Some say Quebec has too much corruption,

Steal from the blockhead’s is the direction,

It is a time-honoured Quebecoise tradition.

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Driving a Ford product the other day, I was waiting at a stoplight and happened to look down at the console between the front seats.  There was a small metallic plaque attached to the console that said: Powered by Microsoft. Those are frightening words.

Microsoft is an unusual company.  It has been written about many times.  Some of the writers have been in awe.  Others have written disparagingly.  Both types of writers are correct.  You cannot help but to stand in wonder at a company built on bluff and chicanery as was Microsoft.  The product that brought the company into prominence in the computer industry about 30 years ago was pitched to IBM for use on its new personal computers and then purchased from another company.  The product became known as the disc operating system (DOS) and it built an empire.

Microsoft has grown into a giant in the computer industry and has a reputation for releasing its products before all bugs have been fixed.  It apparently wants its customers to find them.  It is a company that often seems to prefer buying its competitors rather than creating its own products.  It is a company that sells obsolescence to its customers to protect its future sales.

It is this obsolescence that makes the words Powered by Microsoft of concern in an automobile.  This vehicle uses software programs that were already obsolete when it was purchased.  It means the software programs installed in the computer chips in the vehicle are based on programs written as much as 30 years ago.  Newer programs are based on the older programs.  New is written with pieces of old.  It is a design flaw that is eating at the computer industry.

But it is also the design flaw that creates billions of dollars worth of new business for the computer industry every year.  It is the business of replacing hard drives that become corrupted and the computers that surround them.  It is also the business of writing updated operating systems, applications software, peripheral drivers as well as the operating controls for your auto’s climate control, brakes, radio, ignition, lights, telephone, back-up warnings, global positioning system and the list keeps growing.

And if you think your automobile is becoming too dependent on obsolete software, you might not want to fly the unfriendly skies.  The modern airliner is so full of outmoded, unsafe software programs, it is mindboggling.  As a pilot once explained while showing off the latest computer programs in his cockpit, “We will soon be here just to make the cabin announcements.”

Surprisingly there is little impetus today to correct the growing problems with this obsolete software use.  Programs by various computer industry companies that were launched decades ago continue to gather dust.  Simplified operating systems have been designed and remain curiosities instead of the basis for further development.  Cheap memory and the ease of layering more code on top of old code dooms new development.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to   [email protected]

Our merchants are in a litigious mood,

And it’s the city that’s gonna get sued,

They’ve got Babel’s roads so screwed!

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Having mentioned the inadequacies of Babel’s MP more than a few times in the past, the point should be quickly made that this is not just a rant.  And, as my wife has asked me nicely to not refer to him as ‘that a**hole,’ I will try to be a little more courteous.

I will do it because this is serious.  The sad story has to do with something known as the national command centre.  This is a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) initiative that politicians have mainly ignored for the past quarter century.  I bring this up because a prototype national command centre was temporarily in Babel earlier this year.  Babel is an ideal locale for this centre on a permanent basis.  The cost of having it here temporarily during the G8 and G20 summits was probably enough money to purchase the facilities and pay for the centre’s first year of operations.

The first time I heard of this initiative was about 25 years ago.  I was standing at a window in a very large room at the Alta Vista Drive headquarters of the RCMP in Ottawa.  The person I was talking with was the officer in charge of the identification section.  I pointed to a street about 200 metres away and said: “If a criminal had somehow found a bazooka, he could park over there for about a minute and easily destroy the centralized police records on 2.5 million Canadians and probably kill every person in this room.”

That was when the rationale of the national command centre was discussed.  Those records and their now computerized locations are nowhere near as vulnerable today but Canada still does not have a secure site for an outside-of-Ottawa national command centre.  With growing terrorism threats against North America, the need is more urgent.

What the national command centre would provide is a secure repository for critical records, a command centre for military, police and emergency services needed in case of a natural or man-made catastrophe that requires immediate multi-facetted interdiction.  The centre would coordinate military response with air, naval and ground capabilities as well as all police services and emergency services, depending on what is required.

Babel is an ideal location for this centre as it is close enough to Ottawa for inexpensive secure communications.  It is easy to move key personnel to it when needed. It is close to major ground and air military resources for area defence.  It has multiple reliable communications networks.  It provides good living accommodations for a highly trained staff and the technical support people.  The city offers excellent training and educational facilities and a highly rated hospital.  It is far enough away from the U.S. border to not be caught up in an event against that country.

Babel made even more sense earlier this year with the G8 in Huntsville and the G20 in Toronto.  That is why facilities were rented in Babel at a very high price, equipped and staffed for an amount that has been variously reported as $14 million and $27 million, depending on who might be asked.  One suspects that the variance in the figures is that one includes personnel and operating expenses and the other does not.

But where was Babel’s Member of Parliament while Babel housed the national command centre?  Maybe he was at hockey school, honing his skills.  Maybe he was busy ordering more grey flyers to put in Babel mail boxes in a desperate attempt to get re-elected.  What we do know was that he said nothing about making the national command centre a permanent installation in Babel.  Mind you, what would be the point?  Nobody listens to him in Ottawa anyway.

While it would certainly be better for Babel to have a more intelligent and politically capable Member of Parliament, you would think that someone in his party could kick start the guy to make something happen.  Babel deserves better.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to   [email protected]

Canada’s sex trade workers must have the right,

The choice to give or to sell is for what they fight.

__________________________________

There have been a couple challenges to the comment in the Babel Manifesto that American politics are corrupt.  If you ever need proof of that claim, you should read the New York Times insight into the cost of a vote in the November 14 issue.  The Times was complaining that in the U.S. mid-term election this month, candidates were spending  an average of more than $40 per vote.  How times change.

Back in the beginning of the 20^th Century, in Canada, it was commonly believed that the cost of a vote was a $5 bill, a mickey of rye whiskey or ten minutes with a hooker.  Then they gave women the vote and costs started climbing.

It was in 1968 that a Toronto steel tycoon complained to his friends at his club that inflation was serious as it had cost him $79,000 to buy a seat in Canada’s Parliament for his son-in-law.  Sitting in a meeting with that son-in-law when this openness was being discussed, I quietly commented that I thought the campaign cost more like $85,000.  He agreed but added that he did not get money from just one source.  Mind you, with the very high turnout in that election, his cost per vote in that riding was less than $3.

It was the year before that I had spent about $12,000 (a little more than $1 per actual vote) on a provincial campaign in the same area.  How much more it would have cost to win, is hard to judge.  We lost by less than a thousand votes.  It was not just the vulgar amount of money the opponent spent but the cost of the criminal charges that were brought later against the overly-partisan returning officer in the riding.

It might be foolish to suggest that politics is squeaky clean in Canada today but you rarely see the wholesale corruption that Americans seem to take for granted.  Creative accounting by Harper’s Conservatives has caused more than just raised eyebrows in our federal politics.  There also seems to be no upper limit to the amount of taxpayers’ money that Harper’s people are willing to spend on their re-election, before the election is called.

Provinces do their own thing on election expense rules and my experience is limited to Ontario.  If the rest of the provinces have rules as clumsy as Ontario, we are all spending too much on accountants to try to keep things organized.

And since municipalities are creatures of the provinces, municipal election rules are the poor stepchild.  In the recent municipal election in Babel, explaining the rules was made more difficult by the fact that the people explaining and enforcing them rarely understand them.  And in an age when people are getting away from using cheques, candidates are supposed to only accept cheques for donations.  Cash is a no-no but credit cards can be used through the candidate’s web site.  Ontario’s municipal donors are limited to $750 total donations to one campaign but, strangely, there is no limit for the candidate (up to the spending limit).  Mind you, each candidate has to report all donations and expenses after the election and you are only permitted to expend about 90 cents per potential voter.

It all makes our municipal elections penny ante compared to the American mid-term figures.  The final reports are not in from either but a best guess in Babel shows an overall expenditure by all mayoral candidates combined of close to $4 per net vote.  That is about one tenth the estimated figure in the American mid-term elections.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to   [email protected]

America wants to become a gated community,

Interfering in the world, yet seeking immunity.

________________________________

The idea of Palin or Trump for president is an outrage,

But it is something Mr. Harper will want to encourage.

______________________________________

The nattering pundits keep writing him off,

Cartoonists portray him as a Boris Karloff,

They say Mr. Ignatieff  has yet to take off,

But when he’s PM, their hats they will doff.

_______________________________

Telecommunications companies used to provide reliable telephone service and jobs for people in our communities.  Our neighbours who worked for the telephone company were, on the whole, capable and understanding and would answer queries in a friendly and knowledgeable way.  This was also back when Sunday night radio featured Jack Benny and Fred Allen.  Those comics are just as dead as customer service is today.  There are no longer helpful, service-oriented employees at any telecommunications company.  They have been replaced with inexpensive and incompetent outsourced call centres and technical staff who are not allowed to talk to customers.

A good example of this was the other day when the wife and I were heading out for lunch in different directions.  We were both being picked up by separate friends who had told us they would call when they arrive at our building.  There was no point in either coming up to our 15^th floor suite.  We would come down when our respective driver arrived.

Like a couple dummies, we sat there, ready to go, in our suite from about 11:30 am until close to 1 pm, waiting for the calls.  Neither of us used the telephone in this time as we did not want our drivers to get passed to voice mail.  Finally, the wife said that something must be wrong and called the person with whom she was supposed to have lunch.

It was then that she found out that the woman had arrived on time, called and when she got voice mail instead of my wife or I, she waited for a while and then reluctantly went back home.  When my wife called, the gal was eating her lunch, at home alone.

None of this made sense to the wife.  She checked the voice mail and could not get into it because as soon as she dialled *98 to reach the voice mail, a voice demanded a password.  Our code for accessing the voice mail was not accepted.  She was told it was the wrong password and she should try again.

What we soon found out was that our telephone had not been working when the two people came to the building.  As our entry system works through our telephone—which was not working at the time—both left lengthy messages on our voice mail to express their concern that we were not there.  As the person picking me up had already driven for more than an hour and a half to get to our place, he went off and found a place for a hamburger while waiting for me to call him on his cell phone.

To add insult to injury, the incompetent telecommunications company responsible for our telephone and voice mail not only had our telephone out of commission in that time but the voice mails that were left never went to a voice mail server for us.  Our messages went to Never-Never Land.

It was with great difficulty that I contained my annoyance when talking to technical support for the telecommunications company.  After considerable difficulty trying to explain what was wrong, I was blithely informed that our telephone service had been interrupted to allow for an upgrade and I had to re-initiate the voice mail.  There was a very hollow apology given for disrupting our telephone service for so long at such an inappropriate time of day, losing our messages and putting us to the trouble of resetting our voice mail.

What was less than funny was that we got an e-mail from the company two days later telling us how to reset our voice mail when it was upgraded.

Luckily our two appointments could be caught up and the inconvenience was not the stuff of lawsuits.  It is just one more example of really stupid, uncaring service by a telecommunications company.  What the company considers an upgrade is a faster connection to voice mail that uses a voice with what sounds to me like a vaguely Hessian accent that demands information from you.   This is enough to send us back to using answering machines.  They are friendlier and do not send your messages into the ether where they are never heard again.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to   [email protected]