tweaking by the twit

I did it again! I thought my old dexterity with anything computers would help me improve the look of my blogsite.  So I began downloading some of the free xml codes that I got from the many sites on the net. somehow, I didnt do it right (again). I lost some of my old links and xml codes like the visitors tracker and my kids' photos.  I will have to rebuild the blog again!how frustrating! grrrrr....

I have always thought that I have been a computer geek.  When I was at school, I was amongst the first one who managed to get hold of the commodore 64.  Yes it was running on 64 kilobytes of RAM and back then we had to use cassettes to install any program or to save anything as there was no such thing as floppy discs (my daughter asked me what is that?) and let alone cdrw!.  I thought it was the coolest possession that I had which I bought with my own savings from the monthly allowance that I got as a scholarship student in Singapore. computers were then very abstract. I remember wordstar was the few word processing software available and after that wordperfect entered the market. before the windows operating system (was it 3?) came into the foray, you would need to learn a lot of the c command. And now things have all changed but I dont know if its for the better or worse as the endless arrays of softwares, tools and sites available are just mind boggling! Just the other day I got an email from a friend asking me to "twitter"? I am sure it was a mass email generated by the program. So the question now is should I or should I not twitter? I have been using facebook for a while and I have to say now I began to get hooked to it simply because of its simplicity (I use my nokiae90 to "fb") and like what I said in my previous posting, it is indeed very useful for me to get connected with my friends and relatives all over the world. 

But the downside of this technologies and the always-connected life, there is this constant urge and expectation to always be up-to-date on my emails and on the web. I have this constant urge to find answers for every question that comes to my head and by googling you are bound to get the answers in a matter of seconds. Indeed the amount of information available for free on the net is the biggest pull factor on why it is the greatest invention that mankind has ever come up.  But what if there is a force behind all this? What if the search engines that are being developed are tweaked in such away that information that promotes a certain cause or propaganda goes on top of the search list? is this not possible? (oh no, I have gone deeper now in this conspiracy theory)

But really? Take wikipedia for instance, one of the noblest inventions that the internet has managed to come up. As we all know it is a free encyclopedia built by contributors like you and me. 

But can we rely on the information from wikipedia especially those that can affect certain political or legal cause? That can affect the minds of the people who read them? Can wikipedia be used for some clandestine purpose for instance as a tool by Governments as one of its open source for its propaganda machine?

I have tried to pick up one particular interest in my heart.  The issue of Limbang which has been a disputed territory as it was annexed illegally by Rajah Brooke of Sarawak in 1890. This is what I got from wikipedia and I managed to trace the IP (internet protocol) address of the person(s) contributing the information on wikipedia as is:

The two countries agreed, via the signing of Exchange of Letters on 16 March, 2009, to settle their boundary issues and demarcate their common border according to the five historical agreements, of which the two directly concern Limbang, and to use the watershed principle to fill in the gaps. This essentially reaffirms the current de facto boundary without major deviation and has led Malaysia to declare that the Limbang Question has been settled with Malaysia having unequivocal ownership over Limbang.{{cite web |url=http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsgeneral.php?id=396573 | title=Brunei Drops Territorial Claim Over Limbang | accessdate=2009-03-17 |author=Hafizah Kamaruddin |date=March 17, 2009 |publisher=''[http://www.bernama.com.my [[Bernama]]]''}} Brunei however immediately denied Malaysian press reports, saying the Limbang Question was never discussed during negotiations for the Letters of Exchange.{{cite web |url=http://www.brunei-online.com/bb/wed/mar18h1.htm | title=Brunei denies Limbang story | accessdate=2009-03-23 |author=Azlan Othman |date=March 18, 2009 |publisher=''[http://www.brunei-online.com/bb/ [[Borneo Bulletin]]]''}} Malaysia subsequently said the Limbang Question will be settled when the survey and demarcation of the boundary between the two countries is completed.{{cite web |url=http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/3/20/nation/3518846&sec=nation | title=Limbang border to be set | accessdate=2009-03-20 |author=Nurbaiti Hamdan |date=March 20, 2009 |publisher=''[http://www.thestar.com.my [[The Star]]]''}}

Now, isnt Bernama an official government news agency?

Your guess is just as good as mine.