Crank Chiropractor and Crank Power Balance Bracelets

Back on 23rd December, 2010 I blogged about the ACCC finally forcing Power Balance Australia to remove false/misleading claims about any enhancements that their rubber band offers.  Now, I wonder if Matt Bateman - a chiropractor that went on air to state that he saw a 500% increase in the strength of his "patients" who wore this - will now retract this statement that all claimed enhancements of this product have been proved false and have been retracted by Power Balance Australia?

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

How To Install SBS 2011 With A Bootable USB Drive

Props to Tim Barrett for doing this so I didn't have to!  ;)


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

SBS 2003 - SBS 2011 Migration

It seems that the Microsoft SBS team and TechNet have decided to give us an early FSMas present.  You'll find here that there's an SBS 2003 to SBS 2011 migration document that's been released.  No doubt there'll shortly be a) a doc for migrating from SBS 2008 to SBS 2008 R2 (oops, I meant SBS 2011) and b) the release of the Premium kit so we can once again run SBS 2011 virtualized...


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Power Wristbands A Crock

Now, as hard to believe as it is, a rubber band around your wrist doesn't help your strength, balance nor flexibility (but it does give a healthy increase to the bank balance of the company who were (up until recently) promoting this with false claims.

The ACCC has finally ordered Power Balance Australia to cease marketing its wristbands with any claims of enhancement - Choice spoke to Power Band Australia some time back, but only now have they been forced not only to take down the misleading claims, but to pay back anyone who feels they have been mislead by the totally baseless claims about these rubber bands.

Good to see some sanity creeping into the faux health product market!

(Update: This was just posted on the Gizmodo site.)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Filthy Pedophile Supporting Pope

Every time I think that this dirty, filthy, pedophile supporting Pope gets as low as humanly possible, he keeps coming up with more amazing ways to show how low he can go.  Do I think there's any limit to how low of a human being this filthy old man can go?  I'm starting to believe that he's just going to keep digging at the roots of human decency until he brings us all (well, his Catholic church and likely also Christianity, at least - and as an Atheist, that most definitely doesn't include me) down to his level - and then he's just gonna keep digging.

The filthy old fucker has now blamed society for the Catholic church priests that buggered and otherwise molested small children in their care.  I mean FOR FUCK'S SAKE the church pretends to hold themselves higher than humankind as they are representing "god" to the world.  If this is what god is truly like, a child molesting bastard, then I'm most definitely glad that he doesn't exist.  All this continual debasement of the morals of the church shows is that they cannot be trusted - not even with our kids.  We know that they make up stories (such as god), but now not only are they ramming this drivel down our children's throats, they are ramming their penises in our children's orifices and blaming us for them being the filthy, low-life scum that they are.

Fuck off you filthy scum, and the church you represent.

(Edit: Sinead O'Connor rips the Pope a new arsehole, too.)


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

In an utterly unexpected move, the US Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers.  An amazing call - the US Legal system makes a decision based more on human rights and common sense than on an overbearing political "need" to have free reign over everyone's personal lives.

The EFF blog post about this decision can be found here.

Let's hope this leads to a rash of sensible decisions to be made in the USA's courtrooms, especially around personal privacy and human rights.
Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

BPOS Botch

I received this notice from BPOS in my email this morning with the following information: "As a Microsoft Advisor Partner, we would like to inform you of a Service update that is being sent to BPOS – Standard customers today.  The attached email will go to all subscribers of the BPOS - S Suite as well as Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online."

Microsoft recently became aware that, due to a configuration issue, Offline Address Book information for Business Productivity Online Suite Standard customers could be inadvertently downloaded by other customers of the service, in a very specific circumstance. The issue was resolved within two hours of identification, and we completed a thorough review of processes to prevent this type of issue from occurring again. Our records indicate that a very small number of downloads actually occurred, and we are working with those few customers to remove the files.

This issue applied to Offline Address Book information only, and no other information was affected. The Offline Address Book contains an organization’s business contact information for employees. It does not contain Outlook personal contacts, email, documents or other types of information. For more information on the Offline Address Book please visit this link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=208114&clcid=0x409.

This issue affected only Business Productivity Online Suite–Standard customers; no other Microsoft Online Services were affected.

No action is required on your part. Because we take our responsibility to safeguard customer information very seriously we wanted to inform you of this issue.

