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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Archive for December 2020
31.12.2020

One thing about not posting to NewTumbl is I’ve nowhere convenient to put quotations I’ve found. Maybe they have to go here as well. Back when I started this blog in 2006ā15 years ago, since it was in JanuaryāI did make some very short posts, so it’s not out of keeping. (I realize the timestamp is in GMT, but it’s coming up to midday on January 1, 2021 here.)
Here’s one from Robert Reich, and I think for the most part US readers will agree, regardless of their political stripes.
In 2008, Wall Street nearly destroyed the economy. The Street got bailed out while millions of Americans lost their jobs, savings, and homes. Yet not no major Wall Street executive ever went to jail.
In more recent years, top executives of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, along with the Sackler family, knew the dangers of OxyContin but did nothing. Executives at Wells Fargo Bank pushed bank employees to defraud customers. Executives at Boeing hid the results of tests showing its 737 Max Jetliner was unsafe. Police chiefs across America looked the other way as police under their command repeatedly killed innocent Black Americans.
Yet here, too, those responsible have got away with it.
I did offer these quotations with little or no commentary at NewTumbl and Tumblr.
What came up with the above was a Twitter exchange with a netizen in the US, and how some places still touted three- to four-day shipping times when I argued that it was obviousāespecially if you had been looking at the COVID positivity rates that their government officials relied onāthat these were BS. And that Amazon (revenue exceeding US$100 milliard in the fourth quarter of 2020) and Apple (profit at c. US$100 milliard for the 12 months ending September 30) might just be rich enough to hire an employee to do the calculations and correlate them with delaysāwe are not talking particularly complicated maths here, and we have had a lot of 2020 data to go on. But they would rather save a few bob and lie to consumers: it’s a choice they have made.
The conclusion I sadly had to draw was that businesses there can lie with impunity, because they’ve observed that there are no real consequences. The famous examples are all too clear from Reich’s quotation, where the people get a raw dealāeven losing their lives.
Tags: 2008, 2020, Amazon, Apple, Big Tech, Boeing, corruption, deception, finance, law, pharmaceuticals, racism, Robert Reich, Twitter, USA, Wells Fargo Posted in business, culture, internet, politics, USA | No Comments »
31.12.2020
This final podcast of 2020 is an unusual one. First, itās really directed a family Iāve never met: the Lais, who are leaving Hong Kong for Glasgow after the passing of the national security law in the Chinese city, as reported by Reuter. They may never even hear it. But itās a from-the-heart piece recounting my experiences as a Ć©migrĆ© myself, whose parents wanted to get out of Hong Kong because they feared what the communists would do after 1997. Imagine heading to a country with more COVID-19 infections and lockdowns and feeling that represented more freedom than what the Chinese Communist Party bestows on your home town.
Secondly, itās in Cantonese. The intro is in English but if youāre doing something from the heart to people from your own home town, itās in your mother tongue. It seemed more genuine that way. Therefore, I donāt expect this podcast episode to have many listeners since I suspect the majority of you wonāt know what Iām saying. They are themes Iāve tackled before, so you could probably guess and have a good chance of getting it right.
If you know the Lais, feel free to share this link with them.
Tags: 1970s, 1976, 2020, Cantonese, China, family, freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, Glasgow, history, Hong Kong, podcast, Scotland, UK Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
29.12.2020
I was led by this Tweet to have a peek at the Draft EUāUK Trade Cooperation Agreement and can confirm that on p. 931 (not p. 921), under āProtocols and Standards to be used for encryption mechanism: s/MIME and related packagesā, there is this:

The text:
The underlying certificate used by the s/MIME mechanism has to be in compliance with X.509 standard. In order to ensure common standards and procedures with other Prüm applications, the processing rules for s/MIME encryption operations or to be applied under various Commercial Product of the Shelves (COTS) environments, are as follows:
ā the sequence of the operations is: first encryption and then signing,
ā the encryption algorithm AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with 256 bit key length and RSA with 1024 bit key length shall be applied for symmetric and asymmetric encryption respectively,
ā the hash algorithm SHA-1 shall be applied.
s/MIME functionality is built into the vast majority of modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x and inter-operates among all major email software packages.
Two things have always puzzled me about the UKās approach to getting some sort of a deal with the EU.
There are two Davids, Davis and Frost, no relation to the TV producer and TV host. As far as I can tell, despite knowing that the transition period would end on January 1, 2021, failed to do anything toward advancing a deal with the EU, so that the British people know there are new rules, but not what they are. The British taxpayer would be right to question just what their pounds have been doing.
