The New Microsoft Partner Center (Le Sigh)

Microsoft's latest regurgitation of their Partner Portal is the Microsoft Partner Center.  This is a fair bit different to previous regurgitations as it now requires an Azure AD account to authenticate against.  For newer Partners this won't really be an issue as they will have a single Azure AD tenant that is where their MPN Azure Credits and also their IUR Office 365 rights are assigned.  Most likely.

But for those of us who have been around since before Azure/BPOS/Office 365 existed, that's likely a very different story.  :(

Way back in prehistoric times, many Microsoft Partners had a Live ID (later known as a Personal Account) that they signed into the Partner Portal with.  Then Microsoft came up with Azure and created a tenant based on that Live ID and failed to mention this to their Partner Channel.  So, for instance, if your original Live ID was FSM@rocks.com then a new tenant named "fsmrocks" was created and it was here that the Azure Credits were assigned.

Since many of us longer-term Partners signed up for BPOS (what Office 365 was originally known as) before taking a serious look at Azure, many of us followed the procedure as we'd do for our clients - create a tenant (such as fsm.onmicrosoft.com), set up a custom domain, assign the License Key here (in this case the IUR key) and away you go.  This then created an Azure AD tenant and the world was good.

Or so we thought...

Now there was an Azure AD tenant for your MPN and Azure credits (fsmrocks) and another (fsm.onmicrosoft.com) that had all your real users and the custom domain you used regularly (fsm.com).  And unless you really needed to have Azure guests working with Azure AD COnnect back to your on-premises domain, that was also a non-issue.

Now Partner Center is introduced.  It needs to use an Azure AD account.  But which one?  Which tenant?

The more switched on members of the long-term MS Partner crowd here will see this will be an issue.  And another Partner issue is just what we don't need.  Yet another Partner issue...

So, here we go down the complicated, time consuming and unnecessarily frustrating rabid hole.  (Yes, I know - it really is rabid, though...)

You will need to "merge" the tenants.  If you don't have anything you're not willing to rebuild (or export and import) in Azure on the MPN account, then that's going to be a lot easier.  So you have a source tenant (MPN tenant - in this case fsmrocks) and a destination tenant (Partner Center tenant - in this case fsm.onmicrosoft.com).  We will need to migrate your older MPN account to the new Partner Center (relatively easy) and then create an Azure Support Ticket and have the MPN subscription moved to this new Partner Center tenant (unnecessarily frustrating and difficult).

So, either calling Microsoft Support (hhmmm...) or using their online support you will get the existing MPN account converted to a new Partner Center account.  The primary login for this Partner Account needs to be a user with Admin rights in the destination tenant, so we'll use FSMisLord@fsm.onmicrosoft.com as an example.  This account needs an email box assigned for the duration of this exercise, which can then be removed.  Once this has finished, you'll be able to log into both https://Portal.Office.com and also https://My.VisualStudio.com with this account, however the My.VisualStudio site won't have your MPN details assigned yet.

Now the fun really starts.

Signing into the source Azure Portal, see if you can go into Subscriptions and initiate a move of the MPN subscription to the destination tenant (

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/billing/billing-subscription-transfer

).  I'm betting it fails.  So kick off a support ticket and ask to have your MPN subscription moved to the new Partner Centre account.  This is where things really can go South.

Quite probably, you won't have a Partner Center account that Azure can see.  I don't know if the Azure team yet know the Partner Center is using Azure AD credentials.  I'm sure in a few years or so they will work it out.  Thre Azure team should contact you within 24 hours and will likely have no idea what you are trying to do, why, and how to fix it effectively.

So after prompting by the Azure Support call center contractor, from the source tenant email address (the old Live ID) you'll eventually need to send them a lot of information - the MPN Subscription ID you wish to move, the physical address of the old tenant, the last 4 digits of the CC used on the old tenant tenant, the email address of the administrator of the new tenant, some screenshots of you logged into the new Partner Center so they can see you can log in, some screenshots of the My.VisualStudio.com login with the destination tenant admin account showing there is no MPN stuff assigned yet, and maybe something else, depending on which call center contractor you get hold of.

