Unfortunately, my background does not permit me a full move to Mac OS X, because I have written several applications for Windows, and I must support SQL Server databases for several customers.

So … laziness dictated (it’s a known fact that all software developers are lazy, otherwise they wouldn’t spend so much time trying to do so much with so little code) that instead of installing a brand new virtual machine running Windows XP Professional, I would simply reuse the one from my Windows 7 install (Virtual XP), and do an in-place upgrade using my Action Pack licence to get around the licencing issues.

In other words, I wouldn’t have to reinstall SQL Server and Visual Studio, and copy over all my files and code.

It worked beautifully. Except, for some reason, my virtual machine seemed to be shutting itself down every night around the same time. At first I thought it might be the Windows Activation thing getting confused, because I was doing something unusual.

But, after rerunning the in-place upgrade with an XP SP3-streamed install last night, and reactivating my OS, the machine shut down all by itself tonight at 11:17pm. I know, because last night I checked when it happened, and tonight I made a special note to see if it happened again at the same time.

Sure as bears in woods and Catholic Popes, it was a definite recurring problem. Was the OS infected? I checked. Was the activation a problem? I couldn’t think why it would be, and I reactivated to make sure.

So I went onto Google, my saviour. I call it that because Google has saved my job many times. Tonight, I searched for “XP shutting down same time every day”. The first few pages were garbage, but then … oh yes, then …

“Check if you have any scheduled tasks that might be shutting down your computer” in some or other forum.

*Click* goes the brain, and let me explain why.

I wrote a little application called ShutOff 2000. For the past few years, I’ve been working here and there on its replacement, ShutOff 2010. One of the new features of ShutOff 2010 is its integration into the Windows Task Scheduler for all versions of Windows, from lowly XP up to 2008 R2.

And because I do my best work at night, I had tested it to shut down every night at 11:17pm, just to see if it was saving the scheduled task correctly.

And then I forgot about it.

Until tonight.

Yes, you may laugh at me.

Canada’s Worst Driver

Canada’s Worst Handyman

Disclaimers before shows, and after adverts

The adverts.

I’ve released a third beta for ShutOff 2010, and new versions of the Password Generator 2010, Simple Lotto Number Generator 2010, and the ShutOff 20×0 registry cleaner.

Simple HexConverter 2010 is also almost ready for release.

Yes, I sold out with the names of those products. I decided to plug in “2010″ and “Simple” in as many places as possible. No, I will not apologise.

You can find these new products at http://itsol.co.za/.

What else? Ah yes, a complete stranger told me of changes to the WordPress table structure which necessitated changes to the SimplePHPBlogToWordPressConverter (another name I shall not apologise for, despite it being a bugger to type). Since my involvement in said project is now over, I made him a project lead and he committed some code changes. Thanks, Hans! (I think his name is Hans.)

Not much else. Promise!

So for the record, our big piece of news is that we’re part owners of the clinic. Other than that, not much else!

So, Canada. Why Lloydminster of all places? What about Vancouver? Toronto? Ottawa? Well that’s an easy one: Lloydminster needs doctors, and I’m married to one. In fact, I’m married to one of the best doctors I know, and I’ve seen my fair share.

We left Johannesburg on the day after Julius Caesar was assassinated, and the day before St Patrick’s Day. Off to Zurich on Swiss International Air Lines, with a seven hour layover before flying to Toronto for a three day holiday.

Except our Toronto flight was cancelled.

So what do you do? All flights out of Europe were full. If we wanted to get the next one, we’d sleep in Zurich’s airport because we didn’t have Schengen visas. We’d also miss an entire day of our Toronto trip and lose bookings on various excursions, which cost a fair amount of money.

Fortunately we had decided (well, I was dragged along) to get US visas a week before we left. That was fortuitous because we were able to get Swiss to fly us to Toronto via Boston in the US. Massachusetts, thank you very much.

We didn’t see much of Boston: some blurry photos in the skywalk, and a four hour sleep in the airport’s Hilton Hotel.

We got to Toronto 14 hours later than planned, but sufficiently rested (well, barely) to make our bookings, which included a very pleasant surprise in the form of “Young Frankenstein, the Musical”.

Toronto is a distant but good memory already, except for the tooth ache. Ah yes, I managed to bring over an abscess with me. $83 to see a dentist, and $36 for the antibiotics and painkillers, were almost as painful as the toothache itself.

The city seems very clean. The Canadians were super friendly (and mostly still are – you get the feeling that the writers on “How I Met Your Mother” are just exaggerating real people).

The food is expensive, though. $10 – $15 per person per meal, and up to $50 or more eating out. Unless you like beef. Beef is cheap. Luckily I like beef. On the other hand, there’s cholesterol. So, ja. The portions are huge too. I’ve left a few plates and glasses with food and drink respectively.

Best burger ever: Hard Rock Café in Toronto. Seriously.

Niagara Falls was really awesome, though a little chilly. This winter thing tends to run a month later than you’d expect.

After Toronto was Saskatoon, or “Toon Town”. It is the biggest city in Saskatchewan, with over 200 000 people. Regina (rhymes with, well, yes … moving swiftly along) is the capital, with fewer than 200 000 people. Huge, thriving, mega cities, as you can imagine.

We were taken on a tour of the city, and half an hour later, we ate food at one of the finer establishments. Then we were taken to shops. Lots of shops. Lots and lots of shops.

Registration at the College of Physicians and Surgeons was quick, at 2 hours and 15 minutes, and then a Lloydminster doctor’s husband (Tommy) came to fetch us. We joked and said to bring a big car because we have lots of luggage. He arrived in a Toyota Tundra. Not the small one either.

The drive to Lloyd, as the locals call it, took around three hours, but fortunately it went quickly because Tommy is a good conversationalist and was able to tell us a lot about the city, the clinic, and other things like how to buy a car.

We got to Lloydminster and went to visit people at the clinic, and then off to our new house. It is a two bed apartment on the ground floor, with a thermostat and lots of storage space. It was missing window treatments when we arrived, like curtains and / or blinds, so we hung a sheet for the first night!

It snowed on Tuesday and Wednesday. 10 – 12cm in fact. I think they arranged it just for us.

Today we bought a new car: a Nissan Rogue SL something or other. It’s shiny and has a sunroof, which is really important for these weather conditions . Marinus loves it and I really like it too. We looked at a black Ford and a red Toyota, but the Nissan stole our hearts. My Mandela-emblazoned card helped pay the deposit.

I think it’s bed time. But that should get you into the picture for now.

ShutOff 2000’s code will also become open source when I release ShutOff 2010 (that’s a long story – don’t ask).

NCANE.COM’s code-base will be available on Google Code. I’ll update the blog with its exact location when I’ve created the project.

In case anyone is interested, I’m using the MIT licence. No GPL for me, thank you very much.

UPDATE: The project is now at Google Code. You can access it from: https://code.google.com/p/ncane-com-short-url-generator/

1. One human cell contains 75MB genetic information.
2. One sperm contains a half of that; that is 37.5MB.
3. One ml of semen contains 100 million sperm.
4. In average, ejaculation lasts for 5 sec and contains 2.25 ml semen.
5. This means that the throughput of a man’s member is equal to (37.5MB x 100,000,000 x 2.25)/5 = 1 687 500 000 000 000 byte/second = 1,6875 Terabyte/sec

This means that the female egg cell withstands this DDoS attack at 1,5 terabyte per second, and only lets through one(!) data package, thereby being the best freaking hardware firewall in the world!

The downside of it is that this only small data package that it lets through, hangs the system for the whole of 9 months!

On the weekend, a 24-year-old idiot paramedic called Jonathan Erasmus, climbed over a safety rail to take a photograph, after which he fell several hundred metres to his death.

Dumbass Tomcruise.

Honda SA has announced today a safety recall of the previous generation Jazz to inspect and modify driver door power-window switches that may, in some cases, short circuit as a result of water intrusion into the housing.

(Source: Honda website.)

Then there’s the wonderful story of how we spent R50 million (almost $7 million) on the Miss World pageant. I don’t even care know who won.

In other news, Dr Blade Nzimande, Minister of Higher Education and Training, and secretary general of the South African Communist Party, was on the radio this week preaching about socialism, including talk of nationalising mines, the Reserve Bank, private health, and so on.

I’m all for socialism when enough people are paying tax, but we only have 5 million tax payers. There are around 50 million people in the country. Bankrupt again.

Coincidentally, Blade Nzimande was one of the new Zuma crowd of politicians who took advantage of an Apartheid-era parliamentary guideline and bought himself a R1.1m BMW 750i. Nice car for a self-proclaimed communist, wouldn’t you say? Morally bankrupt, I’d call it.

—

* (Apparently®, FIFA® is® so® full® of® shit®, you® can’t® even® mention® them®, or® refer® to® the® world® cup®, without® permission®. So® I’ve® put® registered® trademark® symbols® everywhere® just® to® make® sure® I’m® not® sued®.)®

—

I read that Terry Pratchett is a Humanist. I didn’t quite know what this meant, but it appears at first look to cover my belief system as well, so if I were forced to pick a label, I suppose I’d pick this one. I’m not religious about it, if you’ll pardon the pun.

They have a “statement of faith” which reads as follows (my own emphasis added):

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural  views of reality.

—

On Monday I’m starting on a new project at work, which has a zero margin for error. I’m even getting my own Business Analyst to help me out. We have to extract data from old storage and re-inject it into new storage, so that the old storage can be freed up. Unfortunately, if we miss some data, there’s no back-out / rollback plan. There’s just too much data and not enough time.

—

I butted heads yesterday with one of South Africa’s Spammer Hall of Shame, namely Jaco Derksen. I managed to find out that he uses email addresses supplied by fxstyle.net. They claim to have over 300 million email addresses via opt-in services all over the world. I’m trying to follow up with them, but I’m keeping the Internet Service Providers Association of South Africa up to date.

—

Yesterday morning I drove to Pretoria in a follow-up trip to last week. First off, I dropped off documents at the Canadian High Commission (hopefully for the last time before we take our passports through), and then I went to the South African Police Services records division to get our Police Clearance Certificates renewed.

Traffic is getting worse. People do not understand what the speed limits are for, and I would have been able to issue several hundred fines in the hour and a half I was on the road, had I been a traffic policeman.

Parking was good, the station was clean (if a little dingy) and everyone was friendly. Even the drunk criminal suspect who was shuffled past me during the hand-cleaning process smiled and waved, but that was possibly coincidental.

Thanks for making an unpleasant task pleasant.

Stage 4: The medical examination

After spending half of our morning in Johannesburg, and the other half in Pretoria, with me driving through a construction site known as the N1 / M1 freeway, dodging idiot drivers, it was time for M to drive to Rosebank for our medical exam.

We got to the doctor’s office for our appointment, at 2:30pm. There were more forms to fill in, including a consent form to test for HIV. This is standard practice, and I’ve signed many of these before. See, in SA, we have a reasonably high infection rate, of about one in four people. It’s fine to have it, but Canada (nor the USA, nor UK) will not let you live there if you’ve got it.

But because of the stigma around it, you need to give permission to the doctor to inform insurance or immigration departments that you’ve got it, and if you don’t sign, you won’t be allowed in.

Neither of us has HIV, but the point is that if you want a better life in another country, your chances are severely limited.

Forms were completed, the doctor called us in, and we had a long chat. This guy is on a very short list of two doctors in Johannesburg that sign off medical exams for potential emigrants. That sort of job would drive me mad, but anyway. He was very chatty, and I think enjoyed the fact that one of his patients was a doctor too.

There was the obligatory poking and prodding (and one particular moment that shamed me), and it was over, bar the drawing of blood. I didn’t slap the nurse this time, because a) she poked my slapping arm, and b) was actually quite gentle.

Then it was over. Time to drive home and have a few minutes before rushing off to my brother’s house for a family do at 6:30pm.

