I was wrong.

The real credit for the portable tape player is to Andreas Pavel, a Brazillian national, making his first portable personal stereo player in the late 1960′s.

With irony, he was unable to enthral people with the device. He recounts the confusion he raised in Milan in 1976 with massive earmuff headphones (the kind scumbag hipsters wear today, but larger, affectionately called ‘cans’), “people would look at me sometimes on a bus, and you could see they were asking themselves, ‘Why is this crazy man running around with headphones?”‘

Pavel filed patents in five countries, and Sony agreed to license his technology in 1986 — although they refused to acknowledge him as the technology’s inventor. He fought long and hard, and it wasn’t until 2003 that he reached an agreement with Sony that saw him credited for his idea, along with a sizable cash settlement rumored to be over $10 million. To his credit, he never let his legal battle consume him or define his life, even when faced with financial ruin.

Below is the earliest article I can find on the subject, from 2005.

Portable Stereo’s Creator got his Due, Eventually
By: Larry Rohter
Published: New York Times, Friday, December 16, 2005

In the late 1960s, Andreas Pavel and his friends gathered regularly at his house here to listen to records, from Bach to Janis Joplin, and talk politics and philosophy. In their flights of fancy, they wondered why it should not be possible to take their music with them wherever they went.

Inspired by those discussions, Pavel invented the device known today as the Walkman. But it took more than 25 years of battling the Sony Corporation and others in courts and patent offices around the world before he finally won the right to say it: Andreas Pavel invented the portable personal stereo player.

“I filed my first patent a complete innocent, thinking it would be a simple matter, 12 months or so, to establish my ownership and begin production,” he said at the house where he first conceived of the device. “I never imagined that it would end up consuming so much time and taking me away from my real interests in life.”

In person, Pavel seems an unlikely protagonist in such an epic struggle. He is an intellectual with a gentle, enthusiastic, earnest demeanor, more interested in ideas and the arts than in commerce, cosmopolitan by nature and upbringing.

Born in Germany, Pavel came to Brazil at the age of 6, when his father was recruited to work for the Matarazzo industrial group, at the time the most important one here. His mother, an artist named Ninca Bordano, had a home built for the family that included a studio for her and an open-air salon with high-end audio equipment, meant for literary and musical gatherings.

Except for a period in the mid-1960s when he studied philosophy at a German university, Pavel, now 59, spent the remainder of his childhood and early adulthood here in South America’s largest city, “to my great advantage,” he said. São Paulo was experiencing a period of unusual creative and intellectual ferment then, culminating in the Tropicalist movement, and he was delighted to be a part of it.

When a station called TV Cultura was licensed to go on the air, Pavel was hired to be its director of educational programming. After he was forced to leave because of what he thinks was political pressure, he edited a “Great Thinkers” book series for Brazil’s leading publishing house in another effort to “counterbalance the censorship and lack of information” then prevailing.

In the end, what drove Pavel back to Europe was his discontent with the military dictatorship then in power in Brazil. By that time, though, he had already invented the device he initially called the “stereobelt,” which he saw more as a means to “add a sound track to real life” than an item to be mass marketed.

“Oh, it was purely aesthetic,” he said when asked his motivation in creating a portable personal stereo player. “It took years to discover that I had made a discovery and that I could file a patent.”

Pavel still remembers when and where he was the first time he tested his invention and which piece of music he chose for his experiment. It was February 1972, he was in Switzerland with his girlfriend and the cassette they heard playing on their headphones was “Push Push,” a collaboration between the jazz flutist Herbie Mann and the blues-rock guitarist Duane Allman.

“I was in the woods in St. Moritz, in the mountains, the snow was falling down, I pressed the button and suddenly we were floating,” he recalled. “It was an incredible feeling, to realize that I now had the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation.”

Over the next few years, he took his invention to one audio company after another – Grundig, Philips, Yamaha and ITT among them – to see if there was interest in manufacturing his device. But everywhere he went, he said, he met with rejection or ridicule.

“They all said they didn’t think people would be so crazy as to run around with headphones, that this is just a gadget, a useless gadget of a crazy nut,” he said. In New York, where he moved in 1974, and then in Milan, where he relocated in 1976, “people would look at me sometimes on a bus, and you could see they were asking themselves, ‘Why is this crazy man running around with headphones?”‘

Ignoring the doors slammed in his face, Pavel filed a patent in March of 1977 in Milan. Over the next year and a half, he took the same step in the United States, Germany, England and Japan.

Sony started selling the Walkman in 1979, and in 1980 began negotiating with Pavel, who was seeking a royalty fee. The company agreed to that in 1986, he said, but would not acknowledge him as the Walkman’s inventor, so in 1989 he began new proceedings, this time in British courts, that dragged on and on and ate up his limited financial resources.

At one point, Pavel said, he owed his lawyer hundreds of thousands of dollars and was being followed by private detectives and countersued by Sony. “They had frozen all my assets, I couldn’t use checks or credit cards,” and the outlook for him was looking grim.

In 1996, the case was dismissed, leaving Pavel with more than $3 million in court costs to pay. But he persisted, warning Sony that he would file new suits in every country where he had patented his invention, and in 2003, after another round of negotiations, the company agreed to settle out of court.

Pavel declined to say how much Sony was obliged to pay him, citing a confidentiality clause. But European press accounts said that Pavel received a cash settlement for damages in the low eight figures and is now also receiving royalties on some Walkman sales.

These days, Pavel divides his time between Italy and Brazil, and once again considers himself primarily a philosopher. But he is also using some of his money to develop an invention he calls a “dreamkit,” a personal, multimedia sense-extension device, and to indulge his unflagging interest in music.

Recently, he has been promoting the career of a somewhat overlooked flutist named Altamiro Carrilho, whom he regards as “the greatest living Brazilian musician.”

He is also financing a project that he describes as “the complete discography of every record ever released in Brazil, so that we will know every track and who is playing on it.”

In addition, some of his friends have suggested he might have a case against the manufacturers of MP3 players, reasoning that those devices are a direct descendant of the Walkman. Pavel said that while he sees a kinship, he is not eager to take on another long legal battle.

“I have known other inventors in similar predicaments and most of them become that story, which is the most tragic, sad and melancholic thing that can happen,” he said.

“Somebody becomes a lawsuit, he loses all interest in other things and deals only with the lawsuit. Nobody ever said I was obsessed. I kept my other interests alive, in philosophy and music and literature.

“I didn’t have time to pursue them, but now I have reconquered my time,” he continued.

“So no, I’m not interested anymore in patents or legal fights or anything like that. I don’t want to be reduced to the label of being the inventor of the Walkman.”

This article really makes me rage at the fact we’re waiting for up to ten years for this to happen in our areas. It’s an ESSENTIAL piece of infrastructure, worst part is the Liberal party are going to bin the NBN if they get in, which ties my hands as to who I and all geeks will be voting for in future. I really hope other parties wake up though, as it is in Australia we have ultra-conservative Liberal, and ultra-conservative Labor.

Labor dicked us over when Julia Gillard ran a coup, dethroning Kevin Rudd, possibly the most popular PM in our history due to his accessibility through social networks, et cetera. So they really deserve to be punished, although at the last election they held on with Julia because most Australian females thought they were ‘voting in Australia’s first woman prime minister’, when in reality they were just voting in a dog who didn’t care about the voters and wanted power; ultimately costing us trillions of dollars and a GDP to put us in the top three nations globally when she got the nod from the mining giants to run her coup over the mining tax.