Then from the email account of the Partner Center admin (in this case, FSMisLord@fsm.onmicrosoft.com) you need to send the same details as you sent for the source tenant, but with destination tenant information (CC, email of the source tenant, MPN subscription ID, fully worked proof of Legendre's Conjecture, and possibly some other random information about your neighbors across the road).

Eventually, a few dozen emails and days later (hopefully a lot less for you since I have already detailed a lot of information above to help this procedure out) it should be sorted.

If you need to know where to send a bottle of bourbon, contact me for the details.  :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Outright theft and plagiarism

It was brought to my attention yesterday that the author (sic) Pomiraja from the http://www.AskMeBoy.com site was plagiarising my blog posts.  I'd like to thank the anonymous person who brought this to my attention.

AskMeBoy have so far, through Pomiraja's plagiarism, republished 26 of my blog posts (as of right now) as Pomiraja's own work without giving any credit to me.  To see exactly how stupid this plagiarist is, they have even left my signature on all of the posts they have stolen!

If you would like to see a list of the plagiarised posts, have a look at https://askmeboy.com/?s=outspoken+wookie or the screen captures I took below - as I said, there are 26 at this point in time.  I don't know if this will encourage the owners of the website to axe Pomiraja for this plagiarism, axe the stolen and mis-credited posts, or have the site publish a written apology.  Their contact page is broken so I could not contact them directly about this, forcing me to make this public complaint about their plagiarism.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Medical Woo-Woo Shits Me

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of medical woo-woo.  So, to help people understand what these quasi-medical woo-woo terms mean, here's a Patient's Guide to Magical Medicine.

And in case someone is looking for the other common term for these practices, it is "SCAM" as in Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Microsoft's Broken Store Upgrade to 8.1

After spending well over 8 hours trying to work through this issue, including a reasonable amount of Google searching, it seems to me that Microsoft has royally fucked up the Microsoft Store Windows 8.1 Upgrade for Windows 8.0 users.  And now, I'll explain it in a little more depth...

For anyone who needs/wants to reinstall their Windows 8 (RTM), then activate with their license key, then install the updates needed (KB2871389 and KB2917499) to get the Windows 8.1 upgrade from the Microsoft Store and upgrade to Windows 8.1, you're in for a bit of a shock if you need to run applications that need the .NET Framework 3.5 (or 3.0 or 2.0) Feature that's normally installable via either the Control Panel or a particular invocation of the DISM command.

If you try and install via Windows Update, you'll be presented with the following error message:

Windows couldn't connect to the Internet to download necessary files. Error code: 0x800F0906 (which, of course, is bullshit if you've got a functional Internet connection - this is an erroneous error message)

If instead you try the DISM way, you'll see either the above error code or the following:

•0x800F081F: The changes could not be completed.

The reason for this, it seems, is because downloading the Windows 8.1 Upgrade from the Microsoft Store gives you the latest slipstreamed install of Windows 8.1 with almost all current Updates and HotFixes. Normally that would be great as it means that you don't need to bother performing a boatload of updates after installing the Windows 8.1 Upgrade, except that it seems that Microsoft has chosen to include in the slipstreamed Upgrade, HotFixes KB2966826 and KB2966828 (see: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-winapps/cant-enable-or-install-net-framework-35-in-windows/2f221b25-8d17-421f-8c37-1fed61649b4f) which are .NET 3.5 updates, meaning that until you uninstall these (which you cannot do if you've installed the 8.1 Upgrade from the Microsoft Store) you are what's known in the trade as SOL if you want to install .NET 3.5 (including 3.0 and 2.0) in a newly installed Win 8.0/8.1 from the Store.