We only had road one incident, and this was on the way back home. The road we were travelling on has several roads that cross it, but each of those roads have stop streets. You know, stop streets, those intersections where you stop, wait for traffic to pass, and then go?

Not if you’re a taxi driver. If you drive a minibus taxi in South Africa, the rules do not apply. You can kill schoolgirls, you can drive in the emergency lane, you can skip red lights, you can drive the wrong way down a street to avoid having to sit in traffic, and so on. Unfortunately, these bad habits have spread to other drivers. It’s chaos.

As we were driving down the road, moving fairly slowly because it was rush hour, a taxi, who was crossing over the road without waiting, tried to drive across the road in front of us. So we cut him off, and he had the nerve to shout, “Jou ma se poes.” I’m not going to translate it, because it’s dirty. The comment, not … actually, never mind …

Stage 5: None of your business

There is no Part 5 for the blog, because family time is private. We only got home at 11pm though, so it wasn’t too shabby.

Stage 3: Where the f**k are our medical forms?

The Canadian High Commission is in Pretoria, along with most of the other high commissions and embassies. This is because Pretoria is the state capital of South Africa.

Pretoria also happens to be on the other end of the largest construction site in South Africa: the M1 / N1 freeway. The only thing “free” about it is that the tollgates haven’t been installed. Yet. The posted speed limit due to construction is 80km/h. We’ll come back to that later.

Someone at the SA National Road Agency Limited decided to upgrade the road infrastructure. This is due for completion in the future. No one knows when. It won’t be before the 2010 Fifa World Cup in June.

At the same time, there is massive construction going on for the rapid rail Gautrain, which is linking Johannesburg to Pretoria, as well as Sandton and the international airport. I think they call it O R Tambo International Airport at the moment, but it has been called Jan Smuts International Airport and Johannesburg International Airport as well.

So a bit of background: M went to Pretoria to apply for our visas, on 3 December 2009. It takes around four working days for them to open a file and send us the medical forms, so that we can be poked and prodded by a doctor.

Some time in early January, we emailed the High Commission, asking where our forms were, and what our file number was, because we’d heard nothing. Eventually we received an email last week, giving us a file number, and asking whether we’d like to collect the forms, or have them mailed by insured post, through the South African post office. For whatever reason (blind hope?), we elected to have them mailed. After all, that should take four to five days, and we had seven working days before our appointment. Which was yesterday at 3pm.

On Friday, M went to the post office to ask if our forms had arrived. They refused to look in their book because he didn’t have the tracking number (that useful piece of information was not furnished by the High Commission). He went again on Monday, and again they refused to check because he didn’t have a tracking number.

So we decided to go to Pretoria and ask the High Commission to either issue us with new forms, or collect them if they had not been posted.

It was an adventure on that freeway. Cement mixer trucks overtaking me while I’m in the left lane, travelling at 80km/h, because according to lore (that’s not law, mind you), speed limits are for sissies. One cannot describe the terror and anger one experiences when a rearview mirror is full of cement mixer bearing down on one.

We made it to the High Commission at 10:50, alive, and stood in the queue outside. You see, they only allow collections between 11am and 12pm. Applications are done between 8am and 10am. I imagine that 10am to 11am is their morning tea break.

Getting inside is fun. We know the drill now, so we left our phones in the car. You need to have your green barcoded ID book, which the security guards check. If you have ANY electronic equipment, it must be switched off. This includes telephones, iPods, etc. Said electronic equipment must then be deposited in a tiny security locker, for which you are given the key. Of course I forgot that I still had my iPod with me, so instead of going through the rigmarole of taking it out, I suggested putting my bag in the locker. This was not a simple process: those lockers are tiny. I suggested to the security guard that I might have some sweets in the bag, which she could help herself to afterwards, if she helped me.

Once inside, we were attended to, only to find that the file number we had been emailed, was in fact incorrect. So, Mr Mohammed, we saw your file. Sorry. Anyway, it turned out that our medical forms had been posted last week. We got the tracking number from the woman (who declined printing us new forms because this would require permission from on high, which makes sense).

We took the tracking number back to the car (the security guard got her sweet), went onto the SA Post Office’s website via iPhone and 3G, to discover that the forms had ARRIVED at our post office on Friday last week.

Tempers were frayed.

So we drove back to Johannesburg. Directly to the post office. We discussed various methods of torture we would employ upon the staff, and decided on sarcasm.

Once inside the post office, we gave them the tracking number, dripping with sarcasm. The lady disappeared into the back with (I think) a senior member of staff, and emerged with our letter. The delivery date, written on the envelope, said 15 January. Last Friday. So please explain to me why they couldn’t write a collection slip for the envelope, and drop it in the post box for us, last Friday?

The medical forms were inside, thankfully, and it was now 1pm. Two hours before we had to be at our appointment. Time for a light snack and time to argue relax.

At 2:20pm, we left for Rosebank. [Read the rest in Part 4.]

Stage 2: Renewal of Police Clearance Certificate

When we first decided to emigrate, it was clear that it would take a long time, and we would have to renew several things that had already been issued.

Of primary importance among these was the Police Clearance Certificate, which says that, according to police records and our fingerprints, we do not have a criminal record.

The certificates expire in February 2010, so we realised we should renew them before the end of January. This consists of a visit to the local police station, payment of R59, the taking of fingerprints, and the completion of a form.

I figured that, having yesterday off, I could pop into the police station after my driver’s licence renewal. In August, it had taken fifteen minutes at most, so off I drove.

I arrived at around 9am, and walked in, feeling happy with myself for keeping to my schedule. I asked the three policemen who were standing around at the front desk where the office was for getting the police clearance certificate. The reason I asked is because these things can change daily.

I was directed to the same place as last time, so I walked down the corridor towards the office. There were two people outside, waiting for something to happen (I know this, because they had their green barcoded ID books with them).

The guy in the front of the queue said, “PDP, come back at 2” at me. I did not know what he meant, so I said, “I’m here for a police clearance certificate.” He said, “Yes, come back after 2pm.” So not trusting him, I tried to stick my head in through the doorway, only to have it slammed in my face.

I walked back to my car, dejected. After all, only a couple of days ago, M went to the police station at 1pm to do the same thing, only to be told to “come back in the morning”.

Huh?

Now it was time to wait for M to get home from work, for our Great Trek to Pretoria, to the Canadian High Commission. [Read the rest in Part 3.]

Stage 1: Renewal of Driver’s Licence Card

I woke up earlier (7am) than usual (8am), so that I could be at the Randburg Licencing Department to renew my driver’s licence card. It expires in August 2010, which will cause unnecessary inconvenience if I plan to drive overseas.

I got there at around 7:50, walked past a security guard holding what looked like a Remington shotgun. We greeted each other as we passed, me saying “Sure, baba” (pronounced “Sho’”), and him returning the greeting with “Heita”.

I walked around the parking lot to the building complex, which is in the heart of the Randburg CBD. For the out-of-towners, allow me to describe the Randburg CBD. Well, for starters, they have security guards armed with shotguns. Plus, because this is the land of entrepreneurs, you are shouted at by tens of photographers as you walk 150 metres. This is because the government departments have unofficially outsourced the taking of photographs.

There were two buildings that looked like possible places to renew a driver’s licence card. I trusted my instincts that the one with the shortest queue was the right place, and walked in. I asked one of the security guards at the front where one would go to renew a licence, and he handed me a form.

Before I left home, I checked out advice on the Internet for this process, and was told to “take a black pen with you”. I’m glad I did. I filled in the form (putting the year as 2009 in a cunning test to see if the government officials were awake by mistake), and asked the surly kindly security guard (he was probably armed with a grenade launcher behind the desk for all I know) about the photograph requirements. I had brought several thousand colour pictures of myself after all.

“Black and white”.

“Bah”.

So I asked him and his colleague where the cheapest and best photographs could be had. They told me “the Rasta man” and indicated that he wore some form of headgear. I walked outside and directly towards the throng of entrepreneurs*, shouting “I want the Rasta man”. He shortly presented himself and in broken English, pointed me towards a tent nearby, where a man was sitting next to a (semi-) white backdrop and HP photo-printer. I asked him how much, he told me R45 for four, and we did the deal. As a side note, my pose looks quite similar to my October 1997 ID photo, which is ironic.

As I walked back from the throng of entrepreneurial spirit, one of the mob separated himself from the crowd and asked me who told me to use the Rasta man’s services. I said “I asked at the front desk and they suggested him”. He was unimpressed with this answer, and although I ignored him* and continued up the path, he followed me.

Just inside the door, he asked me again to identify the person who told me to use the Rasta man. I said, “Look, I’m sorry, but I asked who I should use. I understand you have competition for your business, but I’m not going to tell you who suggested Rasta man, because I don’t want him to get into trouble.”

He eventually backed off. I think he remembered that these guys have low-yield nuclear weapons under their chairs for security reasons, and went back to the throng outside.

So back in the licencing building, I showed the security guard my completed form and photographs, and he pointed me upstairs to “Room Triple-Two”. I took the stairs, saw a stencilled sign with some scribble on it, pointing the way.

In room C222 (“Driver’s Licence Renewals”), there was the standard municipal government queuing system: several rows of chairs, and when the person in front is served, everybody stands up and moves one chair closer. It works surprisingly well.

I arrived in position number eleven, asked where the end of the queue was, and sat down. This is where it got amusing. Keep in mind that we’re in a small room, sitting on chairs, most of us without a pen, and there is no air conditioning. Or an open window. Right.

At the front of the room where the action is, is a desk with an eye-test machine, a desk where someone fills in forms, and a desk where a man sticks your photos to the form and takes your thumb prints**.

One of the department’s employees (a little old white lady with a strong English accent – I mention this, because it is unexpected) comes in and asks if everyone has a copy of their identity documents. I see people handing her their green barcoded ID books (you know, the ones we’re told never to give to strangers or let out of our sight), and she vanishes into oblivion.

Then another side dish of amusement: we’re given forms to fill in before we’re served, to make the process move faster. There is an original form and a duplicate (on the same piece of paper, oriented to landscape, and which are torn apart down the middle). One imagines that the original goes off to Pretoria to be processed, while the duplicate stays behind in Randburg. It’s an assumption, and as we discovered later in the day, one should never assume anything with government departments.

There is a big white block on the form, with a thick black border around it, where you must put in your specimen signature for scanning and putting on the licence card. They explicitly tell you to sign inside the block on the form. The man who handed out the form also told everyone in the queue, as he handed out each form, to sign within the black square and not go outside the lines.

One person in front of me, an old man, went outside the line and asked for a replacement. This made the form-giving man grumpy, but he gave him a new one.

Then a man of Indian descent (I point this out because South Africans might claim to be a rainbow nation, but we’re still all racists and it’s pointless denying it) asks for a new form because he, too, went outside the lines.

Then the form-man started shouting at him. He told him, “I’m not giving you a new form because I already gave you one and I told you not to go outside the lines, but you went outside the lines. If you’re going to behave like a child, I will treat you like a child. Come back another time.”

And that’s the funny-because-you’d-cry-otherwise part: he was being serious. He would not serve the Indian man because he wrote over the line when he did his signature. It was extraordinary. Of course this threw the other two department table-sitters into a frenzy (when I say frenzy, they actually just agreed with form-man about going outside the lines). Eventually, the Indian man was given another form, but it was clear that he was being made an example of.

Then again, I managed to stay in the lines.

Eventually I made it to the front of the queue (it took about 20 minutes, I would estimate), and did the eye test. The man operating the machine filled in my form for me (and didn’t notice my 2009 mistake), so I didn’t have to sit at form-man’s desk (thankfully!), and then got to the fingerprint-man’s desk.

Keeping in mind the fuss about the citizen going outside the lines and wasting department stationery, and the huge example that was made of him, it was amusing (to me, anyway) that fingerprint-man fluffed one of the fingerprints on the woman who was ahead of me, and had to fill in a new form anyway.

