Blogging in the name of v2.0

new blog

2010-02-11T07:25:00.000-08:00

My new and improved blog is here: http://webviarich.tumblr.com

Art in film

2010-02-10T03:36:00.000-08:00

We're taking the stylistic route of Journalism for the last semester of our degrees, and producing a documentary revolving around 24 hours in Winchester. The film will feature short stories of 'every day' people in Winchester-working in pairs each group follows a random person around (with their permission) for five hours or so and tries to capture what their life is really about. The story behind the story if you like. The technical problems in filming a piece this big is the truth behind it-as it's all based on 24 hours in Winchester we all have to film on the same day, meaning the loan counter staff aren't too keen on us at the moment and will be fresh out of equipment that day. The GVs are going to be flimed in a Powaqqatsi styled way, and the interviews/tailing in a similar fashion to D A Pennebaker's 'Don't look back'.

I watched Powaqqatsi yesterday and had some pretty good ideas and drew up some designs for shot types and shooting locations. As a footnote, Powaqqatsi is actually pretty good, which I suppose I should have expected seeing as it was presented by Francis Ford Coppola.

Omar and I are going to be shooting 4pm til midnight on the actual day so hopefully there'll be either a decent sunset, loads of rain or settled snow.

SEO experiment

2010-02-10T03:31:00.000-08:00

Have started another blog on a different account-the new blog has a very narrow range of content and I'm interested to see how the SEO results will vary. Keywords and meta tags are much easier to assign because the posts are always about the same things. Analytics stats are looking hopeful, but only at day 3 so far. I reckon the new blog will overtake this one in Alexa within a month. Today the second blog has a 'no data' rank on alexa though which I think means it is below 25 million. I'll post any results on this blog and even refrain from linking to it for free link bait.

Named and shamed

2010-01-15T06:30:00.000-08:00

The photographer being pursued by Kate Middleton's lawyers has been revealed as Niraj Tanna(not pictured in this blog-no juxtaposition libel suits please) from Ikon Pictures.

Apparently Tanna spent Christmas following Prince William's girlfriend, and even tried to snap her through the window while she was at dinner with her family on Christmas day.

The pap then distributed the pictures via Rex Features, only to have the shots declined by several papers. This one was a bit predictable really wasn't it? As recently as December the Queen herself warned the media that they were walking a legal tightrope in regards to their relationship with the royals. So not only do they have the right to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights, but now also under the editors' code of practice which protects people seeking "a reasonable expectation of privacy".

152"er

2010-01-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

Panasonic have been saving the ace tucked neatly up their sleeve for a while now, but pulled it out in a blaze of high resolution glory at the consumer electronics show this year.

Their groundbreaking bar-raising TV as pictured above is an astonishing 152 inches and has 4,000 by 2,000 definition. Not only is it stupidly big, it is also one of the first full HD 3D plasma displays to be announced.

Industry insiders are saying that 2010 is going to be the year of the third dimension in entertainment, but the big question on everyones mind is "will this thing fit in my living room?"

Taking the moral high ground?

2010-01-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

Google has drawn a line in the sand and said that it will be shutting down its Chinese sector Google.cn should the Chinese government continue to insist on filtering search results. The announcement comes after Google told the world it had been the victim of an organised sophisticated hack. According to Google the attack was based out of China, and the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were accessed. Here’s what Google's official blog said about the hacks:

“In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. (...) We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. (...) As part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Google initially brought their services to China because it saw a business opportunity, and as a company that aims to collate and organise all of the information in the world it didn’t make much sense to not provide their services to a fifth of the population of Earth. So this move to pull out of China if the Government’s censoring continues seems a little strange. In an idyllic way it’s nice to see such a huge company taking the moral high ground, but I fail to see how A) stopping their services in China will end or lessen the censorship enforced by the Chinese government or B) how anyone will benefit from this move-especially not Google. Essentially, I don’t understand how the hacks/malware attacks are related to Google not being allowed to provide unfiltered search results in China. It seems to me that there are some other reasons behind all of this and that we’re not getting the full picture….

