For the last few years Nintendo have had somewhat of a monopoly in the motion sensor category in the console market through the Nintendo Wii; not anymore. At 2009's E3 we were introduced to Microsofts controller-less controller code named project natal and man did it look good. Although in early development the demonstrations where awe inspiring and the trailer left my jaw on the floor. But in 2009 we were given no details, no release date, no idea of actual playable games, nothing.

But now, a year later our questions are answered; well at least some of them. Renamed Kinect the device is set to revolutionise the way we play games, make calls and interact with our console in general. No longer are we tethered to a controller, needing to learn button combinations and making the battery industry rich, for with kinect your body, arms, legs and voice are the controls and it works however you move your body. After loads of internet rumours about a potential Q4 release date, Microsoft has finally confirmed a November 2010 release and announced the first 8 games to be launched along side the controller. Games launching in November will be;

• Dance Central
• Kinectimals
• Kinect Sports
• Kinect Joy Ride
• Your Shape: Fitness Evolved
• Kinect Adventures!
• Zumba Fitness
• Sonic Freeriders

And although I'm holding out to see the first shooters come to Kinect the launch line up looks creditable and definitely in the league to directly rival the wii with big names like fad sensation Zumba on board. That's right, no more trying to get the Sensor bar to pick up the Wii Controller, no more warnings about jumping on the Wii Balance board. With Kinect, go ahead and jump! Heck, kick, punch, dance, move however you see fit; it's all great with the Kinect.

But Kinect isn't just a game controller, it also enables you to make HD quality video calls from your TV when you have an Xbox Live Gold account. The camera in the Kinect automatically moves and traces you around the room, so you're always perfectly in frame, while multiple omni-directional microphones make sure everyone can be heard. Now it's possible for your whole family to keep in touch with grandparents, that nice family you met on holidays or whoever else, all on your TV! I'm sure more will be announced in the coming months, and I'll do my best to keep you up to date through this blog and twitter.

Links;

Official Kinect Website
Wikipedia Article
Project Natal YouTube Channel

Section 5: History doesn't back the bible up

I'm sure most of you know the biblical story of Moses who spoke to the burning bush and freed the Jewish slaves from Egypt. He parted the red sea and drowned the Pharaoh along with his army, or so the bible would have you believe. The bible then talks about the Jews toiling in the desert until they came upon Jerusalem where they settled. Funny thing is, archaeology doesn't back this story up. See the important thing to note about this story as opposed to others in the bible is a matter of records. For most other civilisations around the time record keeping was spotty at best, and a lot of the records that were created have been lost to time as a result of wars or fires or other disasters. On the other hand, the Egyptians kept records about everything, and boy do I mean EVERYTHING! The good, the bad and the neutral, it didn't matter what it was or how it reflected on them, they recorded it. There were records for each years grain supplies, how many slaves they had, where each army was, who was in it, who did what, where and when. EVERY last little thing, recorded on stone no less, preserved for all of time.

Funny thing about the Egyptian records, they mention absolutely nothing about losing thousands of slaves, a parting of a sea or losing an entire army and the Pharaoh (who remember was to the ancient Egyptians considered a god himself) to drowning. We have a group of people who are meticulous about keeping records about everything and they mention not one word about something as huge as thousands of slaves escaping, or the drowning of a Pharaoh or the drowning of an entire army? I mean think about it for a moment, the Egyptians were so good at keeping records that we use them to help validate and get greater insight into other cultures at the time, with whom they traded. It really isn't reasonable to think they'd leave out such important events in history, and have those events as the ONLY events that are left out of record. So one can pretty safely conclude if the Egyptians didn't record it happening then it must be a little bit bullshit...

Nokia have recently announced the brand new N8 as coming soon on their Australian website and this is certainly not a phone to be snubbed. If when looking at the N8 you were confused as to whether it was actually a rather pointy looking iphone you'd be forgiven, and surely this is an outright attempt by Nokia to grab some of the smart phone market away from Apple. I must say that a lack of physical keyboard be it full qwerty or otherwise is a bit of a disappointment for me, there is something rather annoying to me about virtual keypads.

Another disappointing feature is that the N8 will only ship with a stylus in the box to SOME "SELECTED" countries, meaning those outside of the "selected" countries will have to either purchase a stylus separately or just use their fingers. And while the phone is purpose built to be able to use your fingers to control it, I find it unfair that some countries will have the stylus bundled.

But these two faults are where the negatives end and the N8 really starts to shine. Weighing in at just 135g (with battery) it's light enough to carry in your pocket, and comes in Silver, dark grey and green. The screen will auto adjust it's brightness depending on the amount of ambient light, there is an inbuilt compass. Home screens allow a custom mixture of shortcuts and widgets to make your experience completely personalised, but nokia haven't just stopped there; instead they have given you 3 home screens to customise for different times in your day/life. For example much like you can have different ring tones and sms alert tones for work or personal time on most modern mobiles, the Nokia N8 can now have different home screens for work and for your personal life. This allows you to have the widgets and shortcuts providing the information you need when you need it.

Network wise the phone has GPRS, EDGE and HSDPA (CAT 5 & 9) support with the GSM mode working on 850/900/1800/1900 bands and the WCDMA mode working on 850/900/1700/1900/2100 bands, and automatic switching between GSM and WCDMA modes means this phone can be used basically anywhere on the planet on any network making it perfect for those whom travel. There is support for the brand new Bluetooth 3.0 and HDMI, Micro USB (Data and charging), 2mm charging connection and 3.5mm AV connection ports. The phone has an inbuilt FM transmitter allowing you to listen to music from the phone in your car wirelessly. If of course has an FM tuner as well, although I think a digital radio tuner might have been more fitting. The phone even has Wifi b/g/n support.

With 16GB of internal memory and support for up to 32GB of memory with a MicroSD card there isn't a lot you can't fit on this phone. There is the flexibility to store almost as much music, photos and video as you like. The battery also boasts some pretty impressive stats, with 720 minutes of talk time and 50 HOURS of music play back, this isn't a phone that's going to be warning of flat batteries on that critical call. Software wise the phone comes with a full html (4.1) browser, Flash lite 4.0, Quick time 4.6.2, Java, OMA DM 1.2 and OMA Client provisioning 1.1. And there is of course all the usuals like calendar, contacts, Ovi Store, messaging etc.

Email is supported and rather predictably has a customisable home screen widget. WebTV is supported allowing access to your favourite web shows from anywhere you can get a signal. There is even an office document editor and a VIDEO and photo editor! Chat wise the phone has inbuilt support for Ovi Chat, Yahoo!, AIM, Windows Live, Google Talk and Myspace which covers basically everyone you know right? Get a Nokia N8 and you not only get both GPS and A-GPS receivers, but you also get FREE turn by turn navigation for, wait for it, LIFE! That's right, you never have to pay to update your GPS maps again! And where GPS isn't available, the N8 will attempt to locate you via wifi!

Now for the REALLY cool stuff; the phone comes with a 12 megapixel camera meaning you can take both photos and video in FULL HD!!! Right on your mobile phone!! In wide screen!!! Score!! There is also a second VGA (640 x 480 pixels) camera on the front for video calls. A dedicated camera button makes taking photos and video easy as point and shoot. But why only please your eyes when you can also stimulate your ears? The N8 comes with Dolby Digital Plus! Now music and movies will sound superb where ever you are. Gaming is another winner, with the phone boasting a dedicated graphics processor supporting openGL 2.0, or in otherwords, gaming on the mobile phone just got serious!

Green consumers will be pleased to note the phone 80% recyclable and the full user guide is displayed digitally on the device or on the web. The box contains the N8 smart phone (or mobile computer as Nokia are billing it), a Nokia BL-4D battery, a Nokia connectivity cable, a Nokia stereo headset, a compact travel charger, adaptor cables for HDMI and USB and for "selected" countries a stylus. No word yet on a release date, but the Nokia N8 is certainly a phone to keep an eye and an ear out for.

In part for I explore the nature of Jesus in relation to the Jewish faith and how it stacks up historically. Oh and I must apologise for the lateness of this entry.

Section 4: A Jewish God

You know Jerusalem, being the holey city of “god” isn't named that way by accident. In fact at the time Jesus was born Judaism was widely practised in the general region, and weirdly enough worships the same god as other Christian religions. Fact of the matter is the early factions of Judaism are the source of all modern Christianity, including Catholicism and Islam, so in actual fact all Christians worship a Jewish god. In the first 6 decades of the first century CE, Judaism was actually comprised of roughly 24 competing factions, one of which being the followers of Yeshua of Nazareth (Jesus of Nazareth in English). It is interesting to note that the Synoptic gospels and Gospel of John mention that the teachings of Yeshua (Jesus) very closely matched those of a rabbi named Hillel who lived in the second half of the 1st century BCE, generations BEFORE Yeshua's (Jesus) birth! On a quick side note, they also interestingly continue by stating that Yeshua (Jesus) was charged with what we today would called “aggravated assault” against merchants in the temple, which was considered treason or insurrection by the Roman forces. Both Gospels give that as the reason why Yeshua (Jesus) was crucified and not the outlandish jealousy and insecurity by the king, stated in most modern Christian bibles.

But back to the origins of Christianity in Judaism; in 70 CE the Roman army attacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. This devastating blow disrupted Jewish life and caused two new movements to emerge, that of the rabbinical Judaism which was centered in local synagogues, and the early Christian movement. Some of Yeshua's (Jesus') followers, and some who although never meeting Yeshua were inspired by his teachings, settled in Jerusalem. Others spread across what was the then known world, but all of whom, come even within the same city, taught very different messages and held vastly different views on who Jesus was and what he did. So there you go, if you're a christian, you're actually a Jew, because you worship a Jewish god. And the teachings of Jesus were both inline with those already established at the time AND distorted by his followers. Just another reason the bible is just a little bit bullshit...

Russian politician Kirsan Ilyumzhinov claimed on April 26ths edition of a popular russian Tv show that he had been abducted by aliens in 1997. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has been the serving president of Kalmykia for the past 17 years. Without any further proof, the interview has sparked concern in Russian parliament with Russian MP Andre Lebedev calling on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to conduct an inquiry into the claims with fears Kirsan Ilyumzhinov may have given away "state secrets" to his alien abductors.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov claimed in his Channel One interview that he was falling asleep when he heard someone call him from the balcony. Upon investigating he supposedly found a "spaceship" which was a "half-transparent half tube". Somehow (he didn't explain how) Kirsan claims to have then entered the "spaceship" where he was greeted by "human-like creatures in yellow spacesuits". According to the eccentric politician the aliens then gave him a tour of their spaceship. When asked about communicating with them Kirsan stated "I am often asked which language I used to talk to them. Perhaps, it was on a level of the exchange of ideas".

On a personal note, while I certainly believe in life on other planets. And could be persuaded to believe in extra-terrestrial life visiting our planet, I find Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's claims completely laughable. It is interesting that this supposed event took place whilst under his own admission he was falling asleep. I think it is far more likely that Mr Ilyumzhinov dreamed the whole event and none of it actually took place. I find it both highly amusing and concerning that Andre Lebedev is worried about aliens gaining state secrets without any actual proof beyond his own word, that aliens ever visited Mr Ilyumzhinov.

Links;

News.com.au
The Sun

Part 3: Multiple Versions

As I covered back in Part 1, there exists multiple versions of the bible, and multiple interpretations of “gods word”. Even if you believe in God, you have to concede that it's impossible they're all right. For example if I say “If you're feeling sad, go jump in a lake” there a many many different interpretations that can be had on what I meant. Some people might think I meant to literally jump in the lake, then get out again, whilst others would think I mean they should commit suicide, whilst against others might thing I meant it as a turn of phrase meaning they should go away if they're feeling sad, and still there are other interpretations which I won't list here. The point is, I didn't mean all of these interpretations, I meant only 1 of them.

It seems to me that if “God” were the true “creator” then there wouldn't be all these different interpretations, I mean surely a being whom is apparently able to creature man kind with a simple point of it's finger is able to be clear enough in communication to get out the true meaning of what they have to say. I find the mere fact the bible is an interpretation cause for why it's a little bit bullshit, because lets say the text is really the world of god, the moment a human comes and “interprets” that text, and thus changes words around (potentially changing whole meanings of sentences) it ceases to be the word of god and becomes just another human written bunch of non-sense.

So the mere fact there are multiple versions, each interpreting the supposed word of god in their own way. But it's worse then just that, they each include only the scriptures and teachings they agree with interpreting only THOSE scriptures and teachings into the bible and leaving out the bits they don't agree. Again, if it's the word of god, then it's all the word of god and should all be included. It doesn't matter if bits repeat or if some things greatly differ from the general teachings, isn't that for each person who “experiences the word of god” to decide? It seems to me, anyone who is really seeking the true path to “god” and what “god” is on about, should learn ancient Latin, Greek Hebrew and Aramaic so they can themselves properly read the actual scriptures. It seems to me that if there is any truth to the bible it should be distributed including ALL of the scriptures, written in their entire original form, including original language, completely free from human interpretation. Anything less than that is just a little bit bullshit...

British pop singer M.I.A has sparked world wide criticism in the media over the video clip to her new song Born Free. The 9 minute video clip which depicts U.S authorities going house by house to round up all the red headed men for execution has even been banned on YouTube!

I'll be first to admit the video is over the top graphically violent, and honestly the song itself is none but a bunch of noise (maybe I'm just getting to old) but I don't think it deserves the sort of criticism it's getting if on the other hand we're going to say pop stars like Lady Gaga are allowed to have their extremely sexually explicit video clips and movies like Saw IV are allowed to exist. In fact if anything I'd have to say M.I.A's video clip is rather tame compared to any of the remade films Rob Zombie has done. And more over, M.I.A and ROMAIN GAVRAS were attempting to make a political statement with this video clip. Sure the clip does a clumsy job at making it's statement, but it quite clearly has hit people hard (otherwise it wouldn't have so much media attention) so one must assume it has at least partly fulfilled it's purpose.

Do I agree video clips like this should exist? No, of course not, but I disagree with video clips like those of Lady Gaga and movies like Rob Zombies remake of Halloween even more. None of this crap should exist, it's not art, it's not expressionism, it's not about complementing music or benefiting society. It's pornographic sexuality and violence for shear shock value and commercial gain. All of these types of videos should be banned, not just one video that has a bit of violence in it. I certainly don't think it's appropriate that I walk into a shop like Big-W and my children can see Lady Gaga half naked, dancing around like a whore on the LCD Tvs. We need to really take a long hard look in the mirror at the crap we're allowing Record companies to pump out and expose our children to.

My weekly series on the bible continues this week where I explore some of the Contradictions in the bible.

Section 2: Contradictions

The bible is absolutely filled with contradictions. It seems one moment it's telling us to or not to do something, or that things are or aren't a certain way, then suddenly and inexplicably takes the complete opposite stance. Lets take for example the 6th commandment (5th of your Catholic or Lutheran) “You Shall not Murder” (“You shall not Kill” if your Catholic). Think about that for a moment, here is a commandment which states very clearly that killing is a major sin, note the significant lack of the word Human in that commandment. That is to say the commandment itself makes no definition as to it referring to a particular species, and thus one can only make the generalised assumption from the text that murdering anything that is alive, be it human, other animal or planet is a sin under the bible.

But lets forget that a moment and for argument stake take it under it's traditional interpretation as to only applying to the killing of other humans. The bible still very much contradicts this stance in itself. Take the following verses taken from the bible for example, and please note that a reference to both where you can find the verse and in what version of the bible it will appear.

“Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel.” (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)

“A man or a woman who acts as a medium or fortuneteller shall be put to death by stoning; they have no one but themselves to blame for their death.” (Leviticus 20:27 NAB )

“If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:10 NLT)

"If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives." (Leviticus 20:13 NAB )

"If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare... See More or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you. You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. And all Israel, hearing of this, shall fear and never do such evil as this in your midst." (Deuteronomy 13:7-12 NAB )

"Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death." (Exodus 21:15 NAB )

"A priest's daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death." (Leviticus 21:9 NAB )

Now of course there will be those who talk about old and new testaments but before you do, let me just say this. If the bible is the word of God, then how does it really matter if it's old or new testament? Think about it for a moment, if you believe the bible is the world of god, then the old testament has to be just as valid as the new testament, otherwise heck why would it be in the damn bible? I mean we've already talked about how each version of the bible includes only the scripture which that religion finds relevant to their own Christian values, so if it's in your bible then clearly your church wants you to believe in that stuff just as much as everything else in the bible. If it's all the word of the apparent divine creator then guess what, you have to believe in and practise the whole lot of it, you can't just pick and chose the bits that sound nice and leave the rest. It's one of those black and white things.

The Bible; Some people believe in what it says, even for some, when they haven't actually ever read the bible fully. Whilst others look at the bible as nothing more than fiction, a story book, or at best a cultural governance set by man. But whatever side of this equation you fall on, it might be in your interests to read these series on why I think the bible is just a little bit bullshit. If at any point you agree or disagree with something I have to say, I encourage you to comment on the post, or head over to our forum and discuss the matter there.

Section 1: The word of God.

The Bible would have us believe it is the word of “God”, a divine book descended from “Heaven”. But I have two main problems with this idea, the first of which being that the bible was not physically written by God, nor did it magically fall from heaven. Instead as we all should know, the bible was physically written by mere mortals, both men AND women. Now you can claim some divine entity came down from heaven and told them what to write all you like (I call a voice only you can hear telling you what to do a symptom of Schizophrenia nor divinity), but the fact remains it was actually written by human beings, not by divine entities and most certainly not by God. I find it most interesting that out of the hundreds of accounts, none of them were written by “Jesus of Nazareth” who the bible tells us is apparently simultaneously the SON of God AND God in human form. The mere lack of any accounts or scripture from “Jesus of Nazareth” is in itself most telling about the nature of the scriptures. That is to say if it was gods will to write them, surely god would have done at least some of the writing whilst in human form right?

Actually Christian testimony was originally entirely oral, and continued in this medium for roughly twenty years after the supposed death of “Jesus of Nazareth” before the “word of god” was written down as biblical scripture. These scriptures where in fact distributed secretly across early Christian regions that were under Roman rule. In actual fact Roman law at the time made it a capital offence to be Christian &/or to distribute Christian reading materials. Imagine for a moment you live in the year 25A.D. Villages are small, and cities while large compared to villages are still incredibly small compared to modern cities. There are of course no TVs, Radios, Telephones or Computers and there are no planes, trains or cars. This means that travel and communication between villages or cities is measured in days, if not weeks or months. If an Arab stranger rides into your village claiming to be from Egypt which is several months travel away, and tells of the destruction of an Egyptian city, then it's pretty likely, having nothing else to compare the claims against, that you're going to believe it.

So if you get this “secret” scripture proclaiming to be the word of a divine entity (“god”) that is filled with details about how enemy cities are crumbling, and how “god” is going to save his people from the Roman dictatorship, you'd certainly believe it. Instantly you're filled with hope for a better life, and future for your children who are probably currently slaves. Of course at the time there would be no way to verify how true the document is, or even who actually wrote it. In fact, a single document could have potentially been written by several people, as opposed to just one, and the author(s) weren't even necessarily Christian followers. In fact to this day, there is still no way of actually verifying who actually wrote any of these biblical scriptures. People have ideas about who wrote them, there are a wide range of theories, but there are actually no facts surrounding the author(s) nor their motives.

So while on one hand we have a book comprising the writings of unconfirmed authors, claiming to be the word of god, on the other hand there are far MORE biblical scriptures in existence than you will find in any bible. Each version of Christianity makes up their version of the bible from the scriptures it feels best represents their beliefs, but all leave more other then they put in. In fact there are some biblical scriptures which aren't contained in ANY bible. So we're meant to believe the people who wrote these scriptures were all influenced into writing the divine and infallible word of god, we're also meant to believe that some of those teachings should be excluded from our view? That some of them are irrelevant, or down right wrong? But wait, isn't “God” meant to be infallible? In fact, if the heads of the Christian churches honestly believed that all biblical scripture was the infallible word of god, and that god was our all knowing creator, then guess what; they would have no choice but to include each and ever biblical scripture as part of the bible. All of it, even the parts written by women.

Think about it, according to the bible, perverting the word of god is a sin, on you will go to hell for all eternity for. Guess what excluding some of the things “god” has apparently said through people in biblical scripture, in order to better show the word of god in the way you want it to be, would be called. Hrmmm. And guess what then spreading the teachings in such a perversion would be called. According to the beliefs of Christians themselves just by reading their bibles and spreading what they say as the whole word of god, all Christians are going to hell... :lol:

Links;

Wikipedia (Early Christianity)
Early Christian Writings
Religious Tolerance

Our video sharing website project that I announced last month is developing along nicely. The official launch date has now been set for May 15th 2010. The site is currently in beta trials so if you want to get in early and help test out the system just head on over to camzit.com and sign up. If you hurry and sign up for beta testing, you might even find you'll get a reward as a result.

So you went out and paid $800+ for your iPhone, or got jammed into a long term contract that sees you paying over $1000 for the device, you faithfully stood by Apple even though your iPod or iPhone exploded. Your even excitedly impatient for the release of the iPad near you so you can snap one up at $900, despite it's severe lack of features and general uselessness. You're a faithful Apple user, you buy apps by the dozen, you're addicted right?

You're even about to wet your pants over the release of the announced iOS 4.0 and the speculation over a new iPhone device. Well here is a feature in iOS 4.0 you may not have heard to much fan fare about, iAds. That's the name of course Apple have given to their new targeted advertising system, which will place targeted advertisements in your apps.

That's right you've paid for a device and an application that is going to spam the heck out of you every time you use it. I'm sure if you enjoy having ads all over the place this won't present the slightest problem to you, but for most people iAds might just be an iKiller. I mean we put up with the ads from Google, Facebook, myspace and the like because well, they're free services, ads are how they make their money. But apple make a hefty profit without ads, they're essentially asking you to pay for the privilege of being spammed. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced he plans to serve 1 BILLION ADS PER DAY

Sure you could just use the device in default and not download any extra apps, but seriously if you were going to do such a thing, why would you bother getting an iPhone or iPad? There are plenty of phones in the $100 - $200 range that have the same features as the iPhone minus the apps (Heck some even have the apps too now days).

So, why the sudden shift into advertising you might ask? Well firstly it isn't sudden, it's been planned for quite some time now. Apple plan to give 60% of the profits to the application developer and keep 40% to take care of the costs of serving those ads. It's a move that is meant to make iOS look like a more desirable platform to big name game and software developers, like Nintendo. Apple seems to think people will want to spend hours on end playing in-depth, graphic rich games on their iPhone or iPad as opposed to their Gaming Console or PC; I think Apple are a little delusional.

If Apple are so interested in gaming perhaps they should focus on making the MAC more gamer friendly, &/or developing a gaming console of their own. They sound like far more logical solutions to me, but of course in the world of Steve Jobs it's a better idea to attempt to get people to play games on a tiny screen (part of which will be taken up by ads while you're in the game) with poor user game controls. And of course the Telcos will love this idea, think about it. 17% of the mobile market in Australia owns an iPhone, each one being served data using ads, day and night! Oh yeah, get ready for your mobile bill to rise.

Which leaves just one question left, seriously, what is with Apple placing an 'i' before the name of every product they sell? Am I the only one who is getting annoyed at that? But I suppose if they insist on putting an 'i' before there advertising product, a more accurately descriptive name might have been "idontwantads".

Links;

iTWire Article
The Age Article
Nintendo USA President on Apple

Stephen Conroys great internet filter is clouted as the only of it's kind in the western world, and whilst that very well may be true (I'd like to hear from someone who knows), Australia isn't by any means the only country in the western world talking about censoring the internet. In fact, it seems we're a little late to the table with the U.S.A and Britain already censoring.

As free press reports, the fight for net neutrality is underway in the U.S.A with public figures on both sides of the debate. Interestingly however unlike in Australia where it is the government leading the charge on censorship through an ISP level filter, in the U.S.A it's the ISPs themselves who are leading the charge, with LIVE monitoring and blocking of undesirable content. That's right, for Americans their ISP is able to have a real live person look through your personal messages (including Instant Messaging and email), look at any websites you own &/or run, the people you communicate with, etc and determine whether action should be taken.

According to evidence given at the Federal Communications Commission by Michele Combs, American ISPs have been speed throttling and blocking content of political &/or social nature which the ISP itself doesn't approve of. For Americans there is no spin that it's "for the children" like it is here in Australia. There are no delusions about making a safer internet being propagated, nope it's just flat out social control and censorship by corporations held in broad daylight.

For the British it's worse, as ISPs have willingly teamed up with the Government to invade privacy and provide censorship. Calling no line ISPs will log every website, email, download and upload you make in a named account which is then passed to government. The ISPs are happy, they uses the data to better send you advertising, both through the browser and through email. In fact Britain has one of the highest rates of spam on the planet, and it's all down to this ISP level snooping.

The argument for a lot of people against the Australian filter seems to be that in other developed countries that filter internet, it is a voluntary system on behalf of the ISPs, but the fact is, in countries like the U.S.A and Britain these voluntary actions are being taken up by all the major ISPs in the market, giving the same blanket effect to the community that our Australian filter is meant to achieve through being mandatory. It seems in fact that ISPs and their corporate partners see the benefits to their organisation of such controls and censorship.

Imagine a world where no corporate entity, no government, no military, no public figure ever had to worry about a scandal or cover up story again? A world where if something, be it a download, a news article, a blog, a fan page on a social networking site, a video and any other material, was placed on the internet which exposed wrongful actions of a corporate entity, government, military or other public figure they could simply and explicitly block the content from being seen by anyone.

A world where the richest, most influential political parties are able to block out from national view, what opposing political parties have to say. A world where websites such as wiki-leaks can be blocked from view at an ISP level across the countries for which such websites are trying to expose wrong doings. A world where the giants of business can simply block out their competition, instead of having to beat them in the market place. That is the world we are fast moving toward. The days of freedom of speech and zero censorship on the internet are coming to an end.

So here is my prediction, one of two things will happen, either we will continue into this world of censorship, continuing to rely on and connect increasingly more of our lives to the internet, resulting in an incredibly ill informed, fascistly controlled community, bound into bondage and slavery to corporate brainwashing. OR, we as a people will decide that censorship and invasion of privacy is to high a price to pay for the "convenience" and "improvements in our lives" the internet has provided, and thus there will be a mass disconnect. Both of these options have their pros and their cons, so we as individuals, families and neighbourhoods need to decide which option best suits us.

Todays email scam struck me more than the usual ones do as instead of claiming to come from some ambiguous fictional entity, this one claimed to be a lottery draw done by GOOGLE! I know Google get into a lot of different areas of business, but random online lottery draws probably will never be one of those products offered by Google. The scammers email follows;

From: info@google.co.uk [143.89.13.26]
Reply-to: gca01122009@windowslive.com
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
Message-ID:201004010022.o310Lxhb041468@mx4.ust.hk
To: My email
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 02:25:41 -0700
Subject: GOOGLE NOTIFICATION.

Google Incorporation®.
Belgrave House,
76 Buckingham Palace Road,
London SW1W 9TQ,
United Kingdom.
Notification Date: 26/03/2010.


GOOGLE PROMOTION

Dear Lucky Winner.
We wish to congratulate you once again on this note,for being part of our lucky winners selected this year. This promotion was set-up to encourage the active use of the Google search engine and the Google ancillary services.
Hence we do believe with your winning prize, you will continue to be active and patronage to this company. Google is now the world leading search engine worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine, an online e-mail balloting was carried out on the 1st of March 2010 without your knowledge and was officially released today being the 26th of March 2010. We wish to formally announce to you that your email
address was attached to a lump sum of Ј450,000.00 {Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand British Pounds Sterling} only.

We also wish to inform you that you have successfully passed the requirements,statutory obligations, verifications and our satisfactory report test conducted for all our online winners. A winning Cheque will be issued in your
name by the Google Promotion Award Team, and also a certificate of prize claims will be sent along side your winning Cheque.

Your Award Winning Details.
Code Number: GUK/3554749405GK
Ticket No: GUK/1008272745GK
Winning Number: GUK/99334353734GK


Information's required from you are part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program.To claim your won prize,please contact your claims representative(Barrister Pascal Greene)neatly filling the verification and fund release form below.

VERIFICATION AND FUNDS RELEASE FORM.

(1) Your Full Name.
(2) Your contact address.
(3) Your Nationality/Country.
(5) Sex.
(7) Age.
(6) Occupation
(4) Your Tel/Fax numbers.
(8) Ever won an online lottery before now?
(9) Alternate Email Address.

You are advised to contact your claims representative with his private email details below to avoid unnecessary delay and complications:

***********************************************
Foreign Transfer Manager.
Pascal Greene
Google Security Department (United Kingdom)
E-mail: pascalgreene@8u8.com

Congratulations from the Staff & Members of the Google interactive Lottery Board Commission.

Yours Sincerely,
Mrs. Tracy Chapman
Google Zonal Coordinator.
London,
United Kingdom

How can you honestly not laugh at that? From the mere fact they're sent it from Google UK, to their Buckingham Palace address, inability to make the £ sign, the fact apparently noted country western singer Tracy Chapman now works for google and, oh yeah the fact google would of course get you to reply to either a web form or google email address, the fact Google don't do lottery draws and of course where all scam lotto falls down, the mere fact that if you've apparently won the draw, why do they need to ask your name, let alone the rest of the details? So first I hit reply to hit up the reply-to address

From: My email
To: gca01122009@windowslive.com
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:04:30 +1000
Subject: Re: GOOGLE NOTIFICATION.

Hi Bill,

How are you going today? I must say I was surprised to hear from you, I was sure you had died in that unfortunate plane accident. You must tell me what happened. Where have you been hiding all this time?

Regards,

Peter

Unfortunately for this gag I almost immediately received a return de-sender on this message. It's gotta make you wonder, if the reply-to address, which differs from the google address the email apparently came from and thus helps to give the scam away doesn't actually exist what was the point of putting it in there? My next reply to the address they request reply to in the email made it through, check it out below.

From: My Email
To: pascalgreene@8u8.com
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:30:42 +1000
Subject: Re: GOOGLE NOTIFICATION.

Dear Tracey,

Thank-you for your email, I was delighted to hear you had finally given up trying to sing and instead opted for a job behind a keyboard. The world will be glad to know we will never again be tortured by your voice. I feel that you should indeed call me by my first name instead of "lucky winner" even though I am very lucky and I'm certainly a winner, so please be sure to call me by my first name from now on. I really don't understand why you need all those details from me if I've won your draw. I mean shouldn't you already have them? Never the less, here they are.