Now came the part where you pay, in another room. I went to the desk and put down all the pieces of paper we’d filled in. The lady asked me whether I wanted a temporary driver’s licence, and I said “I do not”. Apparently, to her, that sounded like “Yes”.

Meanwhile, I heard through the bullet-proof glass that the licence renewal costs R165, so being short of the correct money, I put down R205 in the hope of getting two R20 notes back. She looked at this in disdain and said “Two-One-Five”. I said, “But you said it was One-Six-Five.”

She said, “You asked for a temporary licence.” I said, “No I didn’t. Why would I want to pay R50 for something I don’t need?” and then I proceeded to show her my current licence, which expires in August 2010. She said, “But I’ve printed it now.”

When I left, I had paid R215 and had a temporary licence that I didn’t need. I figured I didn’t want to start the third world war because of the incompetence of S LANGA (who received my money, according to the temporary licence).

I got back to my car by 8:50am, which was a successful morning. Now it was on to the police station. [Read the rest in Part 2.]

—

* South Africa is not for sissies.

** South Africa takes fingerprints for everything involving government departments. Everything.

Anyway, Danny Glover is almost as ignorant as Pat Robertson. The latter said that Haiti was hit by this devastating earthquake because they “swore a pact to the devil”. Yes, really.

Now Danny Glover, who I was a little worried about after seeing him in 2012, has decided he is a scientist now. He has said that Haiti was hit by this devastating earthquake because of climate change. Yes, really.

Since I believe strongly that climate change (rebranded from global warming, because they realised nobody believed them) is a man-made hoax, this has made me lose even more respect for the man.

Danny Glover is my tomcruise for 2010. Yes, the whole year. Not even the most famous “older man in a cape”, Vitamin B-16, comes close.

The big day is on 27 January, and I have 45 minutes in which to make the presentation. All of our customers are still on SQL Server 2000, so I am expecting to demo some 2005 features as well.

Here is my proposed list:

- Management Studio overview – 5 min
- Table partitioning – 5 min
- SSIS overview – 10 min
- Compression (2008) – 10 min
- Master Data Services (2008) – 10 min
- Questions – 5 min

Thoughts?

The snag I ran into in December, which is holding up the release, relates to a Microsoft DLL change between Windows XP and Vista. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the XP version worked in Windows 7. It doesn’t. I don’t know if it’s my fault or Microsoft’s. Yet. (I am big enough to admit if it’s my fault, once I find the problem.)

The funny thing is, I’m *this* close to just open-sourcing the damn project like I was going to do with ShutOff 2000 anyway, unfinished as it is.

Thoughts?

As regular readers know, I developed a C# Windows app to do this for myself, last year. However it is certainly not production-ready, so two separate websites had to be assisted manually with the conversion. Their common issue is that they were combining more than one Simple PHP Blog directory into a single WordPress instance.

The trickiest part of doing this is the category list, and internal links.

With the category list, as in this recent conversion, the two source directories had the same categories between them, but in a slightly different hierarchy. That means manually merging the generated SQL scripts into one file, renumbering the category IDs in the second dataset, and removing the truncate statements.

With internal links, the problem is simple, but the resolution is awful: a blog will point to earlier posts, but when generating the SQL script, I don’t know what the new IDs will be for those posts, plus the permalinks may be changed at some stage by the blog owner. In other words, I need to know a URL that doesn’t exist yet.

Currently, I find all occurrences of internal site links (manually, using a SELECT … LIKE query), generate the new WordPress blog by executing the generated SQL script, manually update the script with the new IDs by searching for them through WordPress’s built-in search, and then re-running the modified script. I really need to find a better way, because this last blog had nearly 100 internal links, and my search and replace is slow.

How do I fix this in code? Well, I have a pretty good idea, but I think it may be error-prone. Simple PHP Blog creates static files and names them whatever the timestamp is. I use this time stamp in the course of generating the script, but I noticed tonight that sometimes the filename and the modified date don’t match up, especially if you’re not using GMT (UTC) date stamps. So if the timezone is screwy, the filename might be wrong.

If I can crack the timezone problem, I might be able to resolve matching the internal links via their timestamps. While this isn’t perfect (multiple posts with the same timestamp, for example), it’s a start. Then I can guess what the URL will be.

Unfortunately, this means having to assign static IDs in the SQL script, which I’m trying to avoid, but is there a better way?

I’ll look at this when I get a chance. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Since electrifying the wire would consume an unaffordable amount of electricity (notwithstanding the upcoming Eskom tariff increases of 45% per year for three years), it uses a pulsed charge that runs through the wire approximately once every second.

So the control box ticks, quite audibly, at a steady 1Hz, day in and day out. Fortunately, we only hear this if we sit in the lounge with the front door open, or happen to be outside. If that was not the case, and I would hear it every night, I’d freak.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep. This upcoming move is more stressful than I expected, and I’m feeling my AS acting up, so I have a low threshold for noise. This includes garden crickets. How anything so small should be so noisy is beyond my substantial powers of comprehension.

There was a cricket chirping, or rubbing its legs together (or whatever it is they do to get laid), and it was distracting me. But much more ominous to me was the steady click, click, click, that could only be an electrified fence discharging its load through a short circuit.

Unfortunately, this sound appeared to be coming from RIGHT OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM. In other words, no sleep for me. Really.

This afternoon, upon my return home from work, I decided to investigate. I would not have my sleep affected by external influence if I could avoid it.

Using my much-vaunted and über-powerful hearing (but mostly luck), I narrowed down the clicking to the corner of the garden, where the sound was echoing off the wall, amplified by the corner, and bouncing into my bedroom window.

After getting wet from the tree under which I clambered to access the corner, I discovered a slug. It had managed to slither its way close enough to one of the plastic insulators to be electrocuted, and still carry an electrical charge through its body as it rotted.

The effect was a visible spark, every second, as the fence earthed itself through the slug and into the brick wall.

Randolph decided to remove the slug, to effect a peaceful sleep (see what I did there?). All he needed was something long enough to avoid arcing, and non-conductive (and dry) to avoid electrocution.

Armed with a stick in my right hand (I’ve been electrocuted before), I felt the electricity travel through the sap when I touched the slug, so I hunted for a better weapon.

Three minutes later, I had an A4 page, folded along the length at around 3cm wide for strength, and scraped off the slug. Yes, in case you’re wondering, it was as disgusting as it sounds. In fact, a dead slug that is being used as a light bulb does not in fact retain much structural integrity after a day. Scraping is definitely the right way to describe the process.

I am now writing this in absolute peace and quiet. Tonight, even the mighty cricket knows that Sir Randolph and his trusty paper sword is ruthless.

I bid you good night.

I tried seven times to buy those tickets. SEVEN TIMES. If Verified By Visa wasn’t timing out, Computicket was complaining because I wasn’t logged in. I’ve decided I fucking hate Computicket too. Why do you need my date of birth and cell phone number? WHY? You’ve managed for more than ten years without it!

So after registering on Computicket and trying to type in my Verified By Visa password, I was blocked because the password wasn’t correct. Bullshit.

So I phoned the number on the screen. The computer on the other side told me I called outside of “business hours”, so I must phone back tomorrow. I got some satisfaction out of the fact that it said my call was recorded for quality purposes, so I swore at the computer for good measure.

Then I phoned the number on Computicket’s website, and they also told me I must call during business hours. They told me slowly, so that it would hurt more*.

So tell me, Computicket, you bunch of fucktards, why if it’s outside of business hours, your website was still trying to sell me tickets to a show?

[Side note: In 1997, which was in the last millennium, never mind the last decade, I worked for a 24-hour helpdesk, because we had clients who expected it. Open a twenty-four hour helpdesk, Computicket!]

On the fifth attempt, I clicked on a link on the Verified by Visa page which asked if I was a new user, or had forgotten my password. I right-clicked to open in a new tab, and had to start over because it terminated the transaction.

Sixth attempt, I clicked the same link. It told me to fill in stuff I knew, and sent me a code via SMS, which I filled in, and also chose a “new” password. You know, the one I always use for secure credit card transactions on Verified by Visa partner sites.

I got a “(null)” response back. Was I billed? I haven’t got a clue. I’ll find out tomorrow.

On the seventh attempt, I hoped for the best that the password change went through, so I resubmitted my details on Computicket’s side, clicked Continue, and lo-and-behold, it went through.

So here’s one final fuck you to Visa. And Computicket for good measure.

* Computicket’s number is charged at R2.85 per minute, and free minutes do not apply. Remember, in South Africa, a minute is only 30 seconds long in the world of cell phones. That’s R5.70 per minute. Criminals.

So tonight is going to be interesting as I go deeper into the recovered data. No obvious sign of my decade worth of mail though, which was the main priority.

I have been eerily quiet on my blog about this for a number of reasons, many of which go to my privacy, potential issues at work, and so on.

I’m mentioning it now because I (we) have a dilemma: two small dogs that need a home, and an unknown date of our actual departure.

So this entry, along with dropping the bombshell about me leaving the country in which I have lived my whole life, is also a call to animal lovers to adopt two of the most awesome creatures I’ve ever had the pleasure of raising.

Biscuit, who appeared on a doorstep (as a very small puppy) nine-ish years ago and is therefore a lady of indeterminate age and breed, is quite possibly a Chihuahua cross (with a Jack Russell). She is spayed.

Molly is a pure-bred Dachshund, two years old, and not spayed.

Both are up to date with innoculations, have their vet booklets stamped, and are house-trained. They live outside in their own kennel.

Please have a look at the poster I made if you’re interested.

You can contact me here, or email dogs AT itsol.co.za. Operators are standing by.

Granted, some of this is customer-related, but 100GB is a hell of a lot of data!

Let’s see what they say.

Huh? WTF?

Add to this the news from various sources that the deep web (a.k.a. darknet, etc.) is becoming more searchable, and we have the wealth of humanity’s information at our fingertips, in real time.

The Internet is alive. How awesome is that?

Said company, in one of the many emails between Hetzner, myself and the spammer company, asked “what drives this gentleman?” when referring to me, and the ruthless manner in which I attacked them for sending me unsolicited email.

Well, the answer is simple: I don’t like spam, and I’ll do whatever I can to eliminate it. If just one company learns their lesson, perhaps they can pay the lesson forward to others.

To the company who sold my email address(es) to this spammer, I’m going to find out who you are, and report you for theft of personal information (see bottom of this post). Even if the cops do nothing, or I emigrate before then, I’m making a stand for my rights. If I (and similarly-minded people) don’t, we’ll end up with the draconian laws of the UK and USA, where the government can do anything they like to you, without needing a reason.

For the record, here is my complaint to the spammer, after being told that it wasn’t in fact spam. In the interest of good cheer and all that, I’m not using the name of the spammer here.

Dear [name withheld]

Your email refers.

1. The invitations were from [big name in spam], not [name in the small print at the bottom]. This is deceptive behaviour.

2. Your unsubscribe link does not work in Google Chrome, no matter how many times I click it. It is broken.

3. I don’t care if other people appreciate your invitations. I do not. Your "invitation" is by definition an offer to sell "unwanted services or products", and since you’ve admitted to sending the invitation to "thousands of recipients", you are diluting the very exclusivity of the offer. Add to that the fact that you sent me several invitations (albeit to different addresses), you have lowered the barrier to entry of your "club", and devalued the exclusivity even further. My legal background may be rusty, but I can spot deceptive behaviour right there.

4. Who are your business partners, so that I can contact them about sharing my information? Please provide this information within two working days from date of this email, per the appropriate section, sub-section and paragraph of the ECT Act of 2002.

5. I have listed myself and my email addresses on the DMA’s Do Not Contact list, amongst several others. The addresses to which you sent email are only available through website scraping. If you bothered to check, the [scraped email address] address is ONLY available for support queries regarding my software. If you also bothered to check, you’d note that e-llusion.biz and itsol.co.za are the same company. But I know you didn’t bother to check, because I have two unsolicited emails in my inbox, using up my valuable bandwidth, disk space, memory and time to respond to. You simply purchased a list of email addresses known to exist, without comparing it against existing "Do Not Contact" lists, and send out a mailshot. This is unacceptable.

