vote early

Today at The Guardian - 'whistleblowers play a crucial role in keeping the "public reason" alive. Assange, Manning, Snowden, these are our new heroes, exemplary cases of the new ethics that befit our era of digitalised control. They are no longer just whistleblowers who denounce the illegal practices of private companies to the public authorities; they denounce these public authorities themselves when they engage in "private use of reason".

We need Mannings and Snowdens in China, in Russia, everywhere. There are states much more oppressive than the US – just imagine what would have happened to someone like Manning in a Russian or Chinese court (in all probability no public trial). However, one should not exaggerate the softness of the US: true, the US doesn't treat prisoners as brutally as China or Russia – because of its technological priority, it simply does not need the brutal approach (which it is more than ready to apply when needed). In this sense, the US is even more dangerous than China insofar as its measures of control are not perceived as such, while Chinese brutality is openly displayed.

It is therefore not enough to play one state against the other (like Snowden, who used Russia against the US): we need a new international network to organise the protection of whistleblowers and the dissemination of their message. Whistleblowers are our heroes because they prove that if those in power can do it, we can also do it.'

capTURING an innocent person

Today I was pleased to read that other people are aggravated by those silly twisted CAPTCHA words.
I don't have Word Verification on any of my blogs.  It's already hard to get comments.
The Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, abbreviated as CAPTCHA (instead of CAPTTTCAHA )
My favourite acronym is FFS.  (I actually think I pioneered it, but that's another post for another day)
That the developers have dragged poor Alan Turing into this blurred vision also aggravates me. Poor innocent man had enough trouble in his life without this.
That is all.

Karma Kami Matteoli on

Who would have thought, that even before 2DayFM got into the London inquest for suicide Jacintha Saldanha, that the dramatic arc would be repeated? (rhetorical, answer – nobody).
The entire (well-fed) world came down like a ton of bricks onto Mel Greig and her colleague after they did something they had done without drama more than once before, when they did it to a person who unknown to them of course,  just happened to be chronically depressed.
When the FBI asked for members of the public to come forward if they recognised the men who might be the Boston Marathon terrorists, Kami Mattioli thought one resembled Sunil from her school class of 13 years ago. The sometimes UNsociable Network Of The Usual Suspects gave this an instant virtual explosion almost as harmful as the actual one.

                                                       "and then hit Reddit"



Now only her 6000 Followers can post comments to her Twitter and she is no doubt bracing herself for the virtual/ethernet lynch mob, after she tried to do the right thing.  Unfortunately, as with 2DayFM and Nurse Saldanha, this involved a chronically depressed person.

He has now been found dead, but was aware before this, that he had been mistakenly suspected, and had emailed various friends to set them straight. I would risk serious money betting that Ms Mattioli has never heard of the 2DayFM phone prank, or of Nurse Saldanha.
The student, Sunil Tripathi was a Brown University philosophy major nearing graduation and ‘was last seen on March 16 on a surveillance camera after leaving his apartment at 1:33 a.m., and his family has been frantically searching for him for a month. There is no evidence tying Tripathi to the bombings.’ ‘6 feet 2 inches tall. Tripathi left his apartment without his wallet and cell phone. ABC News reported that he was "possibly depressed and left home without any of his belongings."’ A Facebook page dedicated to finding Tripathi was taken down by his family late Thursday night after suspicions about his involvement in the Boston bombing were posted on Reddit. The Facebook page was flooded with comments that were quickly deleted before the page was taken down.'

Alexis C Madrigal lays out the sequence of events on The Atlantic magazines website, but this was written pre-suicide and could disappear if the legalities that follow a death require it. Even this (pre-suicide) April 19th Buzzfeed report by Andrew Kaczynski might disappear, and it is good so please read it while you can.
It is ridiculous of me to even dwell on all this when elsewhere there is massive repression, starvation, corruption, and mass deaths of various kinds every day, but nobody would argue with my opinion of those things. There are many suspicious things to discuss with regard to The Saldanha Inquest, and the similarity of this situation required addressing.
Sunil had taken leave with permission from his philosophy course and had gone bush. His emotional state was apparently known to be fragile. If it had not been, he would have returned and probably been propelled with Kami into their 15 minutes of fame and laughed the whole thing off while raising money for the injured victims of the real bombers.
But he was fragile and now he is dead and it is not her fault, just as the death of Jacintha is not the fault of Mel Greig.
The Tripathi parents will probably not have the confluence of a Keith Vaz, MP, and a posh hospital to propel them into legal action and claims, as with Nurse Saldanha, but the tabloid public have been flung fresh sustenance in Ms Mattioli. Poor girl. What happens next will affect any future assistance the FBI might get from The Public.

not keen Keane

I get the bus. 
I got a MYKI on the first day it was sold in Ballarat in the winter of 2009. On arriving home I telephoned to register it and spoke with ‘Luke’. He gave me various security code numbers which I noted, but registering online-use proved too difficult for him to achieve and we both gave up. I should have realised how important this was.
I topped it’s balance up by $20 only days ago and used it normally on Tuesday 22nd January.
On Thursday 24th it was stone dead unusable. I bought a Daily ticket to travel.
On arriving home I went online to deal with my various MYKI numbers and ‘register’. 
No deal because ‘your MYKI has expired’.
I start from first-base to re-register and purchase online. DOB, address and phone are required in order to catch a bus. After giving all that, I got – ‘we already have that name’, ‘that email’ etc.

