Category: Information

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Anyone who follows the news can’t have missed the current economic gloom:-

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7644238.stm

The US Senate just agreed George Bush’s $700 BILLION bailout for failed Wall Street financial institutions – though Congress actually rejected the plan on Monday. Similar rescue plans are afoot all over the planet. But should the taxpayer be bailing out the fat cats – giving them a so-called golden parachute made out of our hard earned cash? Or is that the price we have to pay? Will it work anyway? Trouble is it seems the banks no longer trust each other, so why should we trust them?

I think we should be talking less about bail and more about jail for those responsible for this monumental cock-up. But who is to blame? George Bush? Gordon Brown? Greedy bastards in Wall Street & London’s “Square Mile”? Or perhaps our “leaders” are correct and we should blame the “great unwashed”, for borrowing more than they can afford to pay back? Fortunately, I can’t borrow any money even if I wanted to because UK banks don’t lend to geese.

Anyway, what are good quiet little geese like me supposed to do next? Sit tight, with our heads in the sand and our wings up our big, white, feathery bottoms, hoping for the best? Or perhaps should we pawn everything we own, spend our last few quid on a handful of gold Krugerrands and head for the hills?

And if all this isn’t depressing enough then check this out:-

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston

Honk! Honk!

Interesting that folks this side of the pond are starting to talk in terms of recession. The situation really is very worrying indeed. Home repossessions have doubled, paid work is becoming harder to find and I think there is much worse to come. There are number of very serious contributing factors in my view:-

• The sub-prime lending fiasco – people lent far more money than they could afford to pay back.
• Big banks no longer trusting each other and unwilling to lend money to one another. This inter-bank lending is what lubricates the wheels of free-market capitalism. If it dries up then basically we are buggered.
• A totally decimated industrial base. What do we actually make here in the UK? Bugger all.
• UK and the United States having economies that are tied together too closely. If Washington sneezes we catch the flu.
• UK (& US) wasting billions of dollars on a long, drawn-out and utterly pointless foreign war. I still don’t understand how Blair got away with this. The guy should be standing trial for war crimes, not swanning about as Middle East Envoy.
• The Iraq war has also resulted in oil-price-instability and hence a massive hike in raw energy costs.

What seems to be forgotten is that wars cost money. This money and this has to come from somewhere. It has already cost the US three trillion dollars. Our Government won’t actually tell us what it’s cost. I suspect it doesn’t know how much it has cost!

Finally, I think these national current account figures make particularly depressing reading. Note the three countries way down at the bottom – i.e. those with the biggest national debt – are the United Kingdom, Spain & United States. Remember, these are also the three major players in the Iraq fiasco:-

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html

And remember these are the CIA’s own figures!

We are really in the poo methinks…

This allegedly US-produced map of the world, simplified to the point of stupidity, sums up graphically how many people around the planet regard the average American view of the world…

But is it really fair or wise to write off all Americans as dumb or arrogant?

Firstly there are plenty of dumb, arrogant and generally unpleasant individuals here in Old Blighty. There’s no chav like a British chav! I’d say that Springer’s flow of “trailer trash” actually seems quite bright compared to some of the specimens one sees dragging their knuckles along Shirley High Street, here in sunny Southampton.

Secondly, I think the current incumbent in the White House has probably done more to damage America’s reputation abroad than all other US presidents put together. But you can’t damn a nation because of its damned president! Remember that only 25% actually voted for him – and the vote-counting in several states was far from transparent.

Thirdly, America has done some great things, (e.g. Man on the Moon, Arpanet, Unix, GPS, Hubble Telescope, Maglites etc.) – along with some fairly dreadful ones of course (e.g Macdonalds, Microsoft Windows, Iraq war, Vietnam War, Jerry Springer Show, etc .)

Fourthly, there are a lot of Americans who are deeply distressed by their image abroad. There is a definite sense of , “Hey, when did we become the bad guys?”. I remember one American friend ringing me on the eve of the Iraq War saying she felt ashamed to be American. Another young American lad I got chatting to on a bumpy bus ride across one of the Hong Kong Islands told me that in his travels around the Far East he seldom admits his nationality, for fear of attack. He tells people he is Canadian.

On the bright side there are voices of resistance and they are growing stronger. We don’t hear much about it here – not unless you spend a bit of time on the internet.

This is my favourite. It is excellent. These people actually tell the truth! Bush’s administration don’t like them very much but it makes one think there may be hope for America – and the rest of us – after all..

• http://www.truthout.org

When I was a mere gosling, I remember visiting Paris and thinking how much dirtier it was than London. Today completely the reverse is true. London must be Western Europe’s grubbiest capital.

Nothing seems to work properly in London any more, does it? Bin bags strewn across the pavement. Unintelligible or non existent road signs. Short bits of wide road joined by ridiculously narrow ones so that nothing actually joins up. Congestion charging. Potholes. Dog turds. Litter. Chewing gum on the seats of all the buses and tube trains. Great ugly lumps of concrete dumped in the street to “prevent terrorism” but actually just prevent the traffic moving.

And then, when you are stuck on the South Circular at virtually the same spot for two hours waiting for the smoky poison-pumping wreck of a bus in front to move forward another two centimetres, you have to read some smug advertising hoarding commissioned by Ken “newt-brain” Livingstone telling you how bloody marvellous London is since he took the helm!

And don’t get me started on that mismanaged cesspit they call Heathrow!

This made me chuckle. Hopefully one day the law enforcement agencies will get the bastard – before he emigrates to the 40,050 hectare ranch he has just bought in Paraguay. This was the same country that many Nazis escaped to after 1945. Seems the Bush Gang plans to do the same. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that Paraguay has a loophole in its extradition treaty with the USA that excludes “political crimes”!

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1928928,00.html

Of course once the law gets after Bush and his criminal cronies, even if it can’t actually catch them all, there is a very good chance that we can finally get that grinning, lying, two-faced shyster Blair.

This was lifted from…

• http://www.motherearth.org

There is a bigger version that you can download and use to print T-shirts or scale down for desktop wallpaper. You can also print it out and perhaps send a copy to Tony Blair just to make the lying two-faced bastard pee himself in anticipation of the fate that eventually awaits him.

They say “there is a mug born every minute”. Judging from the contents of our ‘in boxes’, the planet is becoming overrun by them. It seems astonishing to us geese, that articulate, intelligent humans actually believe that if they give some unknown company all their friends’ personal details then they will receive something really great for free, with no strings. It’s all true – like I’m Mother Teresa’s web-footed nephew! 🙂

The latest attempt at persuading people to sell-out their friends for a few freebies is now hitting our mailboxes here at GarfNet. It comes from an outfit calling itself ‘GetItFree‘. You go to GetItFree’s website and give it your friends’ email addresses. If you betray enough of your friends, then you might receive a free iPod. Meantime, GetItFree spams all your friends until they join up too, amidst offers of all sorts of free goodies. And if your buddies don’t join up first time, GetItFree continues to spam them, er I mean ‘remind‘ them until they do!

Why are you humans so gullible? Wake up and smell the pond, er I mean coffee! It’s just yet another email harvesting scam! It works like this…

Lists of genuine email addresses are worth a lot of money. These scams bring out the Judas in gullible humans by persuading you to sell your friends email addresses for a handful of silver (e.g. an iPod). Then, surprise, surprise, no silver! If you really hassle them you might get something of lesser value. But probably not! The key to how this scam works is actually contained in GetItFree’s own terms of service, if you can be bothered to read them…

http://www.getitfree.net/index.php?target=tos

Especially this bit (copied verbatim 2006-05-12)…

“GetItFree reserves the right to modify or amend this Agreement at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all, at GetItFree’s sole discretion. We also reserves the right to change the methods through which free products are earned. This may include, but is not limited to, increasing the number of friends you have to refer or adding more steps to confirm that you have a legitimate account. GetItFree may also add or remove any gift product listed as an incentive at any time. If we replace a product, the new product may not be of equal value.“

I.e. You sell-out your friends. Then GetItFree can change the agreement in whatever way it wants, whenever it pleases and you are entitled to precisely NOTHING! Great deal huh?!? At least Judas actually received his thirty pieces of silver!

My advice…

1. Do a Google search before subscribing to any “too good to be true” scheme/scam. It only takes a few minutes and it can save your friendships and prevent you from making a complete fool of yourself. http://www.google.com
2. If the scam is web-based then read its terms and conditions carefully. You might need a magnifying glass to read all that smallprint but they are always good for a laugh!
3. If you really are determined to be stupid then please don’t involve us! We don’t want any free offers. Please don’t give companies our personal details without asking our permission. Especially mine!

By the way, if you live in the European Union then passing on other people’s personal details to third parties without their consent probably contravenes the EU Privacy Directive and you could face legal action.

Honk! Honk!

I had to honk with a certain amount of web-footed shadenfreuder when I read that Microsoft Vista, the much-hyped new version of Windows, is to be delayed yet again, till 2007 January this time.

• Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/06/03/21/2331210.shtml
• BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4831374.stm

Surely not! 🙂

Thing is, methinks this year (2006) will be the turning point for the open source community. There is so much good free open source software out there now and every day it gets better & better. For example, Linux operating system is now so smooth that for the majority of users, this does everything they need, at zero cost and without the dreadful security issues that seem permanently to plague Windoze users.

• http://www.linux.org

And frankly, OpenOffice (the free open source Office suite for both Windows & Linux) is in some respects better than M$ Office.

• http://www.openoffice.org

Even my goosy blog is run on 100% open source software. I’m a poor old goose and I won’t sell any more of my splendid feathers to pay for Windoze! And what about the really poor folks in the majority world? People there simply can’t afford the huge price Micro$oft extorts from its users in the West – for a product that for the last fiteen years has consistently failed to deliver on it promises. Methinks that pretty soon, even wealthy western businesses are going to start asking, “What the flippin’ heck are we paying Micro$haft all this money for?”

Indeed, we are starting to see (here in the UK anyway) cheap, OS-free PC’s. I reckon it may not be long before Windoze becomes an expensive optional extra. I.e. “Linux for free or Windoze for fifty quid”. That kind of thing. Or M$ will have to drop the price considerably. Methinks M$ Office c/w Windoze for tenner would be about right!

Then there is Kofi Annan’s $100 laptop for the majority world. This is his one laptop per child initiative (OLPC). Not a whiff of M$ Windoze here. Just like GarfNet, this baby is 100% penguin-powered and full of unixy goodness. I.e. it runs Linux…

• http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/laptop-1116.html
• http://www.laptopical.com/annan-unveils-cheap-laptop.html

It means that a whole generation of kids will grow up without going anywhere near a M$ product!!!

Mind you I think the mock-ups look far too nice for a load of horrid, grubby-fingered kids! And how about a one laptop per goose (OLPG) campaign then, Kofi? Rampant goosism, that’s what I call it!

• http://laptop.org/download.en_US.html

Anyway, I digress. It’s hard to tell what will happen to M$ now. My guess it will be back to the late 1980’s – they’ll be back to giving away Windoze again! 🙂 With lean times on the way for the mighty Micro$haft, I’m not sure what they’ll feed that fat cat, CEO Steve Ballmer?

“Developers, developers, developers, developers” perhaps?

Honk! Honk!

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[dedicated to “the Angel”, as she gets her first insights into open source]