Big,Brother,Bill,amp,#58,#39,1 DIY Big Brother Bill: It's 1984 all over Again!

When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in

Most of the commentary over the George Orwell's novel, "1984"that occured in that year, was derision, saying that nowit was quite clear that the eerie picture painted of "BigBrother" was unlikely, and certainly not possible.Now Microsoft has proposed a sweeping web initiative which it hasdubbed "dot Net" or .Net in which they would be the "host" for thepersonal information of every single online consumer. The ideahas some appeal as a possible way to access information from acentral bank of servers using XML code to withdraw selected infofrom the vast database of personal information about anyonefrom a central "host". To have web access to that information might save the life of anaccident victim allergic to medications or allow you to withdrawcash from any bank via your cell phone.The privacy implications though, are downright spooky. Now, youcombine that information with newly available science-fiction-like "face-mapping" software tested this year at the "Snooper-Bowl" where certain law-enforcement agencies would haveaccess to private personal information and high resolution videoscans of the crowd and you have -- Big Brother. Combine that with"Telematics" being used by car rental agencies to track the locationand even the speed of their fleet of cars and now it gets real ugly.This is the George Orwell novel, "1984" come to life, a little late,but it's definitely here. Carry a cell phone? It will be federally mandated that your phone must use global positioning technologyso that when used to dial emergency services via 911, you can belocated to within twenty feet or less. It doesn't take a genius torealize that could be used by Big Brother just as easily withoutyour knowledge.Any idea if your boss is peering over your shoulder? More than three-quarters of corporate employers monitor employees in multiple ways.The following is from Onvia.com web article on workplace monitoring."Although the average percentage of workers with office e-mail andInternet connections remained relatively constant, overall activemonitoring grew to 78 percent from 74 percent in 2000. The overallfigure includes such measures as storing and reviewing computerfiles (36 percent), video recording of employees on the job(15 percent), recording and reviewing telephone messages(12 percent), and storing and reviewing voice mail (8 percent)Other forms of surveillance, including telephone numbers calledand time spent on the phone, logged computer time and videosurveillance for security purposes brought the total for allforms of monitoring to 82 percent, up from last year's 78percent and from 67 percent in 1999."http://www.news.onvia.com/x20557.xmlConsider that Microsoft provides the desktop software to mostof the corporate world and it doesn't take much of a stretch ofthe imagination to see them building in their own monitoring tools.Add to that, "Smart Tags" that are being built into Microsoftsoftware so that all of their products are tethered together andthey now have access to virtually all of your information fromOutlook, Word, your calendar, your email addresses, your files, your spreadsheets and your Powerpoint presentations.The following quote came from a large computing company's leadengineer, he was promised anonymity:<- begin quote ->"Bill has held back technology in order to control the growth at hisown pace and suck up every ounce of revenue along the way. He is agenius when it comes to business - probably the smartest businessman to ever live!When he released MSDOS (early 80's) there were plenty of multi-tasking OSs available - he released Windows NT in the mid 90'sover ten years after the technology was available on the PC! Youhave to be pretty smart to hold off that kind of technology forover ten years!The consumer is just now starting to receive the benefits ofmulti-tasking OS's with Windows 2000 and still has no ideahow much technology they are missing!He uses his install base of (90+%) of the client market to controland kill every standard in his greedy profit hungry companies way.Now he is trying to kill Java with SOAP, SNMP with CIMOM ... etc.He killed pop3 with exchange server - you have to buy your corporateemail server from Microsoft. No open email standards will stand inhis way - eliminate the competition!The bottom line is Bill is the smartest business man in the softwareindustry and controls the pace of technology. You will not get thetechnology until Bill can control and own the market!"<- End of quote ->Bill Gates made $931 million as Microsoft shares rose about 2 percent, better than the Upside 150's 1 percent gain. The Microsoftchairman was worth $50.6 billion at the end of trading on June 29,based on his company stock holdings. That would finance the BigBrother centralized database called .Net quite easily.Are you ready for 1984?