Where did our Democracy go?

This is a fascinating episode of The World Tomorrow, Julian Assange's TV show on RT. It focuses on the "Occupy" movement and the realisation by today's leaders that nations are no longer in control of their own destiny, and that decisions are not made by elected leaders, but by power structures that would prefer to work behind the scenes. Organisations like the Federal reserve, WTO, IMF and the like operate without any accountability or oversight.
The super-rich feel nothing about plundering whole continents for resources, and impoverishing the poor still further. South Africa's ruling elite are no different, except most of them probably don't even realize what is going on. I wonder how much longer the Western "economies" will last?

Who do you follow?

Internet Solutions/ISDSL Epic Failure

On Friday I went to work for my biggest client, who uses Internet Solutions as their "service" provider. More specifically, they use ISDSL, the ADSL part of the company.
On Friday basically nothing was working: you couldn't use Carbonite, DropBox or even Google Search, Google Drive or Gmail. Twitter.com, like most dotcom sites, was inaccessible. It turns out that one of the major undersea cables, SAT3, was either broken or under "maintenance", and a number of ISPs were affected. Why single out Internet Solutions? Because they are the biggest commercial ISP, and at one time they were the best ISP. Sadly no more.
As a client we received no notification from ISDSL, and they wouldn't reply to my questions because I'm not on their Technical Support list. Instead, the only public acknowledgement of the problem was on Twitter, but you needed to use a different ISP to see the message.
The graphs above show the story pretty well: each graph shows the download speed for several web sites I monitor: www.fishwisepro.com, www.fact-reviews.com, and www.openaccess.co.za. It measures how long an HTML page takes to download. These graphs are the average of all 4 sites. The top graph is for 2 weeks ago, the bottom graph is the past week. They grey area is the weekend. Notice the large dip on Friday, and another on Saturday. Clearly they don't have a backup plan for this kind of disaster.
My own ISP, M-Web, also uses the SAT3 cable, along with the SEACOM cable. They suffered downtime some time back, but clearly they have learnt how to deal with this issue. My home ADSL service was totally unaffected. That's how I was able to read the brain-dead tweets from @IS_global. It was imposible to see these tweets from an ISDSL connection. They clearly have no idea what the word "revert" means.

Update Tuesday 3rd July: Duncan Alfers from IS has been in touch, and I have provided him with contact details for my main client, so we can be warned about future problems.

Qualys Browser Check just got a whole lot more useful

Last year I heard about this really useful web site that checks your browser. It's at http://browsercheck.qualys.com/. It tells you what plugins are installed in your browser, and whether they are secure and up to date.
Now it has just become a whole lot more useful, because it checks all your browsers at once, even the ones you don't use, like Internet Explorer. I have a server running Windows Web Server 2008 R2 and the version of IE that comes with it is basically useless, and I never use it. I use Google Chrome or Firefox instead, mainly for downloads. Recently I discovered that IE still had an insecure component of RealPlayer installed. It turns out this is the default configuration of Windows, so without a tool like this I would never have known.
Then there is the machine I use to develop the FishWise Pro web site. It has 5 different browsers installed, and keeping them up to date can be a problem. Not any more. The screen shot above shows me that they are all up to date, as well as all the main plugins, like Flash, Silverlight, Adobe Reader, and Java. Its very helpful.

Another related tool is the Update Checker from FileHippo.com. I run it from time to time to find out which applications need to be updated. It doesn't check every app I have, but it is pretty comprehensive and useful. If you haven't tried these utilities out, now is a good time.

Goldfish Video Hits 2 Million Milestone

Ever since I first heard "The Four Forty Five Blues" I have been a Goldfish fan. That was on their first album, "Caught in the Loop". Then, on the "Perceptions of Pacha" album they went big with "Soundtracks and Come Backs"
Now they have signed a record deal with EMI, produced a new album, called "GoldFish", and this video has passed the 2 million plays mark. Cool! The new album includes "Soundtracks and Come Backs" and "We Come Together" and a great new song, "Washing Over Me". Let's hope it does even better.

Update: I have noticed that Last.fm alone has 1,093,393 plays (54,282 listeners) recorded. That's pretty impressive.

Why I love Madam and Eve

I love Madam and Eve, especially their week of cartoons page. They manage to remain topical and funny, and often make the politicians look even sillier than they are in real life. That takes some doing! (Click on the images to read each cartoon in more detail)

The President's (16N) Image

This is a story of bad behaviour all round. First there was the iconic artwork of Lenin, shown above. Lenin's actions and policies killed off a lot of people. He was regarded as a hero by many socialist, communist and revolutionary types around the world, who justified all the killing and focused on his rhetoric and writings instead.
Fast forward to 2012 and an artist (Brett Murray) decides to parody this iconic painting by replacing Lenin's face with our glorious President Jacob Zuma, husband of several wives (simultaneously), father of a dozen or so (illegitimate) children, and General Sleazeball.
Every time he announces another wedding or engagement I feel insulted. Presumably the artist feels similar sentiments, which is why he added some genitals to the picture too.
This all went unnoticed in the Goodman art gallery for about a week until someone decided to complain. There's always someone who complains. Of course I feel sorry for the children of our glorious President, since they didn't choose their father, or his immoral behaviour. But since their expenses are paid for by the state, they hardly have much to complain about: a ride on the gravy train has its drawbacks too.
Our Glorious President proved how good his decision making skills are by spending more money on lawyers and going to the High Court to get the painting taken off display. Isn't it ironic that he claimed his "dignity" was being infringed. What about the dignity of ordinary monogamous South Africans?
Now some sanctimonious vandals have decided to inflame the debate by taking the law into their own hands and deface the painting. If Bryan feels that strongly about it, why didn't he just buy the painting? I hope the artist sues him for millions and he gets sent to jail. It'll never happen, of course: the police will just be paid to lose the docket, and/or the judge will decide he wants a promotion.
So now we have a "debate" that has "supporters" of the President condoning death threats against the artist and vandalism of private property. They accuse the artist of "racism" (how predictable) but are silent about the way the president has degraded and diminished the nation's status worldwide.

All I can say is that if it is "racist" to criticise the ANC leadership for its bungling incompetence, dubious morals and arrogance in public, then I'm a "racist" too. Our leaders are behaving like a bunch of savages, stealing public funds, imposing dictatorial decisions on the public, and trying to operate under a cloak of secrecy. They really need to grow up.

Here's what the image restorers came up with:

Mail and Guardian meme of the nation

Update Sunday 27 May: The ANC has called for a boycott of City Press newspaper. Their badly-written press statement is full of rhetoric and low on ideas. I tried buying a copy of City Press today, but they were sold out at Spar, CNA, and Exclusive Books. I eventually found two copies at a filling station, and bought both. I have decided to subscribe to City Press as well. As for the poster below, it is so hypocritical as to be sad.

Update: The FPB has classified images of the pre-censorship painting as being unsuitable for viewing by people under the age of 16. Good luck with getting Google and Wikipedia to remove it. Personally I think they should classify the President's face as 18SVLN and ban it from ever appearing in public. That would be of great help to both children and adults.

After all of this, the City Press had the last word:



Update: 29 Aug 2012: Yawn. Another day, another painting. Ayanda Mabulu's painting Umshini Wam (Weapon of Mass Destruction), currently on display at the AVA Gallery in Cape Town, depicts Zuma in traditional Zulu garb with his right leg raised and pointing forward, exposing his genitalia and part of the presidential buttocks.
"The painting depicting Jacob Zuma is a respectful one. He is clothed in his culture. He is clothed in his manhood," he said in a statement.
Mabulu added he was merely questioning the current status quo.
"I respect the ANC liberation elders," he said. "They worked for the interests of the people. [But the ANC of today] is filled with greed and the lust of capitalism. You are reacting defensively; you are saying you are being attacked. I'm not attacking you; I'm respectfully asking a question," he said.

Star Wars Day

May 4th is Star Wars Day. Think about it, then say the date out loud. ;-) Thanks to the guys at the Daily Maverick for this one, as well as Wookiepedia.