My complaint is therefore justified, and I will maintain my position with your upstream service provider.

Sincerely

Randolph Potter

Of course Hetzner got involved today, when point 4 above went unfulfilled. As it turns out, a company called “MLD” sold them the information. When I find out more information, I’ll post it here.

Good bye, randolph@e-llusion.biz.

"I will not sleep until this night eschews the sun in memory of my mother, who toiled and fought for 24 hours to eject the parasitic boarder she had housed for 9 months. And once freed from the burden of childbirth, rejoiced and devoted her life to mine." – John Larroquette

I wrote quite extensively on this new .NET version in a recent post, as well as the fun I had with a bug in ShutOff 2000. (I’ve decided on .NET 3.5 as the minimum requirement for this baby. This is to ensure that the new version remains more current than the Visual Basic 6 base of ShutOff 2000.)

Tonight, quite by chance, I opened up the project in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and started playing around. As a result, two hours later, the command line version is finalised and in testing, and the GUI version is finalised and in testing. That’s a big win right there.

There are two final pieces I need to put in before it can be released, which are in the core library, plus a bit of polish on the UI.

I’m anticipating something final in the next couple of weeks, if not sooner. I doubt it’ll be sooner, thanks to NaNoWriMo.

I’ve just read an article on TechCrunch today about studios delaying the rental of DVDs for 30 days after their release, which is an interesting read in itself.

What jumped out at me is this: If you make it easier for people to get access to software, music and video content (e.g. iTunes, Netflix, Redbox), there is less chance of piracy.

I am not afraid to pay for content, but I have a serious problem with restrictions placed on me – why am I not allowed to buy games for my iPhone in South Africa? Why can I not access already-broadcast television shows on the Internet from South Africa?

That is why people are software, music and video pirates. Not because piracy is free (though that is a substantial reason), but because it’s easy.

Do you download software and / or music and / or movies and / or television shows without paying for it?

Do you know what ACTA is, or aims to be?

Do you live in a country where your government wants to check what you’re doing on the Internet?

Let’s start off with ACTA: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a proposed trade agreement between a large number of countries (including the USA, EU, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia), which is aimed at reducing “global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works”.

There are good and bad parts in the proposed text (my argument is based on a leaked document that was released earlier this month). I’m all for reducing the amount of counterfeit goods, for a number of reasons, most of which you will share with me.

My issue is with the principle of being able to suspend a household’s Internet account by an ISP, based on suspicion of “copyright infringement”, without a warrant and without providing evidence of said infringement. What is especially stupid, is that ANYONE is allowed to suspect you of infringing their copyright. So to take it to its logical conclusion, I can suspect you of copying my material, and report you, even if you’re in another country. Your ISP will then disconnect you. What happened to your right to defend yourself? What about your right to access information via your Internet connection? What if your account was compromised? What about international law?

What ACTA wants (in part), is for someone in the USA (the MPAA or RIAA, for example – a group of Mafiosa-like individuals who do not fully represent their industries) to be able to suspend someone’s account in another country, for suspected copyright infringement.

What constitutes “copyright infringement”? According to various sources, it is the unauthorised use of material that is covered by copyright law. For electronic material, that would cover reproduction and distribution.

How does the Internet work? At its very foundation, TCP/IP (the protocol for shifting data) uses packet switching. A source device sends a packet of information to a target, which makes a copy of it. That packet may be sent on to another target, and then another. We don’t have direct connections to everything we want to look at, so we have to rely on ISPs, gateways, routers, proxy servers, and a whole lot more. That’s reproduction right there. So who’s at fault? The ISP that allows the copying of the source data? The source for allowing distribution? The target for making a copy (in, for example, the browser cache) on their local computer? The intermediate routers and gateways?

We’re really no closer to an answer as we were at the start, then. Because, by the time you get your file, there is a large number of (sometimes transient) copies of the file already, all over the Internet. That’s where “unauthorised” comes in.

Copyright is an automatically granted right to the producer of material, that says they have the right to decide how people copy their work. The whole point is right there in the name. It’s not rocket science.

Unfortunately, groups like the MPAA and RIAA, based in USA and having no legal bearing on my computer in my house in South Africa, want to tell me how to use the stuff I buy. I’m not even talking about pirated materials here.

Again, let’s use an example: I go to the shop and I buy the latest book by Stephen King. Mr King is the copyright holder of the work. He has given his publisher non-exclusive rights (it has to be non-exclusive if he wants to retain copyright) to distribute the work to me. His publisher pays Mr King royalties on every sale, which are an acknowledgement of that non-exclusive right, usually in the form of monetary compensation. He is one of the highest earning authors in the world, after all.

Now I own the book. It is mine, to do with what I please, provided I do not infringe on Mr King’s rights. I am not allowed to make copies of the book and sell or give away the copies. I am not allowed to write the same or a similar work and call it my own. I am allowed to give the book away. I am allowed to critique the work and use excerpts from it in my critique (under fair use). I am allowed to sell the book to someone else. It is a commodity, and as long as Mr King’s name is on the work, and I don’t infringe his rights, the physical book is mine, and I can do what I want with it.

Music works in the same a different way. I go to the shop and I buy the latest CD by Green Day. Green Day is the copyright holder of that music. They have given their publisher non-exclusive rights to distribute the work to me. The publisher pays Green Day royalties on every sale. You get the picture. Except music does not work the same way as books. You do not own the CD. If you open the plastic wrap in which the CD is sold, you automatically lose any rights to redistribute the work. What you bought was a licence to listen to it. Huh? Because music can be broadcast, and there are rules around what constitutes a public broadcast, it is not a commodity. Did you know that you are not allowed to play your music, which you bought, in a public place without permission? That’s why radio stations play the same stuff over and over again. The record companies tell them who to promote, and the radio stations pay royalties to the record company, who then pays the artist a percentage of that royalty. It’s a mess.

Let’s talk a bit more about economics. Green Day writes and produces music because they enjoy creating it, and they sign a deal with a recording house so that the general public can participate in this music. The recording house manages the distribution of the music, organises deals with radio stations, CD and DVD production and distribution, concerts, and so on.

If Green Day wants to make money out of this creation of music, they must sell merchandise. A lot of merchandise. CDs, DVDs, MP3s (through iTunes and Amazon), t-shirts, bumper stickers, bobble-head dolls, tie-ins with films and other merchandising, and so on.

So, let’s say that a CD costs $10 to buy. The artist will receive a percentage of this, in the form of royalties. It’s a very low percentage. Some megastars, like Michael Jackson, might have gotten as much as 20% per album. Maybe. The recording house uses the rest of that money to pay for marketing, production and distribution of the merchandise. The rest is profit for the recording house.

So for an artist to make it big financially, they have to sell millions of albums, and do concerts. The Rolling Stones and Madonna are respectively the biggest earning group and female artist, because they tour. If Madonna stuck to studio albums and music videos, she would be earning very little by comparison.

So what about those album sales? Gold, platinum, multi-platinum, diamond? The RIAA says an album goes gold when it sells 500 000 units. Platinum is 1 million, multi-platinum is 2 million, and diamond is 10 million. There’s a page on Wikipedia giving a list of sales, and considering the amount of artists out there, it’s not a very long list.

But how many of those artists, who sold that many albums, did not tour? How many of those album sales were a direct result of touring? Those are questions I can’t answer. One thing I am certain of, though, is that to be really successful, you don’t rely on album sales. The Rolling Stones and Madonna prove that. Album sales are only a small percentage of potential income.

Enter software. Software is intangible. I cannot touch it, I cannot pick it up. It exists as a series of 1s and 0s on my hard drive. It exists as a series of 1s and 0s on the media which I bought it on, but I need a computer to be able to view it. Even plain text files are a series of 1s and 0s. All software needs hardware to view it.

This is where it gets interesting. The very nature of viewing a file means that the hardware will create a copy in memory, to display on the screen, or in the case of music, play through some speakers or headphones. But the hardware has made a copy in the memory of the device, to permit me to make use of the software. So I’m never actually using the source, but a copy of it.

That’s important. Whereas a Stephen King book is a physical commodity that I can buy, read, sell or give away without making a copy, I am forced by the very nature of software to make a copy before I can actually use it.

So as soon as you break the shrink-wrap on music or software, the licence agreement (which you are forced into accepting by opening the wrapping) states that you no longer have the right to give it away, sell it, or get a refund. (If the physical media is damaged, you’re allowed to replace it free of charge or at cost within a certain time period). But it’s a licence agreement, not an ownership agreement. You never own that material.

So why are we talking about music and software at the same time? And who exactly is the RIAA anyway? Well, as the name says, it is the Recording Industry Association of America. So basically, a group of recording houses got together and formed an association. In the USA. They can’t make laws. They are not the government. But remember the 80%+ they’re getting from album sales? They can, however (and do) claim to represent their artists. Which is technically true.

So, claiming this representation (and using their massive profits), they lobby the US government (by way of legal bribes – that whole lobbying thing is a mess as well) to create (or change) laws to protect their artists. They are the main drivers behind ACTA. Yes, really. Along with the Motion Picture Association of America, themselves an association of movie production companies (in the USA), they are trying to change international intellectual property laws. In an ideal world, they would be crushed in a few seconds.

Unfortunately, government lobbying is effective. Money talks. Every man has his price. US politicians, who in a number of cases do not understand copyright law, are pushing through changes that will empower the RIAA and MPAA to accuse anyone who has a trade agreement with the USA, to force their ISPs to disconnect someone, without evidence, of copyright infringement. The trade agreement allows them to bypass local copyright laws, because politically speaking, most countries don’t want to lose their trade with the USA. Stupid money.

Back to me on my computer. Here’s a scenario: I run my business from home. I use the Internet extensively to pay bills, check payments, and communicate with my customers. I use VoIP because there aren’t any copper cables in the area for the telephone company to install a phone. I literally rely on the Internet to do my job and earn a living.

My mother, who lives with me, owns a number of vinyl LPs. Her turntable is broken. She cannot listen to her music. So at night, she hops onto the Internet with Vuze or Limewire, and downloads a song from one of the albums she really wants to listen to.

The RIAA, in another country, has put some software on Limewire (which is illegal in my country) to scan my IP address. They write a letter to my ISP, telling them that they suspect me of piracy. My ISP disconnects me from the Internet. My business fails. I kill my mother and then myself, because I have no more money and the creditors will take everything. Yes, that makes perfect sense.

Stop the stupidity and fight back. Law is about the “reasonable man” argument. No reasonable man would allow a trade agreement between two countries dictate what he can do in his own home with his computer. And as for ISPs, they need to fight as well. To ask them to police the network is as futile as it is expensive. Encryption and tunnelling protocols already subvert deep packet inspection. The Dark Net bypasses normal traffic with a peer-to-peer network via the Internet. ACTA will not stop people from using the Internet to copy, because there is no way to tell the difference between a legal bit and an illegal bit. The evil 1s and 0s look exactly the same as good 1s and 0s. Innocent people will get hurt. This is shoot to kill in another form, and we know how well that’s going.

And for that group of people, do you *really* think Zombie Jesus will save you?

See, I was under the (mistaken) impression, that the point of tolerance, love for one another, forgiveness, and all those other good things in that really thick book everyone seems to have copies of, is to not pass judgement on others. Surely?

So then, if I don’t subscribe to your belief system, which includes the fanciful idea of a zombie who will save you from beyond the grave, while you eat human flesh and drink human blood, why do you feel it necessary to judge me? Seriously, why?

As for overturning same-sex marriage, what’s up with that? What sanctity are you protecting? Seriously, what?

I want honest, clearly thought out answers, because I sure as hell don’t understand it.

Religion is an excuse to not take responsibility for one’s actions. It doesn’t get simpler than that. If you can justify religion in the 21st century, in a clear and concise argument, please go ahead.

