£1 Billion has already been ploughed into a monitoring system in the UK that could make every user of technology in the country a target for Big Brother.

The system, based in a building in Benhall, and reported by TechSnake in July, is being funded to intercept all email, SMS and internet traffic to the tune of £12 Billion, once running. Reported in a post on the This Is Gloucestershire website, the move has caused councillors and MPs to question the Government’s morality.

I, personally, can’t believe what is happening. In a modern society too. It is the civil right of every person to have private communications with each other without the government spying over their shoulders. This typical attitude by government agencies is of course wrapped up in the “threat of terrorism” cliché, that is starting to wear just a little too thin. Preventing terrorism is important, but not to the detriment of every other law-abiding citizen. The fishing net mentality is ridiculous - the process is already in place whereby a government agency can get a court order to track individual’s messages for potential terrorism involvement - the government doesn’t need to employ this level of privacy invasion. So what can we do about this - in the UK and globally?

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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 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.

Being a sysadmin, I know the power our profession wields. I also know that there are a lot of unscrupulous people. The combination of the two are very rare, in my experience, but with this story it’s strange how badly this guy’s employers got it.

City worker, Terry Childs, was employed five years ago. He had spent time in jail, and also had counts of aggravated burglary and aggravated assault. He was put into a position of power with the City of San Francisco’s new FiberWAN network - a system which holds 60% of the city’s data. After a falling our with the head of security, Terry Childs allegedly decided to lock the system down with a master password - which only he knew. When confronted with the problem, he gave up a password which didn’t work. He was then arrested. As if this wasn’t disconcerting enough for the City, it also appears he has been paid his wage whilst sat in jail!

According to the mayor of the city, the city is still able to function - although they have called in experts from Cisco to hopefully sort the problem out. Childs remains in jail on bail of $5 million.

You all know the story right? Ian Usher has put his life up for sale on the internet, with the aid of Ebay. By his life I mean his home, his job, his friends, his car - everything except himself. Interesting, quirky, but why did he trust the users of Ebay to “play fair?”

Just 24 hours after the bid began it was swamped with pranksters. People using other people’s accounts, people playing tricks on each other - you name it. At what point did Ian Usher actually think this wouldn’t happen?? It’s far too tempting for people to put in stupidly high bids - then “blame it on their friends.”

The current (authentic) bid for his life, as of this post, is about £189,000 ($372,000) which he says isn’t enough to cover the cost of the house! Check out the auction here, it ends in 3 days if you fancy moving to Perth.. And no fake bids please. I mean it.

Don’t worry - the Mission Impossible link is completely warranted here, as this idea was launched with Mission Impossible 3 in Japan last year. So the idea is Flexplay made a DVD with a certain air-reactive chemical on the surface, that when opened from it’s air-tight packaging makes the DVD useless in 48 hours.

So what’s the point? Why not just go to Blockbusters - why would the film studios think this is a good idea - other than as a gimmick? Then there’s the question of what happens to your DVD player if it’s playing one of these when the chemical goes off! Plus if you wanted to keep it, what’s stopping you making a copy like a regular DVD? I think I’m saying that I’m struggling to see the benefit (cost or otherwise) to this idea! Thankfully not available in the UK yet (if they ever will be).

If you’re not familiar with the term “wall walker”, I think you’ve probably seen the thing I mean: They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, an octopus, spiders, a man & even cars. They have a sticky underside and they slowly make their way down to the bottom of a door or wall. Where else in the world would you think to take an innocent child’s toy, make a 5ft version and let it walk down a skyscraper? Japan that’s where of course! It has a great ending too. [SHOW ME]

I can’t credit the original photographer, unfortunately, but this has got to be one of my favourite pictures that I re-stumbled across today. Definitely a WTF moment!

I discovered this article on Boing Boing just now.. Look at this crazy piece of technology from yesteryear. To think in days gone by that companies actually thought there was a market for this stuff - although at the time I’m sure it was all too easy to get caught up in the hysteria of the coming availability of the computer age. Even looking back that far (I was seven) the idea of computers being involved in everything we do was still so far off, I can imagine the idea of having tomorrow, today, being too much of an offer to pass up - hence the reason for this particular device.

However, when looking at some of the images, the really interesting thing for me is that I remember something similar to this - a sort of superimposed reality game. It was a golf game (and if anybody can help me out on it’s name I would appreciate it) that came along probably some years later, but I still thought then, as I’m sure the people did when this came out, that, “That’ll never catch on.” and at a price tag of a cool $20,000 it’s no wonder it didn’t.. [SHOW ME]

Yeap I’m still alive.. I’ve been out of the scene for a while helping with the day-to-day runnings of the birth of our new baby daughter Kayleigh. But during a routine scour around on the internet, I found this rather useful make project. Take a stuffed animal, remove the stuff and stuff in the guts of a PC to make compubeaver!! If anybody else knows of other novel ways to make a case for a PC, let me know! [SHOW ME]