If I may use an analogy: thereās an exam and the set date was given but no one has done any swotting. Messrs Davis and Frost havenāt even done the coursework and sat in the lectures and tutorials blankly.
The person who has done the least is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the British prime minister, who stumbled in to the exam room at the last minute without knowing the subject.
But never mind, sneaked into the room with his clobber is an earlier graduateās paper! Surely he can plagiarize some of the answers out of that should the same questions arise!
I donāt know much about SHA-1 hash algorithms but the original Tweeter informs us that this had been ādeprecated in 2011ā as insecure. However, I can cast my mind back to when āNetscape Communicator 4.xā was my browser of choice, and that was 1998ā2001. (I stuck with Netscape 4Ā·7 for a long time, as 6 was too buggy, and in 2001 a friend gave me a copy of Internet Explorer 5, which I then used in Windows. This pre-dates this blog, hence Netscape is not even a tag here.)
This is a comedyātragedy from the land of Shakespeare, and I wonder if it means that the British government is expecting things to get so bad that they will have to wind up using computer software from 20 years ago.
Or they just couldnāt be arsed over the last four years (yes, count āem!) to do any real work, and hoped that no one would read the 1,259 pp. to find the mistakes.
To conclude, another bad analogy: itās not really oven-ready despite all this time baking. However, it appears the ingredients aren’t as fresh as we were led to believe. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating.
Tags: 2020, Boris Johnson, Brexit, EU, law, Mozilla, privacy, technology, Twitter, UK Posted in politics, technology, UK | No Comments »
27.12.2020
When Dad was made redundant from Cory-Wright & Salmon, which had purchased his workplace, Turnbull & Jones, he bought all the Grundig equipment and accessories, thinking that he would find it useful. And for a while he did. The odd one he cannibalized, while the parts were used and adapted. Cory-Wright wound up contracting him for all the servicing of Grundig office equipmentāprincipally dictating machinesāand actually wound up hiring three people after they realized all the things Dad actually did there.
He was quite happy to go to work for himself, as he picked up contracts with other firms as well. Some were companies who had gone to him at Turnbull & Jones anyway, and upon being told he had been let go, sought him out. But in the long run Grundig proved to be a fraction of what he wound up fixing, and it was the Japanese brands that I usually saw at home in his workshop, along with Philips (and no, the Japanese brands were not more reliable). Like many hard workers with a customer base, he did far better in self-employment than he did as an employee.
Which brings me to this post. You could say this cache of Grundig parts is part of my inheritance, but what to do with it? The trouble with being in New Zealand is that thereās no Ebayāweāre told to use the Australian one if we wished to sell, except none of the postal options applyāand outside these shores no oneās heard of Trade Me.
Iād like to sell the bits though I havenāt done an inventory yet. That was one of my favourite things when I visited Dad at Turnbull & Jones: he kept an inventory of all the items in his room and I used to make new ones as a fun activity. I marvelled at the new packaging that Grundig introduced, and this probably got me in to German graphic design.
Hereās one item for starters: the wall box (die Wanddose) for the central dictation system (Central-Diktat-Anlage), Typ 593. I have at least five of them, boxed. This was opened for the first time when I took the photo, between 40 and 50 years after it was packaged. That’s the original rubber band as it left the factory in Germany. Some have already been opened. Iāve microphones, foot controls, complete machines. Suggestions are welcome, especially if someone might find it all useful. Those mics are going for ā¬12 on Ebay in Germany, and mine are new. If anyone out there ever wondered, āIs there a lost cache of Grundig parts out there?ā then I have your answer.


Tags: 1970s, 1980s, Aotearoa, Ebay, family, Germany, Grundig, history, New Zealand, office, packaging, Philips, retro, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in business, New Zealand, technology, Wellington | No Comments »
18.12.2020
Either something is interfering with Mediawiki or Iāve reached the limit with the software after 4,300-odd entries on Autocade. Which is highly unlikely as the same software runs Wikipedia.
For the first time ever I noticed this in the footer:

This is how a page with no views looks. Once it nets a few views, a count appears (ā1 viewā). Except for the first time in 12 years, this page, which has been viewed multiple timesāincluding by me as I reloaded it to see if I could get the count startedāwill not show a count.
This is only happening, as far as I can tell, on the newest page, though the counts on other pages have stayed static despite reloads (including leaving the page and returning).