Ironically, she’s facing being voted out because after costing us trillions (which no one cared about and voted her in again anyway, al la George Dubya) she is going to cost us an extra $50 a year with a pollution tax. Ohnoes. Sigh, this is why Australia is destined to always be a back water, the voters are so ill-informed and uneducated.

Anyway, enough nerdraging, here’s the article: -

WELCOME to Gunnedah, population 12,000, 440km from Sydney – and the first Wi-Fi town in Australia.

IT walks like the NBN, talks like the NBN – but is about $40 billion cheaper.

Welcome to Gunnedah, population 12,000. It’s 440km from Sydney and is now the first Wi-Fi town in Australia.

Instead of waiting years for fibre optic cables to be laid out to their doorsteps while small surrounding communities were left unconnected, the council teamed up with a new company to deliver high-speed Wi-Fi internet to doctors, patients, school students and every business in town.

The main street boasts free Wi-Fi as the new pilot scheme connects to the web using fibre-optic cables that were laid three decades ago.

Prior to Wi-Fi, the only options for the town were slow dial-up or pricey satellite internet.

Now video conferencing is allowing doctors to talk to patients at home, the mayor to confer with emergency services during storms and students to connect to the school curriculum from home.

Gunnedah Mayor Adam Marshall said it would allow Gunnedah businesses to have high quality internet without the broadband cost.

“We can save the government a heap of money but they are only going to bring it (the NBN) to the edge of town anyway. This uses the existing fibre optic and we can provide that cover to every home in Gunnedah,” he said.

Mr Marshall said the scheme could hook up any community with fibre optics.

“You could argue that it can negate the need for NBN Co to be rolling it out in these communities,” he said.

TUPS Company managing director Geoff Peach said the NBN forgets about 7 per cent of people in the most remote areas.

“There is a massive advantage for the population in having high speed broadband – it’s just the delivery I am confused about,” he said.

“I think if the approach that we had taken in Gunnedah was taken in every town we would save a great bit of money.”

A spokesman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said Wi-Fi would not be as fast as fibre-optic broadband.

“The Wi-Fi service is shared by many users, which causes a decrease in speed for every user accessing the service and is influenced by other factors which also significantly decrease speeds,” he said.

“Fibre to the premises technology is the state-of-the-art, future proof, fixed-line broadband technology that provides consistent speeds to all users. This is why it was chosen.”
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/gunnedah-high-speed-wi-fi-internet-works-as-leaked-reports-reveal-nbn-cost-could-blow-out-to-50b/story-e6frfro0-1226213817476#ixzz1fcQj2ivC

The exploit was published yesterday in the journal, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where – exceptionally in scientific publishing – both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors.

Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.

Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.

But a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that “unfolds” the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.

This is where Foldit comes in.

Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – using a set of online tools.

To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.

Cracking the enzyme “provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs”, says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.

“We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed,” Firas Khatib of the university’s biochemistry lab said in a press release.

“The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems.”

One of Foldit’s creators, Seth Cooper, explained why gamers had succeeded where computers had failed.

“People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at,” he said.

“Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week’s paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before.”

For the second time in little over a year, an Apple employee has lost an advanced and unreleased iPhone model in a public place, CNET said today.

The most recent incident came after an Apple employee misplaced his iPhone in San Francisco’s Mission District in July. Apple security scoured for the device over the following days and determined that the phone had been taken from a Mexican restaurant.

Apple officials believe the iPhone may have been sold on Craigslist for as little as $200. It’s also highly probable that Apple are intentionally leaking their devices to stir up a storm, given their savvy marketing techniques and their adaptability of leading the way with technological revolutionary items!

While Apple has not announced any plans to release a new iPhone, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports that the company was planning an October launch date for the iPhone 5.

CNET reported that no details about the phone – such as its operating system and design – have been revealed in the latest blunder by an Apple employee.

In April 2010, the gadget blog Gizmodo paid $5000 in cash for a then-unreleased iPhone 4 that a 28-year-old Apple engineer had left in a German beer garden in Redwood City, California.

Two men were charged on misdemeanour theft charges for selling the iPhone 4 to the blog. They are scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday (tomorrow AEST).

The already secretive company reportedly took even more extreme measures to protect itself from information leaks after the 2010 incident, including transporting iPhones in locked and sealed containers to carriers such as AT&T for compatibility testing.

Apple and Craigslist declined to comment on the latest iPhone-gone-missing episode, and the San Francisco Police Department said Apple did not file a police report related to the matter, CNET reported.

A VICTORIAN woman is being investigated after offering her two young children for sale to the highest bidder on internet auction site eBay.

The woman, in her early 30s, lives near Geelong. She wrote a “lengthy sales pitch” that included photographs of her son and daughter, both aged under 10.

Several people placed bids on the sickening auction, which has alarmed authorities.

Detectives from the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse unit were alerted to the internet page by a horrified member of the public.

The page has been taken down and the woman’s children could be taken into permanent care.

Victoria Police has decided not to press charges against the mum, who claims the act was a joke.

However, police sources told the Sunday Herald Sun they were disturbed by the incident and in particular the genuine bidders who tried to obtain the children.

Officers continue to probe the people who bid on the children and the Department of Human Services is continuing its investigation into the family.

“Investigators from Geelong were notified last week that a mother was trying to sell her two children on eBay,” a Victoria Police spokeswoman said.

“Photos of the children, a boy and a girl both aged under 10 years, were included in the sales pitch.”

The page was posted on Wednesday and was active until late morning the next day.

“The mother wrote a lengthy sales pitch that was very interesting reading,” a police source said.

“She said the page was created as a joke, but what worries us is the people bidding on the auction. Who knows who these people are. They could be paedophiles or anyone. It’s extremely disturbing.”

Officers immediately contacted eBay, which took the page down within two hours. Auction site staff then provided detectives with full details of the woman.

She faced charges under section 493 of Failing to Protect Child from Harm, which carries a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison.

But officers accepted her plea that it was a joke.

However, they have referred the matter to the DHS, which is still investigating the family.

A spokesman said it was possible the children could be taken into care.

“If there is a serious threat to the children’s wellbeing and the situation is so bad that the only safe option is for them to be taken from home, then that is definitely a possibility,” he said.

“This action could attract the attention of the wrong sort of people, whether it was a joke or not, and the family need to understand the risks and receive advice around that.

“We will continue to engage with the family and assess if there are any underlying problems.

“We need to get to the bottom of why she did this.

“Is there a mental illness, is the mother not coping or was it simply a joke? I don’t recall another case like this.”

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/probe-into-kids-for-sale-offer-on-ebay/story-e6frfro0-1226096094802#ixzz1SM12zja3

This got me to wondering about moral ambiguity of entertainment. I have, throughout my life, noted far more objectification of men by women than women by men. The generic smutty office worker, 20-40, slightly chubby from a desk job, always posting photos of themselves on facebook with a glass of wine in hand because that’s totally hip atm, that demographic springs to mind. And before we continue, keep in mind that I’ve never had trouble getting female attention, and whilst I hate both genders equally I hope that my introspection can help a few of you out there. Also keep in mind that whilst this is written for a primarily female audience, every element can logically and deductively be boiled down to applying to men too, so you have no excuse if you have a penis not to walk away from this article with some new ideas.

