their nefarious methods of inducing countries to fall under their debt before stripping them of sovereignty and hollowing out their economies.

Speaking on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones radio show, Stiglitz defined the process of globalization as a system that was “rigged against the poor countries, rigged for the advanced industrial countries – the result of that is there were an awful lot of losers.”

The Columbia University Professor described how rampant privatization has crippled Mexico, in particular citing the sell-off of major infrastructure such as roads.

“They sold the roads to the private enterprise and the hope was that they would be more efficient but of course what happens is that they didn’t maintain the roads, they couldn’t generate enough revenue and they eventually had to default and give the roads back to the government.”

Stiglitz agreed that the process of hijacking and looting key infrastructure on the part of the IMF and World Bank, as an offshoot of predatory globalization, had now moved from the third world to Europe, the United States and Canada.

So I don’t know about you, but I’ve already converted most of my US dollars to Euros, and am pricing my products and services in Euros starting next month. It seems the longer you wait, the more you’re going to lose:

I know I said I was done for the year, and I’m sure I heard a collective sigh of relief all the way down here in Peru, but the subject of the U.S. dollar is just too tempting to put off until next year. A lot has happened since I last wrote about it back on October 10th and I believe it is the single most important market event we are facing at this point in time. Even more important than the non-confirmations we currently see between the Dow and other major indexes. What’s more, the ripple effects will reach all the way into the bond, stock, and commodities markets. The dollar is very important for what it is, i.e., a proxy for U.S. debt. It is not a ‘store of wealth? as so many believe. Instead it is a piece of paper backed by absolutely nothing, printed and emitted by the U.S. government as a way of postponing the settlement of its debts. Better yet, it is an ndeclared “bond”, which can never be redeemed, except by receiving more of the same.

All of this is certainly not very good news at the end of 2006, and it casts a shadow over 2007. I think it’s a good idea to be very cautious in the new year, just like those UK companies who slashed their IT budgets for 2007, and be prepared for things potentially getting (much) worse.

IDC have released their top 10 predictions for “Worldwide System Infrastructure Software” in 2007 yesterday, and it doesn’t look good for Microsoft Windows. The following two predictions are of interest here:

9. Microsoft’s client operating system anti-piracy efforts will backfire. Microsoft’s anti-piracy campaign will drive customers toward Linux.

10. Our expectations remain consistent that Windows Vista in 2007 will not uplift the operating system or PC market spend dramatically, but we are predicting a meaningful shift of adoption favoring premium Windows Vista SKUs.

In a previous post, where I mentioned the high prices for Windows Vista together with the fact that Microsoft is further locking down the OS to prevent piracy, I had already mentioned the possibility of their anti-piracy efforts backfiring on them:

In addition to those high prices, Microsoft have also further locked down Windows Vista and made it more difficult for people to use pirated versions. These two strategies complement eachother. On the one hand you have the high prices, and on the other hand you also force people to have to buy a legal copy. This is, ofcourse, to sell more copies and make even more money.

But this strategy, again if I am correct, is going to massively backfire on Microsoft. There are two options. First, if people are able to reliably crack Windows Vista, even more people will use pirated versions of Vista because the prices are simply too high for them to be able to afford a legal copy. And this means Microsoft is actually going to sell less copies and make less money, although they will be able to keep their marketshare. In the second option, if people aren?t able to reliably crack Windows Vista, those people that were using pirated version of Windows XP are going to have to switch to an alternative OS, like Mac OS X or Linux. In addition, a lot of people using a legal copy of Windows XP might not be able to afford Windows Vista and could also potentially switch to a different OS. So in this second option, not only is Microsoft going to sell less copies of Vista, but they are also going to lose lots of users to other OS?s, and as a result lose marketshare.

With the IDC now essentially saying the same thing, I think Microsoft had better look into this and change their course. In that post I also mentioned the fact that I could not understand why Microsoft is taking such drastic, and quite frankly boneheaded measures, at a time when it seems that more governments and companies around the world are looking at using open source software, and are switching to Linux. If Microsoft is lucky, they might sell less copies of Windows Vista due to even more piracy because of the high prices, but keep much of their market share because of the fact that it seems Windows Vista’s anti-piracy measures can easily be circumvented. If they aren’t, they will lose marketshare to Mac OS X and Linux while also selling less.

