My watch is fast; it's 1984
Nov. 3rd, 2005 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianThe NaNoWriMo website is down again. I swear, it used to be the Halloween crash, and now it's every other day. I've hooked into the Word Count Challenge (basically confident Londoners form a team and pit their combined word count against those from other cities in the UK) and you're supposed to update your word count every other day. I can only assume they make exceptions for Chris Baty's server problems.
When reading the newspaper this morning and seeing that David Blunkett's out again, am I the only person who thought, "Good. Stay gone this time"?
Oh, yeah, and now they apparently want to install X-ray scanning and millimetre wave technology scans in Tube and rail stations. Oh, not everywhere, of course; this is only trials, you see. But they won't say where (except Heathrow) and they won't say when, and they apparently won't even announce when this is taking effect. They're just going to randomly pull people aside for trials. Commuters don't have time for this bullshit, and even if they did, I don't believe in random scans. There's no such thing as random, really; on a subconscious level, picking someone out of a crowd for something like that involves finding someone you think is suspicious. Remember the Brazilian man on the Tube the other month? You know, the one police followed down the street and into the Tube, pulled out of his seat and shot? At least that's not likely to happen on random searches, but the point is that 'random' searches are fueled by discrimination. And I can just bet that one of the first places that gets this millimetre scanning technology is Stockwell. That'll be fun as they blow the public transport price increase on technology and then more technology to replace the technology that someone will undoubtedly vandalise in the first week. Let's not put that money on, I don't know, track and signal maintenance.
Not that I don't think terrorism is a problem. I just don't think that this scanning thing will help a whole lot. All it's going to do is engender the very culture of fear and paranoia that the terrorists are trying to achieve, just in a slightly different way. It's not going to be the fear of being blown up by terrorists that keeps people from leaving the house, it'll be the fear of being constantly watched by the police, with the ever-present possibility that they will be 'randomly' scanned and then thrown into jail for up to 90 days because something about you struck them as suspicious. Between that, the identity cards, the holding of phone and internet records, arresting people for wearing T-shirts bearing slogans they don't like and gods only know what else, we're living in an embryonic police state. Whee.
Right. Salt mine time again. Three different projects to work on and only a limited number of hours in the day.
When reading the newspaper this morning and seeing that David Blunkett's out again, am I the only person who thought, "Good. Stay gone this time"?
Oh, yeah, and now they apparently want to install X-ray scanning and millimetre wave technology scans in Tube and rail stations. Oh, not everywhere, of course; this is only trials, you see. But they won't say where (except Heathrow) and they won't say when, and they apparently won't even announce when this is taking effect. They're just going to randomly pull people aside for trials. Commuters don't have time for this bullshit, and even if they did, I don't believe in random scans. There's no such thing as random, really; on a subconscious level, picking someone out of a crowd for something like that involves finding someone you think is suspicious. Remember the Brazilian man on the Tube the other month? You know, the one police followed down the street and into the Tube, pulled out of his seat and shot? At least that's not likely to happen on random searches, but the point is that 'random' searches are fueled by discrimination. And I can just bet that one of the first places that gets this millimetre scanning technology is Stockwell. That'll be fun as they blow the public transport price increase on technology and then more technology to replace the technology that someone will undoubtedly vandalise in the first week. Let's not put that money on, I don't know, track and signal maintenance.
Not that I don't think terrorism is a problem. I just don't think that this scanning thing will help a whole lot. All it's going to do is engender the very culture of fear and paranoia that the terrorists are trying to achieve, just in a slightly different way. It's not going to be the fear of being blown up by terrorists that keeps people from leaving the house, it'll be the fear of being constantly watched by the police, with the ever-present possibility that they will be 'randomly' scanned and then thrown into jail for up to 90 days because something about you struck them as suspicious. Between that, the identity cards, the holding of phone and internet records, arresting people for wearing T-shirts bearing slogans they don't like and gods only know what else, we're living in an embryonic police state. Whee.
Right. Salt mine time again. Three different projects to work on and only a limited number of hours in the day.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-03 01:02 pm (UTC)I've noticed that. I think the problem is a combination of them fiddling with the site and they're getting more people than they expected. Maybe they need to set up the site earlier in June or something, then have a large group of test users to work out the bugs before they go live in November.
On the word count war front I've created a leader board but you can't see it at the moment. London is lying in third place behind Oxfordshire and Nottingham.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-03 01:57 pm (UTC)