When you go to Sydney’s gay and lesbian mardi gras, the VAST majority of people present are women, out for a perve on all the naked gay men, even all the gay guys I know point out that there’s 500 horny women for every gay man on parade. When you watch TV there’s all this pseudo-pornographic romantic tripe all over the tube, from Twilight to True Blood, all vampire and werewolf related shit now has taken on a perverse Riceian sexuality. It’s very common place to notice women publicly harassing boys, I know I get heckled at least once a week by a car load of females on a Friday or Saturday night, sometimes more, and I find it extremely awkward.

What happened to workmen on a work site making lewd comments and whistles at women? Guys don’t dare, because they’ll be slapped with a sexual harassment charge in a heartbeat. But boys look at porn right? Well, yes and no. The purpose of it is far more clinical than women realise, there’s no emotiveness behind it, it’d be comparable to a woman using a sex toy to jack off. Men are sex crazed, right? Well, besides the genetic dispensation to have a higher sexual urge than women, I often find that if the truth is told women are at least equal to men in that regards.

Whether it’s slutty dolls and 10 year olds gyrating their hips like some latina singer on MTV through to the office dwelling sex crazed wine toting weirdos, there is a very distinct societal change developing which seems to have spun off from the 60′s to 80′s female empowerment movement and now those people are in positions of influence they’re pushing forwards some very morally vacuous agendas.

At the end of the day you’ve definitely got to recognise that all the above behaviour is pushed by marketing and advertising, whether you like it or not, you’re going to do as you’re told and become consumption machines and eat up what you’re told is the current trend. And yet, if you take a step back, and evaluate things, extrapolated from all this nonsense there are serious moral foundations in society being broken down and destroyed.

If you academic.google around you’ll actually find that infidelity in relationships is falling well and truly into the female side of the relationship being more likely to, and with Dolly, Cosmo, etc and other softcore pornographic magazines with content that would get it an RC rating over here if it weren’t passed off as sexual education you can see where a lot of these trends are coming from.

To add insult to injury, there is a very, very strong emphasis as of the last two decades on mens body shapes. I’m not talking mad pumped up jacked in on roids type of body, but there is DEFINITELY more pressure on men to conform to Calvin Klien models than there is on women to conform to Barbie, and both conformity agendas being pushed tend to be perpetrated by women, and womens industries, especially women in media.

I first hand know of many relationships which involve partners who freely admit they find X type of demographic of men to their partners who are completely nothing like they demographic they’re talking about, and they do it in a way that they think window shopping in this manner is normal, but would flip their shit if the male in the relationship even accidentally glanced at a female, or even more hilariously, they’d rage senselessly at the guy if a girl flirted with them as though it’s the mans fault.

Another big element in this issue is mens desperation. By being completely cuntstruck and desperate, you kowtow to whatever you’re given and cop it on the chin, when there is definitely an abundance of other potential partners out there. It’s male competativeness and need that drives them to try and compete by absolutely throwing away any self-respect or dignity they may have and tolerating things they really shouldn’t just to try and seal the deal with a specific female as opposed to turning their head and realising there’s 3 billion other women in the world.

This could also reflect peoples complete and utter lack of understanding of their ‘level’ in the dating world. I will admit men have a very low bar, which again proves my statement that men are desperate fucks. Women on the other hand would rather be 50 year old virgins who watch above mentioned pseudo-porn for girls and live in fantasy worlds jerking off over dirty 50 year old mexican drug fucked skeezy filmstars like Johnny Depp instead of appreciating what they have right in front of them. I know of quite a few girls who’re in their 20′s and never had a boyfriend but do all of the above and even when a reasonably attractive man approaches them they write them off as fugly and treat them like crap.

I’ve never had a problem finding or keeping women, I’m decent enough aesthetically, but more often than not my personality is the keeper aspect, so I can say the above without the vitriol and jaded mentality of some balding hairy fat drop kick virgin who lives in his mothers basement. I’m not butthurt or angry at womankind, and as I stated above it’s well and truly mens faults just as much, but the bottom line is; women are generally more intelligent than men, so if I make this realisation why haven’t they?

I’m also sick of seeing female sexual predators, it disgusts me how many women 10-50 years older than Justin Beiber are OBSESSED with him. I swear to god, if there was a female version (although there never is, see, boy singers, boy bands, and even girl bands are all angled towards a female market) and men significantly older than her illegal ass were all saying what some of these creeps say online you KNOW the police would be arresting and charging them and locking them away; but do these creepy middle aged kiddy fiddling pedophile housewives get any punitive measures? Of course not, they’re women.

The frustrating part is the ambiguity of culpability. I’m rather biased, and I honestly think that men are all to blame, because they’ll sell their own mother into slavery for a bit of T&A, but I do think I am naive in thinking so and am aware that arguments towards women being equally or more so at fault are possibilities. I just hate men more than women though, so I tend to lean towards that.

On the flipside, it would be far easier for women to take the moral high road, or rather, regain it, over their dicked counterparts given that their decline is a very recent trend that is somehow fuelled by female liberty falsly at best.

Gaggles of women together pushing peer pressure that your boyfriend or husband is ‘controlling’ or dominating your life or what not is usually a good example of the fickleness of dealing with this type of shit. Some men are controlling. But all female friends who don’t get along 100% with your boy will definitely say he’s controlling. It’s like crying wolf, which makes objective evaluation so difficult.

One sure fire way to not hurt your boy is to treat him exactly as he treats you. You don’t see him rubbing in your face that he finds chicks with EE tits attractive and only EE attractive, then shuns and complains about how flat chested someone with DD tits are, when all the while you’re sitting there with a C wondering why he’s hurting you like that. So don’t do the same and objectify other men, hell, if you’re looking at other men then your relationship isn’t working out, move on, for his and your sake.

If he does start looking at women, call him out on it, but don’t go mental, you’ll just seem insecure and psychotic. Bringing up issues like that is a delicate matter, you can repress things then eventually explode, but you can also harp on it too much and appear nuts, so find a balance. Most importantly though, remind him he’s not single.

Many people will be all hurr durr well there’s nothing wrong with looking it’s natural, but then they’ll sever the testes of their boy if they caught them doing that but think it’s fine if they do. Hypocrisy is rife in relationships in general, so the real trick is to manage a good level of communication and minimise the hypocrisy, there will always be some though. But you have to accept first and foremost that what is ‘natural’ isn’t always ‘right’ and can quite often be wrong. It’s not natural for men to be monogamous creatures, even in animals where assumed monogamy is part of their mating you will VERY often find the male straying, the reasoning falls down to genetic immortality, males are given a compulsion to go out and spread their genetics in any way they can.

One element that explains this in a laymans scientific manner, before I get back onto a collection of protips from my readings this evening, from my life experience, and from discussions with friends is, the genetic primal desire to propogate. If you have an island with 1 woman and 99 men you will have 1 child every 9 months. If you have an island with 99 women and 1 man you will have 99 children every 9 months; so the genetics to sleep around and spread your genetic material far and wide is more prevalent in society purely because people WITH that disposition to begin with have bred significantly more than monogamous men and thus more men are biased towards wandering. So be thankful if your boy doesn’t wander too often!

If you often do things without each other it’s important to be transparant. Tell each other where you’re going, who you’ll be with, keep in touch while you’re gone, that’s just common courtesy. If something happens while you’re out, say, other boys hit on you, or worse you approach them, tell your boy rather than risk someone else telling him. Witholding information is the same as lying, also manipulating what you say like a New York city contracts law solicitor is even more painful to a guy, say it straight, don’t try to mitigate.

Always tell each other stuff straight up and honestly, try to avoid situations where you will flat deny things when being called out, because most times men will do that as a trap, they already know the answer to the questions they’re going to ask; they just want to test the level of your loyalty and honesty with them by seeing what YOU say to them about the matter. This is one I and every guy I know has done many times before, and it’s something commonly referred to as ‘the girlfriend trap’, ironically not because you’re trapping a girlfriend, but because it’s a relationship control dynamic that was most commonly employed by teenage girlfriends you’ve probably had over the years to trap YOU, and you as an adult will ashamedly employ it yourself.

When trying to work through a problem do it textually, it gives you time to think and takes a lot of heat out of the situation, but DON’T ever exacerbate it by trying to defend yourself. Say your man catches you checking out beefy muscled guys all the time, whatever you do don’t send them an email being all so what, I’m attracted to muscley guys, but it’s not like they have to be Hulk Hogan or elements that pretty much just reinforce the guys fear that you’re enforcing a body image on him and if he doesn’t meet that you’ll continue to window shop, it says to him “Oh my expectations aren’t ridiculous, although you think they are because you’re not a beefcake, but gee it’s not like I’m asking you to be a WWE RAW competitor, just built like all the guys I look at,” which is still saying he’s not what you want.

Definitely don’t say that that’s not all you look for in a guy either, because if the issue is he keeps noticing you looking at guys of that demographic then what you’re doing is saying “I don’t look for built guys only, I want more than that.” which translates to a guy as “You catch me only looking at built guys, but I feel bad because I am being shallow, but don’t really care and will continue to window shop.” If you were happy with him, you wouldn’t be window shopping, just as he doesn’t because he’s happy with you, and you know how unstable you’d get if you kept catching him checking out girls with something that is more genetic than by choice, as the example of being a beefcake is.

Definitely don’t say that you look at a boys face first when you’ve been busted by him checking out male prawns (rip the head off before you eat it) or webcamming with guys who’ve got incredible deal breaker mugs on them or worse still pretend personality matters, when lust has no other element to it aside from physical attraction. Remind yourself why you’re with who you’re with, and if you don’t find them physically attractive, or have lost interest, in fairness to them, go elsewhere instead.

If you find yourself attracted to other people, then there’s definitely something wrong with the way you feel with your partner. If you have requirements out of the ordinary and seek attention from other men, again, there’s definitely something wrong that you need to work out before it grows like a cancer and consumes the psyche of your partner (assuming they’re innocent and you’ve just lost interest out of selfish reasons, it’s cruel to put them through that shit). Don’t gush about the million reasons you love them more when it’s a lust issue, it just adds insult to injury because if they have ALL that going on, and some dude just has a good six pack, that’s telling people that you’ll give up ALL that, or risk ALL that for a ugly dolt with a six pack and basically does confirm you’re shallow.

One element a lot of girls don’t realise is, they place unrealistic expectations on men’s body images. Take abs for example, you have to have a very dangerously low body fat level to attain them, and still have to spend a fair bit of time staying super fit to keep them, but you’ll only get that ‘ripped’ look if you’re in that lucky 5-10% of the worlds population who have the genetic disposition to be super lean. So while your gaggle of girlfriends are flicking the bean over ripped boys in your smut mags, keep in mind that what you’re doing is the male equivilent of boys lusting over girls with stupidly massive breasts and tiny waists and other unattainable elements that only a minority of the worlds females genetically possess.

Another definite no-no is to tell them that they’re just paranoid, then cite lies or witholds you’ve stated in the past as truths and demand they believe you; you need to prove yourself to them just as you would expect them to. Change your behaviour, remove elements that you shouldn’t have had in the first place (such as window shopping) and most definitely drastically alter the way you interact with them, become more proactive, show them that you lust over them as much as you love them, especially in situations where you’ve been caught out lusting over other men, even from a distance.

Never play hard to get, it’s cute for about five minutes, but it’s not normal. Also always initiate physical intimacy, even more than he does, especially if you have in the past with other partners, AND especially if he knows this, otherwise you’ll give the kid a complex and insult him on so many levels he’ll probably psychologically withdraw and you’ll suddenly find you just don’t have sex anymore or haven’t for months. Make him feel special, if he makes you feel special, make him feel even more special. Count how many times he compliments you, makes you smile, makes you feel good about yourself, or .. well, you catch the drift, and double it. If both of you try and outdo each other then you’ll be in a sickeningly happy relationship for a very long time.

Never, ever, ever blow off his needs for something selfish. Don’t ditch him to go out and get pissed with your mates, never exclude him from something like that. Never blow him off and give your attention to another male. Whatever you do, don’t do drugs, stay in school, oh … wait. Well, no, I guess that’s valid. I guess the bottom line is, do unto others … we all know that one, just put it into practice more. Most of all, if you hurt him, chase him, and don’t stop until you’ve made it better beyond any possible doubt.

God, I could keep going for hours but I think I’ll leave it there. I hope at least some of this rant has given some of you a bit of food for thought.

HOW are they killing it? They are under the misconception that motorsports vehicles are all dedicated and not used on roads, this is wrong. GQ16 Schedule R first paragraph points out something across most disciplines.

1. Each vehicle must be registered for use on public roads with an appropriate government authority, or be subject of a vehicle permit issued by an appropriate government authority, which authorises the vehicle’s use on public roads and must be covered by a policy of third party insurance. The engine and chassis numbers must agree with those shown on the certificate of registration or permit.

All motorsports vehicles generally also have to have six point racing harnesses and six point roll over protection systems (roll cages) with side intrusion struts. These are EXPLICITLY ILLEGAL FOR USE ON ROADS in NSW and Victoria, our more fascist states for my international readers.

I have been preparing a rally vehicle for getting back into the discipline, and every step of the way I have been confronted with LAWL ILLEGAL from the RTA and police. Half the time even if it’s legal, the police will disagree and sticker you then you have to fight the matter with the RTA and Police for the next three months all the while unable to use the vehicle.

With CAMS and the FIA enforcing safety requirements to protect their drivers, and the RTA forcing us to not use any safety equipment aside from a lap and sash seat belt, we’re caught between a rock and a hard place.

To make matters worse the RTA will not aknowledge European safety standards, which are significantly superior to Australia’s ADR. The purpose for this is, companies then have to pay huge license and testing fees to the RTA, who will then issue them with an ADR certification. The problem with this is, we’re a VERY small country and for most corporations we have too many problems to make us financially viable as a market to enter.

This means we have outdated … well, everything, and most stuff you CAN get here is imported by individuals and sold at anywhere up to a 1000% mark up (ROPS system from OMP, the rolls royce of safety for my Fiesta RS, 280 euro, in Australia $6,800) so we struggle even just to get the gear to participate in the sport.

The importance of motorsports in road safety is intrinsic. Safety gear used in the sport often comes into general public use 20-30 years after it features in something like Formula 1. Motorsports give people a vent to blow off steam and enjoy their cars in a safe, controlled and education-drive environment. It encourages people to appreciate the safety required at speed, and the skill that is integral to driving effectively.

Australia has always been behind the times in this regards though, in the 60′s and 70′s mag wheels were illegal because they were ‘dangerous and deadly’, tint was illegal until the late 70′s, and one way tint (similar to bus advertisements that cover the windows, etc) was illegal up until the 2000′s. Lap and sash belts were even illegal until the 60′s. So it’s no surprise really.

The problem is, we bleed skilled sportsmen like mad. We had the best sporting shooters in the world, and won all the olympic gold medals, but after changes to laws all our sporting shooters who used to bring home the gold like crazy have all moved to the US. Our motorsports guys, especially privateers who don’t have multi-million dollar budgets (which is often where some of the biggest champion drivers emerge) are fleeing the country like mad.

So, I appeal to you all should you have a moment to pop off an email to complaints@rta.nsw.gov.au and let them know you think they stink, link to this article, and let’s hope perhaps they wisen up. At present Vic Roads are also bringing in even more insane road rules, and the federal government are looking at unified road laws across all states and territories which are so strict and stringent that you’re going to get a lot more ‘hoon’s lashing out in frustration that they don’t have anywhere else to blow off steam and enjoy the thrill of racing.

Outlawing safety equipment, not recognising external authorities superior standards, and generally killing one of the worlds most loved sports off in our country is NOT a good representation of what the RTA should be doing in the best interest of all Australians. In fact, it is utterly absurd.

I won’t hold my breath on any reform, however.

This is the logic that led to ‘Octomum’ shitting her litter of slutlets. The demented mind of a child abuser who systematically whores out her children to an apalling yet oh so typically American/Hollywoodesque bunch of carrion eaters.

She stated ONE year after her media blits that she was retiring from the media and was apalled that she was selling her children and wouldn’t be seeking anymore publicity and free crap. Every six to twelve months since then she’s done it again, and when called out on it she cries poverty. Bitch should have done her math and realised that $40 a month isn’t that bad!

She’s done it again, however. Oh ye of the loose snatch has whored herself into the media spotlight again. Not by consuming several adults by her cavernous coot, but by getting into a brawl on a plane with 3rd Rock from the Sun star Kristen Johnston.

The actress got so fed up with the noisy brood, she asked the ‘Octomum’ to keep the noise down. The mum of 14 did not take kindly to this remark, yelling back: “How would you like me to keep eight two-year-olds quiet?” To which the actress allegedly responded: “Get more help!”

Nadya’s spokesperson told TMZ that she shouted back: “Why don’t you grow a baby and get a life.” The family reportedly took up almost all of the business section of the flight, which was delayed for two hours before taking off.

This woman should have her children taken off her and be committed, and steralised.

I, like all males, have no interest in it and assumed it was just more Twifaggotry and wrote it off. But more and more people I know have spoken about how awesome it is, many are young and most have boyfriends hell many have husbands.

What I didn’t know is it’s the largest instance of mass hypocrisy and a more contemporary example of sexism against men and objectification of men, along with image crushing emotional scarring that men have forced on them more than women do in modern society.

I noticed that the demographic of fandom into this new Rice-esque vampirism of faggoty Calvin Klein models and very normal almost unthreatening female characters had caught the attention of many girls who I’d probably categorize as the type of sexist chauvinistic pig that deserves euthanasia if not at least being desexed, but I didn’t quite twig as to how prevalent it is.

The kinds of constantly single (gee, wonder why) or walking STD factories that host these marathons also rope in girls who I’d expect far better from, especially given their age or marital status.

Now I’m far from a prude, but it’s the mass hyporpcrisy and trend towards overt sexism against men about this that is really illuminated by current societal norms moving towards the hypersexualisation of females.

I don’t know a single female who wouldn’t flip their shit and get angry at their partner if they were watching porn, overtly, and didn’t give a fuck if their partner knew but hoped that the ambiguity of the brand name of porn will hide that what they’re doing is going over friends places for porn fests.

If a guy did that, he’d find himself single REALLY fast.

Then we have the flip side, women raging about body image stress from models and the like. Those models aren’t there for men to look at, they’re a clothes horse for women’s clothes for women to look at. If that gives them body issues perhaps they should take a look at the ‘expected normality’ imposed on men.

I’ve always been fit, and I’m in no means insecure, but recently having Gaines an easy 10kgs due to medication I’m on I was looking for other fit men on the same meds to see what they did and what their experiences were.

What I found was, more men are insecure to the point of emotional harm, than women in any demographic circle I’ve frequented, and more have serious depression based from this as a curvy girl is ‘womanly’ and the enduring concept of women being comforting baby pooping factories allows chub, but the image of a man has slowly drifted to steroid built protein shake and no solid food intake men al la the film “300″.

The body image of women, not addressing the super skinny but more the mean example of female image is actually something most females achieve by eating healthy and being active a couple of days a week.

The body image of men requires hormone level sabotaging, starving to below 4% body fat, living off protein shakes and exercising an hour a day with an added two hours two days a week. And that’s the regime I used just to get abdominal definition in my hey day.

Then we have the whole issue of men being judged by women, partners, friends, or even ransoms if they so much as look at porn in the privacy of their own home, not some publicly advertised smutfest of a bunch of hipster sluts like a True Blood marathon by any means.

See, men are a visual creature, women are emotional. Men are the hypersexual of the species like most male animals as in nature courting is more a case of fighting the competition off, physically overpowering and raping the female, especially after a few seasons where they know that if a boy jumps them they have the displeasure of having to carry, bare and raise their young.

Women lack these fundamental psychological and genetic dispensations and this current trend seems enforced by peer pressure, and when you follow that social network to the queen bee enforcing the peer pressure it’s always some massively Americanized Hollywood obsessed twat who eats up what the consumerist market tells her to.

This decade we’ve also seen the emergence of equality in alcoholism, longish behavior, and boarding on competitive immorality from the female gender as the male. These are all new things that I would argue objectively are alien both culturally and socially, and something that is entirely foreign to Australia on top of all that. It’s purely American culture reflecting out to other nations, and it’s entirely built by the current Gen Y obsession with conformity to what they are told by any Tom Dick and Harry is normal, and if you’re to stop and question it clearly you’re a prude, or take things too seriously, or heaven forbid, you’re having a rant, not objectively analyzing what appears to be societal decay happening giving us all a front row seat to the show.

So next time you see some chick ranting about True Blood whilst having a “OMG I LUV @MYBF SO MUCH” in her bio, pop -him- a tweet and educate him, let him know clearly her love is subjective and she doesn’t have a problem lusting after other men behind his back, even worse, doing it overtly so all her friends and those on her feed are completely aware that she doesn’t give a fuck and is proud that she spends her weekends lusting over other men behind his back, which is possibly the biggest insult as it’s public humiliation and disrespect except most men wouldn’t twig on this or even realize.

You’d feel obligated to do the same if a guy on your list kept going on about say, some inconspicuous bar he and his friends go on about as totally awesome and go to often as a group while accidentally leaving out the part that it’s a strip joint and he goes there to lust over other women while his loving girlfriend is oblivious and sitting at home. You’d not only out him but give him a good smack about the head for it.

The cancerous effect that mass consumerism at a cost to societal cohesiveness has wrought may seem not to be too drastic, but I challenge you to look below the surface at ‘ladette’ culture, female alcoholism, and the statistical surpassment of men being the more likely to cheat being flipped on it’s head. I challenge you to ask the hard questions, and ignore the victim defense of clearly women are being exploited by being convinced this is normal or even acceptable behavior. It takes two to tango.

The ladette culture as a whole I should add comes in different guises, I know many hipster wanks who are ladettes in regards to thinking it’s fine to go clubbing without their boyfriends purely because they want to play up, flirt with other men, get with other men, or overtly lust over and ‘like looking at’ other men and think that’s absolutely fine. I feel sorry for men in such relationships, especially if they legitimately love their partner and are given the mushroom treatment about any of the above information.

I definitely feel sorry if they’re scared to talk about it openly, when in reality the pressure all this puts on relationships and especially the men in them (keep in mind men have societal pressure to not be sad, depressed, suicidal, hurt, jealous, offended, or feeling insecure or disrespected as that’s ‘being a pussy’ and heaven forbid if they talk about it) causes more harm than any other social pressure, effect, disease or disorder especially on men’s psychological well being and even health.

We deserve better.

I must say, I was mightily impressed. In fact, this is probably more moving than the Dalai Lama’s Twitter feed. More sensical too. The following prophetical rant came courtesy of one such spam script:

“V star 1100, wearisomely humble virgo was smirched. V star 1100, ceremonial mike will have sapped. V star 1100, mickie radiates within the beleita. V star 1100, freshwater necessity is the intramural aurek. V star 1100, diploid ses may hermetically clamour. Love shall distil. Culottes are the goers.

Gently ornithischian hastings is a breakfast. Altogether molal tronas may obscenely joggle per the yah pitcairner tad. Such audiometers extremly bifacially hoodwinks. Autonomous swearword is primly personalizing trendily withe outgrowth. Dynasties acervately psychoanalyses. Trisyllable had undescribably limned. Endocarditis shall although prolong under the soulful lillian.

Deontology was the muffler.

Afoot theressa may harm on the soaker. Incoherency was the treacherously senatorial unbeliever. Number — theoretically multipliable narthextremly southerly ransacks withindoors within the urbanely varangian wunderkind. Rotational topic was the unlimited jubilance. Preponderant dispersant is the blind nucivorous confirmation.”

Very recently Australia has begun the rollout of the largest sequential bank of radio telescopes in history, producing one behemoth structure per week. Also recently we have begun broadcasting, to planets in the goldilocks zone shortlisted as most probably capable of sustaining life.

The new radio telescope banks will form one badass giant radio telescope. This will undoubtedly be at some point used in the above grandiose endeavor of pestering the neighbors, like some chav council housing skank (iPad in it’s infinite fail thinks skank is REALLY an attempt to type ska keyboard … ) blasting Celine Dion waking the elderly residents nearby.

Stephen Hawkings, Arthur C. Clark, even the late Carl Sagan in his infinite wisdom held misgivings about sending out signals. It’s too early in the morning to research my usual citations or sources, but I do believe another equally brainy chap addressed that at any point in human history where a more advanced civilization encounters a lesser advanced it never worked out too well for the locals.

Even decades ago we made such mistakes. The Voyager program is carrying a gold plated copper record (like a vinyl record) that contains audio AND images and a means to access them through convoluted brainy calculations based on the rotational cycle of electrons in hydrogen atoms (I shit you not).

The collection of images includes many photographs and diagrams both in black and white and color. The first images are of scientific interest, showing mathematical and physical quantities, the solar system and its planets, DNA, and human anatomy and reproduction.

Care was taken to include not only pictures of humanity, but also some of animals, cattle, insects, plants and landscapes.

Other images show food, architecture, and humans in portraits as well as going about their day to day lives. Many pictures are annotated with one or more indications of scales of time, size, or mass. Some images contain indications of chemical composition.

All measures used on the pictures are defined in the first few images using physical references that are likely to be consistent anywhere in the universe.

In what may be the worlds most expensive attempt at a galactic message in a bottle we forget one thing.

Globally we feed over TWO HUNDRED TIMES what would feed the entire world to ecologically destructive animals bred for consumption by humans. This, to any advanced culture, would appear asinine, idiotic, and worse, primitive.

Do we REALLY want to be pestering the neighbors, not with Celine Dion, but proof we’re so massively under evolved that while one in three humans lives in squalor going hungry another one in three are not only inflicting horrid acts upon the creatures we share this world with but do so in what could be the most aggrandized snub to our own fellow creatures suffering?

Do we think our ET chums will rock up with a food basket and a nice bottle of ’89 Chardonnay? Or are they more likely to lob some nanite enriched astroidal planet killer our way with cellular destructive technology perfectly attuned to the human genome we so very kindly GAVE THEM extensive mapping of to help liberate all the other animals enslaved, used, and abused under our destructive reign, possibly even signed off by a galactic interpretation of our very own United Nations, for the greater good?

I leave the conclusions to you, dear reader.

The New York Times said today the covert effort also includes attempts to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries.

The operation involves a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “internet in a suitcase”, the report said.

Financed with a $US2 million ($1.9 million) State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communications over a wide area with a link to the global internet.

The Times said some projects involve technology being developed in the US while others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers from the so-called liberation technology movement.

The State Department is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya.

The US Government has also spent at least $US50 million ($47.2 million) to create an independent mobile phone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country, according to the newspaper.

It is intended to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services, the report said.

I’ve been reading the Dalai Lama’s drivel for quite some time on Twitter, and he is currently in my fair nation of Australia at the moment running around skirt lifting and being a twat for very large fees to trendy wanky folks who’re into contemplating division by zero. I’ve never really found him compelling in any way.

His Twitter feed reads like a Multi-Level Marketing scammers empty headed random quotes.txt. In interviews he takes the generic asian mystic role of spouting utter shit as answers trying to pass himself off as deep or intellectual when in reality koan style responses are just batshit zealot cop outs. But what I want to address is, is he dangerous?

“Rather than working only to acquire wealth, we need to focus on the welfare of humanity as a whole.”

That’s a dangerous idea. Why? Because it deflects the problem, the starving suffering masses NEED to acquire wealth, and not touch each other in the pants and sing kumbyah.

Here’s a little snippet from a TED talk that I hope the Dalai Lama can check out to try and get a LITTLE bit of understanding before spouting crap. Sure, he thinks he’s Yoda, that’s his pitch, it’s how he pulls the bitches, but really; he needs to get a grip, his guru babble puts poisonous ideas into already unintelligent peoples minds who seek out a little asian Yoda in the first place to fill a void in their souls (or minds, given that souls do not exist). But I digress.

So, here we see a perfect example of why altruism won’t solve a situation that a clear lack of finances and especially food will.

“Friends, genuine friends, have much more to do with whether we have a warm heart, not money or power.”

Another example of hippy communist bullshit. People need money. Money is inadvertantly power, the power to control your future, the power to control your life, and the power to be able to obtain resources needed to survive. Circle jerks won’t feed you (aside from protein, if a sao is involved) and good feelings won’t put a roof over your head. This is again nonsense from a man who lives in extreme comfort, toting a rolex, and not in the piss poor nation he is from or represents. That brings me to this little gem.

“We should value our enemies because they provide us with unique opportunities to practice patience, tolerance and forbearance.”

This is from a man who was run out of his own country. He’s definitely not scared of mincing words, oh wait, actually he is, as this excerpt from The Australian from August 22, 2008 outlines: -

PARIS: The Dalai Lama has denied telling a French newspaper that Chinese soldiers may have shot dead 140 Tibetan protesters on Monday. The exiled spiritual leader was quoted in Le Monde as saying troops fired on protesters on Monday and 400 people have been killed since unrest erupted in March.