2010-01-13T08:55:00.000-08:00

Peaches Geldof today accepted what I'm sure was a handsome payout from Express Newspapers. The money was paid for damages caused to Bob's daughter by the Daily Star headline "Peaches: spend the night with me for £5k"

The article claimed that the fruity TV presenter had accepted cash for turning up to parties and other social events. If this is true and the 5k figure wasn't just plucked out of the air then I think this is a little harsh. Not only does she get paid to go to parties, but she then gets a lump some plus legal fees for an accurate and fair headline? Careful Peaches, those palms will be getting sore soon.

That said, according to Geldof's solicitor Jonathan Coad, Express Newspapers agreed that the headline implied Ms Geldof "provided services of a personal sexual nature for the payment of a fee". Though they did print the apology and retraction on the graveyard page so their feelings of guilt can't have been too overwhelming.

WINOL round three

2009-11-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

This week WINOL went live at 5 (give or take half an hour due to technical problems) and judging by the Google Analytic stats coupled with student feedback it was a success.

The atmosphere was one of excitement this week rather than the stress and apprehension that could be felt in the previous two dry runs. People mostly made their deadlines, and on the exceptions where they didn't we established a second deadline and that was met on time.

People are settling in to their roles nicely now, everyone knows what's required of them, and it's really starting to feel like a real news room. Though we do seem to be improving drastically each week, we still have a way to go-technical problems need to be ironed out and we need to decide who's best for the news anchor position (Tom seems to be in his element as sports anchor).

How to embed html objects in a Joomla article

2009-11-10T02:42:00.000-08:00

1. Log in to the back-end of Joomla.

2. Click the 'user manager' tab.

3. Find your name from the list, and click it.

4. Click the 'user editor' drop-down menu and select 'editor-no editor'

5. Click save

6. Click 'content' and select 'article manager' from the drop-down menu.

7. Click the name of the article that you want to imbed the object in.

8. Navigate to where the html of the object is (for the purpose of this tutorial I will be embedding a Youtube video)

9.Click the Youtube video you want to insert.

10. Highlight and copy the html embed code.

11. Open the back-end Joomla tab again, and paste the code where you want the item to appear. (note: you can insert line breaks for layout purposes using the tag
)
Click save.

12. Job done.

How to add an image in Joomla

2009-11-07T08:48:00.001-08:00

1. Enter your user and password into the logon field.

2. Click either Add new article, or article manager.

3. Click the name of the article you want to add the picture to.

4. In a new tab or window to to http://www.flickr.com and click 'sign in' in the top-right side of the page.

5. Sign in using the log on field. (Username and password on production desk board).

6. Click 'Your Photostream'.

7. Find the photo you want to upload, and click it.

8. Click 'all sizes'.

9. Click 'Medium'.

10. Highlight the text in the URL box (careful not to copy the html by mistake).

11. Click the image tag in the toolbar.

12. Paste the URL you got from Flickr into the 'image url' field.

13. Click the 'appearance' tab and change the alignment to 'Left'. Then click insert at the bottom of the pop-up.

14. Click 'Save'

15. Job done!

"I'll work until I DIY"

2009-11-06T02:04:00.000-08:00

You know how buses always come in twos? and how....other things often come in twos as well (but what those other things are I can't recall..maybe magpies or something?) Anyway, it seems that my blog seems to be taking on this trend in it's subject matter. The other day I wrote about death twice (the metaphorical death of Myspace and the Facebook 'memorialized' thing). Next up was a bit of rambling about strikes-BA's and the Royal Mail's. And today this blog seems to want geriatric content.

I mentioned earlier about the 83 year old referee and how I thought his dedication was outstanding. That story is now in my eyes boring, and the ref's achievement minuscule. This is down to the truly outstanding achievement of Syd, 5 years away from his hundredth year, still working in B&Q. (the achievement is that he is working at nearly a hundred, not that he is working at B&Q.) There seems to be a link between stories about old people being employed in some sort of position and my mood improving- normally I find the headlines in this particular paper annoying, but I think "I'll work until I DIY" is just great.