Your organization has obtained Microsoft Online Services from a Microsoft partner. Please contact your partner if you have questions.

Sincerely,
Microsoft Online Services

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Fox News (sic) Strikes Again

Aahhh, the wonder of facts.  Who needs them?  It is clear that Fox News (sic) don't intend to report any - they'd rather report the controversy around the facts.  Have a read of this post to see what I mean.

What sort of News network worth their salt would let the facts stand in the way of a good right-wing controversy beat-up?


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Word Lens: How Cool Is This?

Wow - this is a pretty cool idea!  :)

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/12/world_lens_is_an_augmented_reality_translator_for_your_iphone.html


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Unrestricted, Uncontrolled Internet Filtering

Just in case you weren't aware, Australia's not the only country that's looking at introducing Internet Filter-style legistlation to allow the government unregulated control over adding sites that the Government chooses to have added to an ISP-enforced blacklist.  The French Government just passed a bill to enable this unregulated Internet filtering.  So right now, the French Government can block any web site it so chooses to and there's no oversight, no control, no-one they need to answer to - does this sound like what Stephen Conroy dreams of as his "heaven on Earth", or what?  I'm imagining him sitting down, reading this information and having a little "self flagellation" time and finding it the best thing ever.

In reality, this is a very disturbing thing when it comes to human rights.  The government shouldn't, in a free society, have the right to block things they deem unfit without having this whole process be accountable to someone who actually understands the technology that's being filtered.  And usign "child pornography" as an excuse is totally unjustifiable - anyone who has had anything to do with blocking this sort of lowlife scum filth for any reason knows that child porn sites are hidden behind VPNs, secure access, encryption and other fences so that the general Internet user CANNOT stumble on them - if they could, the Feds could, and if the Feds could, the dirty, filthy scum that inhabit these sites would be in jail (unfortunately in solitary confinement) quicker than you'd know.

The Government (both the French and Australian, as well as other Governments around the world who are looking at China as an example of how to control your citizenry) are in need of a good bollocking for taking liberties with people's freedom.

As IgnoramusMaximus commented on this SlashDot story:

Governments are like nuclear power. If left unchecked they will kill a lot of people, screw up the neighborhood for generations and cause loss of standard of living for a lot other people. In the extreme, they can be used as a weapon and cause far more damage yet.

On the other hand, given enough containment and backup control systems, they can be the most powerful source of help in everyday life to a lot of people.

So where the challenge truly lies is in engineering such containment and control (see for example: the US Constitution) and then maintaining it. But when citizens willing to fight for their rights to the death are replaced with the likes of lardy American Idol fans, there is simply no one left to look after rusty, sieve-like containment vessels.

And so, unfortunately, most governments on the planet today are in various stages of performing their Chernobyl thing.

I don't think anyone could put it more succinctly than that!

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

US Republicans: 911 First Responders Can Stay Hurting

What happened on 9/11 in NYC was bad. We *ALL* know that. And what the first responders did was *AWESOME*. We all know that, too. Well, so I thought...

The US Government is trying to do the right thing - they are trying to allow the 9/11 First Responders to have access to health care.  It seems that the Republican Party think that allowing those people who put their lives on the line to save as many people from the WTC towers disaster to have access to health care (as in reimbursed costs if they are suffering a condition that was caused by their work during the attack) i ssomething that they don't want to support - and to prove this, EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS MEMBER voted against allowing these people access to health care.

That's downright disgusting.

And what's probably equally as bad is that Fox News is reporting this failure to pass legislation without mentioning that every Rep Congress member voted against it - how could the totally biased, right-wing, Fox network say anything bad about their beloved Republican Party, even if it *is* a fact?  :(

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Time: Has It Had Its Time?

It was reported that Time Magazine's Person of the Year, 2010 would be Julian Assange who had a significant lead in the online public polls, however it looks like Time has been swayed by either thoughts of US Government harassment or actual US Government coersion - we'll never know for sure and have instead promoted Mr I Don't Care About Your Privacy (aka Mark Zuckerberg) as this year's "Person".

So, Time has decided to promote invasion of and disregard for personal privacy over a journalist who facilitated the release of a lot of "down and dirty" US (and other) Government secrets to the public - this same public who not only vote for them, but who *fund* them.