*(1) Your Full Name. Mark Brown
*
*(2) Your contact address. 4 Bridge Street, Peterborough PE1 1EH**
*
*(3) Your Nationality/Country. British/England
*
*(5) Sex. Male
*
*(7) Age. 48
*
*(6) Occupation Financial Analyst
*
*(4) Your Tel/Fax numbers. Tel: 0345 456 456 4 Fax: 01733 424405*
*(8) Ever won an online lottery before now? No, never. I'm so lucky
*
*(9) Alternate Email Address. None

*
I would like it if you could please *FAX* me the details of my winning, what I have to do in order to pick up the winnings as well as your contact details as soon as possible. Faxing works better for me than email, as it will give me a hard copy for my records and my secretary will hand it to me as soon as it comes through. Where as emails may take me hours to receive. Be sure to put ATT: Mark Brown on the cover sheet to be sure it gets to me in a timely manner. I am very excited about winning this lottery draw. Also please be sure to telephone approximately 15 minutes after you have finished faxing through the information to make sure I have received your fax. Thank you once again Tracey, have a lovely day.

Kindest Regards,

Mark Brown
Senior Analyst
Barclays Stockbroking

The beautiful thing about this is the address, telephone and fax number I provided all actually exist! They all tie to the real life Mark Brown as well! Although some people would know him better as Sargent Mark Brown of the Royal British Police force. That's right, its the street address, telephone and fax numbers for the Peterborough Police department. And Mark Brown is the Sargent in charge of the station.

I wish I could see the look on the scammers face when the call the telephone number after faxing the details of the scam through to the police station, marked attention to the officer in charge and find out they've been nicked.

To make it even more funny, I wrote to Google, told them all about the scam and even went so far as to provide them with a copy of the message and FULL email headers. Now not only will the Royal British Police be interested in the scammer, but Google will be gunning for blood on a fraud law suit.

I have a feeling someone in Hong Kong is about to have a VERY bad day.

It's happened to most of us at one time or another, you're walking down the street and someone walks passed wearing a T-shirt with a design, slogan or logo that you just have to have! You look everywhere for the shirt, in the designer shops, in the department stores, in the specialty boutiques but alas you're left shirtless and pondering where they got the damned thing.

Chances are they found it at one of the numerous online T-shirt shops, and with often reasonable prices why wouldn't you open yourself up to the 100's of millions of T-shirt designs on offer online, 24/7. Most fan based websites have their own store and merchandise, including even US! The TJandSarah.com webstore offers loads of great slogan T-shirts and other merchandise so you can show off your wit to the world. But of course, our products aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea, nor (unfortunately for us) would you want to shop exclusively with us for your T-shirt needs.

For the younger reader (or their parent/guardian) Emma-Lee Tee is a great place to start. They have a good selection of T-shirts for every type of teen; from the ultra hip to ultra hippie and with their Annabel collection they even have emos and goths covered too. As a bonus if you live in the USA or Canada shipping is free, but here is the best part if you're an international customer shipping is a flat rate $8! No more nasty surprises at the check-out.

After a T-shirt to make passes by laugh? T-Shirt Hell & CharGrilled are two places to find some pretty funny shirts. They offer a wide range of hilarious T-shirts to suit most styles of humor, from the in your face, to the most subtle satire. But of course they are only 2 of many websites offering hilariously slogan tees, so you also might want to hit your preferred search engine if you can't find what you're looking for there.

Of course for some of you the creative bug might hit and you'll want to design your own T-shirt; there are services that offer that too. Zazzle is a printing service which offers a wide range of product, style and colour options on which you can place your own designs, slogans or logos. Incredibly reasonable prices to! And if you feel so inclined Zazzle will even let you SELL your designs to the public too! Custom your shirt is another fantastic service offering things like stubby holders that Zazzle don't. The only draw back is you have to submit for a quote instead of the whole process being DIY.

So there you have it, a new window into the world of T-shirt design. Now you only need go forth and find that T-shirt you've been looking for, for the better half of a decade.

This week there has been a bit of hoo-har in New South Wales state politics; with one politician turning anothers words into a declaration that women are responsible when they are raped. But the seat of the real argument is the over sexualisation of our youth and culture. A culture where young boys and girls are being taught to look at girls as objects only suitable for sexual pleasure.

While a certain state liberal MP seems incapable of understanding what youth of today are doing, the facts of reality are Rainbow parties (where all the girls take turns giving the boys headjobs leaving different coloured lipstick; like a rainbow) happen almost every weekend. Teen pregnancy is through the roof and still escalating, heck children as young at 10 YEARS OLD are having sex. Seriously! TEN! You can buy G-Strings (thong) for girls as young as TWO (2) YEARS OLD, and mini skirts from only a few months old.

Our children are not only becoming increasingly exposed to sex in the media, but they're becoming increasingly exposed to sexualised children in the media. Lets take Lady Gaga for example, the woman who started the media coverage of this political debate. Here you have a woman who is clearly high on drugs for most of her performances, whose lyrics would make a sailor blush and whose "dance moves" equate to little more than a stimulated lap dance. And yet we let 12 year old girls go to her show? I've seen girls as young as 6 listening to Lady Gaga.

But beyond that we have a systemic problem where sex is conveyed as love. While schools may teach the mechanics of sex to children, they are ill equipped to teach the emotions of it. Where as music and their video clips portray it as love, as the begin all and end all. Sure in a loving relationship sex is important to the longevity of said relationship as a bonding tool. But sex with some guy you've known a week and break up with 2 days later... not so much. And someone you just met, yeah sex isn't an expression of anything in that case, other then of course the fact you're easy.

But perhaps this is part of the point, women are becoming WAY to easy. Their sense of self respect and dignity out the window when their idols and role models are people like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lady Gaga. At what point did being a slut become cool? I know when I was a kid being a slut was a recipe to social suicide, now it's the complete opposite! And you only need go stand in front of a club on a Saturday night to see the over the top revealing clothes women are wearing now days.

So to answer the question, no women aren't responsible when they are raped, they're not asking for it. BUT that said, women who dress in a provocative way then go on to flirt and present as somewhat of a slut certainly aren't helping matters. In cases where women have dressed and acted in this manner and been raped; their presentation and actions did play a role. That of course isn't to say it is an excuse for the rapist or in any way taking any of the responsibility off the rapist. We all own our own actions, and at the end of the day, no means no. But you can't shake the fact that acting and dressing like a slut did play a role, however small, in the outcome. Even more so when alcohol is introduced into the equation.

Of course none of this is to suggest that I think we should strip sex from film and all women should dress in burkers. That would just be an over reaction; what I am saying though is young people need good role models. They need to be taught the emotions of sex AT HOME. We need to ban over sexualised video clips from TV screens at times our youth may be watching. We need to make it harder for our youth to get hold of these sorts of songs. And women of all ages need to re-equate themselves with self-respect and dignity.

I think honestly, a systemic lack of self-respect, dignity and self-esteem amongst our women is one of the leading causes towards male attitudes objectifying women. We need to teach our women and young girls that acting like a cheap hooker is not cool. Of course you can have sex (once you've reached maturity) with someone you're dating and want to continue dating. Of course I'm not saying you should only have sex after marriage. But honestly if you give it away on the first night, why should I bother seeing you again? Sex is not love and neither is spreading STDs.

The following is a conversation that I took part in with some random loser for kicks on Omegle

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
You: meow
Stranger: any horny girl for sex chat?
You: sure
Stranger: age?
You: how old are you first?
Stranger: 21
Stranger: u?
You: 19
You: are you at home?
Stranger: ya]
Stranger: why?
You: are you alone?
Stranger: ya
You: is anyone else in the house?
You: I just want to make sure we won't be interrupted
Stranger: ya, bt im alone in mah room
Stranger: no interreptn
Stranger: dont worry
You: Who else is at home with you?
Stranger: grand father
Stranger: he doesnt come to mah room
You: what's a mah?
You: is that your name?
Stranger: mah means my
You: oh, sorry I didn't realise you were mentally handycaped
Stranger: why?
You: I've never done it with a mentally challenged person before
You: can you still... perform?
You: ??
Stranger: i m nt mentally handicaped
You: what?
You: Yes, yes I know you're mentally handicaped... we discussed that already..
Stranger: I am absolutely fine
You: ok take your pants off
Stranger: ya i had already
You: take your nickers off too
Stranger: ok
Stranger: done
Stranger: you take your panty off too
You: you have to get me worked up first
You: how small are you?
Stranger: means?
You: how small is your penis?
Stranger: its 6 inchs
You: Yeah I had heard mentally challenged men also have small penises...
You: we'll have to work with it though
You: so, go ahead retard, get me hot
Stranger: what you are wearing now?
You: my bra, my nickers and my gown
Stranger: ok 1st remove bra
Stranger: Im kissing on your fore head
Stranger: then on your ears
You: slow down there retard
You: I know youre mentally handicaped but you're rushing it
You: you need to take it slower...
Stranger: ok
You: get me excited
Stranger: i come on your lips
You: no no no
You: you're rushing again
You: I don't want your sperm near my lips yet
Stranger: ok u point me what to do
You: Are you a virgin?
Stranger: i told that i wanna kiss ur lips wid my lips
You: no you said you come on my lips
Stranger: ya
You: So you're a virgin?
You: have you ever had a girlfriend?
Stranger: i have girlfrnd
You: wait...
You: you have a girlfriend right now, but you're trying to have cyber with me?
Stranger: so what?
You: Poor girl
You: no wonder you're still a virgin at 21
Stranger: whatever
You: cheating isn't cool
You: what is cool though is that this is being posted live on the internet for everyone to see...
You: oh, and the fact you've been scammed, I'm a guy
You have disconnected.

I have been playing around for the last few months with different options for how to host videos I produce. The idea of hosting the videos directly on TJandSarah.com was the dominant thought for awhile there, but after looking further into solutions I am proud to announce I am currently developing a free video hosting service for everyone to use. The service will be launched by May 2010 and will be called CamzIT

More details will be announced as we get closer to the launch, including a specific launch date. Will this service rival YouTube, probably not; but you never know when it comes to the internet do you? At any rate that isn't the primary goal of this service, the goal instead is to deliver free video hosting for users with benefits that will be announced shortly.

The Australian Federal Police's (AFP) "High Tech Crime" division has only just now realised the risks of identity theft social networking sites pose. The slow speed with which they have realised these risks is a scary thought on it's own. These are the members of the AFP who are meant to understand computers, the internet and how crimes are committed with them. And yet it has taken how many years since the inception of Social networking for these apparent masters of technology to realise what to me has always been a rather obvious risk.

High Tech Crime Operation acting national manager Karl Kent said

"Children are providing personal details on these sites such as their full name, date of birth, their place of residence and even the school they attend. Online fraudsters can use this information to open credit card accounts and commit financial crimes in the child's name."

His warning of course doesn't apply only to children, adults are at just as much risk if these same details are displayed. Federal Police advised users to change the default privacy settings on their social network of choice to more secure settings. But lets think about this for a moment, what is the most popular social networking site on the internet? Answer: Facebook with it's 400+ Million users world wide. But as I have discussed previously in this blog Facebook MANDATE without option or choice by the user that your name, date of birth, likes/dislikes (in the form of fan pages), "Home Town", country of residence and profile picture are all a matter of public domain.

That is to say Facebook allows google and other search engines to collect that data from EVERY ONES profile without exception. Once google has hold of it that information is then accessible by ANYONE on the internet, even those who don't hold a Facebook account let alone be on your friends list. Doubt me? Read Facebooks privacy policy yourself, it's all in there. So 400+ MILLION people across the world have their details; the very same details an identity thieves need; publicly accessible anywhere on the internet, by anyone without any option to stop that from occurring.

If that wasn't scary enough, thanks to the demanding language Facebook use in their sign up form and the general nature of how social networking works, most Facebook users have input their real, true details instead of fudging them a little. In fact to fudge your details on Facebook is actually a major breech of the Facebook terms of service and will result in immediate termination of your account. Weird huh? It's almost like Facebook WANT you to have your identity stolen.

Links;

iTWire Article

Do you like Solitaire? Are you addicted? Then you need to check out world of solitaire! You have the ability to change decks, backgrounds and play around with the animation. So if you're hooked on solitaire or just want something to pass away an hour or so, visit world of Solitaire, you won't be sorry you did. Being that it's java/html based means also that you can play it from any basically any internet connected device!!!

This is a paid post.

Do you enjoy playing flash based games online? funbrain is a new website which caters for plenty of different genres. With classics to ultra modern on offer funbrain surely is a website everyone can enjoy. There is a nice mix of graphics in their games, being that there are games with very simply graphics and those with very detailed and somewhat realistic graphics. There are plenty of addictive and fun games to play so stay off your boredom the smart way, visit funbrain.com today; you won't regret it.

This is a paid post on behalf of payperpost.com and FunBrain.com

Today I received an interesting request from one of my readers; they wanted to be able to subscribe to my blog by email. I thought about it for a while and realised it could be a valuable service. So I'm proud to announce that not only can you now subscribe to my the RSS/Atom feed, the twitter feed and the facebook feed but now I'm pleased to announce you can receive blog posts directly to your email!

The service is supported by the wonderful people over at FeedBurner (Now a google asset) who are transferring my RSS feed directly to email subscribers. Never miss an update again, subscribe by email today and get posts in your inbox at 9am (AEST) every day!

Of course if anyone else has suggestions or requests I am open to them and happy to receive them. If I think it's a good idea I'll implement it. Thanks again to all my readers, I hope you continue to enjoy reading this blog.

I got through a 419 scam today, so keeping in the same vain as my previous post about scammers I figured I'd play around with him. This is what he wrote.

From: "Roselyn J. Ghang"

Reply-To: joernestine@aim.com
Subject: Important: Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:04:01 +0700
Received: from smtp.saigonnet.vn ([221.133.1.3]:34579 helo=mailserver.saigonnet.vn)

Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010
E-mail: BALIWANE@aim.com
Dear Winner,
This is to officially inform you that you have been approved for a lump sum pay out of Five Hundred Thousand U.S Dollars in this year GLOBAL INDEPENDENT E-LOTTERY PAYMENT RECONCILIATION BOARD UK,Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010.
You are advice to Contact: Dr.BALI WANE, Foreign Service Accredited Attorney Overseas Subscribers Agents EMAIL: BALIWANE@aim.com

1. Full Name : ........................................
2. Address : ..........................................
3. Marital Status : ...................................
4. Occupation : .......................................
5. Age : ..............................................
6. Sex : ..............................................
7. Nationality : ......................................
8. Country : ..........................................
9. Telephone : ........................................
10. 1Fax Number : ......................................
11. Email Address : ...................................

Congratulations on behalf of the entire managment.
Yours faithfully,
Roselyn J. Ghang
Online National Co-ordinator,
Global Impact Lottery.

What I find very interesting is how ANYONE could possible fall for these scams. I mean the English is incredibly poor, there are NO LESS than THREE different email addresses associated with this email. It's sent from a server originating in Vietnam and more over NO ONE entered the "GLOBAL INDEPENDENT E-LOTTERY" because well, it doesn't exist. If you didn't enter a lottery draw why would you believe it when someone emails you of all things tell you that you've won. Especially when they ask for a bunch of details that lets face it if you'd entered it and forgotten you would of already had to have given them. It truly amazes me that there are people out there with so little common sense as to fall for this sort of scam. Anyway I replied twice to different email addresses. The first reply is to the listed replyto address joernestine@aim.com

0 12:54:02 +1000
From: my email
To: joernestine@aim.com
Subject: Re: Important: Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010

Hi Joe,

Was nice to hear from you. How's Nancy and the kids going? All good I hope. I see your English still isn't doing very well, but if you keep practicing I'm sure you'll get there in the end. It was interesting that you mentioned Dr Wane, I haven't spoken the him in agers, how is he going? It's strange the a man who has worked so tirelessly to restore peoples gentiles after they've been attacked by swarms of hungry sand flies; would now be working for a lottery draw. Are you sure he's working there now? At any rate can you tell him I said 'hi' next time you see him and ask him how his transgender surgery is going.

All my love to Nancy and the kids,

Peter.

I wrote this email to see if there is actually life on the other end of joernestine@aim.com if there is this opens up new possibilities for fun. The second email is addressed to the one the scam said to reply to BALIWANE@aim.com and provides the details requested only in fake form.

Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:25:32 +1000
From: my email
To: BALIWANE@aim.com
Subject: Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010

Dear Rev Wane,

It was so good to hear from Jackie that I had won the national dependent e-lottery with a sum of half a million dollars. Of course I make several times that amount of money each week but I've never been the type to snub my nose at free money. I have provided my details below as Jackie requested.

1.Full Name : Peter Frapton
2.Address : 810 Whickermore Drive, Branson Missori
3.Marital Status : Married
4.Occupation : Senior stock analysist at First Canada Capital Inc.
5.Age : 38
6.Sex : Male
7.Nationality : Canadian
8.Country : Canada
9.Telephone : (417) 334-3300
10.Fax Number : (417) 337-9246
11.Email Address : I don't have one, sorry.

I am very excited, will my picture be in the paper? I am very much looking forward to the big ceremony where I am presented with the giant cheque. I've been given one of those before and it was a great day. The giant cheque still decorates my penthouse as a bit of a joke ey. Anyway thank you so much for letting me know I have won, I will be awaiting your reply.

Regards,

Peter

Things to note about my reply. I referred to him as Rev and not Dr. I referred to the person who wrote me the first email as Jackie instead of Roselyn and I gave the impression I was extremely rich so their greed would take over completely. In my details you'll know that I said I'm from Branson, Missouri and purposely misspelt Missouri. I then claimed I'm from and live in Canada which of course isn't near Branson Missouri. The best bit about the lot is of course I'm in Australia so if they fall for it, it shows how computer illiterate they are and opens up more opportunities for fun.

The most important thing however to note is that the phone numbers I have provided both originate in Branson Missouri, one at the Branson Police Department the other (fax) at the White Oaks Police department. When the scammer calls he is definitely in for a surprise. I'm hoping though that he will chose to email me back first so I can lure him in a little deeper before he calls, meaning his more likely to say something incriminating when he calls the police.

I seemed to get a better response (although limited) from embedding use a youtube video instead of a vimeo one. If you like the video please be sure to rate it up. Cheers guys and be sure to check out the special ending.

The long talked about and much contested Australian mandatory internet filter has new opposition in the form of the "Australian Library and Information Association and Inspire Foundation". Dubbed the 'Safer Internet Group' and with members such as web giants Google and Yahoo! the group actually stand a good chance at achieving their objectives, which would see a revision of the legislation to better target illegal acts such as child porn while leaving the rest of the internet open, uncensored and free to use.

The filter works in the same way any home blacklist software on either your modem/router or home PC does. The government plan to place URLs of websites they and the public find which you wouldn't want a child to see onto the black list. Once on the black list no one in the country will be able to view the site or any pages listed on it. This I believe is why companies Google and Yahoo! are stepping in, because at the end of the day it would hurt their bottom line.

Take for example if the URL to a specific YouTube video was placed on the list, this would have the effect of causing ALL users who visit YouTube to pass through the filter leading to YouTube videos that aren't blacklisted under the filter not loading and a general slow down of the site. Independent testing by the government in Tasmania in 2009 showed the filter would also significantly slow down general web usage, dropping your speed by 30% during normal usage periods and during high traffic periods by up to 70%!

The Safer Internet Group is points out something I have argued since the inception of this filter, stating

"As a large proportion of child sexual abuse content is not found on public websites, but in chat-rooms or peer-to-peer networks, we know the proposed filtering regime will not effectively protect children from this objectionable material,"

and continuing

"In fact, the policy may give parents a 'false sense of security' encouraging them to reduce their supervision."

Under this filter arrangement websites of a criminal nature will NOT be mandatory passed on to the police, they will ONLY block the content under the filter and leave the matter there. The AMCA (the government body responsible for rating commercial TV and radio) will manage the filter and attempt to apply the same guide lines to the internet that apply to TV. Meaning if they find something you wouldn't want your 9 year old to see, then no one in Australia can see it either, regardless of age.

As I have already previously stated, if the goal is ultimately to stop cyber crime there are FAR better and more effective ways of achieving that goal than instituting a mandatory filter across the internet. Education is key, explaining to the general public internet safety, about email scams, phishing and so forth. It troubles me that there are still grown adults who will today fall for a Nigerian 419 scam (The ones where they say you've won a stack of money, but you need to give them a few grand to collect it). And the filter isn't designed to combat these types of problems, in fact it really isn't designed to combat ANY kind of truly harmful cyber crime.

Kiddie porn will still be just as prevalent as it is now, but legal porn won't be viewable. Everyone will still get just as many spam and scammer emails as they are right now, but watching a legitimate video YouTube will become slow and tiresome. Phishing websites will still continue to exist as often by the time anyone figures out it's a phishing website the phishers have already abandoned the site in search of the next prize. Yet internet banking will take forever (opening people using wireless internet to even future hacking attacks and fraud).

The ONLY criminal activity that I can see the filter would actually combat is the downloading of copyrighted materials such as music, movies, games and software through bit-torrent sites and so forth. But again, that will only stop the use of it in a web based way, it will NOT stop peer-to-peer downloading using software like LimeWire. Beyond that, it will all be business as usual to the cyber-crime world. The ONLY people who are impacted by this filter are the law abiding Australian public whom will lose their right to freedom of information. Not only will legal porn sites be blocked, but so will any sites which even so much as TALK about things that are "undesirable". This includes NEWS sites and BLOGS which are seeking to educate on the issues surrounding a criminal activity or just talking about a criminal activity in a negative light.

Think about it, all those websites giving you tips on how to avoid pedophiles getting in touch with your children, clearly community education groups, being added to a blacklist that no one can visit. How does that make logical sense?

Thankfully with the "safer internet group" lobbying the government, combined with the legal action the Australian Internet Services Association are taking to try and block the filter things should hopefully change on this front. Hopefully someone amongst this group can get Senator Conroy to understand he does NOT know what is best for Australians better than they do themselves, nor does he know what is best for our children better then we their parents do. Lets hope they move fast on this though, as the legislation only needs to pass through the senate before it's law and is already scheduled to be in place by the end of THIS YEAR!

Links;

iTWire Article

I stumbled onto this site the other day which suggested ways to have fun with those annoying email scammers. I seem to get one or two of them in my email a week so I thought I'd give it a try with my own little sense for flare on the whole idea of messing with them. I got two of them through today. The first one is from some man, claiming to be a girl wanting to "tell me something important".

From: hassa10nababy@katamail.com
Reply-to: hassanababy@gmx.com
Date: 16/02/2010 8:15 PM
To: My email
Subject: Hello,

Hello,
How are you? hope fine, I Want to introduce my self to you before I go further, My Name is Hassana lsaac. I will like to have a good relationship with you, if you wouldn't mind, I will like to hear from you soon through this email address (hassanababy@gmx.com) because, I have something very important I will like to tell you. Thanks and God bless you,
Miss Hassana lsaac.

I thought for a moment of doing my usual rutine of simply clicking the junk mail button and never having to hear from "Miss lsaac" again. But then I thought again and decided to mess with "her". First I replied to the email address she sent this from (the one she didn't want me to reply to) saying simply "Hi, how are you?". I though I can certainly do better than that, so I then emailed the address she DID want me to email to (hassanababy@gmx.com) with the following reply.

From: My email
Date: 17/02/2010 2:27 PM
To: hassanababy@gmx.com
Subject: RE: Hello,

Hi Glenda,

It's nice to hear from you, it's been awhile. What happened with that gentile warts problem? I hope it's all cleared up now, or is that the important thing you wanted to talk to me about? It's weird that you've turned into a Christian, I always thought you were a committed satanist. I should let you know we're having a sacrifice next week, you should come along. It's a nun this time, it'll be great.

Looking forward to hearing for you,

Peter

I'm awaiting "her" reply and I'll update you when it comes through. lol

It's important to note that when ever I sign up for things online which I think will give me spam, or indeed I reply to a scammer/spammer I use the name peter. This helps to distance me so no spammers or scammers know my name or details. This will become apparent in the email from the next scammer which I received a few hours later.

From: Paul_Meyers@mytopdealbrands.com
Date: 17/02/2010 2:47PM
To: My email
Subject: Partner with an online guru Peter

Hi Peter

My Name is Paul and I’m an internet professional. For almost 10 years now I have been working in
online advertising and last I will show you verified proof of how I made $136,808 in a single month.

Over the years I’ve seen it all, from the top opportunities on the web to the absolute scams. I’ve helped
my good friend Mike to make money online and now I’m going to help you. Truth is I’m no saint, I need
your help just as much as you need mine.

I’m not here to fill your head with false promises about myself or what you can achieve. Let me show you how.

Click here to learn more:
[insert stupid spam link]

Noting how well I figured the last email had gone I figured I should try something similar on this guy.

To: Paul_Meyers@mytopdealbrands.com
Date: 17/02/2010 3:01 PM
From: My email
Subject: RE: Partner with an online guru Peter

Hi James,

It's great to hear from you. It's been what 2 months since you emailed me last? How is Nancy and the kids? Well I hope. It's been awhile since I've spoken to Mike, tell him I said 'hi' and ask him if he ever found out which one of the prostitutes he was banging gave him Venereal Disease?

It's great to see your new job manually picking leeches off the rare and engaged Swap Camel has netted you so much revenue in the last month. Sadly I must tell you that the life of a Camel Leecher isn't for me, I'd miss the city far to much. Anyways it was great to hear from you james. I hope to hear from you again soon. All my love to Nancy and the kids

Peter.

I like the idea of purposely getting their name wrong, because when they reply it lets me know in the first sentence whether or not they're a real person or a robot. IF they're a real life person they'll correct their name and the rest of the details in my reply. If it's a robot it'll go on telling me a bunch of non-sense. Of course if it's a robot it'll end up straight in my junk mail pile. If it's a real person however I'm going to have lots of fun playing with them. I'll be sure to continue to post the fun I have with scammers into my blog for you all to read.

The other brilliant thing about posting this up is that I've included their email addresses. By doing so all the email address collection bots that spammers and scammers deploy across the internet will collect their addressed from my posts and end up spamming and scamming them. lmao. I've also decided to produce a new page on TJandSarah.com where you can enter in the email addresses spammers and scammers use to contact you. But instead of creating a black list like most people would I figure I can make this list HIGHLY visible to spammers sniffing for email addresses. In this way it's likely that they'll end up spamming themselves as well as all their other colleges

Sure it won't fix the spam problem, but it'll certainly be a laugh knowing their spamming themselves. Keep checking back on TJandSarah.com for updates on when the list will go live.

If you ever wanted to see justice come to missionaries, this story it is. The 5 Male and 5 female Christians from Ohio, USA who entered Haiti and stole 33 children have been denied bail. The group of 5 couples attempted to take the Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic with the idea of setting up an orphanage. The ill equipped group failed their duty of care with all 33 children suffering dehydration and hunger when they were stopped by border authorities. Some of the children also were injured and required urgent medical attention.

But perhaps even more scary is the fact the Christians seeming had forgotten (or perhaps they simply didn't care) to actually check the children they took really where orphans, with most of them actually still having living parents. A Haiti court has denied the group bail, ordering them to be remanded in custody; charged with kidnapping minors and criminal association.

In situations like this you just have to smile at the fact justice has actually prevailed. But you can't help but feel bad about all the millions who didn't have justice go their way. One would think by now Christian missionaries would be outlawed, I mean consider this; In the USA it was Christian Missionaries who stole native Indian children and denied them their culture. In Canada Christian missionaries did the same to the Inuit people and here in Australia they stole aboriginal children and trained them as servants. Now look at all the pain, suffering and money this has cost those countries? Yet we allow Christian missionaries to go forth from those very same countries and cause ever more havoc around the world.

At what point do our governments see the harm this is doing, at what point do they see that by allowing this practise to continue it costs governments more in tax payer funded charity. At some point surely our governments will see sense and benefit from ruling it illegal to go over seas as a missionary. Personally I think anyone who does such should be stripped of their citizenship and their actions dealt with in international court as crimes against humanity. Just remember, the worst acts in history were ALL perpetrated with the "best of intentions".

At any rate, I want to see more of these poor, third world countries standing up to missionaries, charging and imprisoning them for crimes like those of the 10 Christians in Haiti. If all third world nations did this, then perhaps just that would be a big enough deterrent to stop missionaries entering those countries in the first place.

If you haven't already, I suggest you read the original post titled "Can it get anymore ridiculous" in order to understand the content of this post. As I said in that post, I did have a constructive post in mind but Sarah started hassling me about going to the shops so I lost my train of thought. This post attempts to pick up where I lost my train of thought in the original post.

I am all for healthy debate and alternate points of view, but only when the discussion and view is based on rational thought and evidence. When someone starts misleading the facts, and throwing all rational thought &/or ignoring all evidence which contradicts their argument, it ceases to be a healthy debate and turns more into the absurd. Ellery Schempp's article on Gravity is an example of such ludicrous positions of thought. Take one of the leading statements from the article

"First of all, no one has measured gravity for every atom and every star. It is simply a religious belief that it is “universal.”"

It would actually be near impossible to physically measure the gravity of every atom in existence or every star given the shear infinitesimal number of them. It's also important to point out that science takes into account the fact that not all objects have a gravitational field, or at least not one that counts for anything. You can demonstrate this if you for example pick up two pieces of metal, plastic, wood, etc and hold them near each other. Now let one go, notice how it falls to the ground? This is because the level of attraction between to two objects isn't high enough.

This however does not serve as any form of proof that gravity doesn't exist. Gravity is a measurable force of attraction, which can be clearly demonstrated if Ellery would simply jump out of a plane. Now if as Ellery likes to believe, we're all under "gods" control, then Ellery wouldn't plummet to his death. However, has we all know this simply isn't the case, and Ellery would, thankfully die, taking his nutty ideas along with him.

While the existence in some cases is assumed, there is much logic behind this. For example, the gravitational force of many stars has been measured, thus it is a logical assumption that gravity would in all likelihood exist for other stars. If it were proven that gravity didn't exist in some situations then the theory would be adapted to embed the new evidence. This unfortunately isn't something creationists seem capable of doing.

Never the less Ellery gets even more silly when he states

"Secondly, school textbooks routinely make false statements. For example, “the moon goes around the earth.” If the theory of gravity were true, it would show that the sun's gravitational force on the moon is much stronger than the earth's gravitational force on the moon, so the moon would go around the sun. Anybody can look up at night and see the obvious gaps in gravity theory."

Poor Ellery must have skipped class when his teacher explained the nature of gravity and planetary orbit. The moon of course revolves around the earth because it is closer and thus it's gravitational force is stronger. Think of it like this, if you take 3 magnets of increasing size. If you place the smallest magnet next to the middle sized magnet they'll attract. If you take the largest magnet and place it some distance away you'll have a small attraction between the large and middle sized magnets but the smallest magnet will continue to attract to the middle sized one.

The moon is caught by the earths gravitational field, and while the sun does affect on it (giving it a wobble) the strongest force is the closest one. I should also probably point out that the mass of the moon has an effect on the effects of gravity on it as well. You'd think that would be the end of the nonsense from Ellery and he'd start with some logical arguments, sadly this isn't the case. He now starts trying to use the tides to attempt to disprove gravity.

"The existence of tides is often taken as a proof of gravity, but this is logically flawed. Because if the moon's “gravity” were responsible for a bulge underneath it, then how can anyone explain a high tide on the opposite side of the earth at the same time? Anyone can observe that there are 2 -- not 1 -- high tides every day. It is far more likely that tides were given us by an Intelligent Creator long ago and they have been with us ever since. In any case, two high tides falsifies gravity."

Oh Ellery, I'm surprised you're able to count to two. I have to wonder if little Ellery ever passed high school, it certainly doesn't seem likely. It's true that most coastal areas experience two daily high and low tides. This is because when the water experiences the sub-lunar point (essentially it's "under" the moon) the gravitational force of the moon takes effect causing the water to rise. The high tide on the other side of the world is explained by a slight flex in the earth. That is to say, the water on the other side of the earth is effected by the moons gravitational attraction the less, while on the other hand, the earth itself is pulled closer to the moon. This gives the effect of the water "rising". Low tide occurs at the points in-between.

What is even more ludicrous though is that Ellery thinks that god explains tides better than gravity. At this point I must state that I actually have several Christian friends whom equally find Ellery's explanations a joke. They instead (and perhaps more logical for their motives) that god created gravity, and gravity influences tides. If there wasn't a mountain of evidence disproving god, that would actually be a believable theory, for from Ellery who makes no effort to explain how he thinks god influences tidal change.

Ellery then goes on to make a bunch more foolish comments which show how little about gravitational theory and the nature of the universe he actually understands, before bringing Thermodynamics into his argument.

"Furthermore, gravity theory suggests that the planets have been moving in orderly orbits for millions and millions of years, which wholly contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Since everything in the Universe tends to disorder according to the 2nd Law, orderly orbits are impossible."

Now as the name suggests thermodynamics is to do with the movement of heat. That is to say, heat as opposed to gravity. And transversely to what Ellery thinks the Second law states it actually makes no mention of disorder or orbits. Instead the law says that any system (and we're talking about a system involving heat) not in equilibrium will increase over time approaching a maximum value which causes equilibrium. Another way to think of it is when you boil a pot of water, the temperature of the water increases until it reaches 100 degrees celsius then remains constant. Hopefully now you can understand now how VERY little this has to do with gravity.

Instead I think this was more an attempt by Ellery; thinking you wouldn't actually bother to research what the law actually states; to make his argument sound more plausible by bringing it laws and scientific sounding words. Or perhaps poor Ellery was so far off his understanding of science that he actually thought the two things are related. Remember, gravity is a force of attraction, thermodynamics is a set of laws to define the movement of heat.

From there it becomes so laughable as to not even bother reading. But if you insist on doing so I've provided a link below about gravitational theory which should explain the flaws in the rest of his argument. Now as I've already pointed out not all Christians think this way, but the morons who do, prove to be a source of great laughter. But then, all morons are such a source, and I must say I am truly thankful for them (morons) as they brighten every day of my life through their provided laughter. I still however fear for the sakes of these people, it seems unethical to leave them in such stupidity.

Links;

Original Post
Ellery Schempps article
Wikipedia on Tides
Wikipedia on Gravity

The Australian Film and Television industry have lost a class action against West Australian ISP iiNet. The brief charged iiNet with authorising it's users to breach copyright laws by allowing them to use bit torrent software.

With common sense on his side Justice Dennis Cowdroy ruled that iiNet was not responsible for the breach of copyright. Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft who launched the action are of cause very upset with the decision with their spokesman Neil Gane stating
"It's very difficult for the movie industries to compete with a free alternative which is perpetrated by theft"

You're right Mr Gane it is difficult to continue to make billion dollar returns on movies you make when people can download them for free. But with movies like Avatar making 1 billion dollars at the box office in the first 3 days of it's US release I hardly think the industry is in any real danger. What the industry needs to understand is that regardless of what laws the bring in, someone will always be offering free copies of the latest movies. And people will continue to download them, and that isn't always a bad thing. Most of the time these downloaded copies are of poor quality, and certainly never anything approaching High Def.

If people want to see a movie in good quality, their only real choice is to purchase it. So the Movie and Television industry need to look at these downloads as a way for people to preview a movie by watching it in low quality, then if they like the movie they'll of course be much more likely to go out and buy it. That said however, the price of cinema tickets and DVDs certainly doesn't help the piracy issue. Honestly why pay $20 each to go see a movie at the cinema when you can download the movie for free?

Heck, even if you couldn't download it for free, there would still be an almost equally sized amount of people not going to see movies at the cinema simply because they don't want to pay the exorbitant prices. At the end of the day, movies were invented as the working mans pass time, they were meant to be affordable. But instead modern studios have increased prices to unbelievable levels and they're still going up. Here's a hint for the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, drop the prices and you'll immediately see more people buying your products legitimately.

Thankfully todays judgement by Justice Cowdroy is likely to be adopted in the US, EU and UK as we all share and model copyright law from each other. This means ISPs a likely to remain without blame for the piracy issue.

Links;

ABC News Article

It was "revealed" in todays Sunday mail (and I assume at least all other APP publications) that murdered multimillionaire businessman Herman Rockefeller met his killers through an internet sex site. The article continued he had "at least five (5) secret pre-paid mobile phones" and had "at least one mystery girlfriend".

The article also noted that Mr Rockefeller is a married man with 2 children before it continued to drag his name through the proverbial mud. I find it utterly appalling, that a journalist would stoop so low as to write such an article. A man has been killed, and I honestly don't see how his past transgressions are any of our business. Indeed, by making such public statements about the man when he has only recently been murdered must be causing untolled heart-ache and distress to his family.

And the worst part of the whole thing morally is that Herman Rockefeller isn't here to defend himself. At any rate I fail to see how the interworkings of anyones personal life, including their transgressions, where they don't directly effect public life, should become public knowledge. I'm sick of hearing about this or that persons sexual transgressions, it's none of my business nor is it any of yours. It only adds mountain to an already painful situation. It also cheapens the publication, reducing it to little more than a trashy tabloid magazine. I feel journalists should be legislated in such a way as to prevent them reporting on such things.

If it doesn't effect more people than a persons private family, then it honestly shouldn't be reported on.

I recently stumbled across a website for a Christian organisation calling themselves "The Institute for Creation Research" (ICR) with their main goal apparently being to harmonise Science with the Bible. One would think then any serious attempt at such would be done by a team of fully qualified science majors specialising in a selection of fields such as variants of Biology, Geology and the sciences involved in genetics amongst others.

Logically speaking, one has to be able to understand the science before they attempt to harmonise with it, or indeed as the organisation seem to often do, refute it and so the aforementioned team would be necessary for serious conclusion. However; as is often the case with Christian websites refuting science; no such team exists at the "Institute of Creation Research" with their misunderstanding of DNA sequencing and even the roles of different chromosomes easily demonstrated in their front page article "Are Humans as Close to Chickens as They Are to Chimps" (the miscaps are theirs not mine).

The Article refers to the results of the comparison of Human Y Chromosomes with the Y Chromosomes in Chimps which were published in the biological journal "Nature". The original article in Nature speaks about how little knowledge of the Y Chromosomes evolution across species as full sequencing has only ever, until recently, been performed on Humans. The article then goes on to speak about how divergent the Y Chromosomes in Humans and Chimps are.

Showing their total and complete ignorance to genetics, the "Institute of Creation Research" then picked up the article in Nature and decided to run it's results as proof humans and chimps are unrelated and share no common ancestor. In fact the results actually prove nothing like that. In outright incomprehension they continued on to attempt to use this data to disprove the fact that Humans and Chimps hold 98% of their genome in common.

"Most of their findings do not fit well with the often-repeated erroneous statement that humans and chimps are 98 percent similar, nor with the more general hypothesis that they share a common ancestor. One sequence class within the chimpanzee Y chromosome had less than 10 percent similarity with the same class in the human Y chromosome, and vice versa. Another large class shared only half the similarities of the other species, and vice versa. And one whole class on the human Y chromosome “has no counterpart in the chimpanzee MSY [male-specific Y chromosome].”"

They couldn't have gotten it more wrong. Beyond the use of their continual phrase "vice versa" being redundant (It's like saying X and Y are different and so is Y and X different), they've also demonstrated thorough naivety towards how genetics works, how the 98% genome comparison between humans and chimps was achieved and the role the Y Chromosome plays.

So on the off chance someone from the ICR stumbles across this blog, and to better educate people before they read such crude pseudo-scientific articles I'll explain the situation a little better. The Y chromosome exists ONLY in males, meaning that females exist entirely without it, but funnily enough are still part of the same species. Meaning the Y chromosome is more about gender difference then it is about species difference. While they haven't yet been compared, I'm quite certain you'll see equivalent differences in the Y chromosomes of birds. It doesn't mean they don't hold a common ancestor, nor that they aren't all birds.

Furthermore, if you compare the human Y chromosome with that of another human, you'll find a large amount of differences just as you will with any other part of DNA sequencing. This is because of genetic variation, and so it isn't overly surprising to find differences between humans and chimps. What the scientists involved WHERE surprised at was there were more differences than they predicted. But as previously stated little is known about the evolution of the Y chromosome, it's an area for which this comparison is only the beginning of research.

But simply misjudging the number of differences is no more proof that humans and chimps are unrelated, than the countless misjudgements and mistakes made during the evolution of IVF proves it won't produce babies. Clearly IVF does produce babies, and clearly misjudgements in differences doesn't disprove theories nor do they disprove the FACT that humans and chimps share 98% of their genes in common.

To illustrate how completely out of context the ICR have taken comments made in the original Nature article check out these 2 sequential paragraphs taken from the "Institute of Creation Research" article

"The Nature paper expressed the mismatch between this data and standard evolutionary interpretations in a more muted tone: “Indeed, at 6 million years of separation, the difference in MSY gene content in chimpanzee and human is more comparable to the difference in autosomal gene content in chicken and human, at 310 million years of separation.”1 Autosomes are the chromosomes other than the X and Y.

So, the human Y chromosome looks just as different from a chimp’s as the other human chromosomes do from a chicken’s. And to explain where all these differences between humans and chimps came from, believers in big-picture evolution are forced to invent stories of rapid wholesale rearrangements, and rapid generation of both new gene-containing and regulatory DNA."

The Nature article quote clearly is referring more towards the timeline difference, rather than actual similarities between humans and chickens. It's a quote that is clearly directed toward the surprise in difference between Y chromosomes and how long those changes were previously thought to have taken. But undoubtedly it's a quote that will go on to haunt science for years to come as creationists misunderstand the quote continually.

Ultimately anyone who can not conclusively see the similarities both in physical looks and behaviour modelling between humans and chimps is delusional. Evolution is a theory backed by insurmountable evidence, and while there may be surprises found during it's continued research, those surprises won't be such as to disprove the theory of evolution, which itself is still evolving as new research is preformed. If anything, all this new data about differences in human and chimp Y chromosomes proves is some timeline theories are off. To conclude anything more than that however is laughable.

Links;

ICR Article
Original Nature Article

The much anticipated apple iPad was announced yesterday as expected; and as I imagined isn't really what one would call a show stopper.

The iPad measures 9.5 x 7 inchs with basically all of that space constituting the touch screen. And while I praise apple for their continued green approach to new devices, I fear the aluminium frame may feel bulky, and the glass components make it easily broken. The first thing one notices when they look at the device is that it literally resembles a super-sized iPhone or iPod Touch, and you honestly aren't to far off.

The iPad is yet another apple device to lack a physical keyboard, with apple choosing to embed their proprietary virtual keyboard which has featured in their other touch devices instead. This indeed limits what can be done on the device as the user must type with the underwhelming virtual keyboard, causing most people to churn out numerous typos. With that said however, I suppose it's down to apples good thinking that they haven't marketed this product as a desktop replacement or office tool.

The iPad features a 1Ghz processor which, for a device of it's size leaves me entirely under-whelmed. Even my netbook which is 10.1 inch contains a 1.6Ghz atom processor. The large screen is somewhat obviously touch, allowing for the familiar navigation of the iPod Touch & iPhone. It's capable of playing ACC and mp3 music files as well as mp4 and mov video files. The iPad also contains the full safari web browser and email client, so it comes as no surprise I guess that apple are marketing it as best used for surfing the web.

While I have to credit apple with including an inbuilt microphone, I can't shake the feeling that they missed the boat completely by failing to include a web cam. With the virtual keyboard ruling out using the device for emails of great length or substance, and with the growing market for video calls I would have thought it a logical conclusion to add in a web cam.

So what CAN the iPad do? Well apart from surfing the internet, sending and receiving email, listening to music and watching videos the device is able to...wait for it...view photos! Beyond that you're able to download and use apps from the app store, and use the iPad as an ebook reader by downloading iBook and purchasing apple proprietary format ebooks. And that brings us to the extent of what the iPad can do.

To be honest I can't see a reason ANYONE would want one. With desktop and laptop computers taking care of your work/office needs and much of your home computing needs; with netbooks and laptops enabling mobile computing and smart phones taking care of the rest of your internet (including email) needs, where does the iPad fit in? That is to say, when you get down to it the iPad literally is just a giant iPod Touch. In fact, the iPod Touch is able to do some things that the iPad can't!

Can you really see yourself carrying something around the size of an A4 piece of paper in order to listen to music, watch movies and look at your photos when the smart phone in your pocket can do all that and more? And can you really honestly see yourself wondering around with an aggravating touch device trying to write emails on the go and surf the web when again, the phone in your pocket at a fraction of the size can do all that too? And lets face facts here; at $259 including free unlimited GSM data transfer to purchase and download ebooks, the amazon kindle is far better designed and priced if you're after an ebook reader.

The iPad has 3 storage choices; 16GB, 32GB and 64GB and comes in both a wifi stand alone and a 3G + wifi versions for surfing the web. And lets be real here, no one is going to want to be tied to a wifi network, so the 3G + wifi version is the only realistic option here. With the 16GB 3G+wifi model costing $629US and the 64GB model at $829 the iPad has priced itself out of the market. But I'm sure that apple will come up with some ingenious marketing ploy to suck people into buying this underdeveloped offering. Essentially however it comes to this, if you want to waste money, get no real benefit and look like a dork by all means rush out and by an iPad. However if your sensible, value your money and your self respect then give the iPad a wide berth and leave it to shrink into obscurity as another apple iFail device.

Links;

Technical Specifications
Pricing
Amazon Kindle

So I thought I'd start doing a weekly wrap-up by way of vodcast. We've had a bit of a problem getting the video on YouTube as it runs for 13 minutes and YouTube apparently don't want to know you if your video goes over 10 minutes. So contray to what the video says, currently you can't want this episode on YouTube. I will keep you posted as to developments on whether we decide to trim future vodcasts to fit youtube, or just give them the flick.