The only problem with these light hearted stories is that in terms of blog posts they don't lend themselves to great length..in fact I'd even go so far as to say I find it hard to write more than a paragraph about them. So the fact that I'm doing it anyway is an indicator to how much I like them.

danwoodger.blogspot.com

83 year old ref

2009-11-06T01:28:00.000-08:00

As the nights draw in and the mornings become colder, you need a warm little pick-me-up to get you out of bed. Some people drink coffee, others eat porridge, but this morning I read the news.

The story about the 83 year old Derbyshire referee put a smile on my face almost an hour ago and it hasn't faded since. For those of you who aren't familiar with the story-the BBC interviewed a man who has been refereeing football since 1957.

Peering up towards the heavens through the haze of cataracts and three inch thick glasses Harry (that's the ref's name) looked lost, and like he was being interviewed by Nikolay Valuev.

As he talked of how the pace of football has increased since he started refereeing, a nostalgic look crept over his face. Obviously thinking of better times or the good old days, his expression was not dissimilar to Kate Winslet's old counterpart at the end of Titanic.

The charming old man certainly has gained my respect, and it seemed from the footage on the site that he wasn't having any problems dealing with the players. I wonder how Wayne Rooney would react to being sent off by an 83 year old man though....

danwoodger.blogspot.com

BA strike...

2009-11-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

Some may feel that it may be unnecessary or downright boring to blog about strikes more than once a week. But I see myself as a curator to the torch of truth and as such I like my blog to reflect what I feel is wrong today. One of these things is BA staff striking over Christmas. The 'fuck everyone else' attitude is in my opinion a bit of a slap in the face. Forget the little old lady who can't fly somewhere to see some family member (and who for some reason is legally obliged to fly solely with BA). Yet again, this strike will hurt customers as much as it will hurt management. If anything, it gives the management a media leg to stand on-they can try to demonise the strikers and their inconsiderate behaviour.

I wholeheartedly back striking action, but think that maybe there could be a better time to do it.

I think that BA are going to ruin some peoples Christmases, and I'm not just trying to be controversial, honest.

danwoodger.blogspot.com

How to change a front-page video

2009-11-03T05:54:00.000-08:00

1. Enter your username and password in the log on field

2. Click on the "Front page manager" tab.

3. Note: Top:Video box only must always be at the top of this list.
Note no. 2: when accessing any article you must click save when you are finished, or that article will be locked to everyone.
Click on the link "Top:Video box only"

4.Go to the video you want to embed in Youtube and copy the url from the box on the right of the page.

5. Go back to the Joomla back end site and click the video tab in the toolbar.

6. Paste the URL into the file/URL field in the pop-up window and click OK.

7. Click save.

8. Job done.

Fry twitter row pointless and boring

2009-11-03T03:17:00.000-08:00

Stephen Fry has been all over the news this week because of his actions on the micro-blogging site Twitter.

Apparently someone called Fry 'a bit....boring' and due to this comment he decided to leave the social networking site. Now, I won't even begin to hint at how I think this is a little bit of an over-reaction, because Stephen Fry is of course a Manic Depressive. Instead I will concentrate on the level of coverage this 'story' gained in the media.

Don't get me wrong, this is something which could be considered moderately interesting if someone mentioned it in passing, but I'm fairly sure there is no larger debate around the situation, and the conversation would last all of 15 seconds.

The BBC gave the story which centered around Fry and the offending party's reconciliation just shy of 500 words. This is a higher designated word count than the clearing of the Lisbon Treaty in Czech courts today, which seems a little strange.

