Did the CIA build Facebook?

Memo from the Acting Director, Central Intelligence Agency, John E. McLaughlin, Langley, Virginia to President George W Bush
Circa 2004

People, on the one hand, are paranoid about privacy. They jump up and down every time there’s any kind of new legislation to monitor or track them. God forbid you should try and monitor their internet usage or telephone calls for national security purposes. However, in a completely contradictory manner, people are also insanely keen to share everything about themselves with countless strangers. See the whole social networking phenomenon.

So, what if we built the ultimate social networking website. They’d be encouraged to upload detailed profile information, link themselves to all their friends, tell us how they met them, tag photographs of themselves — current and historical. And keep requesting more and more information, little by little. We’ll add a little “status” facility where they can publish exactly what they’re up to all day long. They might exaggerate or lie a little, but they’ll tire of that. Maybe, if we’re lucky, they’ll come to depend on this system a little.

So, instead of monitoring everyone, at our expense, they’ll monitor themselves for us. If we’re looking for someone, we’ll look for them here first. Find out who they hang out, what they like to do, where they’ve been. If we need a photo of them, we’ll have a large choice. And, because social networking does this, the lies will get filtered out by others. Like Wikipedia.

If we’re lucky and this goes viral, we’ll build the most comprehensive database of human activity on the planet, that feeds itself, no-one will resent (in fact, they’ll love it) and will be accessible at the touch of a button to any CIA operative.

What we show the users will be the tip of the iceberg: mainly information gathering. We will have exclusive use to the information mining tools. And that’ll be a list as long as you can imagine.

Sure, no terrorist is going to make himself a page on this system. But they’re not the ones we’re interested in here. This is for profiling the context in which crime takes place. It’s for the good, after all, of society.

And since it’s mainly about identifying people, how about we call it Facesearch? Too obvious? What about something else…how about…Facebook?

Please send me your suggestions and thoughts.

Note: This article is fictional, and in now way represents itself as official documentation of the CIA or anyone else. It’s a joke. At least, I hope it is.

Sonofabitch – allofmp3 dead it seems

It’s been coming for a while, but it seems that Russian MP3 download site AllofMp3.com is finally dead. It’s ability to process credit card payments was slowly whittled away over the past six months and now both allofmp3.com and alltunes.com are down.

We can philosophise at length about the legal issues and whatnot, but I’ll say this: allofmp3 offered quick and easy access to thousands of albums at reasonable prices. If the record industry thinks they can crush the demand for this kind of thing, they’re very, very wrong.

Back to Bittorrent…

Sony Walkman NW-A1000 – DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT

Whine whine whine, that’s all I seem to be doing lately. Anyway…

Ok, I bought this very cool looking Sony MP3 player from Foto Cats in Sandton City shopping centre. It’s cheap — R1400.00 for 20GB — and it looks great. It even works great. Good sound, quick (once you upgrade the firmware). Only annoying feature is that it only plays tracks in Sony’s proprietary sound format, but converting and transferring is seamless.

However, after a week, the unit stopped working completely. Wouldn’t turn on, just hangs at the startup screen. Rewind. Return to Foto Cats. Get a new unit. 1 week later, same story. Rewind. Refund. Goodbye Sony Walkman.

The unit has a lot of potential, but unfortunately the software (or hardware, who knows?) is flawed. I notice Sony.com don’t even advertise the 20GB unit, so maybe they’ve dumped all this defective junk on the developing world. I dunno. But don’t buy this fucker. Seriously.

Now I have to find another MP3 player that won’t force me into some DRM nightmare…

I don’t matter to Woolworths

I regret not having a camera-phone now, because I’d love to post a whole bunch of photos of Woolworth’s empty shelves all over the Internet.

It’s now been almost a week, and apart from one pathetically inadequate reply to my original open letter, they have been deathly silent. What are they doing? Out picking fresh cabbages to help restock their shelves? Murdering innocent organic chickens so that their bloodied carcases can fill the gaping holes in their stores?

Probably not.

More likely they’re doing sweet fuck all, the result of which is sweet fuck all, unsurprisingly. According to news reports, we’re about to have a milk shortage in South Africa. Well, at least Woolies have staff that have excellent training in rushing around putting up “out of stock” signs and apologising to customers. Frankly, who will even notice that this one product is now in short supply.

Woolworths the Facebook

Ok, there is now a Facebook group to try and gather up some support behind the Woolworths campaign. Loads of people have already told me they are having a similar problem. So let’s try and show these fuckers we mean business.

