Why is ‘The Media’ lying to us?

The Iraq War, Climate Change, Violent Crime, and Terrorism to name but a few of the hot media topics of the past year. On all of these fronts I personally hold media organisations culpable for either completely miss-representing the facts on these issues, ignoring them, or worse presenting a fiction as factual analysis.

This is the first of a number of subjects I want to post on, under the banner of the media.

Climate Change

“God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’”—Ann Coulter

If you accept the postulate that mankind evolved alongside our animal compatriots then you must accept that the above statement is both morally and factually reprehensible. This planet supports us all, and its resources are far from infinite.

The moral issue is one of our place within this planet’s ecology. We are on top because we have put ourselves on top. Of all the animals that inhabit this planet we can by far radically alter our environment to support our life choices. We rationalise the destruction of the planet and balance that destruction against profit. Rightly or wrongly that is what separates us from our animal compatriots.

Placing ourselves in this elevated position carries with it a huge moral responsibility. Since we rationalise the destruction of our only supply of resources, and those resources are shared by all that live on this planet. The only thing that determines whether a resource is left alone, or destroyed and packaged for our convenience, is the cost of the extraction and distribution of the resource vs the resale cost of the resource. Where is the morality in that choice?

Global warming is “the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people.”— James Inhofe

It is a miracle of miss-information that there are people who believe that Global Warming and Climate Change are a hoax. It is important to point out that there is one constant, within the scientific community, and that is simply thus; There is no dispute, there is no disagreement Global Warming is real and it’s happening.

The media have told us it is part of the natural cycle of the planet. It is true that there is a natural cycle, however it is also true that the level of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere is presently around 1.5 – 2 times the maximum peak encountered in the last 650,000 years. We put that Carbon dioxide there, so why is it that the media is telling us a different story?

They say that they need to present both the story that global warming is real, and the notion that global warming is not. The issue that I have is that the media does not highlight the difference between the two sides. There was once a time when the media reported news and real events occurring in the world.

The story that global warming is a hoax is fraudulent and yet is being presented blindly as fact. That people find it easier to believe this falsehood rather than accept the truth is harrowing. That the media present the idea that Global Warming is disputed in the scientific community is a criminal miss-representation of the facts as currently understood.

The following figures are extracted from a study performed by Dr. Naomi Oreskes highlighted in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”

Number of peer reviewed articles dealing with Climate change published in Scientific journals during the last 10 years : 928
Percentage of Articles in doubt as to the cause of Global Warming: 0%

Number of articles in the popular press about Global Warming during the past 14 years: 636
Percentage of Articles in doubt as to the cause of Global Warming: 53%

This is not a question of belief.

Today I’m Listening To:

Life Wasted by: Pearl Jam

WinRage (or why hardware manufacturers really suck.)

I’ve absolutely had enough of this crap. Really. I have a problem, and the problem that I have is not the fact that I use Windows Vista, the real problem is that the manufacturers of hardware are un-willing to get their products working correctly under Vista.

Windows Vista is not new, its been in development for the past five years, it’s been fairly publicly Beta tested for the past 2 years, and for the past 9 months has been available in one Release Candidate form or another.

During these past 5 years Microsoft has been tirelessly working with hardware manufacturers, application and driver developers and offered assistance and residency at its own campuses to assist in the production of Vista ready hardware/software and drivers.

Despite these efforts we have had a driver support response from hardware manufacturers that is tantamount to an abuse of their position. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the world leaders in two separate hardware categories.

The award for sound goes to…… Creative Labs!

Creative Labs is the manufacturer of choice for audio hardware among the computer gaming fraternity for two reasons. Firstly their cards are full audio processors, they do not need a CPU to perform functions in software as the card can do it all. Secondly their cards offer incredible feature ranges that are simply second to none in the price bracket.

Being in this position has made Creative one of the largest hardware (add-in card) manufacturers in the world. Millions of high performance computers have Creative audio hardware in them. And how do Creative re-pay their consumer base? By eliminating support for older products under Vista and not having any fully functional drivers available in time for a product that has been in development for 5 years.

Once the public outcry over their lack of support reached fever-pitch Creative relented and started to work on drivers for older hardware. They are nasty and aren’t at all user friendly, but they just about function. Which is more than I can say for their driver support for premium products like the X-Fi. 