As mentioned in that answers.microsoft.com thread, if these have been installed as part of the regular Microsoft Update regime before .NET 3.5 is even installed, it is a simple enough task to uninstall them, install .NET 3.5 and then reinstall these updates.  This is not the case with the slipstreamed Windows 8.1 Upgrade from the Microsoft Store as these updates seem to have been slipstreamed into the installer, meaning that they don't show as updates that can be uninstalled, therefore they can't be uninstalled, therefore you CANNOT install .NET 3.5 on this system - that leaves a lot of software that won't install nor run properly.

Out of interest, this thread also details issues with these updates - so it isn't just on Microsoft's own site that this issue has been discussed.

I have found - as expected - that even if you install .Net 3.5 in Windows 8.0 before performing the Microsoft Store upgrade to Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 is installed with .Net 3.5 uninstalled.  As I said, I expected this behaviour and would have been rather surprised if this had actually worked.

It seems to me that the easiest fix for this is to re-release both of these HotFixes with better pre-requisite detection and also rebuild the Microsoft Store upgrade image so that these two HotFixes are not included, or alternatively, fix the Windows Update site so that if a Windows 8.1 system with these updates already installed, but .Net 3.5 not yet installed, goes out looking for the .Net 3.5 installation files, it provides a working set of files that will install the .Net 3.5 Feature.


Until then, good luck if you need to get the .Net 3.5 Feature installed on a Windows 8.1 system recently upgraded from Windows 8.0 through the Microsoft Store.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Embedded "Security" with IPMI and UPnP

First, let me say that I've been outspoken about UPnP on gateway devices since UPnP was first released - it is simply a Bad Idea^TM.

Recently released information on an IPMI vulnerability involving UPnP on server motherboards has been published by Cari.net here.  Basically, it details how the BMC authentication details of almost 32,000 servers are available online, easily, in plain text - from the servers themselves.  Add to this the older Linux kernel versions some BMCs were running (any old version of any operating system will contain unpatched vulnerabilities that can be exploited for nefarious purposes) and you have a great recipe for easy and effective hacking of servers.

Not good.  Not good at all.

So, again, can I ask that people administering systems actually do their jobs properly and keep up to date with patches and updates and - particularly - disable vulnerable services from gateway devices and implement decent firewall rules to limit access to systems that are supposed to be protected behind these firewalls.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Jesus never said "Fiddle with the little children"

It seems to me that in this time of retrospection for the church (it is the Easter period for the christian church, which was, admittedly, like much of their religion, borrowed from pagan and other traditions that existed before christianity did - after all, Easter was not celebrated until the catholic church, around 155AD, decided to take on the Asherah celebrations as their Easter celebrations) that maybe, just maybe, they could take a look at how they behave - from an outsider's perspective - and learn a thing or two.

Now, not only is the catholic church suffering because of its institutionalized support for pederast priests and ensuring victims of the church are unable to claim compensation, but here in Australia, the Salvation Army is being brought under the spotlight thanks to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse.  We've had Commissioner James Condon (then a Captain) make the claim that he and Lt Colonel James Haggar (then Major (from memory)) went to the police to report Haggar's sexual abuse of an 8 year old girl in 1989, however the Police have no records that this report was made - they have no records of questions to the Salvation Army officers, nor to the family of the girl in question, nor to the victim herself.

And to add insult to injury, it appears that Haggar's wife has sent a "personal Facebook email" to the woman (the Salvation Army's Captain Michelle White) who was the whistle blower on James Haggar, accusing her of causing "devastation and incredible pain to many innocent people" through her actions.  Poor Kerry Haggar seems unable to tell the difference between reporting a pedophile who is actively working as a minister and the damage this pedophile (and others like him) have done to the children they have raped.

Now, we've got Salvation Army Major Peter Farthing, who supported Haggar's application for a Blue Card in 2002 by not revealing the 1989 pedophilia incident.  This same guy, who counseled Haggar for 18 months after he was dismissed in 1990 for the sexual assault, has now claimed to The Royal Commission that he doesn't consider Haggar a pedophile.  Haggar was re-hired by the Salvation Army in 1993 as an Officer.  Of course, after he was hired Haggar and his wife continued to live in Salvation Army accomodation and Haggar worked in a hostel for adolescent boys.

