My view of the world

According to an article in the NY Times M$ strikes again, this time they shut down a chinese blogger’s site because the guy pissed off the Chinese government.
Their response was:
“We think it’s better to be there with our services than not be there.” Translation “we’re in it for the money”, the Chinese buy M$ products and therefore the currently favorable import climate must continue, uninterupted.

The question arises, how long before they do the same here, just because one of our Government Agencies asks them to?

It’s all about the Benjamins, any large company, when they feel the most minor of threats to the smallest part of their profit structure, current or future, turns into the world’s worst “brown nosing, back biting weasel” and capitulates, after all, if the people running these companies had anything but profits on their minds, they’d be down here with the rest of us, actually working for a living, and anything, except greed and avarice on their part is just posturing

Don’t ever expect honesty, much less honor from any major corporation, because, the only thing that ever gets to the top of any food chain is a predator.

The latest attack on M$ is the windows wmf problem. There are plenty of workarounds out now including the one at hexblog.
The basic problem is quite simply, that Windows was built to sing, dance and make coffee automatically. This, by very definition, is a bad thing, if the so called good guys can modify or run things on your computer so can the bad guys.

Did you know that on windows xp there is a hidden user “support_xxxxxx” with full admin rights and that the easiest way into the average xp machine is to change to safe mode and login as administrator with no password.

M$ uses the” guid” for almost everything and swears there’s no personaly identifying information in it, it is however linked to the mac address(the identifying numbers on your network adapter) of your machine.
This is not quite a lie, but the first time you register with any company that M$ can buy or recieve data from, they record the guid and now it’s linked to the personal data you had to give to register.
In the technical sense you social security number contains no personally identifying data, until it’s cross linked to a database.
If you read any M$ privacy statement, it basically says they can do anything they damn well please with your data.

This is not so much a rant against M$, as an example of what real life has become.
The average person doesn’t care what goes on in their machine or on the net. There are a large number of boxes out there with no anti-virus, no fire wall and an operator with no clue.

We live in a world where the information about your online habits is worth more than the OS you’re running. Ads are becoming more and more personalized(according to the advertisers this is what we want) and spyware has become big business.

Our security is our problem and you will never convince me otherwise.
A major third party credit card handler was hacked and the number of people who’s information was exposed was into the hundreds of thousands, possibly more, and yet this company contiues to operate, because it would be too much work for the banks to change over to a new company, assuming that there is another company out there with the servers, backbones and software in place.

Tell me again how any of the major players in any field are there for our benefit. You and I are simply data to be traded at will, with no regard for how it affects us.

This could go on for days, but you get the hint.
Watchout for youself, check you credit report, keep track of your bank and creditcards and for gods sake get a virus scanner and since most problems are invited in by clicking on an email or a banner, ad infinitum, get a firewall that keeps shit from calling out.
Finally: Just because someone asks for your information, doesn’t mean they have any right to it.

In this asylum for the criminally insane that I call home we have a full sized pirate ship, complete with pirate show girls, we have a tropical reef complete with live sharks and we have our very own sweet smelling volcano, I’m told it smells like a pinot colada.
This is a city where a Venetian gondolier doesn’t look weird as he polls his gondola down a canal through the middle of a hotel and where white tigers are expected.

In light of the city’s rep for being over the top, I think the article about hamburgers over on the Las Vegas blog is the quintessential “welcome to Las Vegas” story.
This is a city of extremes, you name it and we’ve got it, from the quiet life to parties wild enough to embarress a roman emperor.
I live in a quiet neighborhood with neighbors that don’t cause a fuss about anything that’s not completely unreasonable, and I go near the strip only under protest, but most tourists only see the strip with its crowds, noise and very expensive food.

The upside is that this is what the average tourist wants, and has every right to expect. They come to this “disneyland for grownups” and don’t care about anything except being entertained, this is good, because that is precisely why this city was built.

This is not a city for sissies, we have more ways to separate a fool and his money than any carny in history, we’re open 24/7 and the party never stops, there’s no such thing as “last call” and you can get a bloodymary at 4 in the morning at any casino, hotel or neighborhood bar in the city, the only time the slots go dark is when the power goes out and the big joints all have generators just in case.
There are no clocks in the casinos or bars and the only people who care are the folks who have to meet someone or catch a plane.

It’s said that absolutely anything can be had in this city if you have enough cash, and I heard it said, again, just a couple of days ago that Las Vegas is the off-ramp between Sodom and Gomorah, the fun part is that people expect this and that’s what keeps them coming back.
It’s not about drinking the whole town under the table or hitting Megabucks, so much as it is about coming to Vegas and saying you tried, besides Megabucks is going to hit and it’s probably better odds than the lottery.

Having said all this, in spite of our phemonenal growth rate, we probably have more parks and churches per capita than where you live.

I live here not because I have to, but because I like it and it’s not about going out at 3 in the morning, it’s about knowing that you can even if it’s only to the grocery store.