It would seem that I was supposed to organise my online use, and a new card, with transfer of my $20 balance, sometime before Wednesday 23rd January. 
 Where was that written? 
 How many thousands of similar balances are now in limbo?
‘Keane Australia Micropayment Consortium Pty Ltd (Kamco) is the Melbourne-based company

‘Kamco is wholly owned by Keane International Incorporated, a privately owned IT services company

From their ‘Overview’ page:
‘Employing more than 100 people in Melbourne, Australia, Kamco also boasts a dedicated team of software developers and testers in Hyderabad, India 
From their FAQ page: ‘Kamco is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. It also uses a dedicated development and testing team operating out of Hyderabad, India.’

‘Keane has been in operation since 1965, employing more than 10,000 people across 11 countries.
Kamco was formed in 2005 to bid for the New Ticketing Solution.

‘Kamco is a single purpose entity, established to build and operate the myki ticketing system on behalf of the State Government of Victoria.

In July 2005 Kamco was awarded the contract to build, operate and maintain the NTS (myki) system. Kamco is contracted to run the myki system for 10 years following implementation. Key among those subcontractors has been Giesecke-Devrient, which provides the cards and ACS Solutions Switzerland, which provides the software, maintenance, and: 1,000 ticket vending machines, 12,200 fare payment machines, 2,500 bus driver consoles, 1,000 tram driver consoles, 1,500 hand held devices for Transit Inspectors, 220 train station gates, 220 ticket office terminals, and 900 retail terminals'.  (for those 94,000 square miles of State - Ed.)

Keane Australia Micropayment Consortium Pty Ltd (Kamco) is at Level 14, 628 Bourke Street, Melbourne.
 I would like Level 14 at 628 Bourke to go down in history as the site of 

the Second Eureka Stockade.

Casualty ward-off

Well dear reader, what a week.  

Doesn't Tolstoy's killer opening line about 'happy families' come to mind for that holiday?
Just look at that photo on the Order Of Service above.  That is the best photo they have of a woman now gone forever.  One they claim was a joy until Australian radio made her life not worth living.
Well a picture or ten, is equal to a thousand words of contradiction, and I see that this woman was depressed well before she answered that call.

However,  the Barboza-Saldanha family life in Bristol and London, was totally anonymous a week ago, and now, because of a pregnancy and a prank, both by Others, and the subsequent death of their mother/partner, their names get thousands of websearch results. There is no way any of us can be ready for, or survive that, and those kids have my sympathy.
Your FaceBuck photos (happy or not) become a target for newshounds the moment they get your name, so go into them now and edit and delete like mad, just in case you, like these two unfortunate teenagers, become peripheral to a major tabloid moment.
Today after the service for Ms Saldanha at Westminster Cathedral if you don't mind, The Guardian is very diplomatically referring to Mr Barboza as 'the widower'. MSM websites have reported many facts conflicting with others.  The husband is actually a 'partner' according to some.  She was alive when found, or not.  The Mirror published this - 'Police were called to a home in Weymouth Street Central London at 9.35am yesterday after receiving a report of a woman found unconscious.

The address is ­registered in planning documents as hospital accommodation.

Two ­ambulances were sent with a duty officer, however the woman was found dead.'
'however'? We know that building was FULL OF NURSES who know how to do CPR.
Two vehicles was not the prime requirement of the moment.

Someone  (a fellow nurse phoned by Ben Barboza because the "deeply religious" mother of his children had not made her usual phone calls to him)  went to check her flat on Thursday NIGHT and got no response.  There has not been a single reference to anything that happened at the hospital on the Tuesday or Wednesday after the silly call. Amazing claim that the NHS accountant was not told on Tues or Wed of the fuss at the hospital, and the two children were not told by friends or neighbours. The father claims they don't watch TV.
The private ambulance came on Friday morning 9:35am.

I cannot believe though, that a nurse intending to die, would not take the easier option of drugs from the hospital to do it with.  Hanging is unreliable.  There are 2 kinds and the one which does not require a 2-metre drop with the slipknot in just the right spot, is very unreliable. An experienced nurse would know that from all those Saturday nights receiving failed suicides while on casualty duty.
Apparently the MP Keith Vaz, the family advocate, let slip in a radio interview that "the family had not had contact with Jacintha for some time". He is on record as saying the money offered from the radio station is a joke in the face of losing their loved partner (not wife).
In defence of the radio people   I submit that this blurry morose holiday snap

is THE BEST PHOTO OF THE BELOVED MUM THE FAMILY HAS? 

After the actual Inquest next March, when we know what her last messages were, I do hope they absolve the radio people. By next March, the pregnancy of the Duchess of Cambridge should also be secure (everybody knows that the first 20 weeks have the potential for failing), but if it is not (and she is not going well physically or spiritually at the moment) then by the time the official inquest does roll around, a very different slant on the whole thing could be the case. I do not wish this pain on the poor girl, but along with self-harm by the distraught DJs, it is something everyone currently being nasty should consider.
 IF the Duchess loses this infant there will be absolute hell to pay the son of Diana.  His helicopter squadron will probably all help him drop loads of manure (or worse)  on NewsLimited presses.

Second amazing thing is that an entire week after the phone call,  The Second Nurse, the one who actually had a conversation with Her Meljesty, has still managed to keep her name out of the news. a hospital spokesman said. He declined to provide further details, and did not respond to questions about the second nurse's condition. In this image below, is it her in the centre?

Her Meljesty, by the way, at no time on the recorded call, claims to BE a majesty, or anyone other than a "grandmother". It was the 5am end of a night shift for Jacintha who should not have had to watch the switchboard, as the hospital should have had a dedicated and trained telephonist while Mrs Wales was there.
The other fact-of-the-moment is that all the many reports of rampant sexual abuse by multi-various figures of power and popularity in the UK, have been eclipsed by this ridiculous baying for the blood of two Adelaide radio announcers.
I just want to go there and slap everybody, and it is fortunate that the only thing that could have made it all worse - The News Of Rebekah World -  is shut down.