Tuesday 17 January 2012

The wallpaper has ears

It's that time of year when all of us in the Northern Hemisphere wish we could escape the post-Christmas drudgery by visiting a little restaurant (restaurent - restorant?) like this one above, which can be reached by wading through some warm water just off the coast of Zanzibar - birthplace of Freddie Mercury.

Call me an old romantic, but being a practical sort of person, I have to admit that when I first saw this picture, my immediate thought was 'I wonder what happens to the sewage from the toilet of the place - it must have a toilet'. Anyone reading this who may have eaten there might be able to answer this question for me - it's a public health issue which I need to resolve before I make the booking.

Right. Back to reality.

It has come to my attention (a phrase which my headmaster was fond of using just before he publicly selected a boy for a flogging) that certain software exists which - once installed - will put on screen before you any blog which contains certain words which it has been pre-programmed to pick up on, and it automatically finds these words by sorting through the millions of blogs which are posted - worldwide - every day, and it takes the program about a quarter of a second to do this.

As you would expect, this software is generally used by corporations or institutions who have an interest in what others say about it, and has probably been used to bring lawsuits against bloggers who thought that they were talking to themselves, or just a small handful of loyal followers, like I think I do most of the time.

I always suspected that a system like this which is a lot more sophisticated than a general search existed, but recently I have seen it work first hand, which has not helped my ongoing treatment for paranoia one little bit.

A company (we will call it the Acme Sausage Company - I'm not stupid!) not too far away from here has a floor-worker who takes what some might think to be an over-zealous interest in the firm, and has installed this software on his own machine, simply asking it to look for the phrase, 'Acme Sausage Company'.

Blow me, within a matter of weeks the alarm bells went off on his Dell, and he was directed to the Google blog of a customer of the Acme who lives in the same town as him, and this customer happened to mention in an otherwise innocuous post that he didn't think much of the way Acme's sausages are produced, though the sausages themselves were quite good to eat.

So the worker went to the managing director with this information, and the M.D. has sent around a couple of P.R. men to the blogger's address to re-educate him about Acme Sausages, as well as giving the rest of the workers a bollocking about the perfectly valid points the original blog made about some short-falls in production techniques.

I don't know about you, but I find this sort of technology somewhat threatening to the notion of free speech and free enterprise, and it throws up the old and futile argument about whether or not the internet should be policed, and if so, by whom?

Nobody would argue that extremely unsavoury websites should not be targeted by spyware to help catch child abusers, etc. but who regulates the regulators? The older I get, the less anarchistic I become in one way, and the more in another. I'm still a crazy, mixed up kid at heart, but try telling that to the 25 year-old bar-maids that sell me beer every night.

23 comments:

  1. It's very big brother all this monitoring that goes on. I'd hate to think what really does goes on...it would be enough to turn someone off from starting a blog!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Careful what you say about particular brands of paint used on the Sow's Ear, Bris, and get Jason to wear a shirt next time.

      Delete
  2. Well, i suppose the internet should be policed in order to weed out horrible things - but then the argument is what is horrible. It is easy to say that if we come to a site and don't like what is written there we don't have to read it - oh dear Tom I am getting myself in deeper and deeper water and don;'t know where this is leading really. I just get on with my life and my blog and try not to say anything too disparaging.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've always thought that Walls Thick Irish sausages were wonderful, and I'm certain that the insult about the Irish is unfounded!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The logo on Worral-Thompson's sausages shows him with a pitchfork in his hand (apparently) and the instructions read: "Prick with a fork".

      Delete
  4. I doubt anyone will find me as The words "QUEEN,HENS,TELAWNYD, BULLDOG & AUNTIE GLADYS" are not eally high on anyone's "please find" list......

    as for your barmaid...all she needs to know is your name and address, so she can tell the taxi driver x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Try posting confidential information about your hospital and see what happens, John?

      Delete
  5. It is a scary world out there, yet I throw myself into the maze. Some of the traffic sources on my blog give me pause - and these are the ones that I can see.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We hear a lot less from the Chinese these days - maybe that is because I blocked the entire nation? No wonder I only have 83 followers.

      Delete
  6. Sewage outlets are THE best place to catch sea fish like Bass.

    Whether you eat them (or want to handle them) or not is another matter.

    Isn't there a huge web based software net called Echelon used by the secutity services? That's scary.

    Hey, just as I've typed this a telephone repair van with dark windows has just pulled up across the street...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The best tomatoes grow on sewage farms too, Chris. The fish - I believe - are called 'bottom-feeders'. Can't tell you about the other website without killing you. Sorry.

      Delete
  7. Tom, the other day a link for your Compact but Adorable blog came up and I clicked on it because I thought you'd gotten rid of that site. No page loaded. I thought it was all very strange and I wondered if you were aware of all that happening. Maybe it has something to do with these folks that are bothering you, I don't know. Just thought you should know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Really, Amy? Where did the link come up? How was it sent? Nobody is bothering me - yet.

      Delete
  8. It was on my list of blogs sidebar. But I don't think it's there anymore. It said the title of your Compact blog, then the teaser lines said something like, "My new WIP (work in progress) is coming along . . ." And when I clicked on it, it said that the link wouldn't go through.

    I don't know. Just something to watch out for. I've been hacked before, so you might keep an eye out for it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh dear - I never say 'WIP'. Thanks for the warning, Amy.

      Delete
  9. I just typed "Compact but adorable" into a Google search, and the only thing that came up was listed under 'Amy Saia':

    3 hours ago ... But my favorite find was the thick manuel of Kiki de Paris. I joked ..... Blog Chain: The Spaces we Remember - This Blog Chain post was started by Jon, who asked ... *Imagine the ..... 1 day ago. Compact but Adorable Lifestyle! ...

    I couldn't find any reference to that quote when I clicked on it, Amy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Who is 'Jon', Amy? Do you know a Jon?

      Delete
    2. That's a definite no. Anything that happens on my blog comes straight from me.

      Delete
    3. Oh well, I'll just stop being paranoid - for a while.

      Delete
  10. Chris is right about the sewage. Many years ago I was spear-fishing off Cala Sahona in Formentera, and swam out to a dark area thick with seaweed. When I dived down to check-out the wild life, I found a huge pipe issuing forth the sewage from the hotel where I was staying. It was only about 50 metres from the beach! There were plenty of fish, but I'm not sure what they were feeding off.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. During a really boring holiday in the Algarve, H.I. and me were amazed to find a stretch of empty beach all to ourselves which we lay on for a week. Eventually I lifted my head over a breakwater to see why. The 24 inch sewage pipe did not even extend to the water at high tide, and we were lying about 10 feet away from everything that came out of it - and I mean everything.

      Delete