That's right, apparently "fingering" an 8 year old girl (and the girl reported this happening another 2 times later on) is not considered pedophilia to the Salvation Army - at least not when the perpetrator was one of their own Officers.  How utterly revolting.

When will people wake up and realise that the way the church views its own moral stance is not the way that general society views it?  General society has a much higher moral stance than the church does today - and the church is supposed to be representing their god who is claimed to have created all things.  If this is how their god shows his love - by having his trusted representatives rape the children brought unto them - then that god is disgusting and unworthy of love, honor, respect nor worship.

Have a read of the Australian, the Australian (again), the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Telegraph (again), SMH, SMH (again), Derryn Hinch and particularly Lewis Blayse (amongst others) for more information on how the Salvation Army is handling the situation arising from Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse.  It is far from good.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Custom Outlook.com and Windows Live Domains

Windows Live Admin Center

Changes to custom domains with Outlook.com

Outlook.com no longer offers support for new custom domain sign ups. New customers looking to manage custom domains are encouraged to use Office 365, Microsoft's premium online service, which also includes enterprise-class mail, collaboration and communication tools.

Explore Office 365 subscriptions

If you currently use custom domains with Outlook.com

We will continue to support the ability to log in to Outlook.com with your existing custom domain email address, but in the future, you will no longer be able to add or remove accounts in your domain.

For domain administrators who wish to continue to manage email addresses in their domain, we will be providing the option to migrate your account to Office 365. As part of Office 365, you will be able to continue managing your custom domains, as well as use many additional productivity tools including shared calendars, cloud storage and instant messaging.

Current customers using custom domains with Outlook.com will be notified via email in the coming weeks with further details and instructions on how to migrate.

----------

What a complete bunch of bastards!!!  :(

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Scott Morrison and the Australian Lack Of Empathy Party

In response to this letter:

There's just 29 days until the government may deport my family for having a son with mild autism. With complete silence from Scott Morrison's office, we're lost and unsure what to do, scared we're about to lose the life we've built here. 

Thank you so much for signing the change.org petition our friend Chris set up asking Scott Morrison to intervene. Watching the numbers climb to over 38,000 signatures has given us the courage to keep fighting -- but with just weeks until our visa runs out, we need your help again.

Right now our application for Scott Morrison to intervene and not deport us because our son has autism is sitting on his desk. It's waiting for him to decide one way or another. Can you help us get his attention and ask him to allow us to stay in the country? 

Here's the details for his office if you can write him a quick email or leave a message with his office asking him to intervene and not deport us for having an autistic son: 

Email: scott.morrison.mp@aph.gov.au 

Phone: (02) 6277 7860 

My wife and I have been in Australia for five years. We've been working as academics at the University of Queensland, paying taxes, abiding by the law -- and building a family with our beautiful son. 

Sending us back to Bangladesh now would destroy that life, but what we're terrified of more than anything is what it'd do to our son. There's little sympathy and support for people with autism in Bangladesh, and he'd almost certainly lose the extra support in school he needs.  

Please if you can help, it'd mean the world to us. 

Thanks so much for your support. 

Enamul and Siuly Kabir 

P.S. SBS News reported on our situation and the petition recently, you can watch the story here: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/12/13/family-be-deported-because-autistic-son

I wrote this response to Scott Morrison:

I know that the current Liberal Party machine has issues with complying with our Human Rights obligations and that what would be called normal societal morals likely don’t come up much in your own personal nor your Party’s internal discussions, however that doesn’t mean that we as Australian citizens and voters don’t find your actions morally bankrupt.  It is a bitter disappointment to have you representing Australian’s moral and human rights values to anyone, particularly to immigrants, let alone refugee and asylum seekers. 