The award for cinematography goes to…… NVidia!

The market leader in high performance video processors for the PC, Mac, and PS3 seems to be employing a policy of let them suffer for as long as possible before we do anything about it. They claim to have spent huge volumes of time working on Vista drivers for their hardware, they have very little to show for it.

Beta drivers that don’t support the functionality of cards that were top-of-the-line 6 months ago. Beta Drivers that don’t support the functionality of cards that were new at the beginning of this year. Yet they badge them as being Vista ready.

Users

Windows Vista is being used as a prospective cash-cow by hardware manufacturers to squeeze more out of consumers than the consumer reckoned. We are being played ironically by the companies that are supported by gamers. Want vista, well that’ll be another $500 video card, and a $300 Sound Card, cause we’ve got support and drivers for those! This is a dream come true for the manufacturers.

Microsoft is being played as the bad guy in this, taking the blame for having a product that isn’t ready. The reality is that after 5 years Vista is ready, it is the hardware manufacturers who aren’t.

John Howard Is An Asshole.

Not content with simply dribbling nonsensical superlatives about the environment, John Howard decides that he must help his old pal George out in the US by launching a scathing attack on US presidential candidate Barack Obama. This is a brilliant tactic on the part of John, except for one flaw in little Jonny’s logic, the democrats have a larger voter base than the entire population of Australia.

When Obama speaks he speaks with the voice of millions. When little Jonny speaks someone has to wipe away the dribble and pat his back. That’s right Jonny, on the international stage Australia is the political equivalent of Oliver twist asking sir for more.

Its not even as if Australia is a powerhouse economy either. The country’s economic performance is primarily gauged by current house ownership. More homes were owned last year so the economy is great. Too bad the houses are owned by property development companies, not families.

It’s good to see Jonny has no real problems to deal with at home. After-all Australia is facing its worst drought on record, the harvest yields are less than 50% of the previous year. Food prices are going to rise, oil is back at US$60 a barrel, and his new IR (Industrial Relations) laws make it easy for companies to sack their staff. It’s a fiscally dangerous time for millions in Australia so its nice to see Jonny more concerned with international issues. Why its probably just as well because it might distract him for a while.

Its good to see those IR laws are helping Australia compete against countries like India and China for investment. What chance do India and China (two countries with a combined population of 2.3 billion) stand against Australia with around 11 million adults and Johns Fire & Forget IR laws.

But Australians shouldn’t worry, because John is on Obama’s case. That’ll make it all right, droughts included!

Today I’m Listening to:

Mysterons by Portishead

The case of Stupidity vs Technology. Stupidity 1 Technology 0

A case study… 

 

Recently a case was prosecuted in the United States against a teacher (click here) regarding an incident that occurred in a classroom in October 2004. The case resulted in a teacher being convicted on four counts of risk of injury to a minor. The reason? A computer the teacher was using became flooded with targeted pornographic pop-ups.

 

Lets look at the facts in this particular case.

 

The computer had Windows 98 installed, there was no local firewall installed. The computer’s Anti-virus pattern file subscription had expired. It was running IE 5. There was no anti-spyware installed or anti-spam. No internet filtering was being performed. To all intents and purposes the computer lacked every single basic security provision required for a computer that is on-line, and more critically used in a classroom. But it did have one thing installed, adware which re-directed some URL’s to porn sites.

 

Negligence 

 

This negligent approach to computer security on the part of the school administration staff has resulted in the conviction of someone who not only was instructed not to log-off or turn off the computer, but who sought help to try and address the issue.

 

The basis of the convictions? That you had to click on them to get them to display. Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but when a computer has spyware, and adware installed on it, the only thing you need to do to get presented with huge volumes of porn ads is switch the computer on.

 

Dumbass Jury 

 

But the Jury selection did not contain anybody who had a modicum of technical understanding the end result is that a teacher was sent to jail for a circumstance that she was presented with that was beyond her control.

 

If you aren’t bright enough to understand the issues presented in a technical case, then you are not fit to participate in a jury passing judgement on aforementioned technical case. Instead you should sit down in front of that computer and figure out how it works in a vain attempt to fire a synapse or two.

 

Today I’m Listening to

Road To Nowhere by: Talking Heads