The statisticsā page on Autocade doesnāt always update when I reload pages, either, which makes me wonder if the count to the next million is going to be accurate.
Anyone else come across this error?
Itās funny that software that has run for 12 years one way decides not to do so any more, without any change in the back end.
I have noticed, however, that Disqus is doing some odd things, with the āAlso on Autocadeā box showing āView sourceā links that the general public is not permitted to see. Which means itās following me. Is that altering how the pages behave? Itās the first time that thatās happened, too.
And something is making sure the ads donāt show up, and itās not me, since I never use an ad blocker, and Privacy Badger is turned off on my own sites. The browser has updated, but I’ve checked and the in-built ad blocker is switched off.
Tags: 2020, advertising, Autocade, Disqus, JY&A Media, Mediawiki, publishing, software Posted in internet, New Zealand, publishing, technology | No Comments »
16.12.2020
Postscript: Alex, who maintains three spaces on NewTumbl, can still see my “missing” five posts. In addition, NewTumbl has responded and it’s believed there was a bug. More on that here.
This is interesting: talking to Bii on Twitter, who is also a NewTumbl user, I discovered that he canāt see my last five posts on NewTumbl.
I sent him a permalink (using the recommended NewTumbl method) to my last post there, but he gets a 404.
In fact, the newest post he can see is my sixth-to-last. And itās interesting to me that of the last five, three were critical of NewTumblās moderation system.
This reminds me of Google Plus, which used to hide my posts that were regularly critical of Google.
Bii would kindly prefer to give NewTumbl the benefit of the doubt though my thoughts jumped immediately to censorship. The last five posts are all public.


Top: The way my NewTumbl blog is supposed to look, in its top left-hand corner. Above: What Bii sees, with the last five posts hidden. Coincidentally three of them are critical of NewTumbl.
Like I say, my blog posts here have a pretty good audience, and the first one on NewTumbl comes up very high when one searches for that site. You do not want to be playing these games.
To think, I was so supportive of that place.
For the sake of completeness, then, here are the three critical posts, which have been excerpted before.
November 27, 2020
Do the mods here know their own rules?
Had a couple of modelling shots marked M by the moderators here and I cannot understand why. I had them marked O.
Thereās no nudity (M) but they contain sexy or sultry imagery (O). Do the mods here know their own rules?
See for yourself: this was the latest. As this is a US site, maybe I should use The Handmaidās Tale for guidance? I hear itās a big hit over there. This is after a post with the word w*nk (literally written like that, with an asterisk) got marked as M.
November 28, 2020
Simple rules
I have some pretty simple rules in life. If you are a professional and I am an amateur, I will defer to you in almost all cases in your specialist area, unless you make a call that is so outrageously stupid and beyond reason. And when it comes to the use of the English language, I am a professional, and can say with some authority over what is and isnāt permissible. If an amateur makes a call contrary to my expectations in areas I know about, then they had better back it up. I am referring to the moderation here.
This is the problem with Wikipedia: a place where actual expertise is hated and seen as Ć©litist. Itās why I tend not to use the site, where a few have scammed their way to the top, and, if you criticize them, you get five days of abuse from a senior editor directed at you. If this is the culture that is being instilled at NewTumbl by people not educated enough to make certain calls, then itās a real shame. Read the guidelines.
I was on Tumblr for over a decade before the censorship got crazy, and they supported the two-speed internet advocated by big firms. It would be a real shame if I were to cut my stay short here after only a couple of years. The difference is I own a lot of sites and have plenty of creative outlets. So, rather than help Dean and his friends make a few bob, I can happily put that same energy into my spaces.
This seemed like a fun site but if a professional has to make his case in a post like this against the decision(s) of amateurs (which is the case with Wikipedia: look at the talk pages!), then that just gets tiresome: itās not a great use of my time. If you donāt know the culture of the majority of countries in which the English language is used and somehow think 1950s white-bread America is the yardstick, then youāre already not on my level. Itās not terribly hard to put together an image-bank site where I share those āirrelevantā thoughts, as I call them here. I donāt have Deanās skill in making it a site for all, but my aims are completely selfish, so I donāt have to.
After all, Autocade began because I was fed up with how poor the quality was for motoring entries in Wikipedia (indeed, to the point of fiction) and sought to do something I wanted. Now it nets 1,000,000 page views every three months and Wikipedia links to it: thereās real satisfaction in that.