 In the case of Enamul and Siuly Kabir, I find it particularly distasteful that you are looking at deporting them because their son has a mild case of Autism. 

 I ask that you suck up your dislike for “aliens”, “illegals”, “unchristian people” or whatever label you are trying to assign to these people and do the right thing here.  Then when you start to get a taste of what’s actually morally acceptable to the rest of Australia, take a long, hard look at how you are implementing and enforcing your Party’s immigration policies – in particular those regarding asylum seekers – and start treating them like human beings.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Making Google the Default Search Provider in IE10 and IE11

I hate that you can't do this directly in Internet Explorer as Microsoft wants us to use the appalling Bing search (sic) engine.  So, instead, just click on http://www.iegallery.com/en-US/Addons/Details/813 and add this as a Search Engine, then go to Manage Add-Ons and ensure the "Search in the address bar" checkbox is checked (should be), change the listing order to make Bing feel even more unloved and your searches in IE will finally be functional! :)

UPDATE: Microsoft has made it even harder to make Google the default search engine.  You nowe have to go to the URL above, which Microsoft will redirect, then you need to go to the URL again for the Google Search option to appear.  Go Microsoft - you bastards!

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Pip Marlow Confirms: Microsoft Are Bastards

OK, so it has been quite a while since I blogged - I should change that.  I've been spending more time updating Facebook instead and that has lead to a dearth of updates in here.  So here's the first in a while.

Pip Marlow has confirmed that Microsoft has been lying to their Partners (sic) in Australia for years when they have been telling us that their over-inflated pricing was out of their hands as it was set by Microsoft US: During a March IT price inquiry hearing, Microsoft Australia managing director Pip Marlow admitted the local arm of the global software giant set Australian prices based on what the market could bear.

The revelation earned Marlow and the company the wrath of the parliamentary committee for 'charging what it could get away with'.

You lying, cheating bastards - and that includes you, too Pip.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Reason's Greetings

I wish everyone could experience the blindness of love so that they wouldn't be bigots about how others experience love.  What other consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms is of no concern to me as it does not affect me, my family, my loved ones, my friends, my colleagues nor my community in any negative way.

This means that your religious freedom to feel offended by certain forms of love is fine by me, however you trying to extend that religious freedom to have negative effects on someone else's religious or personal freedoms is unacceptable.  I don't care what your personal beliefs, as crazy as they may be, are as long as you don't try and use them to remove nor restrict rights and freedoms of others.

I hope that we can all use our brains when we look at the world around us and examine the evidence that exists to support our beliefs and/or hypotheses and - and this is the important part - alter our beliefs and/or hypotheses based on the valid, verifiable, falsifiable evidence we find or don't find.  That's the true gift science has given us - the ability to posit ideas, design experiments/observations, look for valid evidence and change our ideas based on the results of these experiments and observations to better suit the evidence, then continue the cycle - not to ignore some evidence so that we can "confirm" our preconceived ideas.  Good science involves being aware of the confirmation bias we all have and making sure that we design experiments with falsifiable results - results that can go either way to prove or disprove our hypotheses.

"God hates fags" say the Westboro Church members.  OK, so where's the evidence for this?  First, where's the evidence for your god, then where's the evidence s/he hates fags?

"The act of the rapist is made easy, because it would be easy to remove the half-cloth worn by the women," says police spokesperson Wendy Hleta in Swaziland recently after miniskirts and midriff-revealing tops were banned.  So, women's clothing is responsible for men not being able to control their dicks?  Here's my hypothesis - if we better teach men how to behave and what's morally acceptable, we should reduce the likelihood of rape regardless of a woman wearing a miniskirt or a burqa. It is the men that are responsible for rape and who should therefore be held accountable for their inability to control their actions.

Swaziland, by the way, is a country dominated by the christian religion.  According to UNHCR, "The population is approximately 35 percent Protestant, 30 percent Zionist, 25 percent Catholic, and 1 percent Muslim. The remaining 9 percent is divided among the Baha'i Faith, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Judaism, and others."  Maybe their religious beliefs are encouraging men not to take responsibility for their own actions and instead blame them on a third party?  That's an ongoing theme in the christian bible.

Remember Malala Yousafzai:

Malala is the Pakistani school girl who was shot in the face by her muslim brothers for daring to educate herself?  Have a read of this for a refresher.  She was being taught a lesson that the Taliban felt was more important than a tradition education - that women should know their place, and that place is to remain uneducated and be subservient to men.  DAFUQ?  Not to mention that in the muslim world, women need to cover up so as not to incite men to rape them.  Obviously, muslim men have no ability to control themselves.  Well, that's quite apparent, unfortunately.

And as to the recent, horrific gang rape and murder of a 23 year old Indian woman on a bus in New Delhi this past week, there's nothing I can do but weep for her and the women who knew her - it could have been any one of them.  or their friends.  Or their daughters.  Or any other woman.  Or the daughter, wife, girlfriend, friend or associate of any of her family members.  But it was this poor woman.  Disgusting.

"We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4.45am 29 Dec 2012," Kelvin Loh, the chief executive of Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital, said in a statement.

Peacefully?

Peacefully?  There's nothing peaceful about dying from a gang rape and the associated beating that left her with severe organ failure and brain damage.  We're yet to find out more about this horrific event, but there sure was no equality nor love in there.

And to add more to the current issues in India, the last sentence of that article reads:

Police said on Friday that a 15-year-old schoolgirl had had her throat slit after being gang-raped in the Pali Muqimpure area of Uttar Pradesh state. A hunt has been launched for three youths after the attack the previous day.

I just don't know what to say...

So, how about we look at giving up these childish beliefs in imaginary friends and look at reality for what it is - the amazing, awe-inspiring reality that we live in.  As Tim Minchin said:

Isn't this enough?
Just,
this world?

Just this,
beautiful,
complex,
wonderfully unfathomable,
natural world?

How does it so fail to hold our attention
that we have to diminish it
with the invention
of cheap man-made
myths and monsters?

Let's all live, love, learn to use our brains and develop our reasoning skills.

Reason's Greetings to all - in the hope we can avoid horrendous acts of unkindness and "unreason" as I outlined above.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Dave's Thoughts Echo Mine And Many Others'

My friend, Dave Fregon posted this recently. It was so good I had to share it with my other friends:

I'm getting a little sick of Muslim and christian 'missionaries' trying to friend me on Facebook.

We have NOTHING in common and I am totally over talking to the wall that is those of faith that are just out there to score points to get to their heaven. I'll say what I think if asked, but I do the same with anything. I am more than my disbelief in a god.

I change my position given the merits of observable, testable, falsifiable evidence, however what is it that would change their mind? Nothing. That's the problem with talking to missionaries, there is no intention at all of a conversation, they are after points to get into some sort of afterlife.

They want more than the wonderful universe we see around us as they see it somehow lacking. I think it is a sad way to view things and that you can be good without the bribe of a heaven and the gun to the head of an idea that is hell. We are social, caring, loving, empathetic creatures and I hope for each and every one of them some day they learn that morality based on the inspection of ethics, doing the least harm possible, is what has fought such things as slavery and women's rights, whereas holy books have justified both sides all the way.

There is no good that comes from either book that a nonbeliever cannot come to the same conclusion using their own faculties. I would suggest that their god if it existed would prefer that avenue, than a bribe in one hand and a threat in the other.

/end rant

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

The Appalling George Pell

George Pell clearly has no comprehension at all about how heinous a crime the general society considers paedophilia to be. This man is so far out of touch with reality it is amazing he's still able to breathe. This man is a disgrace to humanity.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Islam - The Religion Of Intolerance

I posted this on Facebook back on 20th September, 2012:

http://freethinker.co.uk/2012/09/18/more-die-in-the-wake-of-innocence-of-the-muslims-movie/

There is no chance now that a muslim can claim that islam is a religion of love and peace and expect anyone to take them seriously. Islam is showing itself to be a religion of hatred, intolerance, massive overreaction and extreme violence.

To all the moderate muslims out there - WHY are you not standing up and taking back your religion from these fundamentalist whack jobs? The longer you leave this sort of lawlessness and insanity ruin your religion, the harder it will be to get out from under them when they call on you to support their fundamentalist ways. The time is now and will soon pass. Take action, take control, or lose all hope of being seen as different from these people.

And now, just to prove my point, the fundamentalist Taliban goes and does this: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/09/us-pakistan-schoolgirl-idUSBRE8980EB20121009

Yet one more show of extreme violence from those who represent the islamic faith.  Time is fast fading for the moderate muslims to take their faith back.  The problem is that when they try and stand up to the growing fundamentalist uprising in their own faith - that uprising who values fear, intolerance, hatred and the ultimate power this brings - those representing the fundamentalist side of their faith murder them.  In what way is that a religion of peace and love?

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Vendors

Why is it that even when you come across a vendor who really seems to be one of those who stand out from the crowd as having good software and good support, when you start digging a little deeper, the owner turn out to be one of the biggest cnuts you've ever had the displeasure of dealing with and makes you sincerely disappointed that you've actually recommended/sold their software to a good client.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Father Angel Armando Perez, Catholic Priest, Allegedly Caught In Underwear Chasing Boy

I don't know if there's anything more I need to say with a title like that: Read the full article here.

If hell actually existed, there'd be a lot of catholic priests with their name at the top of the list! :(

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Another Catholic Bishop Likes Slippery Slope Fallacies

Bishop Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen, who claims "As Bishop of Aberdeen, I know there are gay people among the community of the Church. I promise I will always respect and love them and uphold them in their relationship with the God who loves them. But I won’t marry them. It just can’t be done." seems to have a penchant for slippery slopes - maybe he really wanted a Slip 'n' Slide as a kid.

He questioned why, if Scotland treated its citizens all equally and therefore allowed gay people to get married, this equality would not extend to “nieces who genuinely, truly love their uncles” and why men could not have two wives.  This is the exact same slippery slope fallacy that was treated with the respect it deserved when Tony Jones threw to Jeremy Marou and after he stopped laughing, he said "That is the most... weirdest question I've ever heard!" and left it at that.

Now, with the history the Catholic Church has with immorality and their support for paedophile priests in preference to the children who they have raped, I don't know how anyone can take any Catholic priest of any level seriously - and it seems that the higher the level that a priest achieves in the Catholic church, the more involved they become with protecting the paedophile priests from prosecution by the laws of the land in which their priests have raped their parishoner's children.

Earlier this year in Australia, confidential police reports detailed 40 suicides of people who had previously been abused by Catholic clergy.  There are many more known cases in other reports.  The church knew about this and had attempted to keep this information quiet.  This is abhorrent and indicative of an institution that has no self control and no ability whatsoever to self-regulate.  What's even worse is that the church continues to try and keep this information private even though there's a huge outcry in Australia for a full investigation into how the Catholic church operates regarding its paedophile priests.

And in case you think George Pell is completely clear, have a read of this article.

Currently, evidence about three of the Catholic Church's most senior priests is being referred to the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions for possible charges.

So, while the Catholic church continues to rape children and support hiding this information about these heinous crimes from the parishioners and the authorities, they think they have the right to question governments' calls for treating all people fairly when it comes to gay rights.  How can the Catholic church hold any sway in a moral society?


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Catholic Church Sex Abuse

In case anyone missed it, the recent ABC Four Corners episode that investigated the catholic church and its handling of sexual abuse cases is available for watching online.

Four Corners seeks to address the issue that the catholic church is asked these days on a regular basis:

"The Catholic Church says its response to cases of child sex abuse should be compassionate, that abusers should be brought to justice and that concealing the truth is unjust to victims.