Join this group if you’re on Facebook.

Woolworths responds

I complained two days ago about Woolworths’ ridiculous stock shortages, and waited. Finally two days later, somebody from the call centre responded asking me which stores I shop at so they can take it up with the stores. I politely (or not) informed them that this is not a store-specific issue — I shop at at least 6 different Woolworths and they all have the same problem.

They also asked for my phone number  — so we’ll see if some customer services agent tries to kiss and make up over the phone tomorrow.

Woolworths fails to reply

It’s been nearly two days since I posted this open letter to Woolworths, and also emailed them directly from their Web form. I have received NO RESPONSE. Maybe their email correspondents are also now “temporarily out of stock”.

Woolies: we’re waiting.

Open letter to Woolworths

Dear Woolies

I have really had enough of your ridiculous stock problems. For a few months now, I have borne with the outrageous range of items which your stores are out of.

I shop at Woolworths often, and at several of your stores in the northern suburbs. I also tend to shop later in the evening, for which you conveniently cater by keeping the stores open till 8 or even 9.

However, by the time I get there at 7:30, the store looks like it’s been the target of a rampaging mob of Somalian looters.

Example of shopping for ingredients from a simple recipe:
Fresh Mint (out of stock)
Marrows (out of stock)
Fresh Ginger (out of stock)
Sweet Potatoes (out of stock)

Hello? I’m not asking for freshly picked truffles or partially scrubbed Betelgeusian sea cucumber. Sweet potatoes??!!

Which is to say nothing about the fact that you have been out of stock of tuna fish, pink salmon and tinned lentils for so long I could have bred five generations of my own tuna in my kitchen sink, feeding them on nothing but freshly picked lentils from my own vegetable garden.

You are a premium supermarket with premium prices. Where else does one have the opportunity to pay R40 for a punnet of strawberries? Or R6 for one avocado pear? There are families of avocado sellers along the road to Mpumalanga that would be able to retire to the comfort of their Camps Bay home, or at least educate their children, if they could persuade passers by to pay them that kind of fee.

Nonetheless, I have cheerfully paid your obscene prices for two reasons: quality and range. Quality, in general, is good. Everything looks like it has been hand polished on the thighs of the finest Saudi Arabian concubines. Range has now become a matter of statistical probability rather than any kind of certainty. I need to leave the house with 5 recipes in hand, along with a worn copy of the Bible, equipping me with both choice and prayer, to stand even a remote chance of being able to cook myself dinner that evening. And being an atheist, this is a LOT of ask.

Your management seem at best bewildered, at worst uninterested. “We have a new stock system, please bear with us”, the one told me. That was about two months ago after the fourth Woolworths in Sandton was out of stock of potatoes. I am tired of bearing with you. I’m tired of seeing up-ended black vegetable containers and dishonest “temporarily” out of stock notices all over your stores.

If you can’t get the plants to bear fruit or play your part in over-fishing the oceans for the benefit of whinging middle-class citizens such as myself, perhaps you should go back to simply selling clothes? Raymond Ackerman has a lovely book called something about Four Legs of the Table which I used to think was useful only as a way to start the braai on which to cook my Woolworths line fish, but I’m beginning to think someone over there should give it a read. Perhaps he knows where you can buy potatoes.

I don’t know. But I expect the situation to improve immediately. If I have to suffer the indignity of changing to my local Pick ‘n Pay or Spar, I’m not going to be in a forgiving mood

Yours

Jarred Cinman

PS: Thanks to Meira for a suggestion on the Bible bit.

Robert Mugabe is a monstrous bastard

Enough pulling punches. Enough saying things nicely. Call this guy what he is. A monstrous bastard, another in a long line of African dictators who will go down in history along with the likes of Idi Amin for having driven a country into ruin, a people into poverty and destitution. And all for what?

We allow this, all of us on this continent and on this planet. There is no other way people like this can maintain power unless they are allowed to go on, unchecked and unhindered. I despise the whinging, whining DA, but I have to agree with them today. Our government should be embarassed in their response. All of us should be — for being culpable in the continued power this rampaging mutherfucker is allowed over innocent people.

Oh my GOD

If this were a satire (which, in my great misery, it isn’t) it would be hilarious. When the FUCK is this going to stop? Oh wait, I hear the reply in a 702-voice “When the crime stops”..

Which is the most hilarious sentence in the above poster? If you get it right, I’ll donate a torch to you which you can tape to the roof of your car so that there’ll be one more LIGHT to shine out the scourge of violence in the beloved country.