If this is the case I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight

I am in fact a generally cheerful sort of person, filled with faith in my fellow man and hope for a better future.  I believe that one man can make a difference and that if everyone works together we can build a future for our species that stretches beyond the boundaries of this failing planet and into the great beyond.

Don’t dig out the John Lennon classics, just yet mind you..

No success can become lasting, without the tempering that comes from harsh criticism, no greatness achieved without the burning desire to overcome imperfection.

If we are to succeed as a species and circumnavigate the treacherous potholes on the road to our brighter future, then we must be willing to address our failings head on and strive to become better humans.

It is for this reason today, that I would like to address with you some small issues that have recently come to my attention, particularly surrounding the previously mentioned issue of the taking up of causes,  average attention spans and a general misuse of the mediums which many of you have erroneously deduced to be effectively employed for the greater good.

If you will allow me one more disclaimer before I cut to the proverbial chase: While I have long harboured suspicions regarding these issues I am not here to today, my friends, to deal in opinion and speculation.  I have in fact come, bearing statistics.

Our friends over in the Googleverse, where all Internet traffic must eventually pass through, are kind enough to maintain a comprehensive statistical engine which is free to all-comers to examine and gain a deeper understanding of what it is that people are actually doing with their time on the Internet.

One of the quick features one can access is the Hot Trends list, which maintains the top 100 search traffic generators

I would draw your attention first to the opening point of our investigation, June 12 the day the story broke about the usurped Iranian elections.  As you can see the election results managed to gain a spot at number 46 on the list, just beaten out by Facebook vanity urls, which was clearly a more pressing social issue, vanity urls also appeared higher up the list under a different search phrase, no other topics pertaining to Iran made the top 100.

Fast forwarding through the rest of June this apparently hot cause, in fact causes barely a flutter on Google’s hot trends beyond the 14th.  on the 17th the search terms green now and green again peak briefly, however there is almost certainly a crossed line here with environmental

issues that is skewing the results and there is again not so much as a flutter about Iran in the rest of the list.

Finally, on the 20th the story seems to gain a little traction in the global attention span contests, coming in at number 7 with ‘neda iran’, however this attention is short lived.  The very next day the hot list is invaded by Shiloh,Pepin, the mermaid girl and Iran and it’s rapidly failing neda (it means voice) slip down to position’s 86 and 100.

The next day sees Iranian girl shot holding on at position 75, however for the majority of the searching world coverage of the US Open, and watching Weeds Season 5, episode 3 are far more pressing concerns.

On the 23rd traffic spikes nicely again, seemingly brought about by a new batch of videos entitled ‘Iranian woman shot’.  I’m sure that I shouldn’t be disturbed by the fact that video footage of the deaths of innocents grabs your attention spans far more effectively than any actual discussion of the political situation unfolding – you’re watching because you care, right?

By the 24th it seems that most Googlers have had their fill of morally obligated snuffing and the woman shot videos predictably begin to fall off the charts again.

and then on the 25th day, Michael Jackson died.

So tell me again, how much you care about the plight of the Iranian people?

If the Soviet propaganda machine had turned it’s thoughts to such frivolities as creating arcade games they would probably have come out looking this:

This really requires no further explanation, just click on the image and watch this stylish little flash production.

Do you sometimes feel an emptiness in your life, that even your FriendFeed can’t seem to fill?

You add the friends to your wall every day,  send hand-picked e-gifts on all the right occasions, take up the latest quiz challenges from your friends and LOL along with the group when everyone comes out as Yoda.

But you can’t get rid of that nagging feeling that you should be doing something more meaningful to contribute to society, that perhaps your life doesn’t have any real substance?

Well let doubt nag you no more my digital acquaintances. You too can make meaningful contributions too society from the safety and comfort of your computer nook.

Fear not the beating sun on your brow from a day of sixties style placard waving.  ‘No tear gas no baton charge’ will be required for your anarchist street riot.

Not even the 1980’s ‘care with cash’ yuppie method, or ‘my witty grunge t-shirt will change the world’ are things that you need to endure any longer, because now you can make a difference in the world, just by tweeting.

Simply pick up on the latest causememe, retweet it to your followers and sit back in awe of your own abilities my friend, because you have just changed the world a teeny tiny bit.  It all counts right?

Don’t believe me?  Just watch in about 6-8 weeks those twitter powered Iranian protestors will have overthrown their oppressive government and will owe their eternal gratitude to you and everyone else in the Twittersphere who helped make this possible by keeping their meme alive.

Joining Facebook causes, commenting on blogs and forwarding emails are also valuable contributions, if you’re willing to go the extra mile – remember people those Iranians need you to help keep their click up if they’re going to get through this mess.

Thank you social media for once more making the world a better place.  Without you society would almost certainly collapse back into that biblical sort of chaos that inspires the gnashing of teeth, bad ‘gravel hair’ days and a revival in sack cloth fashion.

I am in awe.

Friends of popular Intertubes user Ron_K45 are fearing the worst after this picture of him appeared on twitpic today.  Ron_K was a private user who kept to himself and never gave out his Facebook, or email.  Ron kept up to date with numerous followers on Twitter and was also a lolcatz enthusiast. He was well loved in the canhascheeseburger community, where he regularly posted about the antics of his RL companion – a black and white tabby known as ‘Mr Socks’.

We suspected something might be wrong a few days ago, reported a fellow lolcatter, when Ron’s didn’t post an update on the series he’d been doing on Mr Socks vs his stuffed nemesis ‘Woolydog’.  “Ron never missed a regular post in all the years we’ve known him.” he explained.

We started to get really worried when we did a twitter search on him and found that his last tweet had read. “I can haz chest pains?”

“Yesterday this picture popped up out of nowhere on twitpic under Ron’s account – all we can think is that Mr Socks must have taken it by accident”.

Ron’s followers have been tweeting about nothing else since the picture appeared, but no-one has the faintest idea of where to find him in RL.  Poor Mr Socks don’t has fudz! #sadkitty has registered over 300 retweets in the last 4 hours.

The lolcatz community are holding a best caption poll for his final image to honour the memory of their dear friend.

If anyone recognizes Ron_K45 from this image and can provide us with any details about his RL whereabouts please send us a tweet.

I’m talking of course about Microsoft Natal, the new 3d camera interface for the Xbox 360 that has the whole gaming world abuzz, or as I think it would have been better named – Microsoft Mime.

Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft have produced a technological marvel,

Walking against the Wind **Bonus! 5000 points**

with the 3d camera and the body motion sensing widgetry, but there are some fundamental flaws in the premise of this product.

Firstly I speak for the silent mass of all slightly pudgy unfit gamers when I say that leaping about in front of the screen simply does not become me. My own personal vision of immersive gaming and virtual reality has generally involved a lot of sitting around wrapped in screens while my ‘pretend body’ ran around doing insanely dangerous things that would land me in the ER if I tried them myself.

Just watching that kid in the video jumping around like Tony Hawk brought the schedule on my knee replacement surgery forward by two years.

Secondly?  Two words: Carpet burns.

I don’t want to dwell in this uncomfortable space for too long, but just think about the cost to your elbows next time you’re leopard crawling up the ridge behind the enemy base with your G36 slung across your back getting ready to pwn their mans. Let’s not even contemplate the potential damage that you could do to yourself if they start integrating this thing with ‘social networking’ activities.

Last but not least, please, just look at the picture and ask yourself this – if you think it’s bad enough that we’re raising a current generation of controller mashing zombie children – how about a future  generation of prancing, paste faced mimes?

If you live in a world that runs on memes that spread across the globe in a matter of hours and sub cultures that spring up around the latest social network, or MMORPG, sometimes the slang can get a little confusing – even for the most hardened of Internet users. For this reason I like Urban Dictionary. I find it enlightening and often amusing to skim through the user submitted definitions for the latest buzzword, or catch phrase.

Here’s a user submission that caught my eye the other night as particularly surreal. Apparently doganuses is not at all taken with the spirit of blogging and has strong feelings about the use of some of the jargon attached to the scene. More after the jump.

It did get me to thinking – this rather strange and random outpouring of disgust and anger in the middle of cyber nowhere – about the similarities between cyber rage and road rage and the Internet as an outlet for the copious amounts of suppressed anger most people are carting around these days in our increasingly neutered society. Not guilty? how many times have you yelled curses at someone from behind your steering wheel in the last week…?

This in turn got my thoughts running towards the uglier side of such matters and the Internet as a vehicle for people to find outlets for their darker tendencies, such as was recently highlighted with the arrest of Phillip Markoff, aka the The Craiglist killer earlier this month.

Markoff is not even the first Craiglist killer by the way. Nineteen year old Michael John Anderson, claimed this dubious honour back in 2007 when he lured a young lady to his apartment with a babysitting advertisement so that he could shoot her and shove her in the trunk of her car.

Coincidentally I just finished watching the first season of Dexter and the loveable serial killer himself pays homage to Craiglist by using it to send a furtive message to the Ice Truck killer. We are getting increasingly good at humanizing our demons and letting them out to play aren’t we? A charming serial killer, who lives by a code and only feeds his urges on truly deserving victims – its an intriguing concept – no let’s not soft soap it – it’s an exciting concept! It’s justice in rubber gloves, with a scalpel, a bonesaw and an industrial-sized roll of shrinkwrap.

Dexter sums this up beautifully in his chilling narration of the final scene of the season finale where he imagines the crowd cheering for him.

“My Darkness revealed my shadow self embraced, yeah they see me I’m one of them – I’m their darkest dreams.”

Its brilliant TV, punchy story line, socially relevant and unafraid of itself and as long as we’re parading demons down main street I’m not about to miss the show, or the ride in the hand basket.

I do have this nagging question that won’t go away though… has anyone checked the brakes on this thing recently?

You know it doesn’t take an awful lot of paranoia – when you read stuff like this in the context of our dear friend Microsoft’s long running relationship with soft cuddly organizations like the NSA – to start you wondering if the browser vulnerabilities are really down to sloppy code?

/me wanders off to make himself a new tinfoil hat…

This one is dedicated to all the magpies who helped spread the Conficker worm.

Answer this simple true, or false quiz to find out if you are a Magpie:

1. Clicking on adverts is the best way to get cool free stuff on the Internet.

2. Emails from people I don’t know are exciting and full of surprises.
3. Sometimes the Internet helps me by putting free software on my computer.
4. Using your credit card number for age verification is perfectly safe.
5. Sometimes I cut myself while looking at shiny things.
6. Incredimail is one of my favorite free things I got from the Internet.
7. My favourite website is called Smileycentral.

If you answered TRUE, to two or more of these questions, you are a Magpie – please turn off your computer now, we are banning you from the Internet, for your own safety.

If you refuse to heed this warning – click on the link below once you have the Conficker worm, it will tell you that you have Conficker worm.

Conficker Eye Chart

If you have the Conficker worm on your computer the only way to get it off is to set your computer on fire.

Good luck and remember if things go wrong – stop drop and roll.

"Last week, legislation was introduced that would create a cybersecurity adviser who reports directly to the president and who would have the authority to disconnect federal or critical infrastructure networks from the Internet if they were deemed to be at risk of attack." read more

Back in February Obama launched a review of the US national cybersecurity infrastructure
under the charge of Melissa Hathaway. Now Hathaway is set to take up the full time role as Obama’s cybersecurity adviser on the back of a set of legislation that will grant federal officials new powers to create and enforce data security standards for government agencies and the private sector.

Most significant in this legislation are a set of shiny new presidential powers that will allow him to declare a state of cybersecurity emergency, giving him the ability to shutdown public, or private networks, or portions thereof in the interests of national security.

Now if you’re like me, possibly you only paid attention to the warm fuzzy parts of Obama’s Internet campaigning and heard him make stirring speeches about net neutrality and protecting civil rights online and just possibly you fooled yourself into thinking that here at last was a man in power, who understood the Internet we grew up on – the one where you could do and say anything you wanted to under the protection of the ultimate free speech weapon, anonymity.

If so then consider this your wake up call. Obama loves the Internet, that much is very clear. However first and foremost Obama loves America He wants a safe America, he wants an Internet that’s safe for Americans to use and he is quite clearly listening to the likes of
Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller (yes he is a real Rockefeller) when they say things like:

[Snowe] "If we fail to take swift action, we, regrettably, risk a cyber-Katrina."

[Rockefeller]"We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs. From our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records – the list goes on."

Not concerned? Listen to what Leslie Harris CEO at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has to say:

“This is pretty sweeping legislation,” says Harris. “Seems the President could turn off the Internet completely or tell someone like Verizon to limit or block certain traffic,” she said. “There is a lot to worry about in this bill.”

To put this in layman’s terms. Obama is creating traffic laws for the Internet, very real traffic laws like you’ve never seen before, with very real traffic police and Obama and his traffic police will be able to block the roads control the flow of traffic and if they decide to – stop you from going to the wrong part of town.

Also you need to understand, that these kind of objectives can only be achieved through extensive monitoring of the traffic. Sure he means to protect your civil rights online, sure he means to protect your privacy, but you can’t hand out fines to people for traffic violations, if you don’t know where they live can you?

In good American tradition to be a real president and get what you want you really should have a war to fight and I think its quite clear – from the way he is gearing up – that Obama plans to fight his war online.