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Alive in Joburg, a stellar short film directed by Neill Blomkamp, is an unsettling and eerie tale of a close encounter of the third kind in Johannesburg, South Africa. The discrimination of visitors from another world makes for an interesting allusion to Apartheid. This is what War of the Worlds should have been like.

This is just simply amazing. A briliant concept that has been executed extremely well.

More at Spy Films

I think my hypothesis that the creatures of the sea are turning against mankind is proving correct with yet another notable inexplciable attack in the news.

Video captures octopus attack on submarine

Rare video footage shows a giant octopus attacking a small submarine off the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Salmon researchers working on the Brooks Peninsula were shocked last November when an octopus attacked their expensive and sensitive equipment.

The giant Pacific octopus weighs about 45 kilograms, powerful enough to damage Mike Wood's remote-controlled submarine.

Wood's first reaction was to panic, knowing the marine creature can exert a powerful bite.

Octopuses are known to be intelligent creatures capable of using tools and disguise themselves if they are now attacking submarines I'd be very worried about what future plots they have in store for attacks on mankind.

Forget Al Qaida it is the creatures of the sea that we should be worrying about.

BBC News: Court rules against song-swappers

The UK music industry has won a landmark court case in its fight against illegal online music sharing.

High Court judges ordered two men to pay the British Phonographic Industry between £1,500 and £5,000 for making thousands of songs available online.

One of the men said he did not know he was acting illegally, the other said there was no evidence against him.

The BPI has launched 139 similar cases since October 2004, most being settled out of court for up to £6,500.

I really don't believe that file-sharing is killing the music industry it might well be hitting their income from fewer CD sales but even that conclusion is in dispute.

I think there should be a distinction made between online file-sharers and the organised criminal gangs that are in the business of music piracy who are selling illegal CDs. The second group are the ones I believe should be targetted and the first group should be encouraged to choose legal alternatives.

I'm curious about the case against the first defendant in this landmark court case.

The first defendant, from King's Lynn, said the BPI had no direct evidence of infringement, but the judges dismissed this and ordered him to make an immediate payment of £5,000.

Presumably the BPI did have direct evidence of the infringement which is why the judge dismissed thsi defence. So was the defence just a gambit that was almost certain to fail or did the defendant really believe there was no evidence, if so why would they believe that.

I am waiting for a legal challenge in such a case where the defendant has wiped all evidence from their own PC so all the evidence left will be the internet traffic logs associated with the IP addresses they used.

Bill Thompson writing for the BBC explains why he refuses to agree with the knee-jerk reaction to the news of Google's censorship in China.

He points to the fact that Google.cn explains that censorship of the results have occurred and that much censorship is occuring in the UK and the US that the average user is not even aware of.

He believes that Google's willingness to work with the Chinese government is a good thing in the long run.

But if we in the West, with our liberal political culture and our attempts to build open societies, do not engage with China then we lose the opportunity to influence them and convince them of the benefits that this brings. If the Chinese government fears instability then we should offer help and advice and support, not closed borders and locked doors.

Different circumstances require different responses, and just because sanctions were the right way to put pressure on apartheid South Africa does not mean that a technology blockade is the way to influence China.

Who can say what the repercussions of this will all be but I think he might well have a point.

Yet another link via Schneier.

ID Card Planned for the Borders

U.S. officials announced Tuesday they would start issuing a special identification card this year that would allow Americans who frequently traveled to Mexico or Canada to continue crossing the border without a passport.

Officials said the card would be about the size of a credit card, carry a picture of the holder and cost about $50, about half the price of a passport. It will be equipped with radio frequency identification, allowing it to be read from several yards away at border crossings.

To obtain the card, officials said that citizens would be required to provide the same kind of documentation needed to obtain a passport.

Okay so it requires the same documentation to obtain as a passport does and in effect acts like a passport when crossing the border. I have to ask, why not just use a fucking passport then?

Not only is such an ID redundant but to be equipped with RFIDs that can be read from several yards is a security nightmare and a boon to identity thieves. Jeez.

Labels: Security

A quirky but of security humour found via Bruce Schneier's blog.

How to Survive a Robot Uprising

Schneier's readers come up with some additions to the list.