South Africa has "celebrities", because there really isn’t an A-list and B-list differentiator. You qualify as a celebrity if:

- You act in a soapie (Egoli, 7de Laan, Villa Rosa)
- You have your photo taken at a rave (Cassie Booyse, a.k.a. Vernon Koekemoer)
- You release a CD
- You host a children’s TV show
- You sing Neil Diamond songs
- You play rugby / cricket
- You sleep with a celebrity*

(* see qualifications above)

Robbie Klay, who is apparently an Afrikaans singer (and therefore a celebrity), is presently involved in a court case accusing Jurie Els, an older Afrikaans singer (and therefore a celebrity), of molesting him when he was under 18.

In SA, we don’t have a specific law for criminal male on male penetration (anymore), so they call it indecent assault. If it were me, I’d call it either paedophilia or rape, but it’s not my court case.

I’m upset, though. I’m upset because Klay can’t get his story straight, as it were. Els has denied all charges (because admitting rape would be stupid), but he has a good lawyer.

I’m upset, because for all we know, this is a ploy to sell more CDs, in much the same way that Joost is selling books because he admitted to adultery and possession of an illegal substance (cocaine), which was of course caught on video.

I’m upset because this shit being dragged across our media is improving the celebrity profile of these subhuman cretins who shouldn’t deserve the time of day.

We as a country are lapping it up, like a real life soap opera.

Which brings me to that self-confessed kiddie fiddler, Roman Polanski. He must face a judge and go to jail. I don’t CARE if he makes good movies. He’s a damn paedophile, no matter how you swing it. Laws to protect children (however misguided in implementation) are there for a reason. If you have money and talent and Oscars, you’re still a damn paedophile. And don’t get me started on that melanin deficient trannie, Michael Jackson. Yes, arguably the most talented musician in living history, but he was also a self-confessed kiddie fiddler.

And that’s why I’m upset. I know a number of gifted, talented, hard-working artists in their respective fields (TV, film, music, drama), who will never get anything close to the recognition they deserve, because we’re too engrossed in whether some half-wit mullet-wearing "singer" can remember the "facts" through therapy.

My father died in 1994. I remember it vividly. So does my brother. Klay can’t remember a sexual assault? Please.

I’m sorry for giving them more attention than they deserve, but I need to write it down to get it off my chest.

Oh, and I suggest that if you want to support REAL talent, help the SA Guild of Artists get recognised as a labour union, so that the hard-working, underpaid lifeblood of our cultural heritage can protect their interests. Look them up on Facebook.

To whom it may concern

This is a confirmation that Branded Internet Discovery Mail has released a payment for your account. We have enclosed the details below.

Date : 2009/11/06
Description on Statement : RANDOLPH POTTER
Payment : R 352.00

If you have any queries in this regard please do not hesitate to contact us.
Telephone (0861) 435 733

Kind regards
Branded Internet Discovery Mail”

“To whom it may concern.

I am a long-time Discovery Health and Discovery Life member. I was until very recently also a customer of Vitality Broadband.

However, when I asked them in July 2009, and then again in August 2009 (due to lack of response), to upgrade my account from three separate ADSL accounts, totalling 8GB monthly cap, to a single 10GB monthly cap, they did not upgrade me. This was despite several telephone calls and emails confirming my request.

I became extremely dissatisfied with this lack of service, that I decided in September 2009 to cancel my account. On 1 October 2009 I telephoned again to confirm my cancellation, which I confirmed in writing, only to be informed that the cancellation would take place on 31 October 2009.

All three of my ADSL accounts were terminated during the course of the morning of 31 October 2009, despite my being under the assumption that “end of the month” meant I would have another few hours of service at least. This is my first complaint of fraud by Vitality Broadband. I wrote an email to the support address to complain about this. I have not heard anything yet.

My second complaint, which you can confirm from the attached document, is the debit order from my bank account which was deducted without my permission by Vitality Broadband yesterday, 3 November 2009, for an amount of R352, despite not having ANY ADSL accounts with Vitality Broadband as of 1 November 2009. I logged into my account to verify this, which is how I came upon this proof fraudulent withdrawal of funds (over and above proof as seen on my bank statement).

I have notified the accounts department and support desk of Vitality Broadband that I will sue them in the small claims court if I do not receive an immediate refund. However, I have taken this opportunity to inform you of this fraudulent activity, because they have a knack of not responding appropriately.

I will be lodging a complaint on HelloPeter.com as well as posting a notice on my personal website of this fraud.

Regards

Randolph Potter”

You really are a bunch of monkeys there. I was forced to find alternative bandwidth today because you cut me off before the actual end of the month, which is 12 hours from the time I am writing this. This after I asked you in September to cancel my contract on 1 October, but it took you a month to respond. This after I asked you in July (and again in August) to merge my three accounts into one, and sell me more bandwidth. You see, at that stage, I was wanting to pay you more. But thanks to this ridiculous mess, I no longer want to have anything to do with you.

Saying ‘sorry’ won’t fix it. You need to fire everyone I dealt with. That will make me feel that you take your business seriously.

Until then, rest assured that I will tell everyone I know that Branded Internet’s account management is up (down?) there with Sentech in terms of incompetence and slow response. This includes all the people I know in the media industry.

Regards

Randolph Potter”

Now I just need to invite someone, otherwise it looks pretty dull.

Check out the “writing” link at the top of the page and click on “poetry” for the juice.

What I’m really excited about is the modular way it is built. The console application is fully featured, which means that absolutely all functionality is available there. This is vastly different to ShutOff 2000, which is a GUI-only application. It was impossible to build scripts around it.

The new user interface is also a lot more powerful than the one in ShutOff 2000, and all features from the console application are available, if power users do not want to use the command-line switches.

What’s especially exciting is how I’ve overcome the need to have ShutOff running when you want to perform a shutdown. Once I figured that out, the rest was very easy.

And in other good news, some code that originally was lost when I accidentally deleted a snapshot on my development VM, was reconstituted using a copy of the assemblies and the brilliant .NET Reflector.

Here’s an amusing story about the ShutOff 2000 key generator, and I’m comfortable telling it. I wrote the original algorithm in December of 1999, on paper. I used a combination of Caesar-cipher and ASCII to Hex conversion. I was very proud of this algorithm. In fact, as a one-way hashing algorithm, it’s not bad. I’ll publish it here when the new ShutOff comes out (I’m planning on making the VB 6 code open-source).

So there I was, just turned 23, having written a great piece of computer science geekery. I ported the algorithm into VB 6, and lo, it was good.

Core, one of the more notorious “computer security” groups of that period, cracked the key generator pretty quickly. I think it was a matter of days. What was amusing is how their key generator (also written in VB 6) was more user-friendly than the one I cooked up. It actually generated the key on the fly, whereas with my own personal one, I had to click the “Generate” button.

Then it was time for porting to .NET. I decided a long time ago to utilise the features in C# for encryption, so this was for backward compatibility (another place I’m doing this is by moving the app settings from the Windows Registry into a SQLite database file).

So I ported the code, line by line, into C#. My first challenge was that C# doesn’t have the same functions as VB 6, so I had to work around that. This included beauties like Convert.ToChar() and string.Format("{0:X}"). Eventually it was complete, and then I wrote a test to check if it was generating the same registration keys.

.NET (thankfully) is a lot less forgiving with casting integers, and I had a bug in my VB code, where an int loop counter was implicitly casting to a floating point number when multiplying with a character position, and in 1 or 2 characters in the 20-character registration key, the value was different to the C# version.

So here’s the funny bit: I had to replicate the bug in my brand new application to allow for the key generator to create the same strings as the old application, even though it’s wrong.

So that’s the current status. Because the Windows platform has changed so much in the last ten years, I’ve also had to rethink certain features. Some have been dropped, others enhanced, and of course the whole codebase is entirely new.

ShutOff 2000 is a labour of love. I don’t make much money out of it, despite the tens of thousands of downloads over the years. What I get out of it is the chance to play with new technology, revisit old technology, and realise how far I’ve come as a software developer.

What makes ITS ShutOff different, then, is that I’ve had to be more professional in its development. I’ve had to do a feature list, I’ve had to plan my time, and just like other dev shops, I threw away my code and started again several times. I think this incarnation, despite being called version 3.0.0, is actually number ten or eleven.

When it is finally done, I’ll know I’ve achieved something great. Along with NCANE.COM, I’m proud of my achievement. It has proved to me, if no one else, that a simple idea can go places, with no money and weekends to work on them.

Thanks for the use of your eyeballs.

“You are one of only a few participants invited to take part in this research and your participation is extremely important.

“You have been specially screened and qualified. If for any reason you cannot participate in the scheduled telephone interview, please call us right away to allow us time to find a qualified replacement.”

Then I changed the way MySQL connections are working, because I managed to rack up a 40MB error log in the last month because of maximum connections implemented by my new Service Provider. That’s still a work in progress, but I’ve got the error messages down to about 30 a day (from between 500 and 1000 a day).

Which brings me to the final point. When I built NCANE.COM in February 2006, there was no Twitter. Now there is, and the site’s popularity has increased, partly thanks to that. The top ten URLs alone have redirected people over 10 million times, while the entire database of 27 500 URLs has redirected 44 million (yes, the top ten URLs comprise 23% of all redirects).

I implemented during the course of 2007, with modifications in 2008, a session and authentication manager, to allow a “premier” user to log in, create custom URLs, and skip the standard advertising page that pops up on URLs that are visited more than 25 times.

Bit.ly does the same thing for free. While I’m not going to guess how they manage their URLs, or whether they take as much interest in the protection of users as I do, I know I cannot compete in that space. I don’t have APIs (my first problem), I don’t have proper tracking (all I show is the number of times your link has been visited), and I don’t have time.

The site isn’t going away, but that’s where I’m at with it. I want to redesign the look and feel (Delano is helping with that – he’s the guy who designed the lettering for the site now), and add an API (the database has been ready for years for when I get around to that).

But most importantly, I want to replace the session and authentication module with OpenID. That means I’ll have to monitor the links being created a little closer, but I think it’ll be worthwhile. Three of my favourite sites, namely ServerFault.com, StackOverflow.com and SuperUser.com all use OpenID to great effect. I think it will resolve the maximum connections problem I’m having with MySQL too, in that I don’t have to track sessions in the database – I can just do it with cookies on your local machine.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Now I just need to do the same on NCANE.COM.

The Windows 7 machine at work runs Outlook with Exchange connectivity, so no MobileMe.

How do I keep all of these in sync with one version of the truth?

WordPress, fortunately, is a little cleverer than that. A simple “Would you like to import attachments?” question during the import of the XML file sorted that out.

Oh, and by the way, if you haven’t already, make sure you’re running the latest version (2.8.4) of WordPress. There’s a nasty exploit going around.

M said it is recommended viewing for all South Africans, and I whole-heartedly agree. This movie can be analysed to death regarding its subtext, but I’ll just say this: it’s well-made. The special effects were hardly noticeable (and considering there was a ruddy great space ship hovering over Johannesburg in several key scenes, that’s quite a statement).

Thank you to Peter Jackson for financing this project, and to all the participants in the making of the film. It was refreshing to hear the accent on the big screen NOT coming out of Leon Schuster’s mouth.

I also smell Academy Awards for this one. It is currently rated on IMDB by over-zealous fans at #44 in the top 250 of all time. When the fuss dies down, it may drop in the rankings, but I am very impressed. Well done.

GO WATCH THIS FILM!

P.S. Regarding the violence and swearing in the film, I hardly noticed. It suited the mood of the story, and I know I can swear a lot too. Granted, I’m not ripping limbs off people, but give me twenty minutes with a taxi driver and a machete, I’d have to think about it.

Did that (back in Vista), restarted installation, and now I’m almost done. Yay!

Windows 7 is what Vista should have been.

http://code.google.com/p/simplephpblogtowordpressconverter/

This is slow going with one thumb, but it’s more permanent than Twitter I guess.

While I have been lax in updating the blog, lots has been going on. For instance, I’ve completed a migration of over 50 domains to a new service provider, but more importantly, I’m in charge of all of them now, after breaking a long habit of having Hetzner Africa manage them for me. I cancelled my hosting with them ages ago due to poor service, and now I’m finally rid of them.

Work is going well. My probation period is ending next week and then I’ll be permanent. I’m mainly doing SQL 2000, but I’ve kept my eye in with C#, WMI and SQLite, plus a spot of MySQL. Officially my best job ever, and I work with some talented people (including, interestingly, a junior primary school classmate from 1985).

That’s pretty much it for now! Thumb getting tired .

On 30 July 2009, the second person to purchase a licence for ShutOff 2000 this year made his payment over PayPal. As you can probably work out, the registration key business is a manual process, because with two to three purchases a year, I’m not killing myself to automate it with a fancy web service. $10 to $15 a year (less 10% for PayPal) doesn’t warrant the effort.

Not a few minutes after sending the registration key, the customer declared that the software didn’t work. I’ve had ShutOff 2000 for sale in its various incarnations since 1999. My company’s name has changed several times, the bugs have been ironed out, and apart from a stupid hack that limited the product’s life to 31 December 2007, it was rock-solid. After all, it has been on the market for almost 10 years.

I told the customer that he was mistaken, because this is software that has been around since Windows 98 and NT 4.0. It runs on Windows 9x, NT and everything after that (yes, even on Millennium Edition). I’ve been given superb ratings by advert-driven software portals. I’ve had it reviewed in magazines that no longer exist, it’s that old. But in the interest of Doing The Right Thing (TM), I told Bob (for that is his name) to send me a screen shot, and that it was a problem with his regional settings. Yes, I was that arrogant.

Bob sent me a screen shot. He was telling the truth.

I immediately started up my Windows XP virtual machine. You see, I’m running on Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) and Visual Basic *does* work, but I wouldn’t advise it.

I then looked for the source code for version 2.8.3, being the last version I’d looked at, in December 2007.

After finding out that Sun’s VirtualBox and my bridged network corrupted the files when I tried to copy them to the VM, I tried zipping the files first.

The reason I’m telling you all of this is to point out how utterly silly I thought Bob was being, and how much effort I was going to, to prove him wrong. Yes, I was that arrogant.

I eventually got Visual Basic to open the project. My idea of version control is copy the folder, replace the path names in certain files, and search and replace the version number in the VB code. No, I’ll never learn.

Then I started rooting around in the code. Keep in mind the version history now: lots of activity between 1999 and 2001. We went from 1.0 to 2.5 in that period. Then over the next SIX YEARS I only managed a couple of point releases and minor bug fixes. I didn’t touch it in 2006. I looked at it once in 2007, and once more in 2008. It’s as though someone else wrote it. Heck, I get upset with my code after a three-week period, so you can imagine how I feel about ten years. Also, I managed to LOSE the source code for 2.8.2, so I literally had to re-engineer the bug fixes that were introduced in that version.

Now it gets interesting. More than eleven months after fixing a date-related bug to do with regional settings in January of 2007, I decided to redo those fixes on 2.8.1 code, plus a couple of new features, to make it 2.8.3. You see, I had hard-coded a time limit into the code to expire ShutOff 2000 from active duty on 31 December 2007. The .NET version was supposed to be out by then. In that 2.8.3 release, I also decided to change the timer to include seconds in the time-based calculations, because it would be more accurate, and computers are faster now.

So I added this new functionality, as well as retro-fitting a bug fix I don’t remember doing in the first place, on code I hadn’t looked at in over two years (2.8.1 to 2.8.3). What could possibly go wrong with refactoring all that Date-related code in Visual Basic 6?

Bob found out.

Bob was upset with me. He had spent $5.00 on a product that didn’t work. So while emailing him updates on 30 July 2009, I released an update, version 2.8.4, which included a tiny bit of code that took seconds into account on a date string. Problem solved! The tests ran successfully. The Timer events were firing correctly, and all was well with the world.

Unfortunately, Bob wasn’t around to confirm my tests, so I updated the website, released the new build, and promptly forgot about it.

Last night, Bob got back from wherever work had taken him. He wrote to say that he couldn’t get it installed, and was being told to pay for the software again. I didn’t understand, so I sent him a 6-point list of how to remove the old version and install the new one.

He wrote back saying “it doesn’t work”. I got annoyed, because he wasn’t being helpful, and I told him as much. He wrote back to ask for his money back. I replied saying his seven day return policy had expired. His terse reply made it clear he wasn’t happy. I told him to take it up with PayPal, and find tech support in the meantime. He lodged a claim on PayPal, and I went to close the call so that it could be escalated. I wasn’t having any of this nonsense.

And then this morning, he wrote back. He told me he had managed to get the new version installed, and that it wasn’t fixed. Now I was convinced he was lying, because I tested it, for goodness sake. To be sure, I downloaded 2.8.4 off the website, like a normal person would, installed it, filled in my registration details, and performed a timed shutdown. It worked. I tried a timed logoff. That also worked. I tried a timed lock workstation. That worked too.

I told Bob that it was working on my side, and something else must be wrong. Then it was home time. I came home tonight, deciding to work on the .NET version. I got a heck of a lot done (truth be told, I’m very close to finishing, but there are rough edges that can hurt you, so it’s not ready). Then Bob wrote to me again and sent me a screen shot.

Bob was having the SAME problem as before. His screen shot clearly shows the real-time clock over a minute past the shutdown timer. Even in worst-case scenario, it will take 30 seconds to shut down. This is because the polling timer checks the clock every ten seconds, and then there’s an extra 20 seconds where the “Are you sure?” message box stays before it goes away if you don’t click anything. But Bob’s screen shot was showing over a minute.

I then decided to fire up the old Windows XP virtual machine again, and take a poke around. I implemented my version control system, changed the version number, folder names and all that, and went in. I figured the only difference between Bob (not working) and my (working) 2.8.4 was the regional settings. I changed my XP’s regional settings to US and got to work.

The first thing I did was to change the way the Date Picker DISPLAYS the date:

> DTPicker.Format = dtpCustom
> DTPicker.CustomFormat = “yyyy/MM/dd”

Now at least it would LOOK the same regardless of what country you’re in.

Then I went to the Timer method to see what that was doing. Don’t laugh.

Old Code (see the & “:00″ at the end I put in to fix 2.8.4?):
> ValDate = Date & ” ” & NewHour & “:” & NewMin & “:00″

New Code (that made Bob happy again):
> ValDate = Format(Date, “yyyy/MM/dd”) & ” ” & NewHour & “:” & NewMin & “:00″

See what I did there? I made it the same. You know, for when you want to compare apples with apples.

Sorry Bob. You were right. I’m glad I didn’t refund you, because I wouldn’t have found this problem otherwise.

The moral of the story: my first instinct on 30 July was to refund him and ignore the problem. Although he put me through a lot of effort (ok, two hours tops), it was worth it. He got his $5.00 worth of software. I fixed two bugs. I had a beta tester who was as in-your-face as me, and we both came out wiser.

I’ve offered Bob a second licence (free of charge) for a friend or colleague. Hopefully he takes me up on it. And as we .NET developers know, the Date format problem is a non-issue now, especially if you store everything as UTC. I am doing that in the new version, I promise!

The idea was fully formed this morning as I drank my tea, and it was all thanks to John Lennon and Macca, the most successful song-writing duo in recorded history. Allow me to explain.

Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Scott Hanselman, Jon Skeet, Brad Wilson, (and if you’ll forgive me, Ashton Kutcher) and millions of other people use Deep Share to reach millions of others. We all agree that the Internet is the printing press of the post-modern world. But what makes us different to Lennon and McCartney is that we are able to start a revolution much more easily, with stuff that is so damn easy to use. Lennon is probably spinning in his grave.

And that’s the point.

Deep Share allows us to, in amongst the brain dump of useless information, create new ideas, new theories, new technologies, new philosophies, in a matter of minutes. (It’s really a matter of seconds, but I like alliteration.) For example, green avatars which still abound on Twitter, signified support by ordinary people for other ordinary people during the Iranian elections. It was just another meme in some respects, but the fact that by changing your photo could imply political support on an international scale, demonstrates how Deep Share has penetrated our minds.

Deep Share, built on concepts and technology thought up in another time for another use, brings us to a point where anyone can start a revolution, at any time, and gather support instantaneously. We call it Social Web, Social This, Social That, but it’s not Social Anything. We are becoming more ethereal in our communication. We are becoming a living, breathing, thinking entity.

Deep Share is bringing the ideas of rockstar programmers, who mostly consider themselves ordinary people, to other ordinary people. That means that technology is advancing so quickly, it’s almost impossible to keep up. Deep Share is bringing news to everyone much faster than other media. Deep Share is bringing information to everyone much faster than Google, Bing, or Web 2.0. The people who built this framework embrace the use of it, and want everyone else to participate. Mainstream adoption is happening faster and faster with each new iteration. Web sites, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter … It won’t end there.

It can’t end there. It’s Deep Share. When the Next Big Thing arrives, the market penetration required will already be there. If people have the information more readily that they need to make a decision, then you start breaking down barriers of ignorance. You begin to see things from the perspective of a Russian, or a South African, or an Australian, or a Canadian. How about all of them, all at once, on a trending topic? Visionary, albeit accidental, on the part of Twitter, wouldn’t you say? Even the US President does it.

So I’d like to give thanks to the rockstar programmers. I’d like to give thanks to the early adopters. But most of all, thank you, John Lennon. I call it Deep Share.

simplephpblogtowordpressconverter.0.3.0.src.zip

So I guess it's out with the old, in with the new: VirtualBox FTW!

- Not unzipping files that are already unzipped.
- HttpRoot setting for root of Simple PHP Blog for dynamic replace of base URL on embedded links.
- Related link support. Requires modification of WP template using "the_meta()".
- Category support. This will be augmented with tag support later.

You can get the code from:

Version 0.2.0 (latest)
Version 0.1.0

Latest version will always be available from http://itsol.co.za/download/simplephpblogtowordpressconverter.zip as well.

http://itsol.co.za/download/simplephpblogtowordpressconverter.zip

You will need to compile it to use it. I will provide binaries another time.

The open source licence I've used is the MIT licence. This might change in the future, but it is free to use.

Version 0.1 of the converter successfully produced 845 blog entries and associated comments. You can see the handiwork at:

http://xqrx.com/wp/

There are some teething issues:

1. The categories haven't been done
2. Internal links (referring to posts) still point to their original location
3. The default settings for posts and comments might need polishing up

Otherwise, it was a really simple process. I created the SQL file, GZipped it, and imported the GZipped file into PHPMyAdmin.

I'm doing it in C#, in a Windows Forms app on my local machine. My main reason for doing it this way is because I'm a professional C# developer, so it's much easier. Plus, I'm able to debug the application locally, which makes my life a lot easier there too. Once it's done, I'm sure it can be ported to any language, including PHP.

The basic principle I'm using is a bastardised ORM, where I loop through the folders, unzip and parse each file, and throw the (cleaned up) results into an entity that matches the WordPress table structure. Then (the bit I haven't done yet) I will save each WP entity (post and comments) into a WP database. I'm *probably* just going to generate a MySQL-compatible script instead, which can then be run manually.

I will make the code available as open source (probably the BSD licence or something similar), and then you can tinker with it. Since I'm only building it for myself, there are a few assumptions I've made in the code, and it isn't very robust. On the bright side, it's fast. I was able to unzip, parse and convert into entities all of my 850 posts in around 3 seconds.

As a final note, for about half a day's work, I'm impressed with how easy this has been so far. Granted, it would take about a day to finish it, and probably if I applied myself, the same amount of time to copy and paste every post into a WordPress engine anyway. That's not the point, though

There is a .NET version of ShutOff, and I just need to finish it. I've made a fundamental change to the way the scheduler works now, and thanks to separation of concerns, will have little impact on the rest of the product. Suffice to say though that ITS ShutOff is going to be awesome.

Once the .NET version is released, I'm open-sourcing ShutOff 2000. Should make for interesting reading (and mockery).

I am at the point where I can convert each file into a WP post (in a generic list). Working on comments next. Last will be the SQL script.

For it to work, you will need to download your "content" folder to a local drive. The C# app is pointed at the content folder, and is able to unzip the files if you have enabled compression, read out the contents of the blog entry, and populate the necessary equivalent entities in the WordPress structure (which is as far as I am now).

When it's finished, it will generate a single SQL script to run against a standard WordPress MySQL database to populate the appropriate tables.

Some stats: I can unzip, parse and convert 850 blog entries in around 3 seconds. I expect the SQL script generation will be even quicker than that, since all the blog entries are in a generic list.

Note to self: don't forget the images.

If I ever feel the need, I'll do a PHP version to run on the site. However, I do not feel the need at the moment. I'll probably release the code into the public domain for your enjoyment.

844 entries using 113,842 words stored in 421,949 bytes.
344 comments using 13,094 words stored in 75,088 bytes.

I need to convert these from Simple PHP Blog (using flat files) to some form of MySQL-based thing like WordPress, because Simple PHP Blog hasn't been updated for a while, and I think my site needs a refresh too. A rebranding exercise, if you like.

I'm actually toying with a C# app that will go through each .gz file, uncompress it, remove the awkward special formatting and replace it with proper HTML tags, and write an INSERT statement for each entry. Then I'll make it freely available.

So it's 15:06 now. How far do you think I'll get by 7pm?

http://www.munz.li/?p=10

Since the article has been deleted due to the verifiability of the content (specifically the lack thereof), the issue is moot. Nevertheless, it's more damning evidence against the farcical running of the fraud that is the Human Pin Code.

Click to view the Wikipedia case study.

Click to view Matthew Kirkland's response about the misuse of his name.

EDIT: Brian van der Spuy's original critique of the Human Pin Code has been mirrored here because GeoCities has been closed by Yahoo.

Suffice it to say that if I were Douglas Forbes, I'd hope my customers and business associates don't institute legal action against me (we don't have class action suits in SA, but we should), asking for full refunds.

I wonder whether the police would be interested in instituting a fraud investigation as well.

The information is in the public domain, so if you wish to link to it, please feel free. I am reproducing it here as I feel that it is in the public's interest.

[Matthew Kirkland responded to Jason Dale on the morning of the 6th of April 2008 at 7:07am, claiming that he was not aware of the comments about the patent on Wikipedia, and that his name was used fraudulently and without his authorization. Matthew has also curtly indicated that he does not wish to be involved in any "disputes" between Jason Dale and Douglas Forbes. There is no conclusive evidence to prove Matthew's explanation at this time.]

Dear Matthew,

RE: DOUGLAS FORBES PATENT AND IP CLAIMS INVESTIGATION:

Attachment 1: Local and international patent name search report (Paulo Lopes (MyPatent))
Attachment 2: Washington State Library Correspondence and feedback (Kathryn Devine (WSL))
Attachment 3: Background information
Attachment 4: Legal correspondence

I make reference to your comments on the Wikipedia discussion page for the Human Pin Code, where you state that “Forbes has a granted patent – please check with the DTI in PTA. User Matthew Kirkland 21 October 2008”. Your statement implies that Forbes's patent was granted locally in South Africa under his personal name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Human_pin_code

I make further reference to comments which appear on Douglas Forbes's website which read as follows: "Please note that the intellectual property with all papers and formula mentioned above, is registered in the USA for world protection in the Washington State Library". My understanding is that aside from your various contributions, you are also involved in the administration and upkeep of Forbes's website.

http://www.douglasforbes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=27

Any encyclopaedia, whether electronic or otherwise, is ultimately judged by the relevance, scope and accuracy of its content. Wikipedia is no exception, and as such, I feel the need to set the record straight on a number of issues raised on the aforementioned Wikipedia discussion page. Those issues include, inter alia, the subject of Forbes's claimed granted patent as well as his claims to have IP and related matter registered on the Washington State Library; the latter claim of which is a clear demonstration of Forbes's ignorance as to how IP actually functions. I further notice that the Wikipedia link to a certain critic site not favourable to Forbes's point of view was removed.

Forbes is keen to boast of his exploits and has documented that he regards himself as superior to the academia. I therefore find it rather paradoxical that Forbes avoids mentioning the patent directly, and instead delegates to his associates the task of making vague references on his behalf. In Forbes's book “Human Pin Code” which was published in 2002, Forbes writes on page 21 that “I have applied this theory to create a Black Hole, which I have utilised in a patented invention”. This clarification is strangely not mentioned on Wikipedia, and Forbes's very own website makes no mention of any patents whatsoever. Since about 2003, numerous attempts have been made to gain even rudimentary details about this invention such as the patent number, and to date no information has ever been forthcoming.

Therefore, I took the liberty of conducting a comprehensive investigation of my own into Forbes's IP and patent claims. This was achieved by way of a local and international name search for any patents or patent applications which cite the name “Douglas Forbes” as the applicant (patentee), inventor or assignee. This search was conducted by a patent attorney and IP specialist representing MyPatent. The name search was further complimented by feedback received from a reference librarian at the Washington State Library within the United States of America. Attached please find reports that reveal the findings thereof.

To pre-empt the attached reports, it is noteworthy to mention that:

1. According to the patent name search, Douglas Forbes presently does not hold any valid or granted patents in his personal name, whether locally or internationally.

2. The only South African patent that was ever granted to a “Douglas Forbes” is South African patent no. 99/6722 entitled “Apparatus and Method for Granulating a Material”, the granted patent of which lapsed due to non-payment of renewal fees on 26 October 2006.

3. An unusual number of changes in ownership were effected against the above-mentioned patent 99/6722 during its term (see the attached report).

4. The patent as referred to above was filed under the category “B 02 C – CRUSHING, PULVERISING, OR DISINTEGRATING IN GENERAL; MILLING GRAIN” and denoted by the code 19/18 to include the use of auxiliary physical effects, e.g. ultrasonics, irradiation, for disintegrating. The technology upon which this patent is based is well known and has absolutely nothing to do with the creation of “Black Holes” as is understood in science and/or physics. Patent 99/6722 appears to be a slightly modified version of earlier patents by other inventors. This point is moot as the patent is now lapsed.

5. It should be noted that in the ISR section (International Search Report) pertaining to 99/6722 as indicated in the last section of the report, that the examiner marked an “X” in the reference boxes which is an indication that the examiner felt that at least some of the claims made in the patent application were neither novel nor inventive in the light of the prior art document located. Again, this point is moot and for historical background only, given that the patent is now lapsed.

6. Attached at the end of the Local and international patent name search report is the full documentation for the PCT / international patent application WO 00/24518, which refers to the same invention as the above-mentioned South African complete patent application 99/6722 which is lapsed.

7. There is no such thing as “world protection” in terms of patents, design and trademarks. These rights are territorial and require that an application be filed in each country in which protection is required. Therefore, PCT or international patent applications within themselves do not grant patent rights, and instead are dependent on the success or outcome of the national phase applications within the various territories for which the PCT or international application applies.

8. According to the International Search, the national phase applications extending from WO 00/24518 in the countries Australia, Taiwan and Uruguay were never granted. South Africa is also one of the national phase applications extending from WO 00/24518, and since the only granted South African patent is now lapsed, WO 00/24518 within itself is lapsed and no longer in force.

9. Other provisional applications were matched to the name “Douglas Forbes” in the local name search, which have subsequently lapsed, one of which was for an “Anti Highjack-Anti Theft Device” (provisional application) which may not necessarily belong to the same “Douglas Forbes”, as implied by the subject.

10. Provisional patent applications expire after 12 months, and unlike complete patents, they cannot be scrutinized by the public. No registered claims are filed against provisional applications.

11. I.D. documents are not required for the filing of any patent application and patent attorneys who file such applications are not at liberty to reveal the identities or contact details of their clients.

12. It follows that an “identity shield” can be created when more than one different inventor and/or applicant and/or assignee share the same first and last names, and where claimed inventors and/or applicants and/or assignees that also bear the same first and last name refuse to provide patent numbers upon request.

13. Anybody can obtain a patent for anything at the South African Patent Office due to the fact that it is a non-examining patent office. This is a key difference to foreign patent office's who employ full time examiners to examine the subject matter of all patent applications filed and, only if the examiner is satisfied that the invention fulfils the patent requirements, will a patent on that invention be granted.

14. The claims made about having IP, formulas and papers “registered” at the Washington State Library in the U.S. are completely invalid.

Please refer to the South African Patents Act section 85 (1) through to (4) and be aware of the penalties for making false representations. Perhaps you were unaware of the findings that I have presented, and made your comments on Wikipedia in good faith that the information provided to you was in fact correct. Accordingly, it is my intention to make this information public knowledge, particularly to individuals whom I know or have established to currently have or have had dealings or ventures with Forbes.

The non-examining status of the South African Patents office is such that the South African patenting system is open to abuse by mistaken inventors who file patent applications believing them to be patentable when they are in fact not, or by fraudulent inventors who file patent applications while knowing full well that their inventions are not patentable. Therefore, holding a granted patent does not guarantee that the invention for which the patent applies works, or is valid, nor does such a patent guarantee the expertise of the inventor or the applicant.

This information has been brought to you at great personal risk, expense and labour in the interests of presenting truth for the benefit of the public. I hope that in doing so, others may avoid suffering damages as a result of making uninformed decisions based on false and contradictory information, unsubstantiated claims and misleading marketing. In a country such as South Africa where the vast majority of its citizens are too apathetic to challenge even bad customer service, it is very unlikely that many individuals will go to the expense and the trouble that I have in order to uncover the truth. Sadly, this status quo is taken full advantage of by unscrupulous individuals who depend on the widespread gullibility and apathy of the public.

The attached ZIP archive is for your reference, and presents background information that is useful for placing my investigations into perspective. This includes legal correspondence that Forbes to date has failed to respond to; which also highlights the blatant contradictions in his “scientific” theories. In a display of unbridled audacity, Forbes writes on Wikipedia that “I research everything to the enth degree before writing a word about it” approximately a month after receiving my attorney's letter. This is further exacerbated by a series of statements that are inaccurate, self-contradicting, slanderous and utterly disrespectful. As a matter of observation, Forbes should at least make an attempt to improve his spelling and grammar before making arrogant assumptions about the capacity of the “general public” to take interest in and grasp scientific material.

I trust that you will give serious consideration to the contents of this email and its attachments, and that in future you will exercise more discrimination and caution before posting on public forums. You are entitled to charge for any work that you do for Forbes, and you are also entitled to insist upon the substantiation and proof for any claim that you are asked to represent on his behalf.

Please note that I am not associated in any way with any of the comments that presently appear on Wikipedia concerning the Human Pin Code or Douglas Forbes. Any representations that are made by me will reflect my name accordingly.

Sincerely,
Mr. Jason Dale

SA's selective democracy
Chris Moerdyk

Almost exactly 15 years ago, Nelson Mandela took the oath of office as President of the Republic of South Africa and our country immediately became the world's most shining example of a constitutional democracy at its best.

We smiled, walked tall and generally looked down our noses at far less perfect democracies like the USA, UK, and Europe.

Today, we are not the world's best example of a constitutional democracy. If anything, the only sort of democracy we can lay claim to is a Selective Democracy, which is probably the worst kind of democracy there is.

Selective Democracy is so bad that it's actually almost better to come right out and admit to being a one party dictatorship of a country in which the favourite national pass time is social one-upmanship.

