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A new initiative to fight spam was launched a while ago by the South Africa Chapter of the Internet Society. The ISOC is offering a reward for the successful conviction of any spammer. Up for grabs is R30,000 for a conviction in the High Court if you want to aim for the big loot, or R7,500 for an admission of guilt fine.

The qualifications to attain the much valued cash are rather strict: you need to be a member of the South African ISOC, report the incidence to a police officer, continue following up and ensure a conviction. In a country where it is difficult to report a murder and ensure that a case is opened, I consider the ISOC’s strategy a bit of a pipe dream. Nonetheless, in the spirit of being the ever-optimistic South African I recommend we all try to at least hunt down those leads we are able to.

So, Bundus Sanschagrin with E-mail address Bundus648@fundaver.com, your days are numbered. Sending me junk containing idiotic text (to wit: Low kanye wests golddigger quotsmooth holmes, quotcandy! Ar inspired sacred sanskrit word! Xerces ok xercesjar added classpath tomcatsh besides mean crimsonjar. Thoughts, having lipsyncing make familia?) is sure to make me report you… I just wouldn’t even know where to begin: Yes officer, this is spam. No, I have no clue who Bundus Sanschagrin is. Yes, I can spell that name. Address? What address? No I’ve never seen or met him or her. Spam. E-mail. It’s E-mail I don’t want. Don’t worry officer, I’ll just delete it from my inbox…

I had the dubious honour of driving a Toyota Corolla Verso yesterday. Not a bad car at all, but certainly no looker.

What caught my attention was the rather strange key the Avis lady handed me, after indicating that she had upgraded my vehicle. Goodness knows what carriage I’d have had to trundle around Cape Town in if I’d not been upgraded. A scary thought indeed.

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Billed as the biggest ever Lego set, Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon from Star Wars fame is 84cm long, 56cm wide and 21cm tall. Almost as big as Han Solo himself…

No spaceship would be complete without a crew. Dutifully, the Danes have included Han Solo, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia mini-figures. All are to scale and fit inside the Falcon. That is, the Falcon is to mini-fig scale. But you know what I mean.

After having completed a couple of Kessel Runs, the 5000 blocks making up this kit should provide sufficient inspiration for you to build something else. Like an AT-AT, for example.

Sony X-Box

Originally uploaded by MHertenberger.

Extreme Hotel, Cape Town. A Sony X-Box. That’s maybe a tad too extreme…

Yankees don’t mind starting a war or intimidating anyone not entirely aligned with their way of thinking. On TV, their nation’s representatives are generally made out to be righteous, heroic, patriotic and super tough. One prime example is Jack Bauer of 24 fame.

No task is too big or too small, and Bauer has saved the nation and its people so many times it’s scary. To extract information, special agent Bauer employs less conventional methods. A bit of torture is never amiss to extract the desired result, it seems. But in real life, even the US military is starting to worry about the effects such televised images have on its enemies.

General Patrick Finnegan of the West Point Military Academy is concerned that his troops may be tortured in similar ways Bauer uses on 24. He’s requested the storylines be changed on future episodes of 24 and that torture scenes be done away with.

Maybe a withdrawal and safe return of troops from areas they shouldn’t be in would be a far better solution…

via Spiegel Online

In line with decisions made by many other governments around the world, the South African government has reiterated its support for the FOSS movement and stated that government would migrate its current software to free and open source software.

Government is unable to provide a time frame for the move to Linux, but the main thrust behind this initiative is the saving they hope to achieve on support and implementation costs. Whatever your point of view, there’s no denying that the open source software movement is gaining momentum, albeit slowly. With each government’s decision, the big player is missing out on further opportunities and revenue.

What ZA really needs is a fast track to providing computers with Internet access to schools throughout the country. It’s the only way to make pupils ready for what they’ll be facing once they leave school and enter the real world. I’m confident the penguin can help achieve this aim.

via Tectonic

Cup of copy?

Originally uploaded by MHertenberger.

Only at Burchmore’s Internet café: a complimentary cup of copy…

Some guys get to do a lot of fun stuff. Like playing with Lego a lot. And imitating art.

Here’s the famous Escher work

and the work that went into it.

So far, you’d ideally own a Mac and have the excellent Comic Life installed or laboriously Photoshop your images to add speech bubbles and other comic artifacts. That’s until Comeeko showed up. An excellent Web 2.0-like application that allows you to utilize your photographs in a totally different fashion. Create your own storylines by adding speech bubbles and control the layout as you see fit.

Use of the site requires a brief registration process, then you’re ready to select a layout and upload one or more photographs. A huge number of options is available, including layout, fonts and extra graphics to add to your artwork. Your finished product may be saved on the site and shared with others.

This is a really great application and is very polished. Give it a try!

William Gibson is my all time favourite author. If you haven’t read Neuromancer, you’ve missed out on a very influential book. Then again, science fiction may not be your cup of tea…

With the Sprawl saga completed, Gibson continued on to the Bridge trilogy. These stories were based very much on future events and defined many of the terms and concepts we now take for granted, or are hoping are just around the corner. Implantable memory units, virtual environments and supercomputers all mixed together with Japanese culture and loads of travel.
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