Labels: Security

On this the most depressing day of the year I attended a course to gain an accredited qualification to enable me to apply for a Personal Licence to sell and authorise the sale of alcohol from a suitably licenced premises.

Depressing? No. Boring? Oh yes very much.

To be fair to the course tutor he did try to liven it up but learning the regulations of alcohol licensing is probably one of the dryest dullest subjects possible.

The Thames Whale was perhaps an omen of things to come with the news that Japan is being invaded by Giant Jellyfish.

Well it comes as no surprise to me the news that Lord Falconer has told the BBC that the only way to get full benefit from the Identity Card scheme was for people without a passport to carry one.

It has been the government line all along that the cards would be compulsory. I am worried though that the government is pretty much pushing through biometric identity cards in the form of passports though. Whether the Identity Card bill is passed or not the UK will end up with a massive biometric identity register of millions of UK citizens.

The UK already has the most surveillance cameras per capita of any country in the world and now we learn that the UK also has the largest DNA database of it's citizens in the world with about 5% of the poulation's DNA profile being held.

Labels: ID Cards, Surveillance

The northern bottle-nosed whale that was spotted making it's way into London up the Thames river has died during a rescue attempt.

But the whale died at about 1900 GMT on Saturday as rescuers transported it on a barge towards deeper water in the Thames Estuary.

It was moved after being placed in a special pontoon near Battersea Bridge.

Alan Knight, from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), which is led the rescue operation said the animal died after it began to convulse while it was still on the barge.

I'm quite upset by this but they had no choice but to attempt to rescue it and return it to deep water as it would have perished soon in the shallows of the Thames.

My god I had the surprise of my life playing Stranger's Wrath today.

Here I was going about the place as a bounty hunter just so I can save the 20k needed for the operation and possibly also on the llokout for a Steef for which some dude was gonna pay me the full 20 thousand for.

Turns out that Stranger is a goddamned Steef himself with a whole extra pair of legs in those trouseds of his. That's what the operation was for to rid him of those surplass legs.

What the hell happens now in the game I wonder as the fortune teller booth would indicate there is a whole other realm for me to discover after I escape the clutches of this rival bounty hunter that has captured me and exposed my true nature.

Labels: Games

A report by Corporate Watch, a Quaker-funded research group in Oxford challenges the feasibility of creating the necessary IT system required for the Identity Card scheme. It will they say based on previous examples of Government IT procurement from the companies involved likely lead to an IT disaster

It blames huge, over-complex schemes that fail to deliver promised benefits. Acknowledging months of controversy over the civil liberty and cost implications of the scheme, due to start in 2008, Corporate Watch says "relatively little attention seems to have been paid to the significant practical problems of implementing ID cards and the National Identity Register", which will eventually hold data on all 60 million UK biometric identities.

The unprecendented enormity of the scale of this IT project plus the fact that it will be reliant on cutting edge technologies will in my mind almost certainly fail to deliver. Therefore there seems to be even greater reason for extensive oversight and detailed cost analysis than there would for any previous Government IT project.

Failure to create a prefectly functional and secure system will actually create more problems and exacerbate the current problems the scheme is designed to solve.

Labels: ID Cards

The Government faces an uphill struggle in trying to get their ID Cards bill passed and once again were faced with defeat in the Lords but the Home Office remains unbowed by their defeat and will fight on.

Ministers refused to back down last night in the face of a defeat in the House of Lords which threatens to block their bill to introduce ID cards until the scheme's estimated costs have been independently vetted by the National Audit Office.

Tory, Liberal Democrat and crossbench peers joined forces to reject government claims that an ID card and passport, complete with hi-tech biometric identifiers, would cost £93 at current prices, with the card itself costing £30. The government was defeated by 237 votes to 156.

The Peers rejected the notion that set-up costs needed to be confidential.

But the Home Office minister, Lady Scotland, told peers she "simply did not accept that there should be any such unprecendented review of the estimated costs" before the bill passed.

It may well be unprecedented to have such a review of the costs but for such an unprecendented scheme such as the creation of a National Identity Register and the infrastructure to run it then I believe that parliament and the public really should be fully informed of every aspect of it.

