I don’t know if you’ve ever owned any EA games, and I don’t know if you’ve ever needed their support with them - but trust me, don’t bother because you are going to get nowhere fast with the support team.

I have been a long time owner of EA Sports and Electronic Arts games generally for many years. I have the Battlefield series (apart from 2142) and I’ve enjoyed the Need for Speed games (the older ones more, I must admit.) I have had problems with games in the past, but never had to use EA’s support - and I’m counting my blessings now.

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The Hacker from Blighty, Garry McKinnon, has recently lost his most recent battle to prevent his expedition to the US on counts of hacking.

Gary, who is being charged in excess of $700,000 in damages, is taking his case to the European court, which is expected to take at least a couple of years before it’s looked upon again. Originally charged with hacking into the NASA computer systems, the damages really amount to the cost of upgrading their systems (and user’s education you would imagine) to counter future attacks. Surely NASA should be shaking his hand, giving him a paycheck and patting his back for showing them how to improve their systems, after accounts were hacked using the most obvious methods possible: Administrator accounts without passwords, or default passwords, all available over the net via a terminal services connection. That’s like making a guy who punched you in the face to not only pay for the surgery to your teeth, but also pay for a couple of bodyguards, and karate lessons for you, to ensure you were more prepared in case somebody else tried their luck. I’m sure we would all want it, but is it really justified??

The UK’s government are currently “undecided” as to whether they should have a database that records and tracks every email, website or telephone conversations the UK public make.

What is given another “to stop terrorist activities” reasoning is again interfering with normal innocent daily lives. It’s the general public that are going to be spied on, not the terrorists. How many terrorist’s do they think they would catch, baring in mind that potentially 65 million people would be victimised? All your private communications that are your right as a citizen to be conducted in any way you see fit, stored on a system to be read or listened to without your permission? It seems a little backward and completely open to abuse.

And of all the terrorists using email, visiting websites, or talking to each other - the vast majority will already know about the law and put a very simple layer of encryption in place to protect themselves. And as most of you know, this is not difficult, even with a very basic knowledge and Google at your fingertips, you can be completely anonymous within minutes. It’s just shows the lack of understanding and information the government has when it comes to technology. I don’t know whether to blame their advisers or their own stupidity, but either way this sort of Big Brother attitude can’t be allowed to continue.

Yeap - that’s right - in my opinion, Yahoo! has definitely done the wrong thing. They have struck a deal with Google, so that their search results display Google-ads. Why would Yahoo do this? Sure you can understand the temporary shareholder value increase, but in the long term can only spell death for the search engine.

So the company is worth more, at least in the eyes of the shareholders and Microsoft, but does that mean Microsoft are interested anymore? I don’t think so. Of course, we can only speculate on the intricacies of the contract struck between Google and Yahoo!, but I’m sure Google have worded the legalise to make sure their ad deal sticks, no matter who buys Yahoo! - you would be stupid not to. By penning this one deal, I think the following will happen:

• Google will remove Yahoo! slowly from the search arena and gain monopolistic proportions themselves - 82% according to ComScore
• Microsoft will instantly been turned off by a Yahoo! deal, partial or otherwise - Jerry Yang’s plan?
• The replacement of Yahoo!’s board with Icahn’s influence may actually carry some weight now
• An anti-trust lawsuit to follow if Yahoo dips out of search?
• Yahoo! to switch tactics and focus fully on community driven projects, with Google supplying the ads

So what next for Yahoo!? It looks as though they’re getting out of the search game to me, either by choice or by Google sucking them dry.. Anyone remember AOL as search? Didn’t think so..

So here we are, with the second instalment of Apple’s global domination plan, and what difference is it making to our lives?

OK, firstly I must hold my hands up and say that I am not an iPhone owner or user. I haven’t gone out of my way to get one, because to be completely honest I have more important things to spend my money on. Not that I begrudge anyone who has a few extra notes to spare, to throw it in Apple’s direction. One question really does keep popping up in my mind though - and I’m struggling for the answer..

Does anyone actually care about the iPhone? I mean, I’m in the UK so obviously it’s not going to be as big as it is in America - and also there’s the whole “if I subscribe to a contract, I expect a phone for free” mentality in this country, but I don’t think that explains the whole deal here. When I look around at the average person, I see people who have Nokias, and Samsungs, and Sonys and any other mobile phone make you’d like to throw in there. I don’t see many iPhones though (Not even a handful, to be completely honest.)

So it lead me on to a question (I’m getting good at these). Who actually buys iPhones? With millions and millions of them sold, surely I would be able to see a few in the street when I walk about, without living in San Francisco? And with the new version coming out very soon, with 3G and GPS and all other good things like that, surely everyone would be talking about them, no? Well no, and I think I know the reason. Bloggers. People like me and others spend all our time talking about them, and buying them, that everyone else is quite content to read it and move on. I think the vast majority of people that have bought iPhones are either bloggers, people involved in the tech industry, people who want or associate themselves with the tech industry or people that are quite happy thinking they’re with the “in crowd” (iCrowd?) and also believe that having an iPhone is the reason people will think they’re “cool.” Don’t get me wrong - it’s a great piece of kit, with some really intuitive and useful features - but does that make it essential to your average Joe in the street?

In an article on the Register, O2 have basically admitted that everyone who uses their 3G service is automatically placed on 128Kb/s, rather than the theoretical maximum of 384Kb/s. It gets better though: All of you with a personal mobile with 3G won’t ever get any more. Corporate customers can go to O2 and get it upped to 384Kb/s, but it’s still apparently under their terms.

This just seems to echo how the industry treats people’s internet access in this country. The companies like Tiscali and Virgin Media, and others - now including O2 - think they have the right to restrict usage just because their infrastructure can’t handle the demand. Personally if it’s all about money, I would rather pay a little bit extra to guarantee a decent connection, rather than all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Read the full article here.

In a response to BT’s comments that ISPs need to do more to make it clear when selling “up to 8Mb” broadband, Tiscali I think have got a hold of the wrong end of the stick - probably on purpose.

Tiscali’s PR person, Jody Haskayne is quoted as saying “I think the point is that most of the major isps are doing very similar things in terms of marketing.” This comment is of course true. However, firstly, I’m not entirely sure if this practice or comment justifies misleading customers and secondly, if this is even what BT means by ISPs “doing more.”

I think BT are trying to make the point to the ISPs that if you don’t over sell your broadband, then you won’t have problems with your “up to 8Mb” broadband services. It appears to me that lots of factors are blamed for poor broadband - most of which are only in a very rare number of cases. Bad equipment, interference, distance from the exchange. Of course these things do play a part in how fast your broadband will be, but I don’t believe for a second that good old congestion isn’t the real issue with the vast majority of customers. If it wasn’t down to congestion then why after people swap service provider to somebody else (that is usually more expensive) all of a sudden they magically get a usable broadband service? Look on any of the broadband forums and you’ll see story upon story of woe turned to joy once users have moved from the cheap broadband providers to the more expensive ones. [SHOW ME]

Yeah I know, the Pirate Bay aren’t exactly the last bastions of copyright law, but it’s important to realise that they don’t peddle piracy, they merely allow those who want, to share what they have. Again, the word “Pirate” in their name doesn’t exactly lend themselves well to the RIAA or MPAA or the other myriads of money driven anti-copying corporations. But then that doesn’t immediately make them criminals. If that was a fact then Maersk or P&O would be held responsible for dealing with stolen cars, transported by their container ships - which is obviously not the case. This is just ridiculous and highlights how little the legal system knows or understands how torrents or the servers that hold them work. [SHOW ME]

According to Tiscali, the use of the BBC’s iPlayer is having a detrimental effect on their network. All very interesting, considering that other ISPs (BT and Virgin Media) are quoted as saying they can’t see a difference in their network performance. And if things don’t get any better, Tiscali say the users are going to have to foot the bill. Tiscali must be smoking the crack pipe again.. Why are the users going to have to pay more for a service they’ve already paid for? Is this going to be pencilled into the T&C’s at the last minute? At what point is internet activity normal activity in Tiscali’s eyes? What are the real issues here?

There are 1 of 2 things going on with Tiscali, which is painfully obvious. It’s either that Tiscali’s network infrastructure is so bad and so close to collapse that one more service used over it’s network will grind it to a halt - and they don’t want the general public to be “aware” of their problems (search for “virus effect” on my blog for more information.) Or the other reason could be to make a quick buck. I don’t believe that use of the iPlayer can have that big an impact on your services if your services are robust to begin with. I also haven’t really understood why Tiscali think they can get the BBC to chip in a little something for the strain - although I guess the BBC and other big corporations have very deep pockets. It all appears to be a big smokescreen to Tiscali’s connectivity problems to me. After all - Youtube hasn’t been approached to part with cash, and the bandwidth from them must be massively higher than that from iPlayer. [SHOW ME]

A student of MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is going to fight back after being threatened and ordered to pay a fine by the RIAA for sharing mp3’s and other types of music over the internet. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) are renowned for singling out students and single mothers to scrape together the highest amount of money-per-head possible by concentrating on the most vulnerable and most likely to pay. MIT aren’t prepared to back up their student, so he’s decided to go it alone and face the RIAA himself.

This will be the next BIG case that will go public in, what seems, the war against the RIAA. How long can the RIAA go on extorting huge amounts of money from people for downloading a single track? The punishment should fit the crime, as they say so maybe the RIAA will be shown in their true colours to the public, after this case - a corporation that tries to make examples of people for minor crimes by taking away their money & dignity for the sake of a CD single… [SHOW ME]