KOMPUTER BLUE
You Amerikans live through your komputers. You look at your screens and see the world. What is going on in your komputer box? A virus? Get a service to help you rid you of your diseases? Need a Windows update to keep things running smoothly? Watch out. Look through these dark windows now.
FROM THE GUARDIAN UK: Civil liberties groups have condemned an arrangement between Microsoft and Chinese authorities to censor the internet.
The American company is helping censors remove "freedom" and "democracy" from the net in China with a software package that prevents bloggers from using these and other politically sensitive words on their websites.
The restrictions, which also include an automated denial of "human rights", are built into MSN Spaces, a blog service launched in China last month by Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology, a venture in which Microsoft holds a 50% stake.
Users who try to include such terms in subject lines are warned: "This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them."
THE MIDDLE PART OF THE GUARDIAN ARTICLE IS DELETED HERE FOR YOUR PROTECTION. WE PICK UP HERE
A Microsoft spokesman said the restrictions were the price the company had to pay to spread the positive benefits of blogs and online messaging.
"Even with the filters, we're helping millions of people communicate, share stories, share photographs and build relationships. For us, that is the key point here," Adam Sohn, a global sales and marketing director at MSN, told the Associated Press news agency.
Microsoft, Mikrosoft did not indicate that profits were any konsideration in their decision.
A TIP FROM FRANZ: Unplug from your machine every now and then. People who live online all the time and don't have time to komplain face to face . . . they bug me!
Coffee is again on the house today. You will have to go up on the roof to get it. Rimbaud's French Roast is recommended.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is going on with these computers? Franz K finds it odd that some programs that should protect you from outside virus invaders can so easily themselves invade your computer to protect you from viruses automatically. Am I alone in this? We hold our entire lives in these boxes on our desktops or if we can afford them, we hold our entire beings in our laps! Do you feel safe? Has your spirit krashed when your computer krashed? Have you felt like you lost your soul when you lost your data? How often do you have to hit the save key? What is your worst computer story?
What is your worst computer story?
Crash on Thanksgiving just before I left to drive to see my parents in CT. Bright side: found out that I need a whole lot less of the stuff I thought I couldn't live without on my computer.
Posted by: eRobin | June 15, 2005 at 09:19 AM
My worst story is mundane: my drive failed (yes, there's a metaphor there, too).
In any case, I saw that Guardian article; impressive how far MS will go for a billion dollars. But they're so incompetent that in a year, Chinese using MSN will probably be using their alphabet's equivalent of "fr**dom" and "demo_cracy" to get around the filter's rules.
Posted by: Rob | June 15, 2005 at 09:28 AM
The Killa Mozilla solved 95% of my invasive vermin problems.
One day back in the bad old IE times, I took down my firewall for a couple of minutes to test an incompatibility issue with another piece of software, and BLAM, my entire web profile and interface was turned into porn, porn and more porn. Took forever to root out all the nastiness.
Posted by: mikez | June 15, 2005 at 08:28 PM
Heretik, can I ask a question about Internet Explorer??
Posted by: Night Bird | June 15, 2005 at 09:59 PM