They also suffered their second defeat when the Lords voted by 206 to 144 in demanding that the National Identity Register have a secure and reliable method of storing the personal data to be contained with in of every citizen.

I think this is the more serious point. Such a database as the National Identity Register that contains comprehensive data on virtually every adult in Britain will surely be a major target of identity thieves. It could be a disaster if the data contained within it was not securely held and access to the data restricted via a robust authorisation system.

Labels: ID Cards

It's worrying finding yourself on the same side as the bloody Tories in a political debate but I find myself increasingly there in recent years.

I wouldn't never have believed it 10 years ago if someone told that I'd be agreeing with the views of the Conservative party on the issue of Identity Cards.

Thnakfully there are still Labour MPs such as Anne Begg that are prepared to ask hard questions of the Home Secretary in this debate but the likelihood of get a decent answer are unfortunately remote.

Every one of the arguments that Mr. Bercow raises are wrong are they. Well I'm afraid that simply asserting that doesn't make it a reality. Surely that's the purpose of having a debate so that people can raise points that you then convince with detailed arguments why they are wrong. Or, and I know this might be a hard concept to grasp Mr. Clarke but it's just possible that dare I say it you might actually be wrong.

Labels: ID Cards

I watched Johnny and the Bomb yesterday and darn good fun it was too. Johnny and the Bomb is probably my favourite of Terry Pratchett's non-Discworld books and I'd been waiting for a TV adaptation of it since they did one of Johnny and the Dead about 10 years ago.

Right as rain and twice as ninepence.

The cast is good also especially the lads playing the roles of Johnny and Big Mac as both are exactly how I picture the characters in my head.

Seems that time travel is really in vogue now at the BBC following the success of Doctor Who what with Life on Mars and now Johnny and the Bomb.

I was thrilled but also a little disappointed by the final episodes of Lost last night.

We got to see a little more of the nature of the monster in the jungle and yet it is still a mystery in fact more of a mystery now as what I had thought that it was was proved not to be accurate.

We finally got to see The Others and they appear to be just yet another group of survivors but seperate from those of Flight 815 and Danielle's crew. In fact the island seems to have attracted many different groups of people over the years what with the Nigerian drug smulling priests and then The Black Rock which appears to be a very old ship that somehow ended up 2 miles inland.

So The Others appear to be just a group of survivors that have been on the island for longer than even the 16 years of Danielle. Yet they are are armed and have a boat with a motor plus they seem to posses knowledge about Walt's abilities.

I was left feeling there wasn't enough resolution to plot threads and yet more questions have arisen in my mind. But I'm gripped enough to make the wait til spring for the start of season 2 seem almost unbearable at the moment. But I'm worried that due to the nature of US television we'll never get that final resolution, it will just be dragged out for years and years and then the series will get cancelled.

The Last 1,000 Pixels on MillionDollarHomepage.com were auctioned off on eBay and sold for the whopping sum of $38,100.

The winning bid was made by Great Deals Depot who seems to be sellers of sex toys and other sexual aids.

I think they have paid way over the odds and unless they come up with some truly eye-catching 20x50 graphic their advert is going to get lost amongst all the others.

I think the whole concept was an amazing idea and those advertisers who bought at the price of a dollar a pixel and have a well chosen graphic will get a decent return on their investment as the website has gotten a lot of press coverage and therefore attracted many visitors. Whether that level of traffic can be sustained who knows but I think that it will pay off for some of the advertisers as well as Alex Tew the owner of the MillionDollarHomepage.

Great piece of marketing again to auction off the last 1000 pixels as that in itself has probably gained a ton of media coverage on top of the previous coverage of the site.

Labels: Sex

Just watched the first episode of Life on Mars the new detective drama series on BBC One (in fact it was on the previous night but I recorded it and watched it tonight). For those who haven't heard of it I shall try and explain (in fact I'll let the BBC explain)

DCI Sam Tyler's (John Simm) world is about to be turned upside down. Moments after his girlfriend and colleague, Maya (Archie Panjabi), is kidnapped by a serial killer, Sam is knocked unconscious by a car.

He wakes up - in 1973.