Black music like rap, hip hop and this new very of r'n'b are weird sure, and they suck big time. But what is even weirder and completely sad is when White people, especially young girls, try to immitate it. To bolster my case I submit the video I pulled off YouTube below. Note other then how stupid their lyrics are and how funny they look trying to be black, that they have completely messed up the chroma key.

I subscribe to a number of Skeptic publications; and over the last year I've seen quite a number of articles published in those publications. I consider myself to be a skeptic, but I feel that perhaps there are a few people out there whom claim to be skeptic when really they only stand to debunk anything that threatens the status quo.

To me a skeptic is someone who doesn't just take what they're told by someone and accepts it. Instead, a skeptic will investigate, research and come to their own independent conclusion. To enter a situation with an unbiased and open mind, weigh up the facts and come to the simplest, most logical conclusion. But it seems to me there are quite a lot of people whom call themselves skeptics but really should be better known as debunkers. These are the sorts of people who go out of their way to try to prove that certain phenomenon, be it UFOs, ghosts, other paranormal, spiritual or mystical events, or things like swine flu vaccine being unsafe.

They're the sorts of people whom, instead of digging for the truth, will accept official versions of events from government organisations or other persons whom are invested in the cause. Debunkers are the complete opposite of a conspiracy theist, basically doing everything in there power to convince people that the status quo is the only logical answer. It's almost as if these people were employed by some interested party in order to persuaded the general public there is "nothing to see here". Of course I'm not actually suggesting this is the case, merely using the euphemism to highly how these people operate.

Increasingly I'm finding these sorts of people being published in one skeptic publication in particular; that being Skeptic Magazine. You may have heard their ad play on TopHogg FM from time to time. I am also finding these sorts of people representing skeptics everywhere on all manner of documentaries into the paranormal. Frankly, as an intelligent, well educated person, very capable of critequing and making up my own mind about events, I find some of the things these sorts of debunkers say offensive. They give the skeptic community an unwarranted perception of close minded, illogical fools.

Sometimes for whatever plausible reason, (for example the event happening as so often it is, a surprise and thus there being no camera handy) there may be little to no physical evidence. This however doesn't mean that it never happened, it just means further investigation and research may be warranted should the anecdotal evidence suggest so. This brings me to 2 quite major points.

(1) Science is far from having all the answers, regardless of what any scientist might suggest to you there is still a great deal about ourselves, our planet, our co-inhabitants and the universe around us that we simply don't understand, nor have come anywhere close to it. While humanity has spread to much of the earths land mass, we still find somewhere around 1000 new species a DAY! Most of them being insects sure, but there is still the odd larger animal in there. There is much that happens on the planet that humanity still has no answers for.

(2) Debunkers like to ignore anecdotal evidence all together, stating that it is often fraught with unreliability and thus can't be trusted of given any weight to. But I counter that statement with this simple fact. Very often our legal system uses anecdotal evidence as either part of, or even sometimes as their entire case against crime. While I concede that there are cases in nwhich due to this evidence innocent people are convicted of crime, but this is in the grand scheme of things quite rare. So thus I submit this question to you. Courts demand a high amount of reliability from the evidence they receive on a case, there are plenty of new technologies which are inadmissible in court because they aren't proven to hold high levels of accuracy. It, for example, took over a decade for DNA evidence to become something which was looked at in a court with weight. Yet anecdotal evidence has remained weighted and relied upon. If such evidence is anywhere near as unreliable as debunkers suggest, then how is it our legal system still uses it?

The fact of the matter is that there are SOME cases which debunkers dismiss due to anecdotal evidence and the lack of much in the way of the physical which do indeed warrant additional research and investigation. There are (while fewer still) some cases which while having the same amount of evidence as the previously mentioned, in their own right suggest through the anecdotal something extraordinary happening.

I am offended when debunkers try to pass off phenomenon as mass hysteria, collective imagination or some sort of psychological disorder. All too often I hear so called skeptics using such arguments to explain away UFOs for example. Trying to pass them off as a mix of collective imagination and mass hysteria. While I'm not going to say that little green men are flying all over the planet; I do find it insulting to my intelligence to be told these so called UFO phenomena are in the same category as "monsters" and "demons" as popular fiction.

To me communities telling stories about monsters between themselves or to their children, as well as stories about demons to help explain their world and scare people into a moral life; are completely different to someone telling me they seen a UFO. Now there might be a million other explanations for it beyond alien beings, but to rule it out as ever happening simply because it's only anecdotal in nature is very very wrong. A true skeptic would listen, look at how believable the story sounds and then, if believable perhaps investigate further, setting up equipment, tests or whatever is appropriate to document some form of physical evidence. I would suggest to you, never accept someone as a self professed skeptic if their mind is not open to possibilities.

My Agora Netbook came by courier today. The first noticible thing when opening the box is the lack of any manuals, fliers, special offers, discs or other such things. The box simply contains the Agora netbook, a Australian mains power adaptor and the battery. Upon lifting the netbook out of the box and fitting it with it's battery I was very impressed with it's weight; or perhaps I should say, lack there of.

Weighing in at just 1.4Kg the Agora netbook is quite well suited to travel. The 10.1 inch screen is large enough to comfortable do most tasks on a computer (I'm writing this blog entry on the netbook). I have the standard Agora which comes with 1Gb of 667mhz DDR2 RAM, but the Pro comes standard with 2Gb. Upgrading my netbook to 2Gb of RAM will be a simple enough process however, as I've seen brand new 1GB suitable modules for $19.95 on ebay.

The 160Gb hard drive is MUCH appreciated, and while it's not a SSD unless the netbook really starts cooking then you still get completely silent operation. The Hard drive itself makes no noise, the only noise you do get is a very quiet buzz from the system fan. The fan also does extremely well, as even pushing the netbook to it's limits it remains at a temperature comfortable to sit on my lap.

The inbuilt webcam and mic are extremely handly, not just for video chat, but vodcasting in a mobile environment becomes very simple. The inbuilt wifi is very responsive and gives me a great signal anywhere in my house. I haven't tried it out back, but I'm pretty sure I could travel anywhere in my garden as well. The inbuilt speakers give amazing sound for their size. There is NO distortion, even when they're at their highest setting. With the aide of the Realtek HD Audio manager they do a great job of giving virtual 3D sound.

All in all with an intel atom 1.6Ghz cpu, 2Gb of RAM (in the pro version) and a 160Gb hard disc it's a netbook well ahead of the curve. And at a price of $450 it's hard to find something better at a similar price. But it's not all good news, this netbook won't appeal to everyone. It comes with gOS preinstalled, which to me is not only a pretty annoying OS, but relies far to much on Google apps for my liking. Personally, due to googles privacy policies, I tend to keep as far away from google apps being on my hard drive as I possibly can.

Being a Linux distro as well it means none of your windows apps will run natively on the system. You can get some to run through wine, but it's always a bit of a hit and miss deal. For most users it's going to be a learning curve that really isn't worth the hassle. For this reason I formatted the drive and installed Windows XP. The process of installing Windows from a USB stick (there is no optical drive) is surprisingly easy, you simply get a tool like win2usb to format you usb stick, transfer the windows cd to it and make it bootable. After that it's pretty much the normal way of installing windows except you plug in the usb instead of slipping in a CD.

I chose Windows XP because;

• I have a copy of Windows XP
• I don't really see anything in Windows 7 that makes upgrading worth while
• Windows 7 requires a minimum of 1Gb RAM to run, and as my netbook has only 1Gb of RAM, I didn't want to chance it running slow.

The drivers are a bit of a hike to find, and there are a few tricks to get the wifi and webcam to work. For example to get the webcam to work you have to go into system --> device manager --> click on the webcam and click to upgrade the driver. You have to let it search the internet to find the drivers and then it's all set up. Kogan don't actually provide the drivers in their download which is disappointing. Also I only seem to be getting 2 hrs max out of the netbook in battery mode, but I'm not sure if I only have a 3 cell battery so that may be the problem. I'm going to buy a 6 cell battery ($65) from the kogan website and see if that fixes the issue.

Also the space between the keyboard and touch pad is very compact causing accidental touchs of the pad while typing. By default the touch pad has touch clicking enabled which means accidental touchs result in some pretty odd things happening. You need to manually go through and turn this setting off. These however are all quite minor problems, and still leaves the Agora ahead of the pack. Kogan is also an Australian brand which is always a big plus in my book.

In sumary it's definitely not a netbook that will suite everyone, but if you're looking for a styish netbook that gives you leading features at a budget price it's certainly worth at least a look at.

Ok so after hearing that Avatar is meant to be the best movie ever now I mistakenly seen it. Boy was I disappointed. Far from being the greatest movie ever; avatar presents us with a jumble of story lines from previous movies. Think Braveheart, but set on another planet with people who are actually blue instead of having to paint themselves that way. Add to that a splash of the movies alien and aliens, a dab of surrogates and sprinkle the lot with a cliche love story and you've got avatar. I'm not saying it's a bad story line; although it isn't exactly great; but what I am saying is that it isn't a very original story.

I'm not going to argue that it wasn't a visually stunning movie, because it was. I didn't see it in 3D but it isn't hard to see that it was purposely shot to be seen that way. The imagination doesn't have to stretch in the slightest to be able to know where scenes were created just to have things jump out of the screen. But there have been plenty of other visually stunning movies in the past, some of which with far better story lines.

We shouldn't judge a movie based on how cool it's visual effects or special effects are. That isn't what movies should be about, you only need to watch some great old school black and white films to know that! It all comes down to story line, and this film just didn't have what it takes to become the greatest film ever made. Sure it's made lots of money, but it's one of those gimick films where they give you a different technology.

On an acting side, the characters aren't believable at all. Most notably is sigorny weaver who does an absolutely woeful job of her performance. But the bulk of the film is made up of CGI enhanced actors, which leave you wanting for some sort of connection. This is a movie that tries to do and be far to much and loses it's heart along the way.

I'm not saying don't go see the film, sure go see it, I'm sure you will be entertained. But what I am saying is don't go to see Avatar thinking it's some great movie, because it's not. Instead go for a visual experience, to experience 3D CGI mixed with the real world in High Definition. That to me is the only reason to see this film, I mean it is definitely lacking in every other department.

So I was thinking about this Mandatory Internet Filter that Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy are bringing in to Australia and something dawned on me that hadn't before. See previously I was pissed off that this filter will stop Australians' seeing anything and everything that the ACMA decide someone under the age of 16 shouldn't see. Not just legal stuff, but just stuff in general that someone under the age of 16 apparently shouldn't see.

But it dawned on me that a filter of any kind has to take our information about where we're going online and what we're doing online and sort through it. Of cause due to the nature of the internet your ISP already has this information but under the privacy act can't do anything will it. But as this filter apparently exists to keep us safe from harm and includes sites which are illegal in nature; one would expect there to be logging going on.

Logging is the capture and storage of information pertaining to computerized activity, in this case being your online activity. It's something ISPs aren't allowed to do, but something the government do intend to do. It's bad enough we have companies like Google and Facebook giving us the online big brother treatment without our government giving us the same.

I for one think Australia is better than that. That we aren't a paranoid country, and up until now haven't had paranoid governments. The ability for a government to collate data about each households internet usage without criminal cause for line tapping, without the consent of those who occupy the household and on a mandatory basis is unconstitutional. Sure our constitution doesn't protect freedom of speech, but what the Australian constitution does protect is the individuals right to go about their business in a lawful manner without interference from a government agency.

Seriously, who voted for Kevin Rudd? Because everyone who did is a freak'in idiot. I tried to tell you all not to do it, I warned you he'd screw up Australia. He's more interested in playing fairy tale princess meeting "important people" and flying around the world than in anything that benefits Australians. This government artificially took Australia into a time of economic downturn through scare tactics and misinformation. It lost a lot of Australians their jobs and set us back quite dramatically. They then blew out the budget and put us into such heavy debt that our childrens children will still be paying it off.

But not only are they a clueless government, incapable of making a truly healthful decision, not only are they wasting billions of tax payer dollars, dollars you and I worked hard for, but they have also shown themselves to be a fascist, big brother government intent on controlling the populous at whole. This isn't what our fathers and great grandfathers fought and in some cases died for. They'd roll over in their graves to see the country like this. So thank-you to everyone who freely chose to vote for Kevin Rudd, because in that free choice you have doomed all Australians to have none.

As 2010 rolls in you may be feeling let down that the sci-fi future we were promised isn't here yet. I read an article today in the Big Issue which consisted of some guy bitching about just that very thing. But what you may have failed to realise is while we haven't gotten everything the jetsons promised, we're certainly on our way.

Ok so our skies aren't littered with hovercars flying around, but other than the fact that's clearly a good thing... you can actually purchase one. That's right they do actually exist and have done for over a decade! So why haven't they taken off (excuse the pun) you might ask? Well, other then the price tag; which is somewhere around 1.4 Million USD each due to the small amount made; you have to factor in that there is no infrastructure in place. I mean even if the price came down over night and everyone ran out and brought one, there'd be nowhere to land it (think about it the average yard gets smaller every year), nowhere to refill it's tank, nowhere to service it... There aren't any rules or legislation in place so it would currently stand as a plane and you'd need the appropriate licensing and have to submit courses and junk. You can get them, but honestly why would you want one?

Ok so we're not zooming around in the stars visiting other planets for holidays. But that actually might be closer than you think. Richard Bransons company Virgin have invested heavily into creating commercially viable rockets and space craft in which the average joe can afford to make it into space. He's getting VERY close! He craft can already make it into inner orbit! In the last decade we've also seen the Russian space program begin to take paid space tourists on some of their less intense missions. Ok so 20 Million dollars a pop is out of 95% of our budgets but space tourism certainly does exist and is a growing market.

Think about all the cool stuff that we have now days that didn't exist even 5 years ago let alone in the 70s, 80s and 90s! I mean we have mobile phones capable of video conversations, indeed the average mobile phone is capable not only of making a video call, but taking a large number of high quality photo's & video, listening to music, plugging into the GPS network, surfing the internet, checking email, play games and so so so very much more. With the aide of services like facebook, myspace and twitter we're able to keep everyone we know up to date with every last insignificant event that happens in our lives, regardless of where they or we are in the world.

With the aide of services like paypal, we're able to instantly and securely pay for products and services from the comfort of our own home. Indeed the market for internet shopping is growing exponentially. And computers have not only become more a part of our lives than sci-fi ever predicted, but they're capable of far more as well. Think about it, there is a computer in ever single aspect of your life now. Your car has one, your mobile phone is one, you probably own a netbook or a laptop, you probably have a desktop at home, your games console is one, you most likely use one at work in some facade. Computers are EVERYWHERE! They're in our factories, they're in our offices, they're in our schools, hospitals and basically anywhere else you can think of. And each one, connected to a world wide network.

And ok granted we don't drive around in cars that drive themselves yet. But again, they exist. In fact EVERY major car manufacture on the planet has had at least one vehicle capable of driving ITSELF in the testing phase for well over a decade. And yes our cars might still use petrol, but again that isn't because the technology isn't there. It's because of money that we're still stuck on the petrol powered combustion engine. Australia at least (I'm sure other countries are doing the same but I'm not well researched on the subject) is making a switch from petrol to hydrogen powered cars over the next 10 to 15 years. The switch will first move consumers to diesel and then to hydrogen. But hydrogen isn't the only alternative fuel source we have technology for. There are far to many to name them all! But examples are things like bio diesel or solar.

Solar power itself has made some amazing leaps in the last decade, and I'm excited about the commercial launch of the daisy solar panel which increases solar energy conversion by up to 90% while taking up less than 1/4 of the space of a traditional solar system.

Just think about all the literally millions of new inventions and technologist which have been developed over the last 30 years. The microwave oven for example. A device which automates the cooking process and reduces cooking time into a fraction of what it is in a conventional oven. Kevlar vests stop speeding bullets in their tracks. plasma, LCD and LED TVs which have made the TV thin enough to be hung from a wall like a picture. The exciting new world of 3D Television. Yes, that's right I said 3D television, and they're available right now! Sure with a price tag of $13,990AUD there isn't going to be a mass herd to the store to buy them, but just remember it was only 5 years ago that LCD TVs cost that much and look at them now.

In every aspect of life technology has advanced. So sure we aren't quite where sci-fi promised we would be, but we also have things that sci-fi writers never even thought of. So as we enter 2010 I reckon we should all just take a moment to reflect on all the advancements we've made in the last few decades and how much they've changed our lives. Lets just take that moment to give thanks to all the 10s of thousands of people whom put their blood, sweat and tears into creating these inventions and technologies. And then take a moment to dream about where we might be in another 10 years time!

The following letter is from a network engineer named Mark Newton whom has brought up multiple concerns about the internet filter with the AMCA. But instead of addressing these concerns, in true fascist nature Senator Conroy and his office have attempted to bully Mr Newton into a campaign of silence on the issue. I am reposting this letter as I feel it captures a great deal of the concerns at the heart of this issue. I have pulled this letter from homepagedaily.com

Senator Stephen Conroy

------

Mark Newton's letter:

20 October 2008
The Hon Kate Ellis MP
Minister for Youth and Sport
161a Main North Road
Nailsworth SA 5083

Dear Ms Ellis,

I am writing to you to express my concerns about moves by Senator Stephen Conroy to implement the "clean feed" proposal described on page 5 of Labor's Plan for Cyber Safety by Senator Conroy prior to the 2007 election.

My objections to this policy are detailed below. In your reply to this letter, I would appreciate a direct, detailed response to each of these issues. I am making the assumption that collating such responses will be a simple matter, because a proposal as important as this one obviously wouldn't have proceeded as far as it has if these basic concerns had not been considered and alleviated. If that assumption is unfounded, then that fact should justify revisiting (or, alternatively, abandoning) the "clean feed" proposal.

While I approve of the general thrust of the Cyber Safety proposal, I have serious objections to the "clean feed" section, which will erect an online Government censorship regime in Australia for the first time.

I also have significant objections about the professional conduct of Senator Conroy as he has pursued this issue. The Senator has attacked critics by comparing them to child abusers; refused to provide details of his policy then maligned opponents for their "speculative" remarks; lied to the Australian voting public about the availability of an "opt-out" in December 2007; and failed to consult with the 21 million Australian stakeholders who will be most affected by this plan, in contravention of the Prime Minster's oft-repeated aim to implement a "Government for all Australians" [1, 2, 3]. Rather than addressing the serious policy objections which I outline below, Senator Conroy has preferred to respond with aggressive, offensive, extremist bluster.

The Government has not demonstrated a need for an online censorship regime.

While I accept that the presence of illegal material on the Internet is a cause for some concern, I'm appraised of two important points which the Government appears to have missed.

Firstly: Australians have been using uncensored Internet access for at least 30 years, and there's no evidence of a burgeoning problem concerning access to illegal material. I have been using the Internet almost every day since 1989 and have never seen any content that I'd expect to require Government intervention. Without demonstrating a need for this system, how can the Government credibly claim that it should be mandated?

Secondly: There is little evidence that Australian parents require Government assistance. Indeed, those who claim that parents require such assistance have a remarkable track record of being wrong.

In 1989 / 1990, the Senate Select Committee into Online Services carried out an enquiry into the nature of content available online, and made a rash of recommendations in favour of some kind of censorship scheme based on the expectation that unfettered access would harm the fabric of Australian society.

The passing of time has shown that 1990 Senate's concerns were completely wrong: Almost 20 years have passed since that enquiry, and Australians have enjoyed uncensored Internet access for the entire period. Society has not fallen apart, there is no emergency, children are not being raised in moral vacuums and turning into rapists and axe-murderers, parents are diligently and capably excelling in their efforts to raise their children into fine, upstanding citizens. Today's parents are comfortable with ubiquitous access to unfiltered Internet, having grown up using Google to assist with homework assignments, publishing blogs and websites, using email to stay in touch with friends and family, and treating the Internet in its current unfiltered form as a valuable resource for the education and social engagement of their children.

This fact is reinforced by the public's unresponsiveness to the previous Government's offer of free filtering software for family PCs. When only 140,000 users downloaded the free software over 12 months, and less than 29,000 of them were still using it three weeks later, Senator Conroy concluded that the $84M filtering software distribution plan failed because it wasn't mandatory, rather than the more rational conclusion that the failure of the initiative could be traced to lack of public desire.

The image of technologically-disconnected parents floundering helplessly in a sea of pornography as they fail to adequately raise their children is a reflection of the appalling lack of Internet-savviness of our politicians, not society at large. Politicians assume that parents are ignorant about the Internet because politicians are ignorant. Yet parents came to grips with it years ago; the last remaining social group in our country who expresses difficulty with the Internet appears to be baby-boomer Federal politicians, whose child-rearing days are mostly well behind them.

It is thoroughly insulting to Australian parents to undermine their efforts by asserting that the way to prevent societal decay is for the Government to step in and make decisions about the appropriateness of online content. That is a parent's role, not Senator Stephen Conroy's role.

The government has not demonstrated that mandatory online censorship is technologically feasibly.

Senator Richard Alston, in his tenure as Minister for Communications and the Arts, passed amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act in 1999. As accompaniment to that legislation, the Minister directed the ACMA (then ABA) to establish NetAlert, and for NetAlert to carry out periodic assessments of the "state of the art" of filtering technology.

Since that time, NetAlert and the Department have commissioned separate studies by the CSIRO, Ovum, and most recently RMIT and Enex Testlab. All of the studies have uniformly demonstrated that online censorship technology:

* slows down Internet access;
* inaccurately blocks content which should not be blocked;
* inaccurately fails to block content which should be blocked;
* is ineffective at inspecting or blocking "Peer to Peer" traffic that comprises over 60% of Australia's Internet traffic; and
* fails to accurately distinguish between legal and illegal content even when specifically configured with lists of illegal content under laboratory conditions.

The most recent trials, conducted in Tasmania by Enex Testlab earlier this year, found that the most accurate product tested incorrectly blocked 3% of innocent material, and incurred a "slowdown" performance penalty in excess of 70%, and failed to reliably block the ACMA's prohibited content list. It stuns disbelief that the Minister for Broadband would be interested in pursuing these systems whilst at the very same time advocating for a $20B National Broadband Network (NBN) intended to increase Internet speeds.

There is no evidence on the public record to demonstrate that mandatory online censorship is technologically feasible. Every time experts have been asked, they have uniformly concluded that it is not possible. Furthermore, advances in technology cause Internet speeds to increase faster then censorship systems' speeds, meaning that as time passes the performance penalty caused by these systems becomes worse.

It is very poor public policy to proceed with mandatory implementation of provably failed technology.

The government has not demonstrated that online censorship is effective.

Any Australian can obtain encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) access from the United States for less than $5 per month [1, 2]. This is the same technology that human rights activists use in China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to hide their activities from the Government, and provides an effective, guaranteed bypass of any effort by any National Government to filter Internet content.

There is no requirement for complicated software to use these services, VPN clients are installed by default on all common Operating System platforms. Australians who wish to hide themselves from Government Internet censorship efforts are only a few clicks away from total anonymity.

The government has failed to consider unintended consequences arising from the policy.

In order to implement a censorship scheme, the ACMA will need to make its blacklists available to ISPs.

There are approximately 400 ISPs in Australia. Even if each ISP only has a handful of staff in a position to access routers and scrutinise network configurations, that still leaves several thousand ISP technical staff with full knowledge of the contents of the blacklist.

A moment of consideration of that state of affairs yields the unavoidable conclusion that the blacklist will be "leaked". Many sites on the Internet specialise in providing repositories of "sensitive" Government data for the purpose of providing public access to documents against Governments' wishes, and a Government blacklist is exactly the kind of content those sites exist to publish.

When the Government makes a mistake, it will be public [1, 2, 3]. It is simply not believable that putting the same people who called for the destruction of the Bill Henson photographic exhibit in charge of a blacklist of pornographic imagery can end well. It also strains credibility to assert that there is value in putting the people who decided that Mohammad Haneef should be pursued on terrorism charges, or that David Hicks should rot in Guantanamo, in charge of a list of illegal terrorist material. Governments of both sides have a long and distinguished track record of embarrassing failure in these areas, and the public is wise to be sceptical of moves to place further faith in the demonstrably flawed judgement of our public officials and political representatives.

Leaks have other hazards: It will only be a matter of time before someone, somewhere in the world, testifies in open court that they knew where to find child pornography due to the assistance and enablement of a leaked copy of Senator Conroy's Internet blacklist. The Government will no doubt launch a flurry of PR spin to demonise the leaker and portray itself as an innocent victim of circumstance when it happens, but one fact which will not be in dispute when it happens is that the Government was warned and carried on regardless. How much child exploitation is the Government willing to accept as "collateral damage" associated with this policy? More than zero? How much more?

Encouraging people who wish to bypass censorship to use encrypted VPNs carries a further unintended consequence, namely that the Australian Federal Police are unable to effectively execute Interception Warrants on encrypted traffic. Implementing censorship will drive criminals towards encryption by blocking non-encrypted methods of accessing the content they desire. I invite you to ponder the likely political effect of the revelation that Australian law enforcement was unable to gather evidence to convict a child abuser or a terrorist because the ALP's censorship system had inspired the offender to encrypt their Internet traffic.

Senator Conroy has invalidated the government's claim for a mandate by lying to the Australian public about the scope of the policy.

In December 2007, Senator Conroy was widely reported in the press as stating that "...anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service."

In October 2008, Darren Pauli from IDG/Computerworld obtained confirmation from the Minister's media spokesman that no opt-out will be available, "... the filters will be mandatory for all Australians."

As far as politicians' lies go, this one is breathtaking in its audacity. The Minister took the false impression that Australians will be able to (in his own words) "opt out of the service" to the last election, and allowed it to persist for almost an entire year even as the policy progressed to "live trials" with no opt-out provision. Then when the truth was exposed he launched personal attacks to denigrate critics as "extremist" "speculators".

Summary and Conclusion

Nearly a year has passed since Senator Conroy announced his plan, and none of the concerns described above have been addressed. The 21 million people comprising this policy's largest stakeholder group have not been consulted. We have not even been provided with the details we'd need to assess whether Senator Conroy's efforts to implement the policy are consistent with the Australian values, societal fabric, and child-rearing aims that the policy is purportedly designed to protect.

It disturbs me that Senator Conroy's response to these criticisms has been to label those who disagree with him as "speculators" and "extremists" and to compare them to child abusers. My criticisms are not "extreme", and I am not a child abuser. I am a voter, and I expect Senator Conroy to show some respect by answering my concerns without resorting to hysterical personal attacks. Senator Conroy's job is to convince the Australian public that his idea is worthy, but his habit of resorting to bluster, offensiveness and secrecy has severely undermined that role. Without Senator Conroy's detailed responses to these issues, the responsibility for any undesired "uninformed speculation" lies directly upon his shoulders.

I call upon you to:

1. respond to the policy concerns that I have outlined above; and
2. represent my interests in the Party Room to persuade Senator Conroy and the Prime Minister Mr Kevin Rudd to change track by abandoning the "clean feed" proposal.

The general aims of the ALP's cyber-safety initiative are worth defending. In particular, budget allocations for education programs and investigative law enforcement are commendable. But the "clean feed" proposal is impossible to defend on technical, moral, financial and public policy grounds, and should be reviewed for suitability for inclusion in the Government's policy agenda before being allowed to proceed any further.

Sincerely yours,

Mark Newton

-----

On the 15th of December it was announced that a Mandatory Internet Filtering system would indeed be installed in ISPs around Australia and should be switched on within 12 months time. Supporters of the filtering cite that it will stop child pornography so it's a good thing. How wrong can you be?

"Fact, online child pornography is most often distributed by private email attachments to avoid detection. The internet filter will ONLY block out websites"

Child pornography which is distributed online, is most often by private email between pedophiles as apposed to putting it on a website which would open the creator of the website, and it's members up to all sorts of criminal prosecutions. Simply put, if the main distribution network for child pornography was websites, then there would be a lot more pedophiles in jail. If your sole reason for supporting the filter is stopping child porn, then you need to rethink your position.

So what are the facts about the list? Well, the filter has it's roots all the way back in 1999 when the then liberal government introduced laws which gave the Australian Communications and Media Authority; authority over internet content displayed in Australia. Under that law Content hosted in Australia and classified Classification restricted, or 18+ without an age verification system would be issued a take down notice. Such content hosted internationally would be added to a black list for use in voluntarily installed software on home PCs.

In August 2007 the Australian government through it's NetAlert department offered free, voluntary downloads of internet filtering software to be installed on home PCs. Late 2008 the scheme was shut down, with ACMA Senator Stephen Conroy citing it had not been successful with very few Australian's downloading the software. Clearly that should have woken him up to how Australians feel about filtering the internet, but instead it only inspired him into ISP level filtering instead.

"This very much seems to be a situation where Stephen Conroy feels he knows what's better for Australian's then they do for themselves. If you look up fascism in the dictionary, it will define it very much in that way."

During the elections which seen Labor form the federal government, they claimed the ISP level filtering would be an opt-out scheme. Of course an opt-in scheme would have been more desirable but at least in an opt-out scheme you of course have a way to not be filtered online and gain unrestricted access to information on the internet. But since forming government the policy has changed to one of mandatory filtering at the ISP level. This means every household, school, business, organisation or other entity connected to the internet will be under the power of the internet filter without any way to remove it. If you have an internet connection, the internet filter affects you.

So what is the big deal right? I mean surely they're only going to block out websites that are illegal... right? Wrong! All Restricted Classification content, X18+ content and R18+ content will be blocked. Speficially the AMCA criteria states;

• * Any online content that is classified RC or X 18+ by the Classification Board. This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, material containing excessive violence or sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use, and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.
• * Content which is classified R 18+* and not subject to a restricted access system that prevents access by children. This includes depictions of simulated sexual activity, material containing strong, realistic violence and other material dealing with intense adult themes.

In other words, ALL pornography will be subject to the filter not just child pornography. As well anything which is of an adult nature, that being something you wouldn't want someone under the age of 16 to see. All added to the filter and blocked from view for EVERY Australian, regardless of their age. But this isn't subject just to porn, there is so much more on the list than porn but before I get into that, consider this.

On the 18th of March 2009, wikileaks leaked a copy of the black list onto the internet. A user of the popular internet consumer forum whirlpool posted a link to the black list on the site. The AMCA then issued a notice to Whirlpools hosting company Bulletproof Media that fines of 11,000AUD would apply per day, for every day the link remained on the site. The AMCA furthermore when to extraordinary lengths to forcibly have the black list removed from the wikileaks website. So, consider this, the black list comprises simply the URLs (or domains names) of websites which can not be viewed through the filter. If the filter is such a great thing, then why is it that they are so guarded against the general public viewing the list?

The answer? Because of what the list actually blocks out. From the leaked list it was found that a Brisbane dentist's website was blocked, as was a tuckshop vendors website and the website of a dog kennel. These websites clearly have nothing to do with anything even remotely illegal or 18+ in nature, but yet somehow they're on the list?

But it goes further. In may of 2009 the Australian press, citing wikileaks as it's source broke the news that Dr Philip Nitschke's online Peaceful Pill Handbook, which is a website dealing with euthanasia has been added to the list, as have a range of other websites dealing with the same topic. Apparently the right to a peaceful death for the terminally ill remains out of the scope of reasoning for the federal government even though it isn't illegal in several Australian states.

But still, EVEN MORE FILTERING! In June 2009 the AMCA and the Australian government confirmed that the internet filter will block downloadable games, flash-based web games and websites which sell physical copies of games (like ebay and amazon) that do not meet the MA15+ standard. If the AMCA don't think someone under 16 should see it, then neither should anyone over 18 apparently.

"This isn't about stopping cyber crime; it's about controlling information the public see"

Already many anti-censorship websites campaigning for the filter to not go through have been forcibly taken down by the government. Other sites containing content which is anti-government, or does not support the government has been either forcibly taken down, or added to the black list.

In short the filter classification system stops anyone from not only committing an illegal act online, but from discussing anything that is illegal online, be they for or against the action. It further stops any member of the Australian public, regardless of age viewing any content not suitable for children. It blocks out anything that is deemed to be racist, or that submits a view other than that shared by the censor. Under this classification system, websites like wikipedia (which is a free, user contributed online encyclopedia)have already been announced to be added to the black list; and social networking websites like facebook (due to their user groups, fan pages and applications) have only a limited amount of time before they too are added.

It seem the ONLY way this filter is going to be revoked is if the majority of the Australian public, publicly announce this distaste for the filter and their desire to axe the scheme. If even that didn't work, well then it would be clear that we indeed no longer live in a democracy society. As it stands the labor party are moving very steeply toward a fascist dictatorship not only on filtering but on many issues. It time Australia, that we cut the government back down to size, before we end up in a situation where we suffer from tunnel vision due to lack of information and millions of Australian jobs are lost.

Links;

Wikipedia Article
Electronic Frontiers Australia
No Clean Feed
Labors plan for cyber safety (pdf)
USA Today article
Sydney Morning Herald article (March 19)
Sydney Morning Herald Article (December 15)
ABC News Article

It has been a long time waiting, BUT the wait has definitely been worth it. TJandSarah.com is proud to announce we have finally opened out store in partnership with Zazzle. You can now buy TJandSarah.com themed gear, along with loads of other neat designs. We're offering you apparel, mugs, mouse pads, shoes, skateboards, stickers and loads more.

Make sure you check out our store today! It's as simple as looking through the ticker below, or at any time clicking the store like to the right of this page.

As the year draws to a close we start to reflect on what that year has brought; and one can't reflect on such things without realising a considerable amount of the individuals privacy has been lost. So the question draws, will history hold 2009 as the year privacy was lost?

Facebook and Twitter and of course the Google machine have been the big violators of our privacy in 2009, gathering wads of data on us. This year Facebook made no less than 4 changes to their privacy policy, each one inching just that much more of your privacy away. As a result not only is everything you place on facebook up for documentation and collation with them, but so their privacy policy states, so is every other website you visit including how you interact with every site you visit.

Facebook also teamed up with Microsoft to place facebook on the Xbox 360, automatically updating your facebook status with what games, movies and music your using, as well as various other detailed information about them. Of course once the data is on facebook they file it away to make just that much more of an accurate picture of you. The world went twitter mad in 2009 as well, updating each other with their smallest, most tedious of actions. twitter itself; with a very facebook like privacy policy violated our privacy collating all the data we unwittingly delivered to them.

But it doesn't stop there, facebook took our twitter content and got us to stream it directly from twitter to them where the data could become facebooks to gather as well. And all the while the google machine gobbled up data from facebook, twitter and every other corner of the internet. Google's privacy policy shifted this year to allow for the collection of even more data. Your name, age, date of birth, the school you went to, your medical records, your likes and dislikes, your ex's, school grades, the games, movies and music you involve yourself with, your marital status, your credit rating, how much money you make, how much you paid for your house and how you paid for it...it's all their, publically viewable through google if you only know what to search for.

But where facebook collate each piece of our data as their policy allows for more collection, google play a more shifty game. For google the game plan is to creep through gathering more and more data, but to wait until the time is write to change the policy on collating the data.

But make no mistake, the time WILL come, after all Google are a targeted ads company, gathering data about you and collating it is what their business model is made up of. And with new services like Google's Public DNS and comments from Googles CEO Eric Schmidt on CNBC like

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

the stage is certainly set for a future where google know and collate EVERYTHING you do online. And what's more, knowing google; it will all most likely become publically available as well. The thought becomes even scarier when you consider that more and more devices are moving online.

The future see's devices like the Television and Radio, the telephone, the washer/drier and even the fridge all moving online. Even the video game console seems set to be replaced by a Set Top Box to link into a virtual unit. In this future one can expect your weekly shopping list, your phone calls and even how often you wash your clothes and how much water you use to added to the list of google indexed and publically available content. A wise man once said, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The big question now becomes, where do we go from here? Knowing what has happened to privacy through 2009 do we allow our privacy to further unravel or do we steal it back from the fingers of sleazy two faced advertising corps, back into our own control?

For quite some time now Indian's have been moving out of their over populated crap hole of a country and invading the rest of the world. Now the indian invasion has hit Yoville! This addictive facebook app has now been over run with indian's stealing jobs and ruining the poor yovillian way of life. Check out the evidence below

In other Yoville news, Tom Cruise has apparently joined the Zynga team. He can be found on the splash screen when the app loads. His picture is pasted below.

Imagine for a moment if you will, a world where your every action, your every personal whim is public domain. Imagine for a moment, the erosion of privacy in such a way as to allow corporations to know more about you than you know about yourself so they can advertise products directly to you. Image becoming even more of a consumer slave than you already are.

Imagine no longer, for this is the future that awaits. Advertising companies like Google and Facebook thrive on this information, without it they would be pennyless. So it comes as no surprise they are ever changing their privacy policies to allow just that little bit more of your information to be collected and collated.

Lets take Facebook as an example. Their recent privacy policy change makes way for new services to be introduced such as the new partnership with Microsoft. By linking you Xbox 360 to facebook you allow them to gather an incredible amount of data about your life. Not only what games, movies and music you play, watch and listen to. But also what times of day and in what manner you interact with them. What source they come from (great for weeding out pirate or download copies of movies, games and music), how long you interact with them.

They learn about your habits, just that little bit more. On it's own perhaps it's not so bad. But put that together with all the other information they have on you, your photos', your countless comments and status updates, your messages... it's all there for them to collate in order to produce a reliable picture of who you are. Take it in that context and it's just one more piece of the puzzle.

But lets escape the internet world for a moment and move to bricks and morter retail. What loyalty cards have been doing for years, soon RFID will do automatically. That is to say, track your purchases. We are fast moving into a world where each and every product you buy will be marked with an RFID chip. This means when you go to the store there will be no waiting in a queue, you simple exit the store with the things you want to buy.

A RFID frequency scanner will pick up all the items you have and charge them directly to your bank account or credit card. Sure that sounds super quick and easy. But it also means they'll know what days you shop, at what time, and what items you buy on what days. Your patterns will be analysed and targeted advertising can be delivered to you.

This of course is simple the tip of the ice-burg. There is plenty more to come, the implementation of free flowing tolls and smart card public transport ticketing are examples. Privacy folks is a thing of the past; we've given it up every time we sign up to a service like facebook. The big question is, will our children, or our grandchildren even have a proper concept of what privacy even is?

It seems The Twilight Saga is the new harry potter, in that the whole world seems to be mad for it. New Moon is officially the highest grossing box office release for it's first opening day, taking in 72 MILLION dollars in the US alone. Think about that for a moment, and consider the extra tens of millions made from other countries around the world. This is a film that in it's first day recouped it's production budget. Everything from that point on is profit!

But the thing I'm not understanding is simply why it's so popular. I just don't see what is so interesting about the story line which for me alienates the very vampire legend itself. You see vampires aren't loving caring people, they can't fall in love, they have no sole. They won't rescue you. The folklore of the vampire is simple, they're soulless beasts whom apparently made a pact with the devil in order to rise from their grave. They are the undead. In the context any romantic notions of them are sorta creepy.

I mean seriously, who falls in love with what is essentially a corpse that sucks blood to stay alive? That's more than sorta gross don't you think? I mean what's next? Zombies that fall in love? Or will it be werewolves? Or the creature from the black lagoon? I've seen a LOT of drivel come out of hollywood, and these Twilight movies are right up there with the worst of them.

But in the theme of things, lets explore the vampire legend a little better. As most people know folklore, myths and legends usually have some truth to them, somewhere, no matter how abstract. This is indeed the case for the vampire legend. There are 2 schools of thought on this one, depending on where you come from. The first of which comes from what is now Slovakia and is where we get the Dracula legend.

In 1611 there was a countess by the name of Elizabeth Bathory; she was one of the highest aristocrats of the time and thus had extraordinary power. She not only had people from the local village abducted, but she killed them and drank their blood. No one knows exactly why she did this, but the best respected theory is for it's iron content. Elizabeth Bathory was obsessed with beauty and more over youth. Having a high iron diet will slow the viable aging process, smoothing skin and removing wrinkles.

The second origin for the forklore has to do with what is actually a normal occurrence of death. When a body dies, it starts to lose moisture as a result the skin shrinks back making it seem as though finger nails and hair continue to grow. The gums recede making the canines more prominent as if the person has grown fangs. The hair also starts to lose its colour. Now try to view this from the point of view of a superstitious, highly religious and christian society. One for whom the burial ceremony is quite quick, where a corpse is in the ground within a day or so.

Not enough time to view these traits on a regular basis. But should there be a hold up with the burial for some reason these quite normal characteristics of a corpse can be seen. For such a community it is easy to see how they would mistake the corpse for being alive. Now couple this occurrence with another unrelated one. That of vampire bats. Vampire bats, will feed on humans while they sleep. The experience is painless as the bat's saliva contains a natural anesthetic.

For an already paranoid, superstitious and devoutly religious community linking these to events together must have seemed natural. And so the legend of the vampire was born. A being which made a pact with the devil to cheat death. A being which is dead, but must feed on blood to survive, and must do so by night. And a being capable of turning into a bat. And there you have it, over time the legend of course changed and morphed into something else... new bits where added and eventually we got to a point where we have silly movies and books like those in the twilight series.

Rockstar Games have taken the engine out of GTA:IV Episodes from Liberty City and have wacked it into their latest feature, due to be released April 2010. Much in the tradition of GUN, Red Dead Redeption is a Wild Western sandbox. Think GTA but with Cowboys and indians instead of Street gangs and cops. Be first to check out the offically released trailer here on TJandSarah.com

I know humanity loves to think of themselves as these higher beings that are so entirely over complicated and all, but seriously that isn't the truth. Sex makes the world go round. Sure great, humans can make art, build rockets and cheat death through medicine. But without sex, it's all really kinda pointless.

You exist because of sex, and in your life, while you probably won't notice it, sex will be your biggest driving force. Think about it, why do men want high paying jobs? Sex. Why do people want to be famous? Sex. What's the most popular use for the internet? Sex; or more over sex related activities. In fact, we spend the bulk of our lives trying to find and then keep a mate. Why? Sex.

So it honestly shocks me to the core that so many people deny their partners sex, put sex off and so forth; then can't understand where things went pear shaped in their relationship. Lets think about this logically here for a moment, how does a "romantic relationship" differ from an ordinary friendship? Sex. So without the presence of sex how does it continue to be a "romantic relationship" ?

Fact of the matter is from sex our brains are flooded with a few different chemicals, which in turn cause us to feel more "in love" with the person, to be more tolerant of their behavior and to be more willing to go out of our way to help that person. Sex relaxs our bodies and decreases the chances of heart attack or stroke. 20 minutes of sex is the same as an hour of high energy exercise in the gym, so it's great for keeping us fit and healthy.

Now, without sex those chemicals don't flood the brain. So over time those annoying little habits your partner has can break the relationship. Couples who have a poor, or no sex life fight in a more hurtful and long lasting way. This is why when you first met your partner and you were having sex like rabbits they seemed great but now you can barely stand to stay in the same room as them.

So what about before you had sex you ask? Anticipation is a beautiful thing. The idea of having sex with someone is a powerful motivator and causes amounts of the same chemicals to be released into the brain. In short, you get almost the same effects of having sex (in brain chemistry) without actually having it yet. But of course this only happens if (1) It's someone you actually want to have sex with and (2) see there being a high chance of that action coming about.

So, with keeping a relationship relatively happy, generally coming down to how much sex you get, and more over the perceived readiness there of, why is it that after a certain period of time most people forget to have it? Suddenly things you were doing while you were having loads of sex in the beginning, become a reason not to have sex anymore. It's the biggest mistake. When you're in a relationship GOOD sex should be up their on your priorities list, along side eating and breathing. That is of course assuming you don't want the relationship to end. But I mean if the case is that you do want it to end, then isn't it far better for you both to just end it, instead of subjecting yourselves to the slow painful death?

Yes, sex makes the world go around. So why do so many people forget it?

Google released the source for their new Operating system now dubbed Chromium OS (previously ChromeOS) yesterday. So, is Google trying to make a real play for Microsoft's Operating Systems market? Lets take a look and see.

Chromium OS is essentially just a reworked Linux kernel that boots Google's Chrome browser. That is to say, you turn your netbook on and it loads Google's Chrome Browser and that's all it does. It's incapable of running any applications directly from your computer, instead focusing solely on applications based online (Web apps). This obviously leads the browser to natively take you to Google web apps, and really for the most part there aren't really many contenders to appose the Google web app market.

Chromium also can not be downloaded or purchased separately from a store. Instead Google are working with their partner hardware vendors to bring to market specific netbooks preloaded with Google Chromium OS. This will be the sole way you'll be able to get a copy of Google Chromium as the code itself is actually specific to the system hardware it's installed on. Think of it as a made to fit kind of Operating system, as apposed to a one size fits all Windows business model.

So, will it be a seriously contender for market share? My gut feeling at this point is probably not. There will be some initial interest at first sure, but after curiosity has warn off I can't see this being a huge seller. Why? Well for starters it's a hugely anti-competitor product. I mean Windows might be bad for bundling Explorer by default, but hey at least Microsoft let you then download another browser and use that if you prefer.

Google on the other hand have made their browser the actual operating system. So really if you wanted to use another browser, you'd have to change the actual code itself; and that's actually what the VP of productions at Google has said himself. There also isn't really a huge variety of web apps around, and the bulk that do exist are google apps. Again, more anti-competitor stuff.

But I think the big reason it won't sell hugely is because it's specific to certain hardware. The notion of buying a whole new netbook just to own an operating system which Google clouted as free really won't sit well with people whom are already happy with their windows netbooks that do everything they want them to in a way they already know. The consumer gets no advantage buy purchasing this OS. It's just really...stupid. And to make it worse, it uses the same chrome browser I can download for free online. And if you take a look at my previous post about the browser you'll find it has quite a few short comings.

I'd say honestly, keep away from this one. It's really not worth your time or money. You get no real benefits, it's just there, probably to distract you from Microsoft's move on the Search Engine market with Bing.