Microsoft taking such drastic measures to lock down Windows, and at the same time maintaining the high prices for the OS can only be explained by greed. It’s widely known that their profit margins for Windows and Office are abnormally high already. It’s not like they’re taking a huge hit from all the piracy going on right now.

So again, why are they going down this path when it isn’t really necessary? Is there any other explanation except for greed? Don’t they realize the prices are too high? Just check out this poll on Channel 9:

What do you think of Windows Vista pricing?

Much too high – 36.6%
A bit too high – 45.7%
Quite reasonable – 14.6%
Cheaper than expected – 2.2%
Dirt cheap – 1%

I hope our beloved Steve-O realizes the mistake they are making very soon, otherwise it’s not going to look good for them on the long run. As a developer I am seriously thinking about looking at Linux more and more these days. With Microsoft charging down the path they are on right now, I might have to prepare for the fact that my clients will expect me to develop on Linux in the future because they won’t be able to afford Windows Vista. This is becoming an increasingly more real possibility, and I’m quite sure people who know me will tell you that they would never have dreamed hearing this from me.

On the picture above you can see our beloved Steve-O during the launch of Windows Vista with next to him Lenovo’s CEO William Amelio. Steve-O understandably looked very happy that day, no doubt glad the long development cycle of Windows Vista finally came to an end. However, things have since changed, and I wouldn’t want to be in Steve-O’s office when he finds out about the stuff below.

If you’re on, and perhaps even if you’re near, the Microsoft Campus in Redmond these days, you’ll probably notice a lot of noise coming from one of the buildings. You’ll hear people yelling, screaming and maybe even loud cries. You’ll also hear cracking, loud bangs and other similar noise coming from that building – the kind of noise you usually expect to hear at a building demolition site. Occasionally you might even see random furniture fly straight through one of the windows and landing nearby.

That’s likely the building where the team responsible for the group of software called “Software Craptection Platform” in Windows Vista is located. I know what you’re thinking; usually you’d assume that’s probably the building where Ballmer’s office was located. But right now I have reason to believe that it is more likely to be the “Software Craptection Platform” team.

The reason for that is that Windows Vista is already being widely pirated even though “Software Craptection Platform” was supposed to make that more difficult. As you can see on this forum, the Business and Enterprise versions of Vista can be installed without a key, or, using the default key, and can then be activated against a Key Management Server (KMS) in China. Windows Vista can then be used for 180 days before you have to activate it again. Let me now include the important text below just in case it gets removed:

found this this minute – over 6000 people reporting it works. KMS method to activate your Vista !! (Business edition only)

Step 01:

Install Vista FINAL RELEASE with Key YFKBB-PQJJV-G996G-VWGXY-2V3X8

Choose “Business edition” ONLY not others !!

Step 02:

When Windows setup completed and Internet access setup completed. Open Command Prompt under “Administrator Mode”, That is, right click the Command Prompt icon, select “run as admin”

Activate your Business Vista against sito.kmip.net

(This is a private KMS server for Volume License 2.0a activiation).

Now in command prompt (Admin mode)

type -

cscript c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs -skms sito.kmip.net

cscript C:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs -ato

Activate completed !!

Now you may wish to check the activation status

type -

cscript c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs -dlv

*************

KMS Volume License activate requires re-activate every 180 days. The reactive will be done automatically.

Only works for Business Vista and Enterprise Vista, not other editions!!

And I imagine there will be more public KMS servers to choose from in the near future. The Chinese are only leading the way at the moment. I imagine Microsoft is going to find a way to block users who have activated against one of these public KMS servers from getting updates on Windows Update and through Genuine Crapvantage, but at least Vista can be used without buying it.

If you thought that was already an issue for Microsoft, then get a load of this: A VMWare image can now be downloaded which contains a fully activated Key Management Server in it. Users can now download this image, run it in VMWare locally and activate Windows Vista against it as many times as they want. If the 180 days expire, you can just fire up the image in VMWare again and activate against your own local KMS. This article sums it up nicely:

The idea behind KMS is that you have a single PC running KMS which can then handle activation for all your Vista clients, so that they don?t have to connect back to Microsoft every single time.

The downside of KMS is that the activation is only good for 180 days, to discourage people bringing in their home systems, activating them and wandering off again.

Bearing in mind that KMS wasn?t scheduled to be released until next year, pirates have managed to get hold of KMS and produce a standalone, fully-activated KMS server called “Windows Vista Local Activation Server ? MelindaGates”. Tongue-in-cheek of course?the first “cracked” version of Vista was called Vista BillGates.

The download is a VMWare image, and the idea behind it is that you download and install VMWare Player (a legal free download), boot the image and use some VBS script (supplied with the activation server download) to have the client Vista machine get its activation from the local server. And that?s it ? no communication back to Microsoft.

Of course, in line with the Volume Activation 2.0 model, this only works with Vista Business and Enterprise editions, as they are the only ones which will accept KMS keys.

Home and Ultimate editions still use normal single-use activation that calls back to Microsoft for validation of the product ID.

On one hand, this is strikes a serious blow to Vista?s activation model. Simply possessing the Vista DVD (which was released on the boards about two weeks ago) wasn?t enough to get you past the robust activation requirements. But if you can load up a local activation server and activate Vista that way, it sort of makes the whole thing redundant.

There are two caveats though. Vista still has to be installed with a KMS product key, so if that activated system ever goes through the WGA system with a known pirated key, Microsoft will be able to track it down and eventually close the loop.

The second is that this is a true KMS server, so the activation is only good for 180 days, then the client needs re-activation.

And there you have it. This is as good as the FCKGW DevilsOwn Windows XP release which I wrote about not too long ago. Microsoft was only able to solve that problem by blocking the FCKGW key with the first service pack for Windows XP. This time, they might be able to block users activating through the local KMS much earlier through Windows Update and Windows Genuine Crapvantage, but that’s only going to work for those who try to download updates from Microsoft.

But this is an ongoing effort as far as the pirates are concerned and I think it’s safe to say we should expect even better hacks in the future. What is also pretty clear is that all the effort Microsoft put into Software Craptection Platform was essentially for nothing, as pirates are still able to work around it, and the only thing Microsoft seems to have achieved is make life more difficult for system administrators, who now have the additional headache of setting up KMSs in their organization. In addition, volume license customers are sure to enjoy working in “reduced functionality mode” when Windows Genuine Crapvantage suddenly decides they are using a pirated version of Windows Vista. They’re going to especially love it when they have a deadline to reach on that same day as well.

Finally, here’s an idea for Microsoft: Why don’t you guys take the Software Craptection Platform team out of their misery, merge them with the IE team and have them work on a download manager for IE 7 similar to what FireFox has? – A feature which is loooong overdue in my opinion. Doing that, they could add 100000000000 times more value to Windows Vista compared to what they’ve been doing.

Ex CIA agent Robert Steele recently spoke about the relationship between the CIA and Google again, and mentioned how CIA seed money helped to finance Google’s launch. He did this on the Alex Jones show, where he not too long ago had already mentioned how Google was providing assistence to the CIA.

From this article:

An ex-CIA agent has gone further than ever before in detailing Google’s relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency, claiming sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground and naming for the first time Google’s CIA point man.

Robert David Steele , a 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer and a former clandestine services case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, is the CEO of OSS.net .

Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Steele elaborated on his previous revelations by making it known that the CIA helped bankroll Google at its very inception.

“I think Google took money from the CIA when it was poor and it was starting up and unfortunately our system right now floods money into spying and other illegal and largely unethical activities, and it doesn’t fund what I call the open source world,” said Steele, citing “trusted individuals” as his sources for the claim.

“They’ve been together for quite a while,” added Steele.

Asked to impart to what level Google is “in bed” with the CIA, Steele described the bond as a “small but significant relationship,” adding, “it is by no means dominating Google in fact Google has been embarrassed because everything the CIA asked it to do they couldn’t do.”

“I also think it’s very very wrong of Google to have this relationship,” cautioned Steele.

The former agent went further than before in identifying by name Google’s liaison at the CIA.

“Let me say very explicitly – their contact at the CIA is named Dr. Rick Steinheiser, he’s in the Office of Research and Development,” said Steele.

Steele highlighted Google’s blatant censorship policies whereby press releases put out by credible organizations that are critical of Dick Cheney and other administration members don’t make it to Google News even though they are carried by PR Newswire.

We have repeatedly highlighted past examples of censorship on behalf of Google, including their blacklisting of a mainstream news website that was mildly critical of China, and also the deliberate stifling and manipulation of Alex Jones’ Terror Storm film ranking on Google Video. Google was also caught red-handed attempting to bury the Charlie Sheen 9/11 story at the height of its notoriety.

Notice how Steele even names Google’s contact at the CIA. I’d like to see Google deny this one like they did before. If they keep denying, it will only hurt them even more in the future.

I mentioned before in a previous post that in my opinion the prices for Microsoft’s latest version of Windows, called Windows Vista, are way too high. The Business version costs about $300 while the Ultimate version costs an incredible $400. If you thought those prices were high, you’re not going to believe the following.

The prices in Europe have recently been published, and according to that website, the prices for Windows Vista in Europe are going to be 409 Euros (about $531.70) for the Business version, and 549 Euros (about $713.70) for the Ultimate version.

I almost can’t believe it.

Who in their right mind is going to pay THAT much money for Windows Vista? Honestly? This is just so absurd, my mind refuses to comprehend it. And I thought the US prices were high!

I installed the final version of Windows Vista yesterday on a test computer, and I have to admit that it certainly is an improvement over Windows XP, but nothing revolutionary. It’s even less of an improvement compared to what Windows XP was to Windows 2000. It certainly is FAR from what Bill Gates promised us during PDC 2003. In that regard Vista could even be considered a failure.

Does Microsoft really expect people to spend that much money on an OS alone? Compare this to Mac OS X Tiger, which costs about $105 on Amazon, and offers virtually the same features as the Ultimate version of Windows Vista. The price difference is incredible. Also compare this to the various Linux distributions that are available these days, and ask yourself if you really need Windows Vista. Most people use their computer simply to browse the Internet, use a wordprocessor or spreadsheet and for some basic multimedia functionality. Most Linux distributions today can handle those tasks pretty well already. And Mac OS X certainly is even more capable for those tasks, and is as good as Windows Vista Business which is 3 times more expensive, and comes very close to Windows Vista Ultimate, which is 4 times more expensive.

So again, why the hell would someone spend THAT much money on Windows Vista? To be honest, if I had to spend that much money to buy Vista, I’d be switching to Mac OS X or Linux instead. And if I’m correct, many people are going to do just that in 2007 if Microsoft doesn’t do something about the prices fast.

In addition to those high prices, Microsoft have also further locked down Windows Vista and made it more difficult for people to use pirated versions. These two strategies complement eachother. On the one hand you have the high prices, and on the other hand you also force people to have to buy a legal copy. This is, ofcourse, to sell more copies and make even more money.

But this strategy, again if I am correct, is going to massively backfire on Microsoft. There are two options. First, if people are able to reliably crack Windows Vista, even more people will use pirated versions of Vista because the prices are simply too high for them to be able to afford a legal copy. And this means Microsoft is actually going to sell less copies and make less money, although they will be able to keep their marketshare. In the second option, if people aren’t able to reliably crack Windows Vista, those people that were using pirated version of Windows XP are going to have to switch to an alternative OS, like Mac OS X or Linux. In addition, a lot of people using a legal copy of Windows XP might not be able to afford Windows Vista and could also potentially switch to a different OS. So in this second option, not only is Microsoft going to sell less copies of Vista, but they are also going to lose lots of users to other OS’s, and as a result lose marketshare.

At a time when there are increasingly more stories appearing everywhere of companies and governments around the world switching to Linux, I can’t help but wonder why Microsoft is going down this path. It’s almost like they are encouraging people to switch to another OS and making it more difficult to choose Windows.