There has to be a simple image plug-in out there for WordPress and Iāll just add that to my blog. which runs that CMS. We all win: the holier-than-Mary-Whitehouse types who see their job as puritanically patrolling posts here wonāt have me to deal with, and I get more hits to my own space, on which I will sell ads. Weāll see. Hunting for that plug-in might be my task tonight. Or I might hang about here and post more stuff that by any measure is O, and gather up a few more examples from Angry Ward Cleaver out there.
November 29, 2020
See you at my blog gallery
That was pretty simple. Iāve put the New Image Gallery plug-in from A WP Life on to my main blog. And since that blog gets an average of 700 views per post (and the viral ones getting six figures), Iām betting that whatever I put there will get more eyeballs than here. For those interested, itās at jackyan.com/blog/2020/11/november-2020-miscellaneous-images/. [Postscript: the galleries can be found at jackyan.com/blog/category/gallery/.] New entries will be added on a monthly basis. Itās not as cool as NewTumbl but Iām going to be interested to see if itās as enjoyable as what Iāve been doing here.
I wanted in all sincerity to see NewTumbl grow but as @alex99a-three and others have seen, some moderating decisions have been questionable. I know first-hand that Wikipedia is a place where true expertise, that of professionals, is not welcomeāfounder Larry Sanger has said as much, which is why he left. The late Aaron Swartz echoed those comments. And here, if professionals are being overruled by people who are not at the same level, then Iām not sure what the point is. I feel Wikipedia has no point, and my own dissatisfaction with it led me to create Autocade, and thereās a sense that, in its very real wish to make sure it could keep up with its growth, NewTumbl is heading down the same path.
I donāt begrudge this siteās founders for adopting the approach they did in post moderation. In fact, I think it was very clever and itās a great way for NewTumbl to punch above its weight. However, in practice the absence of an appealsā system doesnāt work for me any more. I totally get that they havenāt the resources. So maybe I will return when they do.
As @constantpriaprism pointed out, Dean is not really present these days, either, so one big drawcard to NewTumblāits transparencyāis now also missing.
And itās those of us in the F and O spacesāpeople that NewTumbl said they wanted to encourageāwho seem to be bearing the brunt of puritanical moderating. Iām guessing we are being sidelined by people who donāt have the context (e.g. Alex has posted some really innocent stuff) or knowledge outside their countries. Both Alex and I (if I may be so bold as to guess his intent) have been marking as F or O things that were safe for us on prime-time TV when we were younger. I use the same standard with imagery and language.
To confirm this lack of knowledge, I read one comment which absolutely highlighted that one moderator had no idea what they were doing, advancing what I felt was a particularly weak argument. In that case, a newspaper front page was taken down and marked as M. You have to ask yourself: if a word appears (censored) on a newspaper front page, then itās probably not M; and if a word is used on prime-time television without bleeping, then itās also probably not M. There are other words which may be adult in nature but are commonly used that even Mary Whitehouse would be fine with, but you just know that with the lack of knowledge that some display here, youāre going to have it taken off the site and marked out of range.
Iāve done my share of rating posts here and I like to think Iāve taken an even-handed, free-speech approach based on decades of experience and life in different countries.
If this is to be an adult siteāand I know the majority of posts lean that wayāthen good luck to it. I will be back as @vergangene-automarken has some excellent stuff, as do the regulars whom I follow, but for now I really want to see what itās like doing the same thing in my own space. See you there.
Tags: 2020, censorship, Google, internet, NewTumbl, Twitter, website Posted in internet, USA | 1 Comment »
16.12.2020
Buzzfeedās article, on departing Facebook staff who write ābadge postsā, wasnāt a surprise; what was a greater surprise was just how long it took for such news to surface.
Badge posts are traditional farewell notes at Facebook, and not everyone has had rosy things to say. One wrote, āWith so many internal forces propping up the production of hateful and violent content, the task of stopping hate and violence on Facebook starts to feel even more sisyphean than it already is ⦠It also makes it embarrassing to work hereā (original emphasis).
Buzzfeed noted, āMore stunning, they estimated using the companyās own figures that, even with artificial intelligence and third-party moderators, the company was ādeleting less than 5% of all of the hate speech posted to Facebook,āā a claim that Facebook disputes, despite its points having already been addressed in the badge post:
The rest is worth reading here.
Meanwhile, this Twitter thread from Cory Doctorow, sums up a lot of my feelings and has supporting links, and it is where I found the above. Highlights:
I realize US conservatives feel they are hard done by with Facebook, but I know plenty of liberals who feel the same, and who’ve had posts censored. Even if Silicon Valley leans left, Facebook’s management doesn’t, so I’d go so far as to say right-wing views get more airtime there than left-wing (actually, also right-wing by anyone else’s standards) ones. On Facebook itself, during the few times I visit, I actually see very few conservatives who have complained of having their posts deleted or censored.
That isn’t a reason to shut it down or to break it up, but misinformation, regardless of whom it supports is. Inciting genocide is. Allowing posts to remain that influence someone to commit murder is. Facebook has proved over 15 years-plus that it has no desire to do the right thing, in which case it may well be time for others to step in to do it for them.
Tags: 2020, bias, Big Tech, BLM, Buzzfeed, corporate culture, Cory Doctorow, Facebook, law, media, politics, social media, technology, Twitter, USA Posted in business, culture, internet, leadership, politics, technology, USA | No Comments »
14.12.2020
The below is excerpted from an email sent to the Race Relations’ Commissioner, Meng Foon, sent yesterday, in light of this Tweet (and the thread that follows):
The New Zealand Qualifications’ Authority responded to Cadence:
My words to Meng:
I find it totally bizarre and inexplicable in the wake of the March 15 mosque terror attacks that someone would have thought it appropriate to include a poem by Terry in such a context, which in my view affords a murderer, racist, and white supremacist undeserved sympathy, and treats the murder of Joe Kum Yung as a side note.
I dare say the equivalent would be quoting from the manifesto of the Christchurch terrorist.
I would have no issue if Terry had been discussed in the context of the xenophobia (even the sinophobia) and racism of the era, with students asked to analyse that critically.
Looking at the Level 2 history exam paper in full, I question whether the poem’s inclusion is even that relevant to the question, more so when compared to the other sources given by the examiner.
Cadence Chung, the student who brought this to the attention of a number of people on Twitter, said she received a response from NZQA suggesting that sufficient context had been given. This I feel dismisses the seriousness of the hate crime perpetrated on Joe Kum Yung and, by extension, on our community, and is yet another example of the ongoing racism that surfaces from time to time.
One is used to it coming from certain quarters but from an official government body?
It does not reflect where New Zealanders stand today and NZQA should both explain and apologize for its inclusion.
Indeed, right now, an analysis of why NZQA felt its actions appropriate in 2020 would make a suitable question in a future exam.
If only I had read Tina Ngata’s Tweet on the subject first, as it is far more to the point:
One hundred and fifteen years on since the racially motivated murder of Joe Kum Yung, we still have people who give this little regard to our various communities. My tale about being denied service at a Wellington supermarket in 1993 on racial grounds doesn’t seem that far-fetched, to be frank.
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, education, Meng Foon, New Zealand, racism, Twitter Posted in culture, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
10.12.2020
Very humorously, Nigella Lawson mispronounced microwave, only to have Those Who Have No Humour get up in arms and Ms Lawson having to clarify that she indeed knew how to pronounce the word the Tory way. Maybe itās the Brexit age, where we canāt even reference the Continent, because of the Empah or some such, but sadly it might be down to the demise of humour in parts of our society. Britain may be leaving the EU but parts of society are about as cheerful as a bureaucrat from Brussels as they realize itās a fait accompli. Oops.
Back in April, I Tweeted this:
Got plenty of positive replies and likes except one chap was concerned:
So even in New Zealand, free from the stresses of COVID-19 infections, humour is dying in parts of our nation. (In this country, it’s spelled humour.)
The reason the joke isnāt offensive or even distressing is that itās highly unlikely. Thatās often the essence of a good joke. (āLetās send an astronaut to the sun.ā āTheyād get burnt up.ā āNot at night.ā) If you took exception to it, then the explanation that follows is that you think the scenario is likely, and, therefore, youāre in a defensive mode.
And come on, most of us wouldnāt drive hundreds of kilometres to take a meeting during a pandemic, so if you choose to make an odd decision, then expect some mirth at your expense.
This entire episode brings up so many other thoughts: what did he tell his wife? (āJust popping out to have a chat to some people at work.ā) What did she respond? (āCome back by 11 p.m.ā) What crossed his mind then? (āCool, she didnāt say which day.ā) Thereās an entire sitcom episode about the drive down.
I believe Mrs Bridges is English by birth and it’s completely in line with her country’s sense of humour. (‘Another woman? Pull the other one, I couldn’t even get Simon to drive back to Oxford.’) Iād even say she loves a good joke because of some of the things her husband says. Simon Bridges showed his more jovial and relaxed side once freed from the pressures of leading the Opposition, so clearly he has a sense of humour, too. You’d need it to have taken on that job.
I used to wonder why this country no longer does political satire as often as it once did, but the humourless are being given positions of responsibility. Ever been to a party where certain staff from a certain ministry are present? (I wonāt name which one, in case they change their mind about my being the New Zealand ambassador to Someplace.)
This has been happening since Labour got elected in 1984. McPhail & Gadsby, endless critics of Sir Robert Muldoon, and The Billy T. James Show vanished. The powers-that-be didnāt want to risk their own lot being lampooned. Being a National MP, Simon clearly wished to reverse that by entertaining all of us in the absence of such shows. How we all laughed at David āIām not that guy off Red Dwarfā Seymour twerking, and look at the votes he got! And how he converted the votes from Dancing with the Stars to political ones in 2020! Thereās something to be said for the Wally act. If we no longer fund such programmes then it is over to the politicians.
How I wish that were not the case and Melanie Bracewell could appear more often as Jacinda Ardern. Is Liz Mullane still keen to don the Helen Clark costume? Whoād play Dr Ashley Bloomfield? Calls to Jacinda. (Episode 1: Helen Clark calls Jacinda Ardern. āIf you want my advice ā¦ā āI donāt.ā Episode 2: Jack Dorsey calls Jacinda Ardern. āWhy donāt you Tweet much?ā ‘With Jack and Maurie on there? Are you mad?’ Episode 3: James Shaw calls Jacinda Ardern. ‘Come round, I’ll brew some tea the Green Party way.’ We would entitle this āThe Billy Tea, James Shawā.) Iād watch that.
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, Brexit, humour, media, New Zealand, Nigella Lawson, politics, satire, Twitter, UK Posted in culture, humour, internet, media, New Zealand, politics, TV | No Comments »
09.12.2020
Earlier today Strangers, the 1978 TV series created by Murray Smith, came to mind. Smith created and wrote many episodes of one of my favourite TV series, The Paradise Club (which to this day has no DVD release due to the music rights), and penned an entertaining miniseries Frederick Forsyth Presents (the first time that I noticed one Elizabeth Hurley) and a novel I bought when I first spotted it, The Devilās Juggler. He also wrote one of my favourite Dempsey and Makepeace episodes, āWheel Manā, which had quite a few of the hallmarks of some of his other work, including fairly likeable underworld figures, which came into play with The Paradise Club.
Yet thereās precious little about Smith online. His Wikipedia entry is essentially a version of his IMDB credits with some embellishments, for instance. It doesnāt even record his real name.
Donāt worry, itās not another dig at Wikipedia, but once again itās a reflection of how things arenāt permanent on the web, a subject Iāve touched on before after reading a blog entry from my friend Richard MacManus. And that we humans do have to rely on our own memories over whatās on the ānet still: the World Wide Web is not the solution to storing all human knowledge, or, at least, not the solution to accessing it.
Itās easy to refer to the disappearance of Geocities and the like, and the Internet Archive can only save so much. And in this case, I remember clearly searching for Murray Smith on Altavista in the 1990s, because I was interested in what he was up to. (He died in 2003.) I came across a legal prospectus of something he was proposing to do, and because it was a legal document, it gave his actual name.
Murray Smith was his screen name, and I gather from an article in The Independent quoting Smith and his friend Frederick Forsyth, he went by Murray, but the family name was definitely Murray-Smith. Back in those days, there was a good chance that if it was online, it was real: it took too much effort to make a website for anyone to bother doing fake news. My gut says it was George David Murray-Smith or something along those lines, but thereās no record of that prospectus online any more, or of the company that he and Forsyth set up together to make Frederick Forsyth Presents, which I assume from some online entries was IFS Productions Ltd. Some websites’ claim that his name was Charles Maurice Smith is incorrect.
Looking today, there are a couple of UK gazette entries for George David Murray Smith (no hyphen) in the armed forces, including the SAS in the 1970s, which suggest I am right.
Even in the age of the web, the advantage still lies with those of us who have good memories who can recall facts that are lost. Iāve often suggested on this blog that we cannot fully trust technology, and that thereās no guarantee that even the official bodies, like the UK Companiesā Office, will have complete, accessible records. The computer is a leveller, but not a complete one.
Tags: 1990s, 2020, Altavista, government, history, internet, Richard MacManus, SAS, Scotland, TV, UK, website, Wikipedia, World Wide Web Posted in business, culture, interests, internet, TV, UK | 1 Comment »
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