This is of course all becoming more and more hypocritical as my wordcount ascends whilst I talk about how I feel the BBC has covered a story not worth as much coverage as it's been given, instead of the Czech courts announcing the Lisbon Treaty is in line with their constitution, for example.

danwoodger.blogspot.com

How to post an article using Joomla

2009-11-02T15:39:00.000-08:00

1. Log in by typing your Joomla username and password into the circled field.

2. Click the circled link which reads "submit an article"

3. Give your article a brief tag and type this in the Title field. Then copy and paste your article into the main field, (or type it straight in)

4. Scroll down the page until you see the options above. Make sure "unpublished" is checked and that it isn't set to publish to front page. Also make sure you set the category to your team. ie. features, sport or news.

5. Scroll back up to the top of the page and click "save"

6. Job done

A concerning story

2009-11-01T04:35:00.000-08:00

A 29 year old man has been sentenced to prison this week after admitting to raping a 12 year old girl. I know a little about media law, but criminal law is a different world. I'm sure the process of prosecuting a sex offender is complicated, and that there are many things to consider. One thing that does strike me as a little odd though is the length of this particular sexual predator's sentence-3 years. So if he joins the Sex Offenders Treatment Program (SOTD) chances are he'll be out in 24 months. After spending a weekend talking to Gerry Conlan of the falsely accused Guildford four this story leaves a bit of a sour taste in mouth and a slowly emptying space where my faith in our legal system should be.

Chubb

2009-10-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

As Bob Dylan once said (or sang, rather-but I'm sure he said it as well): the times they are a-changin'.

It is a truly said day in the British lock trade industry, and I feel that as such it is a sign of the times we live in. Some of you may have already heard, but in case you haven't, here we are: it will soon be impossible to buy a Chubb padlock on British high streets.

That's right, as published in a newspaper yesterday, the iconic anti-burglar locks that were originally made in Winchester and later in Wolverhampton will now be used exclusively in Prisons.

It is not yet clear whether or not there will be a rise in crime resulting from people who simply can't live without the household name Chubb.

Note about upcoming posts

2009-10-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

Some of the following posts are being made as part of a project between myself and an illustration student from Brighton University. No copyright laws are being broken, and the illustrations are the artist's interpretation of the news stories about which the blogs are being written.

The death of Myspace?

2009-10-27T04:37:00.000-07:00

Another cheery post revolving around death then as it's been revealed that Facebook are in talks with Murdoch's Myspace website about absorbing their content. Should Myspace be absorbed into the global social network Facebook, then this day will surely be marked as that of Myspace's demise.

The metaphorical skin of Myspace's teeth does seem to be holding if only for a short while longer though, as last-ditch plans to turn it's focus and content entirely on music continue.

Facebook users out number Myspace users threefold, and the future does look bleak indeed for those die-hard 'emo' Myspace users. Their accounts would eventually be redundant, and Facebook account details will be used to log on to the music-focused website.

This corporate take-down has been a long and drawn out struggle-Myspace has long been in a stranglehold by big daddy Facebook for months. It was always simply a matter of time before Facebook killed Myspace however. (or absorbed it's content) Truly a gritty fight to the end, the underdog Myspace which once was king now looks like it is dead in the water. This nasty affair will be made to seem like a picnic party compared to what's going to happen to Facebook when Google Wave goes public though, believe me.

Rest in FB

2009-10-27T02:51:00.000-07:00

Mark Zuckerberg and co. have announced that the profiles of dead people can now be 'memorialized' on the moderately popular website Facebook.

The touching sentiment of being 'memorialized' forever in your favourite social networking site is truly sickening. Why would anyone want to be left imprisoned within the confines of Facebook's newsfeed after death. It would be like Limbo only worse, with constant invitations to use pointless time-wasting applications or rate and compare people in a wholly shallow and materialistic way.

And don't worry, because no-one will ever be able to 'memorialize' someone who isn't actually dead-Zuckerberg and the team are just one step ahead of those pesky internet pranksters. Stringent security has been laid out around the process of declaring someone dead on facebook. Users wanting to 'memorialize' a dead loved ones page have to email facebook with the deceased's (ex)email address along with a news story about their death (or-not and-or an obituary entry) I'm sure no one will ever manage to beat that system.

I'd just like to put it out there now just in case I do die anytime soon...I do not do not want to have my profile 'memorialized' on Facebook. If anything, that would just be an excuse for people not to visit your place of rest.

"such a tragedy....did you go to the funeral?"
"Nah, poked his memorial page though"

Wii fit given NHS change for life logo

2009-10-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

The new Wii-fit plus will proudly and shamelessly be branded with the NHS's Change For Life logo-the one that looks like the little morph guys from art attack a couple of years back.

I know as a nation we are overweight- I read somewhere that the fattest man in the world lives in Ipswich or something. But government backing of a specific section of the gaming industry is in my opinion totally unfair. People know that the Wii fit is an active game and that it can encourage weight loss, and I don't think the NHS logo will change whether or not someone will buy it.

I think that in actual fact this is less about the NHS attaching their name to the product as an attempt to boost Nintendo sales (would this correlate vaguely with a downturn in obesity? unlikely) and more about the NHS trying to get a bit of a re-branding by taking a ride on the Nintendo's young person's train.

Evolution of the internet

2009-10-18T05:28:00.000-07:00

The protocol TCP was first accepted as a global standard on the first of January 1983, meaning that the Internet is 26 years and 291 days old. Still in the prime of it's life and really only just showing us what it can do, the internet still has some way to go. With internet usage changing as regularly as the technology providing access to the internet, it's hard to imagine where the hot-spots on the internet will be next. Not so long ago many people couldn't live without myspace and the relentless bulletin posting and page view counting, and then everyone's parents and aunts found a use for the internet...Friends reunited! Today it's all about Facebook poking, twitting and Googling for answers. So what's next for the internet, where is it heading?

Comparisons have been made between the developing net and a baby's brain- some say that they develop in almost identical ways. So is the net the next stage of evolution then? The sum collective of our knowledge as a species? Of course not, it is simply a large collection of text and hyperlinks with a few pictures and videos thrown in for good measure-there's no actual thought process going on here-at least not yet. The next stage of the world-wide-web is web 3.0, and involved in this stage is semantic web. The concept of semantic web has been developed by the inventor of the internet Tim Berners-Lee. In brief, semantic web is an internet which can be understood by computers as well as humans. Presently the internet is a group of pages designed to be read by humans, meaning that search processes can be drawn out, and often you end up looking at pages completely irrelevant to what you were looking for. The following is a quote from Tim Berners-Lee in 1999, describing the concept.

"I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The intelligent agents people have touted for ages will finally materialize."

Recently though there have been hints that we are getting very close to semantic web. Google's highly anticipated take on social networking 'Google Wave' is in beta testing now, and should go live early on in 2010. Wave features a content-based spell checker-one which knows in which circumstances to use there/their/they're, and that also knows the sentence 'I'm going to go on the rollercoaster at the fair' needs amending.

The velocity of technological advances is increasing, and it seems a little worrying that computers are now being taught grammatical rules and how to understand the content of the internet.

Satellites

2009-10-13T07:23:00.000-07:00

Satellites usually orbit at around 22,000 miles from the surface of the Earth. At this height they appear at a fixed point, and so coverage is consistent meaning that switching between satellites isn't needed.

This optimal placement for a satellite is referred to as the 'Geostationary orbit' , and it is getting rather crowded. There are currently more than 200 satellites in a Geostationary orbit which don't work-these are called 'dead' satellites- and this figure is likely to reach the one thousand mark in around ten years.

The most obvious solution to this problem is to start building satellites which can re-fueled so that new ones aren't needed (if you disregard technological developments and potential improvements and upgrades). In fact in 2007 the US managed to refuel one of their satellites which was designed for that purpose.

German scientists are on the brink of going one step further however, and are currently developing robots capable of withstanding temperatures as low as -170C (-274F) and high as 200C (392F).

These robots can be used to refuel satellites, or, in typical human-race signature fashion, boot them out past the Geostationary orbit and off into the vastness of space for someone else to deal with.

Reckoning day

2009-10-13T04:42:00.001-07:00

Directed, produced and edited by Julian Gilbey, Reckoning Day was released on the 11th of September this year.

Fans of British gangland cinema will remember Rise of the Foot soldier, also directed by Gilbey-and if you liked that then let me assure you.....you won't like this.

With gritty scenes of relentless violence the film is a slap in the face for those not desensitized to needless gore-within the first few minutes of the film several people are shot in the face, some at point blank range. I am not particularly affected by violence, but I do find this level of violence accompanied with the cheesy one liners more irritating than shocking in the way I'm sure it was meant to be.

The opening scene shows scrolling blood coloured text over a gritty black and white backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. The brief textual introduction sets the feature up to be a cat-and-mouse type thriller and while there are chase-like themes underlying this film, these seem not to be between the characters and rather between the viewer and the storyline which is tediously hard to keep up with.

The cinematography throughout the film is nothing short of awful, and it seems as though the camera crew had only just discovered the zoom upon shooting, and decided to overuse it completely. Dizzying pans coupled with confusing angles disregarding the 180 degree rule leave you feeling entirely disorientated during the shootout scenes (which embody probably around 80% of the film).

The lead protagonist Echo Delta (or Ed as the script writers kindly shortened it to for those of us who had a little too-much on to remember a name over one syllable) is a greasy American surveillance operator who is frankly annoying. This badly acted role is the acting debut of Roman Karpynec and hopefully it will also be his last.

The script is shoddy and not thought out at all-one minute Echo Delta knows nothing of the drug 'Unseen Force' or it's effects, and literally 5-10 seconds later in the same conversation he is lecturing another character on the socioeconomic effects of the drug in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The overall quality of the script writing is summarised accurately by the bra-less nipple showing woman in the film who says to the villain "That sounds so rehearsed Charlie" when he says "never sell what you can't take back" after killing about 200 people for two syringes of the super drug.

A film using grainy picture quality to make it gritty is fine, but this film is shot in near static like conditions, and any hope that you will only have to endure this eye-straining experience fades with the opening scene as the strap line informs that this is no longer a flashback.

The flimsy back story which attempts to carry the violence vaguely mentions in passing something about a fictional drug with is X times strong than PCP or something. The writers were modest enough to name this drug after their production company 'Unseen force'-something which with any luck this film will remain.

Watch or Not? : Not

Another great move from NASA

2009-10-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

The discovery of ice beneath the surface of the moon would be an amazing discovery. Not only because it means that a lunar base could be achieved far sooner at a much lower cost (no need to send constant shuttles up full of water) but also in terms of looking at the history of the moon-was it really formed after Earth collided with a Mars-sized object? And what causes the regular moon-quakes?

Water on the Moon would ultimately mean a near-unlimited supply of rocket fuel for the lunar base as well. (Rockets are Hydrogen powered, and the H from H2O can be separated off from the O also conveniently supplying Oxygen for the base) It could be turned into a petrol station from which spacecraft could shoot off in different directions building other space-stations which would act as other refueling stations.

So obviously the discovery of moon ice is important, but surely there has to be a better way about it than slamming two space shuttles worth around £49,000,000 into it at twice the speed of a bullet. I mean, I'm not an astronomer, so please if you're reading this and you know more about it than me, or even if you could tell me why we couldn't simply land something there and maybe send a drill probe down below the surface, then please please comment this and tell me. (Even if they have no way of getting the technology back from the moon, at least without the impact it would be salvageable once we get back there.)

According to NASA, the second shuttle was to examine the plume of dust created by the impact of the first one. Disappointingly however, there was in fact no dust plume whatsoever in the images sent back from the second shuttle. So was it a failure? Apparently not. NASA say that the fresh data they could get from the remains of the shuttles would be far better than anything that could have been sent back electronically. So all they have to do is nuke the far side of the moon hard enough to send the charred remains sitting on the near side of the moon hurtling back towards us. Gun-ho America!!

As an afterthought, I though it would be interesting (and maybe relevant) to add that our good old friend Obama has ordered a massive review of all NASA equipment and missions, which will undoubtedly delay any upcoming plans for the space agency. At least the new president acknowledges NASA exists..I heard that a certain cowboy ex-president didn't have a scientific adviser for an entire term.

New ring detected around Saturn

2009-10-07T07:33:00.001-07:00

Scientists have today announced that they have discovered a massive ring around Saturn. It's thought that the ring is made up of dust and debris from a moon called Iapetus, which orbits 3,500,000 km from Saturn. Iapetus' two-tone shading has been a mystery until now, with light impacts seemingly explaining both the origin of the ring and the colour of the moon.

The ring itself is big enough to fit the Earth inside it 1,000,000,000 (one billion) times, and has been forming over millions of years.

Such a discovery is heartening to see- we are still learning about our own solar system, despite being able to see colossal events occurring trillions of miles away. As a species we are creating knowledge from the matter around us and generating increasingly more accurate models of the way the Universe works. Certainly more focus needs to be put on Science and astronomy, and less on becoming more of a green planet and cutting carbon emissions.

In fact, cutting Carbon emissions is an entirely pointless waste of time. If global warming projections are accurate then it was already too late to save the planet by cutting emissions in the 70s and 80s, let alone three or four decades after that. Instead of investing millions of pounds into ridiculous propaganda like 'Earth day' and 'the great switch off' maybe some more money should be poured into fringe research into cooling the core of the Earth, deflecting the Sun's heat through mirrors in space or adapting to live at warmer temperatures. These sound like ideas from the sci-fi world but realistically it's our only option. Or possibly dark matter generated from the LHC when (if) it gets up and running again.

Free money!

2009-10-06T05:43:00.000-07:00

A list of email addresses with corresponding passwords has been posted on the blogging website Neowin.

The list is part of a phishing scheme, an internet-based system which leads victims to copy-cat sites in order to obtain their passwords for internet bank-accounts and email accounts. As well as the obvious danger in an internet hacker accessing your bank account remotely there are other more wide-spread threats which aren't as easily traceable.

Many of the email addresses published on the blog site are old, inactive web mail accounts, meaning that the owner wouldn't necessarily notice anything was wrong or even be aware of the forced password change Google and Hotmail are enforcing onto the affected accounts. This means that the hackers will have access to the email account's settings and preferences as well as all the information given by the original user when he or she signed up. A person who has not made a career on identity theft, hacking and cracking probably couldn't do much with a person's full name, address and phone number, but the people who created the phishing sites will be able to sell those sensitive details on to other internet criminals who can potentially make thousands out of them.

The process of creating an identity is slow and drawn-out, but with the victim totally unaware that anyone has their details the identity theft would be in no rush. Signing up for library cards, video rental cards, buying bus-passes and signing up for loyalty cards are included in the number of ways one could obtain photo ID for the newly created identity. Once one has accumulated enough evidence to show that this identity really is you, then a cheque cashing 'why wait till payday?' sort of shop can be hit with blank cheques made out to the new identity. Loans can be taken out, pay as you go phones bought and registered to the identity and receipts written out in the new name.

The hazards of cruising the internal network are well and truly out there-you have been warned.

But how can you protect yourself from these dangers? Fill in your name, email-address, home address, land line and mobile telephone number here to be receive updates on the websites which have been compromised by hackers.

Getting more hits with less effort

2009-10-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

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Conflict in facts

2009-10-05T04:34:00.000-07:00

The Sun today printed a story on Cameron's response to being called a toff. In the last few paragraphs of said story Graeme Wilson wrote of David's Wife's outfit "Mrs Cameron showed she can shop on a less-than-toff budget, sporting £65 shoes from Zara".
This sort of story doesn't interest me in the slightest, and I would far rather read the sort of stories in the latter sections of the Sun about frogs eating fairy lights. However, the Daily Mail today also deemed Sam Cameron's shoes as newsworthy, but claimed that the shoes cost only £35. I'm sure I'm being pedantic but someone has made a serious mistake here. The reputation of these papers really will suffer if this sort of sloppy mistake is repeated.