In a recent article, our beloved Steve-O was interviewed:

In an interview, Ballmer said that more than 20 percent of its software running around the world is pirated and the company aims to lower that figure with a new authentication program to run in Windows Vista and Office 2007.

Microsoft is probably going to succeed, but the mistake they are making is to assume the people part of that 20% are actually going to buy Vista. There is a reason those people are running pirated versions of Windows XP, and that is likely because they cannot afford it. If they cannot afford XP, they most certainly are not going to be able to buy Vista at those absurdly high prices. The thing that is more likely to happen, is that these people are going to switch to another OS. So if I was Microsoft, I’d expect to lose at least 20% of my marketshare in the near future.

Steve-O goes on to say:

“We’re trying to make it easier for people who somehow have received improperly licensed versions to get legal, and we also put more roadblocks in,” said Ballmer, declining to specify how much it can reduce the piracy rate. “It will help,” he said.

He actually claims Microsoft is making it easier for people to get legal, by putting in more roadblocks and maintaining those incredibly high prices for the software. I’m sorry, but what?? If anything, more roadblocks plus high prices will make it easier for people to not use Vista at all. And that will not only reduce the piracy rate, as he is hoping, but also the number of Windows users in the future.

Way to go Steve-O!

John Battelle made a post on his website claiming that “an official Google spokesperson” said that “The statements related to Google are completely untrue.” The statements that “official Google spokesperson” refers to, according to John Battelle, are the ones which are summarized in a previous post of mine which you can find here.

First of all, notice how the name of this “official Google spokesperson” isn’t mentioned at all. At least the “conspiracy theorists” have the guts to name their sources and not be anonymous themselves when they make their claims:

A former clandestine services officer for the CIA who also maintains close relationships with top Google representatives says that the company is “in bed with” the intelligence agency and the U.S. government. He has also gone public on his deep suspicions about the official explanation behind 9/11.

Robert David Steele appeared on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones radio show and began by voicing his deep doubts about the official 9/11 story.

…

Steele raised eyebrows when he confirmed from his contacts within the CIA and Google that Google was working in tandem with “the agency,” a claim made especially volatile by the fact that Google was recently caught censoring Alex Jones’ Terror Storm and has targeted other websites for blackout in the past.

“I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government – that is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off,” said the ex-CIA man.

“Google was a little hypocritical when they were refusing to honor a Department of Justice request for information because they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of research and development,” said Steele.

Steele called for more scrutiny to be placed on Google if it continues to engage in nefarious practices, saying, “If Google is indeed starting to do harm then I think it’s important that be documented and publicized.”

Aaaw yeah.

Secondly, notice how we have to get Google’s remarks from someone else on, as far as I’m concerned, a random blog. Why can’t they release an official press release, or comment about it on their own blog? Then at least we can know for sure it’s official, and not have to rely on questionable claims made on some blog.

What is Google afraid of? Why can’t they just be open and be transparent about things? One of the reasons probably is that they simply cannot deny their links with the CIA. They know that if they officially do this, Alex Jones will fry their ass on Prisonplanet by releasing even more information about their deals with the CIA. So they might as well keep quiet and hope people will forget about this soon.

Ofcourse, we won’t let people forget.

This caught my attention this morning, and ofcourse was no surprise to me:

A BLOKE WHO used to work for the CIA, Robert David Steele said Google and the CIA are “in bed” with one another.
Dozens of radio listeners tuned in to hear the remarks on the Alex Jones show

Ex-spook Steele reckoned in bed with the CIA was a bad place to be.

“Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government, “he said. “That is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off.”

Also from here:

Steele stated ‘I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government – that is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off ‘. Steele says he has confirmed this information with his contacts within the agency. The question this raises is who is controlling information that may be seen as controversial? Is censorship-taking place and how would one go about proving that censorship has taken place?

…

Michael Hampton who writes for www.homelandstupidity.us wrote “Even while Google presents a public image of vigorously protecting its users? privacy, it has quietly provided assistance to several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. prosecutes its war on terrorism.” As for Steele he stated, “If Google is indeed starting to do harm then I think it’s important that be documented and publicized”.

I warned you before in almost exact same words with examples:

• P2P is the Future of the Internet
• Google Caught In Censorship
• Google admits to censorship, then does it again
• You are losing your privacy on the Internet

If you haven’t yet done so, read the above posts. Is there still any doubt as to what is going on?

This article also caught my attention this morning:

VOULIAGMENI, Greece – Internet search leader Google and other major U.S. technology companies insisted Tuesday that their products benefit Chinese citizens despite government restrictions and warnings that online censorship is spreading.

Providing some information is better than giving none at all, the companies said, but human rights groups warned that heavy filtering of Web content is increasing in developing countries ? with some using China as a model.

China denied it censored Internet sites at all, saying criminal investigations are unrelated to freedom of expression.

Human rights groups have sharply criticized Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO – news), and Microsoft Corp., along with technology provider Cisco Systems Inc., accusing them of helping the Chinese government restrict information and crack down on dissidents.

“We concluded that we would prefer to provide as much information to the Chinese people as we could through the Google search engines, in spite of the fact that we also are self-censoring material which the China government tells us we are not to exhibit,” said Vint Cerf, a Google vice president.

First of all, notice how Google is trying to talk their way out of this and trying to make it sound like they are doing something good. Please read my previous post on this topic for more. Google’s hypocrisy seems to have no limits. “Do no evil” indeed. I had hoped before that they would see what mistake they are making, but it seems the people actually in control at Google don’t feel like listening to Brin.

Secondly, notice how China is claiming that it is not censoring information. Do they think we’re THAT stupid? Claims like this are nothing but a serious insult to our intelligence. How dumb do you have to think people are to make such a claim, and actually expect them to believe you??

In a previous post, I mentioned a trend we can now see in the media globally: Consolidate, Centralize and Control. In that post I also mentioned how the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and General Electric Capital are funding organizations to buy what is remaining of the independent print media. Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News and tons of other media around the world not too long ago bought MySpace, one of the largest social networking websites on the Internet. It looks like he might also be buying Digg soon. The same thing is happening on the Internet that happened to other media like TV and print years ago. They’re trying to gain control over the Internet this way. For more information on this, watch two documentaries called Outfoxed and Orwell Rolls In His Grave.

Imagine if you could control public opinion. Imagine if you could influence public opinion through the media in such a way that you could manipulate or program people into believing what you want them to believe. Imagine if you had 80% control of all the media that people go to for their information. Any dictator would love to have such a “democracy”, where he can assure himself that the people will always support his views. Here’s a link to give you an idea of what I’m talking about: Pentagon Will “Catapult the Propaganda” Via U.S. Media.

Update:

It appears the CIA, through their venture capital company In-Q-Tel (a government intelligence agency having a venture capital company?), actually owns Google stock. And get this:

Even while Google presents a public image of vigorously protecting its users’ privacy, it has quietly provided assistance to several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. prosecutes its war on terrorism. In addition, Google may be providing assistance to the National Security Agency.

IT contractors and intelligence officials familiar with the arrangement confirmed to HSToday.us that Google had been providing assistance to the intelligence community, but would not say under what authority that assistance had been requested or provided.

The intelligence community appears to be interested in data mining Google’s vast store of information on each user who uses Google’s services. Google collects data on each user’s search queries, which web sites users visited after making a query, and through its Google Analytics service, can also track users on cooperating web sites. It’s not clear what level of access to or how much of this information has been made available to intelligence agencies.

What a world. The more I research, the more I find out how stupid I actually am. Thanks to Rick Siegel for leading me to this info.

Update 2:

Also be sure to check this latest post on this subject on Homelandstupidity.us.

Update 3:

It appears Google and the CIA might also be sharing computers and networks:

In a recent twist on my delving into the larger than life link between the corporate entities of Google and the CIA, which lie in military grade computer sharing, mutual facilities and a direct access line between the two, this tid bit comes up. How did the CIA get so much stock when the common man got access to none?

Google’s “Don’t be evil” slogan has now officially become the equivalent of Fox News’s “Fair and Balanced” slogan.