But does it follow those principles?"

Have a look at the show and make your own mind up - but the answer is very, very clear:

"In Victoria the Government is holding a joint party inquiry into the way religious and other non-government organisations respond to sex abuse cases. The Government was pressured into holding the inquiry after the release of a police report that criticised the Catholic Church's handling of abuse issues. The confidential police report revealed that the Church had known about a shockingly high rate of suicides and premature deaths but had "chosen to remain silent".

There is now a growing demand for the Federal Government to hold a national inquiry to assess the true extent of sexual abuse by all church groups and to assess the programs that have been put in place to assist victims and deliver them compensation."

This is a disgusting and disgraceful organization that protects child rapist priests and leaves the children who they ruined to their own ends - and those ends often lead to self-harm and suicide.

If you believe that a Royal Commission into the catholic church (and other NGOs) is needed to actually get the situation brought out into the daylight and handled properly, I suggest you sign the petition on Change.org asking for a Royal Commission into what's happening with our children.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

A Win For Human Decency

In an all-too-rare win for human decency, the Change.org petition started by Melinda Liszewski in support of Jeannie Blackburn's request to have the Bravery Award that the Royal Humane Society awarded to Paul McCluskey revoked due to the violent behavior of McCluskey against Jeannie Blackburn that left her blinded in one eye and resulted in the loss of her unborn child has resulted in this award being revoked.

When actually honoured with the certificate for bravery for his efforts in the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, McCluskey was serving a minimum 3 year jail sentence after pleading guilty in the Victorian County Court to criminal damage, intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury and recklessly causing serious injury to Ms Blackburn between 2006 and 2007.

Now, along with another 18,000 people I signed this petition which was presented on Tuesday 19th June, 2012 to the Melbourne Mayor who is also the Vice President of the Royal Humane Society. Jeannie did a series of interviews about the petition on the nightly news for television channels 2, 7, 9 and 10, radio station 3AW and it was also covered in the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph, the Australian and various other media locations.

It really is a shame that this sort of media and political pressure was required to force the hand of the Royal Humane Society - who convened a crisis meeting after all of this media coverage and voted unanimously to strip McCluskey of the award.  If only the Royal Humane Society took a look at the central word in their title and the central tenet of their charter maybe Jeannie's initial request for the revocation of a bravery award to a violent criminal would have been heeded without the need of all this additional pressure and poor media they have caused themselves to be subjected to.

I just hope Jeannie can get some comfort in the knowledge that she has the support of a large number of people and that this violent person has been stripped of this certificate and recognition that he absolutely did not deserve to be awarded.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/black-saturday-bushfire-hero-stripped-of-bravery-award/story-e6frfkvr-1226402942393#ixzz1yQf5sFs8

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Bravery Award For Wife Beater

In a disgusting example of the Royal Humane Society's support of a wife beater, they have awarded Paul Francis McCuskey with a bravery award for his rescue of an elderly woman as well as her pets during Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires - and given him this award whilst he's serving a 3 year jail term for numerous assaults on his former partner.

This is a disgraceful turn of events that the Royal Humane Society has effectively chosen to ignore.  How can a violent wife beater - he kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant and later kicked her so hard in the head he severed her optic nerve, making her permanently blind in one eye - be awarded with a bravery award - especially as he's serving a violence-related jail term.

Quentin Bryce, the Australian Governor-General has put her weight behind the appeal to compassion for Jeannie Blackburn, McCuskey's former partner, for the retraction of the bravery award to McCluskey and to keep the Royal Humane Society in some form of moral acceptability to Australian society.

I signed the petition for this award to be retracted on 1st June - there's currently over 14,200 signatures to this petition.  I encourage anyone who finds violence unacceptable and who cannot accept the awarding of a bravery award to a person serving jail time for a violent crime to head over to Change.org and sign the petition.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie