Mr. George Orwell, to the best of my knowledge, coined the there "Doublespeak" in his novel "1984". We are now a decade plus past that date, but "Doublespeak" seems to have found a secure home in our current government. I certainly remember the "Mission Accomplished" photo op of 2003. And the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" "Slam Dunk" of our intelligence (?) operation. We are now preparing Iraq for a "free and independent" election early next year, while the "Insurgency" (loyal opposition?) manages to kill more and more of our "Super Power" under armored and under equipped fellow citizens.
Now we look forward to a president with a great mandate (52%?) with an primary objective of "fixing" Social Security. The primary proposal th fix Social Security is to begin diverting the money from the trust fund into the tender mercies of the stock market, while promising not to change the current benefits. It appears that this would exacerbate the current financial problems with no benefit to anyone but the stock market. During the last election, the right wing pundits talked a lot about the "tax and spend liberals", now it seems we have the reduce taxes and increase spending "conservatives". It would seem to me that Mr. Bush has a LOT of unfinished business to take care of before he "fixes" Social Security.
Meanwhile our government is preoccupied with such burning issues as "Hewlett-Packard and Philips said Wednesday that they have developed a content-protection system for DVD's, designed to protect users from burning "protected" DTV broadcasts. "The primary goal if you read FCC regulations is to create a situation where it is not possible to randomly, indiscriminately distribute content over something," said Kevin Saldanha, HP's DVD+RW program manager, speaking at a press conference here."** This plan will probably protect the public by obsoleting all currently existing DVD playing devices. This is done to protect the public from recording protected content, thereby insuring the the intellectual property industry is payed for each and every viewing/hearing of their product..
The manufacturers of video equipment are apparently going to stop producing VCR's by the end of the year. The VCR is supposed to be replaced by the DVD recorder, but there are no real standards in the DVD recording world with a least 6 different forms of media available. And DVD recorders only work with specific types of media, and specific speeds of media. And the media speeds and type keep changing, so a recorder you buy this month, may not have any media available for it next month.
We are also entering a brave new age of "digital communications", which is obviously intended to benefit the general population. We are going to change from NTSC broadcast television, to a new standard called "HDTV". This change is currently scheduled for 1/1/2007. On this date all transmission of NTSC television is to stop..
This is great, we will get high resolution advertising and reality TV sent directly into our homes over subscription based cable or satellite providers, at a monthly cost. But everyone that currently owns a television receiver will have to either 1) replace their equipment with "new and improved" "high definition" equipment, or 2) purchase a HDTV tuner. If your existing television does not have S video, or composite input jacks, you will also need to buy a modulator to provide signal to your set. No wonder standard TV equipment is getting to be dirt cheap. If you look on the Internet, you can buy HDTV tuners now, but there isn't very much HDTV to look at yet.
Soon broadcast radio in the form of FM and AM is to be replaced with subscription based radio services like "Sirius", at a monthly cost. Of course the subscription based services will be commercial free, not unlike, cable, satellite, vhs video, and DVD. Oh, and of course all to the radio equipment you own will instantly become junk. I do love that idea, you get to replace a $20 radio with a $99 satellite radio receiver that will only receive signals when you pay a $10 per month subscription fee. Don't forget to buy one for each car you own.
The computer software industry has already announced it is moving to a annuity or subscription model, where we will pay monthly, and they will send us what ever they think we need. While they drop support for products that were purchased just a year or two ago, their solution is to sell you an upgrade of your defective product. Of course the shrink wrap end user licensing agreement absolves the manufacturer of any legal responsibility other than collecting money.
Of course, the way to correct security problems is to sell more products (firewall, anti virus, anti adware, services on the subscription model) to the user. It is rumored that since a few of the machines in the white house were compromised by viri, a bill is being considered in the congress that would make it illegal to have a pc without a firewall and virus protection connected to the Internet. Perhaps if the software publishers had some legal responsibility for the quality of their products, they would not build in the technology that makes the virus/adware/scumware programs possible?
A lot has already been said about the behavior of our(?) drug industry. I heard this morning that the manufacturer of Prozac has been withholding a study proported to show that an individual taking Prozac is 12% more likely to commit suicide, than on other anti-depressants. My assertion remains that TV advertising for prescription drugs is irresponsible. Physicians should be the people responsible for determining the need for prescription drugs. Does your doctor prescribe based on what he saw on TV last night?
Charitable hospitals are either, 1) going out of business, or 2) going for an ever increasing non-profit, while billing the least able to pay the most. Management types seem to have no shame when it comes to compensation and perks.
This is all put forth in the name of God. By a opportunistic politician that figured out that by embracing evangelical fundamentalism he could carry the political day by focusing on soft controversial moral issues and personal attacks on the opposition, using soft money donated by the corporate rulers of our country. The loyal opposition did not succeed in presenting their case, and ended up spending much of their soft money defending their candidate.
As for me, my job and much of IT industry was outsourced to India. Which our government said was good for the economy. (Who's?) I was fortunate enough to retire very early, as no one would talk to me regarding employment. It appears to me that we are firmly in the age of intolerance, hyper greed, and doublespeak, does this remind you of America? Not me....
02/29/08