You know you live in a Selective Democracy when:

- Politicians vociferously commit themselves to upholding the independence of the judiciary until a judgement goes against them and then they publicly say that all judges are racist idiots.
- When politicians who fought for decades against the iniquities of apartheid and struggled for human rights, ban someone like the Dalai Lama just because his presence in this country might annoy China.
- When politicians are seen to uphold the rule of law by watching as their friends go to jail for fraud, then use their clout to set them free on all sorts of flimsy grounds before they have spent more than a couple of minutes in a cells.
- When politicians are found guilty of a crime and their political party carries them shoulder-high to the gates of the prison while behaving as though the guilty party had just scored the winning goal in a World Cup final.
- When political party youth leagues rant and rave about their democratic right to go and address crowd in opposition strongholds and then talk about killing anyone who doesn't agree with their leader.
- When politicians create a special task team to combat crime and then disband it when they find it targeting them.
- When it takes prosecutors five minutes to stick a shoplifter in jail and almost ten years to get to first base in a legal action against a high profile politician in spite of claiming for years and years that they have cast-iron evidence of his guilt.
- When a bunch of politicians appoint a board of directors to the national broadcaster and within a few months those same politicians want to fire them due to a sudden apparent lack of confidence, but actually because those politicians now have a new boss who doesn't like the old boss and therefore doesn't like the board of the national broadcaster not because they have suddenly become bad people. Then, when they can't fire them they just make up a new law to let them do it.
- When the most visible result of a decade and a half of affirmative action and black economic empowerment is 500 exceedingly rich fatcats and just as many unemployed as there were before. Now, because of these fine examples set by politicians, the whole country is getting in on the Selective Democracy act.

Ordinary

To ordinary people, Selective Democracy means:

- If you are poor you are entitled to steal electricity even if this kills your neighbours.
- If you are poor you can steal just about anything because your are entitled to. Even steal from other poor people.
- If you are homeless, you can just move into houses in spite of some equally poor people being on the list ahead of you.
- Driving unroadworthy taxis like manic madmen, causing accidents and killing passengers right left and centre just because you feel entitled to.
- Disrupt traffic, destroy property and assault innocent passers-by just because government wants to introduce a better bus service. Selective Democracy to the taxi industry means competition only works when they are competing against poor bus and rail services and absolutely not the other way round.
- Driving your new BMW at 200kph on a freeway while at the same time changing lanes without indicating and chatting away on your cell phone because you have spent R500 000 on your Beemer and feel entitled to get your money's worth out of it.
- Selective Democracy means being able to drive any car at any speed and any old how no matter how dangerously because if the taxi drivers can get away with it then why shouldn't you.
- Selective Democracy means you can beat another motorist to death with a hockey stick for cutting you off, but at the same time feeling entitled to give the finger to and/or shoot anyone who has the nerve to hoot at you when you cut them off.
- It also means that if you run a business where a lot of cash is involved, paying tax is optional. And if you opt not to, you can still bitch like hell when your rubbish isn't collected or a pothole in the road isn't fixed within minutes of appearing.
- If you run a big business and a senior executive rips you off, you can give him a golden handshake, ask him to resign and then promise not to say anything if he doesn't, and then sweep it all under the carpet. You don't have to lay a charge of theft even though the law insists you must, because you don't want to damage the image of the company with controversy. Then, you complain at dinner parties about politicians flouting the rule of law.

The list of examples of Selective Democracy goes on and on and, let's face it, not only politcians and businessmen, but a huge number of ordinary folk who are guilty, even in some small way, of manipulating democracy to suit themselves.

But, who is to blame? Who the heck started it all?

Well, there is only one answer to that. It starts by the people who lead us. Politicians and businessmen.

The examples they set by being so patently selective in the way they either vociferously uphold democracy or simply ignore it when it suits them can't help but have an impact on society.

It is the start of a process that has more and more ordinary law abiding people thinking: "Well, if they can do it, why can't I."

========================================================================

THE Ph.D. FINAL EXAM

Note: Anyone who has taken a Ph.D. Final Exam will surely remember these
very standard kinds of questions.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Read each question carefully. Answer all questions. Time limit:
4 hours. Begin immediately.

HISTORY:

Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present
day,concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social,
political, economic, religious, and philosophica impact on Europe,
Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific.

MEDICINE:

You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze and a
bottle of scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your
work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.

PUBLIC SPEAKING:

2500 riot-crazed aborigines are storming the classroom. Calm
them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.

BIOLOGY:

Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture
if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier, with
special attention to it probable effect on the English
parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.

MUSIC:

Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with a flute
and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.

PSYCHOLOGY:

Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional
stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of
each of the following: Alexander of Aphrodisias, Rameses II,
Gregory of Nicia, Hammurabi. Support your evaluation with
quotations from each man's work, making appropriate references. It
is not necessary to translate.

SOCIOLOGY:

Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end
of the world. Construct an experiment to test your theory.

ENGINEERING:

The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed on
your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in
Swahili. In 10 minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to
the room. Take whatever action you feel appropriate. Be prepared
to justify your decision.

ECONOMICS:

Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace
the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism,
the Donatist controversy, the wave theory of light. Outline a
method from all possible points of view, as demonstrated in your
answer to the last question.

POLITICAL SCIENCE:

There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War
III. Report at length on its socio-political effects, if any.

EPISTEMOLOGY:

Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your
stand.

PHYSICS:

Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an
evaluation of the impact of the development of mathematics on
science.

PHILOSOPHY:

Sketch the development of human thought, estimate its
significance. Compare with the development of any other kind of
thought.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE:

Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.

Fifteen percent of South African school children have been forced to have sex, a study by an international group of epidemiologists based in Canada has revealed, the SABC reported.

I am terribly disappointed that I was never molested at school. Clearly I hung out with the wrong kids … *sigh*

A wise man (or woman – I forget who it was) once told me that the most powerful vote you can cast is for a strong opposition, regardless of who is in power. And, quite frankly, I can't predict the outcome of this election to the point where I want to vote for the Congress of the People. Aside from the fact that they might win (albeit a very slim chance), they don't stand for what I believe in. Yes, I'm dismissing Ms Botoz right off the bat, because Helen Zille, while a strong woman, is not a leader. The Democratic Alliance is boring. They've been the "opposition" since Apartheid South Africa, and even their recent rebranding exercise did nothing for me.

So I don't know who to vote for.

TREVOR MALLACH
GLOBAL SOURCING EXECUTIVE – SHOPRITE GROUP

Hello fellow citizens

If like me, you don't have a passport from another country and you quite like living in South Africa, now is quite an important time for you.

Instead of using clichés like "the future is in your hands.." or "make your mark, let your voice be heard!" and other ineffective drivel, I am going to just draw your attention to the following:

Bob Mugabe had to amend the constitution of Zimbabwe to allow him to remain in power as president, long after he had reached his intellectual sell-by-date. (Before this, as in all "democracies", there was a limit to the number of terms which a president could serve). Having changed it once, he did it again. Then he was on a roll. The rest of the story we all know very well. With hindsight, we can see that had he been prevented from taking the first step, the whole sub-Saharan part of Africa would have been spared quite a lot of bother.

When Hitler took over Germany he systematically turned it into a fascist police-state, where no-one (no, not even German citizens) had any freedom. He did this by passing one piece of legislature after another. Slowly he started to ban things (like women shaving their legs and underarms). Next he formed a special police force which was under his personal control (the infamous Gestapo) to enforce these new laws. Then he banned some more things, like jokes, clever books and talking about him behind his back. By the time he had mobilised his army, and banned being Jewish or trying to stop him from invading your country it was TOO LATE! He had gained too much momentum.
"How did he and Bob manage this?" you may ask.
I'll tell you how: Baby steps.
Each time they changed something, they convinced all the stupid people that it was for the greater good. Clever people, who could tell that it wasn't, thought to themselves "Surely they won't get away with this" over tea and rusks, but did nothing. By the time someone decided to stand up and make a scene, his house had been burned down and his head was firmly wedged between an S.S. boot and the pavement outside.

Now, I'm sure we all agree that one "Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma" possesses neither the intellect, balls or charisma to start a world war. However, he has somehow managed to wangle his way into a position where he can very well take the first baby step towards making a complete pig's ear of our country. Old-school racist whites are always on about our country going to the dogs and ending up like Zim.. Of course they did this because they were narrow-minded and ignorant, not because they were keeping a keen eye on actual political developments. Our downfall will not be racism as everyone predicted in 1994, it will be corrupt politicians driven by greed and a hunger for power. And people drinking tea saying "surely they won't get away with that?".

Now,

JZ's trial has been scheduled for August (which is AFTER the election). After winning the election, the ANC plans on amending the constitution to prohibit the acting president from being prosecuted in a court of law. Just like with Bob Mugabe, the most fundamental law of the country will now be changed to suit the whims of a criminal with no brain. (Never mind the fact that this would actually mean that he could literally commit murder and get away with it until he steps down as president). Our constitution is literally the anchor which stops our country from drifting down river and over the edge of a waterfall. It leaves ultimate power in the hands of the courts and judges and prevents government from raising itself above the law. To allow anyone to mess with it is equivalent to committing a slow national suicide.
The ANC no doubt thinks they will again get the two thirds majority they need to tinker with the constitution in the April election.

I beg to differ.

I hope and believe that, unlike the sheep of the past in Germany and Zimbabwe , the average person who receives this mail has actually had enough of all these shenanigans and would like to see the appearance of justice, logic and efficiency in government.
Unfortunately, we are in the minority. However, to prevent things from getting worse really fast, all we have to do (for now) is:

VOTE !!!!!!!!

And then, when the election comes, vote for anyone except the ANC. You can vote for Vernon Koekemoer or Skippy Peanut Butter for all I care, just as long as no one gets a two-thirds majority!

I swear on my grandma's grave… if I hear someone (who didn't vote or couldn't vote because they were too lazy or hungover to register) complaining at a braai about the government I will come in from the side with a flying head-butt which will leave you so brain-damaged you'll join the ANC youth league and vote for Julius Malema in 2013.

This country is genuinely amazing, lets not let a small handful of people use it as their personal monopoly set and turn it into another post-Collonial African 3rd World sad story.

Vote, dammit! People are willing to die fighting for the right to vote. If you don't, and you end up watching as the country slowly slides into an abyss it will be "on you".

Ok, enough.

(Aside: Thank GOODNESS he's gone. I mean, seriously? How badly did he screw up?)

So now it's Obama, the …

(Aside: Sorry, my fingers are refusing to write the same clichés everyone has used to describe a man whose father was born in Kenya.)

So now it's Barack Obama, the new president, who has to clean up the mess. It's almost New Deal territory. The entire First World is broke. Interest rates are hovering around 1%. In South Africa, we've just had our prime interest rate slashed to 14%.

I don't envy Obama. Not only does he have to single-handedly convince the USA he's not a socialist (and even if he is, who cares?), but he has to sort out the nonsense in the economy, and indirectly the healthcare and education crisis in that country too.

Would you want that job? No wonder the poor guy fluffed the "faithfully" line in his swearing-in ceremony.

Netbooks. I think I finally get what they're about. Sure, it's a small, underpowered, notebook wannabe (notebook: (n), a portable computer). Except when you're lying in bed at 1am and you want to write something down and the pen is nowhere to be found, and the notebook (notebook: (n), a small collection of paper, usually lined, bound in the form of a book) has fallen behind the back of the drawer inside the bedside table.

So tonight, I'm thinking I want a netbook, so that I can write my best-selling novels in bed. No kidding. I finally get it. Now who wants to buy me one?

I can thank my better half for suggesting it.

I was quite innocently sitting here and watching last night's America's Got Talent, with the last round of auditions for season 2. Hit him up on Wikipedia or YouTube for this audition piece. It frightened me more than The Hoff's singing.

For the SOI new year, I'm thinking a review of our NMC list as well, and perhaps some additions. I can add Dubya now, which is helpful.

Find the Smiters' website on www.smite.co.za and remember to visit the shop. Dancing pirates are optional.

By the way, Michael Moore's Sicko is a good watch. If nothing else, it makes you want to visit France and Canada.