But his office said he denied a comment attributed to him by Le Monde that 140 people had died on Monday when the Chinese security forces opened fire. His office said there were casualties.

“The Chinese army again fired on a crowd on Monday August 18, in the Kham region in eastern Tibet,” said the Nobel Peace prize winner who is on a 12-day visit to France.

Le Monde quoted him as saying that up to 140 people had been killed, though the figure was not confirmed.

“His Holiness did not mention any number of casualties,” his office said in a statement after the interview was published, adding that “he clearly stated that we had no specific information on the number of casualties.”

Another gem:

“To arrive at certainty, you need to start from a skeptical posture. The best scientists are impartial, not swayed by their own beliefs.”

I particularly find it hillarious when religious nuts comment about science, scientists or skepticism. If he followed his own advice, he’d stop wearing dresses, buy himself a nice suit, and entirely give up his religious faggotry. And I don’t meant faggotry of the fun kind. Another example:

“The aim of spiritual practice is to become the friend of all beings, concerned about them and ready and able to help them.”

In closing, I have found a fantastic replacement for the Dalai Lama, and I propose should he or his representatives read this (you’d be surprised how many people I @reply in my titles of blog posts read the posts in question, I do have an 8 millionpw reader demographic after all), this person has the same character, intelligence, education, and charisma as the Dalai Lama and I propose she should step into his role forthwith.

How can anyone NOT prefer her, at least she can answer fucking questions put to her. Feel free to check out her other videos, she will definitely culturally enrich the readers of his Twitter feed far more than he is currently doing. Enjoy.

Addendum: For the record, I am not Chinese, I am not being paid by the Chinese government, I am not racist, I hate all races equally, I’m not sectarian, I’m a hypocritical Roman Catholic Jewish Atheist Ninja (it’s a religion!) with Jedi leanings who believes in the Ancient Astronaut theory and evolution (and other wonderous scientific mumbo jumbo!), I am also not in any way being paid, bribed, or given free shit to post this blog post, I just sincerely hate fucking moochers who run around touting hypocritical party pieces who live in comfort and tell everyone also living in comfort that circle jerks will cure all the woes in the world rather than addressing the food shortage or even the fact that PIG’s in the UNITED STATES alone consume SIX TIMES the food supply that it would take to FEED THE ENTIRE WORLD each year. Fuck. Seriously. He’s a fucking putz, what more can I say.

</rant> :)

Recently another instance of this has occured, where the ABC showed footage taken covertly in helal slaughter houses across Indonesia. Over 200,000 Australians have responded in a backlash against these disgusting acts.

You get a lot of propaganda by religious mobs on this issue as they see it as encroaching on their freedoms as opposed to pointing out that in the last six thousand years human understanding of animals biology has grown significantly, as has .. well, everything but religion, and that it is a social imperative that we enforce social normatives on those who would ever inflict barbaric acts on humans or animals alike.

You’ve got two lobbies who are obssessed that animals are chattals of man put there for exploitation and that they have no feelings nor souls and do not count as living entities, it’s hard to argue logic with them, but it’s easier to argue logic with politicians. Scary thought, isn’t it.

Thus, I ask every one of you to go here and sign this petition: http://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/animals/live-export/ban-live-export

If you want to go the extra mile email Nick Xenophon urging your support of his push to outlaw kosher and helal slaughter not just outside of Australia facilitated by live export, but within Australia too.

There are far too many slaughter houses using barbaric practices, and even more so they’re using outdated research and propaganda including bullshit fear mongering regarding BSE / mad cow disease to try and outlaw captive bolt guns which are currently not allowed to pierce the animals brain (causing instant death) but rather just knock the animal unconcious after a few agonizing attempts.

This lobby MUST be stopped, we can’t turn a blind eye to cruelty. I don’t give a fuck what a persons magical sky fairy demands, cruelty to animals is not on, and is NOT something that any Australian or in fact any one from ANY nation should ever tolerate on their watch.

In Australia, on every TV channel from daytime talk shows like Sunrise through to tabloid journalism from the Daily Terrorgraph newspaper through to ACA/TT, you find journalists pushing their social media portfolio to the masses through materials that have HUGE demographic reach

Theoretically they’re using social proof to try and hyper inflate their online presense, yet just can’t get the kind of captive audience bloggers like myself get purely through ACTUAL integrity and not being boring barrels of dicks like most media ‘icons’ are.

I just wanted to take a moment to thumb my nose at attention hungry fame whores. Nothing more to see here folks, move along. :P

“Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour,” Liu told the Guardian. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.”

While the idea of prisoners being forced to play video games may seem chuckleworthy, and it certainly is absurd, it is no laughing matter. Again, from the Guardian:

“If I couldn’t complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things,” he said.

Goldfarming is now extremely widespread in China, where the Guardian reports nearly $2 billion in online currency was traded accounting for 80% of the world’s goldfarming. While for some of the world’s poor population, goldfarming could mean a better life, the use of prison labor is bizarre and more than a little troublesome. It also complicates international trade, since some countries refuse to accept exported goods made in prisons.

Liu speculates that many other prisoners are likely still forced into goldfarming operations, and assumes that the practice must be widespread. His belief is backed by University of California researcher Jin Ge, who describes China as “the factory of virtual goods.” One wonders how comfortable gamers would be if they knew that the items and credits purhcased for a game came at the cost of forced labor.

Update: The Telegraph reports that Chinese officials have denied the story, saying that gold farming would allow prisoners to communicate with the outside world, which they would never allow:

[A]n official at the central office for labour camps in Heilongjiang denied that inmates were forced to play games online. “I have never heard of this. If you want to see for yourself, come to one of our labour camps,” he said.

The official, who declined to give his name, said: “We do not allow our inmates to do high-risk occupations, such as coal-mining. We do not have large numbers of computers. And we do not allow our prisoners to have any contact with the outside world. If they were playing these online games they could easily communicate with other people. We would never allow that.”

(U.K. Guardian)

Battlestar Galactica ended, Caprica came out and got canned. Star Trek Enterprise got canned, even after the Star Trek film came out nothing came of it. Stargate Universe lasted a season. Let’s not mention Firefly. Big Bang is on hiatus until next year. Walking Dead had like three eps then went off until a year or more later (10-2011) .

It just seems bleak for me, no shows I like are in production at present, NO science fiction is being made anywhere in the world. ScifiTV and Syfy show non-sci fi ,ore than sci fi, it just really seems like the entertainment sector of TV world is anti-mensus and only mass producing crap that appeals to the brainless under achieving teenage demographic.

I know I’m not alone as I see many complaints on social networks and blogs everywhere, but how are the market research departments of these big networks utterly OBLIVIOUS to the huge demographic I’m a part of?

I just can’t fathom why it is acceptable in any way to have a year between seasons, BBC’s Torchwood is a perfect example of a huge offender. Season 1 was a MASSIVE hit, season 2 was a year and a half in the waiting and they decided to make a three part miniseries instead, then another season was ‘pending’ announcement for a year or more and now in six months we’ll see ANOTHER miniseries, this time only two lousy parts.

How do these fucks justify anywhere up to a year in wait? Is it all based on the fact ratings are measured over a short period and not the entire year? Surely given that 99% of people have digital cable with set top boxes measuring ratings can be a constant thing?

I propose lobbying ratings measuring companies to make their rating system based on a full calendar year, ensuring that ALL the year is filled with new material as opposed to lame repeats, or worse in the case of Scifi TV in Australia which airs mostly non-science fiction like Xena, Buffy, Angel and Charmed. They obviously think that all speculative fiction is the same as science fiction, but given that their entire customer service department is outsourced to a Mongol living in a yak skin tent drinking his own urine on a satellite phone remnant from the cold war 80′s and a mildly retarded Daschund that can type running their social network presence getting your complaint heard is as unlikely as banging Kaley Couco in the bum.

I’m just so frustrated and totally over how shit TV and even movies have been lately, even the music scene has been lame of late, if I hear another song with choir vox effects or the same but with little kids singing in addendum to main vocalist chorus I’ll self immolate.

What happened to the entertainment industry? Where did it all go wrong?

That being said, I can also be a bit of a dolt and in this case was entirely slow of faculty. I discovered iTunes U, I entirely forgot Americans abbreviate university to U (outside the US the common abbreviation is ‘uni’) and expected the U to be oriented around the selfishness of Web 2.0 with everything being self centered, my, u, etc included.

I was surprised to find that it has a mass of lecturers from various uni’s around the globe! My days will no longer have lulls of boredom within them, it really has a mass of interesting lectures to download and listen to from all around the world.

I can’t help but be amazed that I can gain insight from uni lecturers from the middle east, or listen to student workgroups from Russia discussing and covering any number of topics.

So, if you have an iPhone or iPad, I highly recommend cashing in on this free cache of information and wealth of knowledge. This is what the Internet was designed and meant for, it is absolutely brilliant and humbling in a way to see the milestone if where it has, with the help of the sage like prophets of technology and the digital church of awesome, come full circle.

Get downloading and get educated. It’s cool to be smart now, when the dumb kids realized all us nerds are what makes the world go around and that they bask in the technology and science brought about by their victims of bullying and the shunned geeky types in the world.

Expand your mind and you will also expand your future and potential as a human being.

Geeks, nerds and whoever else wears thick glasses and a pocket protector can publicly boast about their geekiness without being labelled as weird. It happens on May 25 every year, which coincides with the release of the first Star Wars movie in 1977.

The day started in 2006 in Spain – strangely enough – when 300 geeks showed their pride by creating a human “Pac-Man” game. In 2008, it came to the US, where bloggers heralded it as a holiday.

Not sure of your geek orientation? Here are some rights and responsibilities, as outlined in Geek Pride Day’s manifesto. If they inspire you to put on your favourite Dungeons and Dragons cape, then, no question, you’re a geek. So take pride and celebrate.

Your Geekly Rights

The right to associate with other nerds.

The right to have few friends (or none at all).

The right to not leave your house.

The right to not like football or any other sport.

The right to be out of style.

The right to be overweight and nearsighted.

(WIth great power comes great) Responsibilities

Try to be nerdier than anyone else.

If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.

Don’t be a generalised geek. You must specialise in something.

Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.

Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/once-a-year-its-hip-to-be-square/story-e6frfro0-1226062318927#ixzz1NKlH6toB

DESPITE our relative geographic isolation, Australians are among the best travelled race on earth.

With Asia on our doorstep, we are a relatively easy half-day, overnight and jet-lag free flight away. And the strength of the Australian dollar means than more of us can travel to more places.

There’s also no more experienced a group of travellers than the intrepid Generation X, many of whom are now approaching 40, with half-a-lifetime of globe-trotting behind them.

It made me wonder what you should know by the time you’ve reached that milestone, now that you have all that experience under your money-belt.

Australia is not the centre of the universe
Some people still don’t even know where it is. You know to presume ignorance.

Not risking getting sick
You’ve stared into enough toilet bowls by now. Follow the tenets of healthy eating and drinking when travelling, especially in the third world: boil it, peel it, cook it – or forget it.

Never enter an Australian-themed pub
Anywhere.

The best Irish theme pubs are in Ireland
The Irish will appreciate you visiting them considering the dire state of their economy.

Knowing how to use chopsticks
You’d be surprised how impressed the Asians (especially the Japanese) are when you display real skill with these eating utensils (and how pitying they can be when you ask for cutlery).

How not to be fleeced
By now you’ve probably been victim to at least one scam in your travelling life and can spot a fraudster from a mile away.

Dressing appropriately
Leave your shirt on at all times on when not on a beach or near a swimming pool. The locals will appreciate it, and may even expect it.

Not looking like a tourist
You’ll be taken more seriously and melt into the crowd. Remember that most people dislike, even despise, tourists, particularly in places where the annual number of visitors can out-number the local actual population.

Not behaving like a tourist
See above. Every country has it loud-mouthed, drunken tourists. Don’t be one of Australia’s representatives.

Knowing that you shouldn’t travel without travel insurance
You’ve heard all of the horror stories and know you’d be mad to risk your luck.

Remembering not to eat and drink too much on a plane
You’ve already had enough jet-lag in your life and realise you don’t need to eat and/or drink everything offered to you or put in front of you.

BYO toilet paper
You never want to get caught out again after that horror Indian/Chinese/Russian train carriage toilet experience.

You don’t need to see everything
Tear up the checklist. Rome wasn’t seen in a day.

Travel is never really a waste of money
Even when you get the credit card bill when you get home (though watch those global roaming charges).

Getting lost is not a bad thing
In fact, in can be fun, illuminating and by now you’re experienced enough as a traveller to find your way back.

How to pack
Your clothes are better now than when you were 21. Be kind to them.

Not trying to be the first person off the plane
Relax, no one’s ever been imprisoned for life on a plane.

Be considerate
You are a guest in another country. Behave like one, unless badly and unreasonably provoked.

Not to queue interminably
Madame Tussauds was never really worth the wait.

Know when to stop haggling
Arguing over the equivalent of 50 cents is not a good look for someone from a nation as rich as Australia, even if you’re on a budget holiday.

Look beyond the tourist zone
Some of the most rewarding travel experiences can be as close as a street or two from the crowded main tourist drag (example: the streets immediately surrounding Barcelona’s Las Ramblas).

Immunisations before travel can save your life
Boring but true. Keep a record of them and keep them up to date for every trip.

Consider government travel warnings
… but you weigh them up based on your own judgement, knowledge and experience

Do your research
You owe it to yourself and the destination you’ve visiting

You wear a motor-cycle helmet
You wouldn’t go without one at home so why do it in another country? Brain-surgery in Laos is to be avoided.

Not to worry/panic when things go wrong
By now you’re a seasoned traveller and can handle pretty much anything and realise that it all adds to your experience (except if a jet engine explodes mid-flight when you’re allowed to panic).

How to tip
It’s really not worth being chased down a street by an irate American waiter just because you don’t believe in tipping.

Learn at least a little of the local lingo
It’s always appreciated, and a good ice-breaker.

That a smile goes a long way
Except in countries such as Russia where they’ll just think you’re crazy

Not to give money to beggars
Hard as it can be to ignore them, it just perpetuates the practice.

Knowing that you don’t need a photo of everything
Who cares if the traffic lights are different than back at home?

You still have more than 40 years to perfect yourself as a traveller
Chances are you’ll be living to 80, and may well beyond, with a whole rest of the world left to see.

Read Doc Holiday’s weekly travel advice column Escape lift-out in all News Ltd Sunday papers. Send Doc Holiday questions to doc@docholiday.com.au

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advisor/things-every-traveller-should-know-before-theyre-40/story-fn6sg2rl-1226061066555#ixzz1N8oLF6gO