Sam discovers a strange new world full of cigarette smoking, gum chewing, and unreconstructed men. He's a DI starting his first day in a new precinct and he's got to prove himself to his new DCI, Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister). Gene likes to throw his weight around. He acts first and thinks later. The only person in this alien world who reaches out to Sam is a young WPC, Annie Cartwright (Liz White).

Dazed and confused, Sam finds it difficult to focus on the murder his new colleagues are investigating. Then he discovers a connection between this crime and the serial killer who kidnapped his girlfriend back in 2006. Could solving this case be the key to getting home? Could it be a way to save Maya?

Sounds daft and like it couldn't possibly work but it is a fucking cracking drama and I've developed a massive crush on WPC Annie Cartwright, must be the uniform.

I think this'll be taking the place of Lost, which is due to finish this week on Channel 4, as my must-see piece of television each week.

Just watched Wolf Creek. I think it was more disturbing for the fact that it was a small budget movie the acting seemed naturalistic and un-actorly and so felt more real and non-hollywoody.

I wasn't as impressed as I thought I might be having heard so much good stuff about it but thought there were some really good moments in it.

Got me to wondering though about how different is Mick from the normal member of scoiety. Can he just be written off as a psychopath or would many blokes put into a similar isolated environment and given the opportuntity to get away with horrific crimes do exactly the same?

Plus the other side of the equation having been abducted but then gotten free somehow what would the average person do? Would they flee, save their friends or would they seek out their abductor to get act out some retribution?

In Liz's situation after she's shot Mick in the neck I think I would have made sure he was definitely dead. If the gun was empty now I'd find some tool like a spade and gave the bastards head until it was just a smear of gore on the floor.

Reading the user comments for the movie at IMDB is quite interesting as there seems to be a large split between those that loved it and those that thought it was rubbish.

Also it seems many users are not understanding the concept of being based on true events not actually meaning that it is totally accurately portraying the events that really happened.

I also admit the TRUE STORY part had me intrigued as I'm sure they could not make this stuff up. At the end however, and this is the big spoiler, one guy does escape. However he was incapacitated/unconscious and unseeing of all the other torturing and chasing going on for the whole ENTIRE movie, and the authorities reveal how none of the bodies were ever found, nor was any evidence, or a bad guy. So how the hell is this a true story? This only victim that escaped certainly didn't know what happened, other than his friends did not return. That pretty much leaves the director/writer or whoever to make the whole thing up. Right? Think about it if you've seen the movie.

Okay mate how about you look up the meaning of the phrase artistic licence and then read the following about Ivan Milat, the real Australian serial killer upon which the killer in the movie was loosely based.

Reinvigorate your Monopoly board game by using some of these new rules.

I particularly like the following rule as it gives the railroads some enhanced use.

Traveling Railroads
Rule: Whenever a player lands on a railroad, the player may choose to move his or her token to any other railroad owned by the same player.

It's been years since I played Monopoly but it was a family favourite when my brother and I were kids and we'd play it very often. I might see if I can dig out the old board and play him again using some of these rules when he next visits.

Labels: Games

I've been wasting several hours recently playing Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath on my Xbox. As with most of the previous games in the Oddworld series this one succeeds in combining a quirky sense of humour with great gameplay.

Set in a bizarre version of the Wild West where the citizens are chickens, outlaws are piglike creatures, you play a bounty hunter named Stranger who is a kinda Humanoid-Feline.

Stranger requires moolah to pay for an operation and the only way he's gonna get it is to bring in some bounties by hunting down outlaws using his double-barrelled crossbow which can be loaded up with a variety of different live ammo.

The game is a mix of first-person shooting and third-person melee and platforming and it's great fun especially blowing the crap out of badguys using explosive bats launched from the crossbow or beating them senseless using some brass knuckles.

Labels: Games

P1010145
Originally uploaded by electricinca.

The lights put up by the houses in Longford Road in Melksham are bigger and better than ever this year.

The photo is part of my Flickr set of Christmas Lights 2005.

New Year's Eve 2005: Adam the photographer
Originally uploaded by electricinca.

I think this is the one of my favourites of the photos I took on New Year's Eve. It is my brother Adam taking a photo of me. His photo was awful but mine turned out great I think.

The photo is part of my Flickr set of New Year's Eve 2005.