Has Time Magazine had it's time?  Is it becoming just another muse of the US Government, like Sweden now is?


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Sweden: Once Neutral, Now America's Bitch

Sweden, once respected for being a neutral nation, has completely given that state of affairs away by becoming America's bitch: WikiLeaks reports that the Swedish government 'hid' anti-terror operations with America from Parliament.

Oh, well, they are truly showing their hand with how Julian Assange is being treated, and now this revelation just hammers the final nail into the coffin containing their neutrality!



Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Forest, Trees And All That...

They say that the simple things in life are often the best.  (Well, I don't know that I'd call Liz Hurley "simple", but I think Warney's doing quite ok there...)

And sometimes you can't see the simple things for all the complexity that drives them.  I spent around 3 hours today trying to work out why a client couldn't access their Public Folders (SBS 2003) using Outlook 2003 on any machines and spent a bit of time checking PF permissions on the server, then looked at OWA that was working as expected and left them using OWA for their Shared Contacts (all that was in the PFs, luckily) until I could look at the system again tonight.

Well, I looked at everything I could find - including restoring from a backup - no change - and creating the Public Folders fresh - again, no change - and then when chatting to a colleague/mate online, I typed out the error message (the one I'd read so many times today) and it dawned on me: Outlook was set to "Work Offline".  FFS.

I was looking at the server because at least 2 machines were having the same issue.  Now, I don't know what would have changed (and this client doesn't "fiddle" on their server, thankfully) that set everyone to "Work Offline", but at least the fix has been found.

In the mean time, I learned a new tool - MFCMAPI from http://mfcmapi.codeplex.com/ - which is quite interesting.  So, all wasn't lost (besides the fact that the client is good to go again in the morning).


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Sweden Completes Its Whoring Out To USA

We all know that the only reason that the Swedish prosecutors re-opened their criminal investigation into Julian Assange's alleged sexual assault after it was originally dismissed from lack of evidence is because the US Government forced them to do so.  Now the Swedish prosecutors are going to appeal the Bail on which Julian Assange has just been released (in England).

This goes to show that the Swedish Legal system has completely whored itself out to America.  I know a number of Swedish people and I'm *quite sure* they'd be disgusted with how willing their legal system has been to bend over and take it from America.  I know that there's quite a few Swedes who are feeling fairly dismayed with their own legal system taking it from the Americans and how their once legendary neutral status has been completely wiped away  by their country's willingness to be the submissive one in their relationship with America.

"Lick my boot, slave".


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

New Zealand's Inland Revenue Department: Keep A Local Copy Of Tax Records

New Zealand's Inland Revenue Department issued a Revenue Alert today expressing their concern that they "are concerned that the use of cloud computing may mean businesses are not meeting their record keeping obligations under the Inland Revenue Acts".

This should be taken as a heads up, not just for our Kiwi brethren, but also for us - if we use a Cloud-based accounting system, are we keeping enough backups of this data such that we're complying with Australian Tax Law and ensuring we have the ability to provide our books for auditing should that become required?  That goes wherever the data is stored - what happens if the Cloud service provider is offline and we need to have our books audited?
Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

SBS 2011 Standard RTMs Today

Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard released to manufacturing today. Software will be generally available in the coming weeks, with free trial software coming mid-January. Read the blog post for more info. http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2010/12/13/windows-small-business-server-2011-standard-releases-to-manufacturing.aspx.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

The Vatican Protects Child Abusers (Again)

In what's seemingly a never ending run of Ratzinger-related protection of Catholic priest pedophiles, WikiLeaks has released information about the Vatican refusing to support any investigation in Ireland of Catholic priest pedophiles.  Typical, isn't it?  Ratzinger values these filthy, scum-sucking pedophile priests more highly than the children's whose lives they have ruined.  Way to go Pope!  :(

This article was just published, and along with others about the same topic, brings into more light the darkness that's infesting the Catholic church under the leadership of their Pedophile Promoting Pope.  Ratzinger was the person involved in ensuring these filthy lowlives didn't get found out nor prosecuted before he became Pope, and now he's the leader of this mythical culture known as the Catholic Church, he's effectively enshrining pedophile priests into the culture of this church.

Apparently, priests are people in positions of respect and power.  I thought these people were supposed to be representing their god.  I didn't know that the Catholic/Christian god was a purveyor of vile acts upon children and a suppporter of those who perpetrate and support these acts.  I must have been mistaken.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

We Should All Be Disgusted At Canada

Asbestos kills.  Everyone with access to a television or newspaper or radio or especially the Internet over the past 20 or more years knows this.  Canada realises this, yet wants to open a new mine and ship their lethal asbestos to developing nations in Asia - where people don't have access to the same health and legal systems they do in developed nations such as Canada.

This is disgusting and is something that should make all people who read this feel sick (at least morally, if not physically).  Canada is clearly trading human lives for cash here - this is abhorrent.

Read more at ABC News.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

The Internet's Voltaire Moment

Simon Phipps from ComputerWorldUK gives us some interesting food for thought in his latest blog post.  Now, I don't agree with him that WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay are tarred with the same brush, nor that what WikiLeaks are doing is inherently wrong (I think we need some journalists somewhere who've got big enough balls to do what a lot of journalists did years ago - report what's ACTUALLY happening, not just what someone else reported), but I think that his points on how easily some Cloud providers terminated WikiLeaks' access is something that needs to be carefully weighed up when we're looking at hosting information in The Cloud.

If Amazon and Tableau software are so willing to remove access by WikiLeaks to their services, then we all need to have a long hard think about what would happen to our business if for some reason we had our access to our data blocked for a period of time.  I've already blogged here, here and here about Microsoft BPOS and Office 365 outages, here about the many times LiveMeeting is, well, not "Live" and here about Quicken Online going offline permanently (without any *real* way of converting your data to their new online offering), and there's a lot more well known instances of failed Cloud services causing major headaches for their paying clientele (such as when online backup vendor Carbonite lost the data for a large number of their clients).

Ultimately, if you lose access to your data because your Internet connection fails, there's generally always some other option - even if it means going home (or to the beach) to work.  This is one of the good sellign points of the Cloud.  But what happens if the hosting provider decides, for whatever reason, to limit access to your data.  What happens to your business then?


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Pop Quiz: What Won't Cap'n Bligh Sell?

Our soon-to-be-ex-Premier, Cap'n Bligh, has a laundry list of assets that Queenslanders once owned (or will soon be sold) and Queensland Motorways has now got a tick in the "Sold" box.  Cap'n Bligh sold it for AU$3b (the lower end of the estimated price she was lookin gfor when it was originally placed on the market) to Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) a Government owned Corporation.

Another example of a Government Owned Corporation is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - and we all know how far down the gurgler that's gone this past decade or so, especially under John Howard's mismanagement of our country.

I'll say it here so everyone knows my feelings - don't be surprised if you drive into NSW for a few days and upon your return you see a big fence at the border with an "Excavation" sign on it and when you look through the fence, the top 3-4 meters of Queensland has been sold off to the highest bidder.

Cap'n Bligh's already sold off a 99 year lease on the Port of Brisbane for a measley $2.3b and will be aiming to do the same with the Abbot Point Coal Terminal - but for significantly less.

I wonder what Queensland will look like in 100 years?  Probably a lot less like Australia than it does now. Thanks Cap'n Bligh - now, at the next election, you can just FUCK RIGHT OFF!!!


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Unmarked Mobile Speed Cameras

Just in case you've not seen these, here's a photo of two of the new unmarked mobile speed cameras that Cap'n Bligh has unleashed on Queenslanders to pay for her superannuation once she sells every piece of infrastructure off that we Queenslanders once owned.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Journalism Or Self Fulfilling Prophecy?

Sometime religious fundamentalist conservative American reporters, politicians and voters literally scare the shit out of me.  And this is one of those exact times.  Just because some whack job makes some shit up and pushes it out to the media, well, that doesn't mean it is factual, verifiable nor even believable.




Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

The Cloud - Should We Care

Should we care about the cloud?  We've been working in IT for wnhat, 5 years?  10 years?  20 years?  We know computers.  We know servers.  We know how to install, configure and troubleshoot Exchange Server in our sleep.  We can configure an SQL Server and a SharePoint Server together in less than 2 hours to get a site up and running.

Why should we bother with the Cloud - it's so new, so early in its life and so undefined that we'll be fine going along the way we have been for the next decade or so while the Cloud plays catchup.

Oh, really?




So, what exactly is the cloud?




Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Where do astronauts hang out?

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie