When the pictures were taken, it was nearly pitch dark outside!

The shots are in 2 columns below, taken at about 1 this morning.  Those on the left are “autoenhanced” using Irfanview as part of the batch resize operation before uploading to the web.  Those on the right are resized without any enhancement.

All shots are using time exposure on my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7, using a tripod sat on the bedroom window sill.  Timings were 15, 30 & 60 seconds.  The images are resized to be 1400 pixels wide.

What I particularly like is the ghostly, ethereal appearance which, if you didn’t know otherwise would’ve come from image processing or special lighting.  The yellow colour is not due to a sepia tinting process but purely distant street-lighting reflecting from the snow clouds coming down from the north last night.

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Truly, our freedoms are at stake.  While notionally an idea to prevent copyright theft, it’s real purpose opens the floodgates for any undemocratic organisation to walk over our freedoms (such as they are) for which our forefathers slugged their guts out.  Read this, then either;

• walk away (wondering in a few years why you’re not allowed to do anything)
• or do something about it!

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• Lets protest tomorrow, protect the Internet (artfulhelix.wordpress.com)
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• Prosey BUTTONS!: ACTA Blowing Up… https://www.accessnow.org/policy-activism/press-blog/acta-protest-feb-11 (friendfeed.com)
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ESA Notes Sheet ESA 40 04/09

That it was.  I first threatened and then did leave the Labour Party over it.  Right at the time they were trying to bring in Identity Cards and lock uncharged people away for 90 days, reduced to 42 days (yes really, they were – It’s like a bad dream) they also added some “rules” for state benefit claimants.  These are well explained at the top of Ron’s blog entry:

A police state for benefit claimants? « Ron’s Rants….

Ron writes;

It’s been brought to my attention that page 16 of the ESA Notes Sheet ESA40 04/09 contains this gem:- You must also tell us if you or your partner (among much else):- My parentheses and italics. go away from home, even if it is for a day

Ron (for it is he!)

And indeed it is so!  The document can be downloaded in full here on the DirectGov website.  A screenshot I’ve taken, highlighted the important bits and shown it here.  n.b. Ron is disabled, in several ways, not least by having the fat burned from the soles of his feet with a lightning strike!

Why Is This Important?

A.    Well actually, it contravenes everything that Britain and other freedom-loving peoples have fought for regarding the right not just to life, but to a decent life, free of oppression, free to move and enjoy living just for its own sake, the UK having signed up for all of this in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It’s part of the United Nations Charter, adopted in 1948 and part of International Law since 1976.

Image via Wikipedia

Here are the bits in which the highlighted line in the screenshot above breaks the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

• Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status – BROKEN.  Ron’s status is different from others in that he is disabled.  And, by limiting his freedom of movement as described, this breaks
• Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. BROKEN.  Ron’s freedom of movement is not the same as those not on benefit.
• Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.  BROKEN.  It is degrading to have to inform faceless bureaucrats of one’s location on a daily basis.
• Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. BROKEN AGAIN.  It is degrading to have to inform faceless bureaucrats of one’s location on a daily basis.
• Article 27: Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.  BROKEN:  Ron cannot participate freely.  Neither can his partner (if he has one).  He must inform the government of his movements which then prevents his free enjoyment that life in a free society provides.
• Article 30: Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.  BROKEN.  The UK state has removed Ron’s rights as defined and make law in the articles above.

What Else is Bonkers About This?

You may have noticed I highlighted another line.  For the lazy, this is how it reads, and when you’ve read it, then realise how bad these draconian rules really are:

You must also tell us if you or your partner, DIE!!!

Laughable bureaucracy, eh?

Finale

Of course, I can see why the state may want to do all of this – the powers-that-be have been making a big play in rustling up public opinion against “scroungers”.  But what Labour started, the Tories, as I predicted, have taken all of this up with a vengeance.  True, it’s fine to have paid work and/or a vocation that enervates oneself.  It’s part of the human condition to feel wanted and valued among one’s fellows.  But it’s all wrong to penalise the weakest in society and those that need the most support, by infringing and removing their basic human right of free movement to enjoy the society we’ve created.

Q. How to solve the conundrum?

A.  I don’t know and I don’t care actually, because I’m not in government and don’t have the power to change.

Those that are, you know, the elected or non-elected ones who decide that they’re better than us, they’re the ones who must, should and can change the rules, because they’re the ones that set them up in the first place!

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Words etc

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Spotted in Bournemouth.., and taken on my mobile phone

So what is it?

Image via Wikipedia

A. My friend tells me it’s a Subaru Samba – and that it is!  It’s a 5th generation model Subaru Samba made to look like a VW Camper.  This British Subaru Sambar VW Camper mini replicas business actually sells a variety of them.

I find something new every day.  Wonderful eh?

Image via Wikipedia

Apparently, VW themselves are re-introducing the Type 2 camper because of their long popularity, but uprated to modern standards.

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Above is the FTC’s own headline from a news release yesterday.  The story is that they’ve hammered six operators of fake news sites into making settlements that surrender their assets.  They’ve also halted the six operations plus those of four others, making ten by my calculation!

What Is a Fake News Site?

Do you really need to ask?   !!    (These are for news7digest, see more below on this!).

Anyone who even casually browses the web will have seen these news exposes, quite often advertised down the right side on Facebook and in banner adverts on even the most sensible of websites – like this one, say!

How the adverts work is that they are paid for by the operators.  They deliberately pay to get premium visibility slots, using Google often, but not exclusively.

The fake news site itself will be plastered with well known icons of top companies (like CNN, BBC, CBC, ABC, Google even!) and purport to be a serious investigation by a journalist into whatever the scam may be.  A short list of such scams that we’ve revealed here are:

• Acai weight loss
• Tea weight loss.
• Acai bowel cleanse.
• Other bowel cleanse.
• Get rippling muscles.
• Make money on Google.
• Get a cheap payday loan.
• Get a cheap government grant.
• Get rejuvenation skin cream.
• Look younger in other ways.
• Gamble on penny auctions.

channel4online.co.uk

Just yesterday, Peter Farrahy asked why these fake news sites are still going on this post about Jesse Willms.

So taking his example of the very plausible looking channel4online.co.uk and doing a search on it like so:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=channel4online.co.uk

…produces several links to the actual Channel 4 in the UK, and the scam site….

This shows the deliberate, deceptive and despicable way in which the site name has been chosen to closely imitate a legitimate and bona-fide news organisation.  Fraud, in other words – as the definition says – “an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual”

Amazingly, if you click the link several times, each effort takes you to one of three different landing pages for a new site, the actual fake news site of,

news7digest.com

This shows up in the header image in two, but confusingly is called Consumer Reporter in the other!  They are all visually quite different.

The three screenshots near the top of this article are indeed the three fake news sites which you’ll land on by clicking on channel4online.co.uk.

Here they are again, to save you scrolling:

Conclusion

Is this the end of the fake news sites?  Well, obviously not.

They are still very very current and still very very visible.  The highly photoshopped images adorn well known websites to the point of irritation.  However, the settlement was only yesterday.  The note on the FTC statement goes on the say;

A settlement order is for settlement purposes only and does not constitute an admission by the defendant that the law has been violated. Settlement orders have the force of law when approved and signed by the District Court judge.

Despite this, it appears the six defendants are caving in as no appeals have been launched.  They are and the details of the settlements are as follows:

• Ricardo Jose Labra Labra’s $2.5 million judgment will be suspended when he pays $280,000 and records a $39,500 lien on his home.
• Zachary S. Graham, Ambervine Marketing, LLC and Encastle, Inc. Graham’s $953,000 judgment will be suspended when he pays $110,000 plus most of the proceeds from the sale of a truck.
• Tanner Garrett Vaughn Vaughn’s $203,000 judgment will be suspended when he pays close to $80,000 over a three-year period.
• Thou Lee Lee’s $204,000 judgment will be suspended when he pays $13,000 plus the proceeds from the sale of a BMW.
• Charles Dunlevy Dunlevy’s $143,000 judgment will be suspended when he pays an estimated $2,000 from frozen assets and the sale of a boat.
• DLXM, LLC and Michael Volozin The $594,000 judgment will be suspended because of the defendants’ inability to pay.

I see it as a warning shot.  The actual wording of the terms against the six goes as follows.  It’s quite onerous and specific, I think, which means that these News7Digest screenshots at the top of this posting put the operators in deep doggy do if they don’t get their act together pronto.  The highlights are mine.

As part of its ongoing crackdown on bogus health claims, the proposed settlements will require that the six operations make clear when their commercial messages are advertisements rather than objective journalism, and will bar the defendants from further deceptive claims about health-related products such as the acai berry weight-loss supplements and colon cleansers that they marketed.

The defendants also are required to disclose any material connections they have with merchants, and will be barred from making deceptive claims about other products, such as the work-at-home schemes or penny auctions that most of them promoted.  The settlements also require that these defendants collectively pay roughly $500,000 to the Commission because their advertisements violated federal law.  This money amounts to most of their assets.

A Sample of My Previous Posts Mentioning Fake News Websites

• http://strangelyperfect.tv/10220/windows-defrag-to-news-9-today-browser-scam/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/7955/facebook-msnbc-jesse-willms-swipe-auctions-and-doctored-photos/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/6568/dangerous-effectivecleanse-and-scams-too/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/10195/dodgy-robert-allen-on-facebook/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/10909/fabian-tactics-of-google-work-at-home-scam-legal-team/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/7108/jobs-at-just-think-media/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/7783/pacific-webworks-lawyers-and-social-networking/

This all proves that what I and others are saying is wrong – and the FTC is proving it!  Virtually everything that the scammers do the FTC has now taken issue with and imposed heavy penalties.  It’s now, as they say, case law, as well as being the law of the land.  Let’s hope that Willms who chucked his power derived from ill-gotten wealth at me making me pull a page or two for a time, gets his just deserts – sometime this year would be nice.

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Why?

All my sites go off-line tomorrow in what-is-to-be-hoped a world-wide protest against the proposed SOPA & PIPA acts in the USA.

SOPA? Briefly.

Under intense lobbying from the entertainment industry behemoths, the law, far from protecting copyright holders like myself, will actually make it a simple process for any person or organisation with enough ‘clout’ to close down whole websites or force them to change content without any call to the process of law which has been bloodily built up over centuries in our Western world.

This means that those with ‘clout’ can censor – anyone – for anything – on their own whim.

This is draconian.  This is bad.  Very bad.  Essentially, it’s the beginning of end of what little civilisation we have and the start of a dark dictatorial era which can only end badly.

Internet Content

The internet started and spread because content is king.  If SOPA goes ahead, content will be at the behest of and regulated by vast faceless pan-global entities.

• You will see what they want you to see.
• You will read what they want you to read.
• You will think what they want you to think.

My websites are just a pimple in the sea of internet content.  But many others are also closing for the day.  The 18th of January 2012 is the day the internet self-censors.  Many large websites are closing too.  It shows us what the future could become.

• For all you yanks reading this, follow the links to find out how you can help.
• For the rest of us, because the USA has traditionally and historically been a bastion of freedom, pray hard – because what the USA does affects us all.

Stop the SOPA Bill

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I’ve been busy. I posted the details of a wacky con on the Crawling Chaos website (shown above). In a nutshell, it appears to operate thus:

• User searches for music or other media
• User is presented with search results, some of which point to Black Box Access
• User clicks on link and is told that the required file was uploaded last week and has been downloaded ~19,000 times
• User immediately thinks “this is popular, I’ll have it!”
• User hands over email & financial details

After this I don’t know as obviously handing over that data to a bunch of crooks is just asking for trouble.
However, as if to highlight their very own scamminess, Black Box Access serve ads which go to websites from which it’s almost impossible to leave with continuous pop-ups and all the usual crap.

So beware. Tread softly young Luke. It’s a major privacy issue.

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Careful observers to this website may have (but more probably not) discovered a tiny little link on random pages, which includes the main page.  The link is there to trap spammers.  Spammers of all kinds really, because once email addresses are skimmed, then they’re in the wild, but initially I trap comment spammers along with address harvesters.  At the end of this post you can see the spammers and scammers that I’ve help trap so far which means that they’re added to block lists thus saving internet users just a wee bit of trouble.

For me, as a webmaster, it’s no trouble to install and I urge others to do the same.  It’s called Project Honey Pot.

How it Works

For your interest, a file is served to a spammer which anyone can view should they click the tiny link.  The file is different on each website. It’s actually human readable but is constructed as two columns with no space, plus a few invisible characters.  Copying and pasting aren’t straightforward!

In it, are a perfectly readable set of Terms & Conditions which are broadly similar to those on all my websites, except they’re a lot more formal!  Buried in this formality is the statement that anyone who uses an email address sourced from this website is liable to a fee of $50!

This is the full content that (usually) only automated bots will find.  Enjoy!

Project Honey Pot Site Terms

And yes, naturally, being a webmaster, I record IP addresses for all visitors for a variety of reasons.   Everyone does!  Below is my Spam Honey Pot page.

My Honey Pot Front Page

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It (literally) means 3000 realms in a single moment of life.  This means that for any given moment your life is composed of everything; all thoughts, all history, all presents and all futures.  You only ‘sense’ things one at a time, yet they’re always there.

Four Mile Beach, Port Douglas, Australia

1. I’ll soon be toddling off to the beach above.
2. 

   Beautiful Sunset

   It’s a fantastic holiday destination, see the sunset here, or click on the image for more shots.

3. You’ll see it’s a beautiful blue.
4. You’ll see it’s a beautiful green.
5. You’ll see it’s a beautiful yellow.
6. It’s the Coral Sea.
7. Steve Irwin, the mad Aussie crocodile bloke was killed here, by a stingray.
8. The Great Barrier Reef is just offshore.
9. They erect stingray nets for swimmers, just like shark nets, only different name.
10. You can get coral-coloured condoms.
11. About a day or so’s sail away, the Battle of the Coral Sea was fought in 1942 where well over 1000 people lost their lives.
12. Most of the survivors are dead now, as they’re getting very old.
13. All life renews.
14. Four Mile beach looks like something Robinson Crusoe would’ve recognised.
15. Both the fictional Crusoe and the actual man on which the story was based couldn’t wait to get off their beach.
16. I’m going to Four Mile Beach soon.
17. 

    Lexington Explodes

    You’ll see it’s a beautiful blue.

18. You’ll see it’s a beautiful green.
19. You’ll see it’s a beautiful yellow.
20. I made music as Crawling Chaos.
21. I’ve renamed one of our tracks, the track  playing, to “Castaway” after I’d re- jigged it a bit.  It seemed “better”.
22. As a boy my father read a book called “The Coral Sea” and decided to become a sailor who would one day sail that very sea because of it.
23. He joined the war.  His ship was originally called CVE-32.
24. The Lexington which blew up in the Coral Sea was originally called CV-2.
25. I’m going to Four Mile Beach soon.
26. What’s it all mean?

Four Mile Beach again

It means that we are all connected.  In many more ways than the 3000, we are all intimately connected both now, to the past and the future.  Sometimes the connections are obvious, sometimes not; but as sure as eggs are eggs all our lives are entangled, it’s a part of life.

The Buddha said “work hard for your own salvation” just before he died.  It means to take action for your own happiness.  Don’t rely on external factors like people, events or gods because you’ll always be dissatisfied.  Suffer what is and enjoy what is as if they’re the same.

Enjoy being a Castaway! Enjoy life.

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Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave...

Back in 2009 I stumbled upon a negative option scam for which those involved were sued by Google (and folded with an out-of-court settlement) and were prosecuted by Uncle Sam, losing again.  Initially, I was completely unaware of the depths of deception to which these people would stoop, but then I rapidly discovered the nightmare web that they’d constructed and how difficult it was for ordinary people, duped by slick honest-looking promises, to un-pick themselves from it.

Not only that, I quickly realised that PWW weren’t the only spawn of the devil and that others, like Jesse Willms, were up to very similar tricks.  See:

• http://strangelyperfect.tv/3099/google-treasure-chest-its-a-scam-and-a-half/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/3140/google-kit-or-treasure-chest-the-plot-thickens/
•  http://strangelyperfect.tv/3240/google-treasure-chest-update/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/3347/google-treasure-chest-and-a-huge-list-of-scams/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/3397/best-description-of-google-treasure-chest-scam/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/3527/embarrassing-pingback-advert-for-google-treasure-chest/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/3743/google-treasure-chest-and-the-bbb-better-business-bureau/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/4308/google-revolution-different-name-same-scam/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/5146/more-on-google-profits-and-pacific-webworks/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/5475/goodbye-bollochio/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/6150/co-durham-and-utah-weirder-than-i-imagined/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/6818/my-first-british-google-business-kit/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/7120/from-pww-to-white-teeth/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/7783/pacific-webworks-lawyers-and-social-networking/
• http://strangelyperfect.tv/10634/from-google-treasure-chest-to-sun-tan-scam-in-nevis-on-the-bbc/

Methods

The above list of links more-or-less shows how we found out the Pacific Webworks (PWW) story.  They’re by no means the only set of devils in the world trying to scam people, but they’re the one’s I stumbled upon first.  That’s all.

Their business was to set up website templates that their “customers” could use to extract money from their customers by use of the negative option scam.  In effect, they were selling the tools to steal to people, who then had the option of calling it a day or selling the tools to steal on themselves, thus stealing.

To promote it they used mass advertising through paid ads on Google (using the Google and others’ trademarks to make it appear that these offers were endorsed by those referenced), through Quad, which they owned, and fake news or personal information websites (flogs) loaded with follow up ads.  The promotions could be their own, but for the most part it was all done by “affiliates” (their customers) that all took varying degrees of commission for follow-through clicks.

The advertising was managed by Bloosky Interactive that also operated through 3rd parties unsolicited email adverts, spam to you and me.

Underlying it all was the credit card processing business which they also owned (Intellipay) usually through the securecart domain.

All parties involved, except the final folk who didn’t really understand how bent this whole operation was, fully understood the nature of this business.  How could they not? – when they were selling “services” for $1.95 for which they’d get $30 commission!!!

Turn of the Screw

In another twist of deviousness, PWW (run by Bell, Bell, Larsen & Larsen at the time) set up The Quad Group (geddit?) to avoid creditors.  This is how they themselves described it:

In June 2009 we experienced limited merchant account processing capabilities which created a situation where we could not satisfy payables to marketing partners. To generate needed cash in the 2009 second quarter we sold a portion of our hosting portfolio that was in excess of merchant account limitations to The Quad Group, LLC, a related party (the “Quad Group”) for $157,786. Quad Group is owned and managed by current directors, officers and an employee of Pacific WebWorks. We may periodically be required to enter into sale transactions with Quad Group to properly manage our merchant account processing requirements.

Neat huh?

Cuts and Thrusts

So that’s about it, as I currently understand it.  PWW’s managers/owners had customers on two levels, that is;

1. The direct affiliates and associated advertisers who were enticed into the operation or migrated from other similar schemes via the lure of easy money.  These people used the templates to lure others with promises of easy money, paid as commission for attracting others to run the same schemes.  The schemes didn’t sell anything – except the scheme!  A true pyramid scam!
2. Duped suckers.  These, numerically the vast majority, soon realised after one or two mysterious withdrawals from their account of amounts around the $79 mark, that it was a scam.

The thrust of the plan was the hope that most people wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t investigate much and wouldn’t associate with other suckers through embarrassment or whatever, just writing off the episode as one of life’s bad judgements.  Thus PWW would make say, $200 from which all the ads and affiliates would get their cut.

Just Desserts

Statue of Justice

Black September

But still the shit kept coming their way.  Just as I’d predicted in my postings (see list above), karma would get them.  On 19 September 2011 this year a class action was brought against the three main bodies behind the scam – Booth Ford v PWW et al – Barbara Ford is to be commended for her patience.  It was 2009 when she first filed for a class action!

In it, we see just how badly PWW have been acting for years.  Section 11, for me, sums it up perfectly!

Booth Ford v PWW et al Section 11

So there we have it!  Now where’s the problem?

Rip-off Too Big!!

On 1 December 2011, Quad (who are actually essentially the same people as PWW with an almost similar board make-up – in fact the Google settlement made it plain that wives of the directors had been roped in as well), filed to be removed from the Class Action because they might have ripped off too much from people!  eh??  See QUAD_GROUP_NOTICE_OF_REMOVAL

The essence of their legal Fabian tactic (as I see it) is that:

1. They scammed people from all over, not just Illinois, so it’s not a valid class action.
2. They scammed people so much (by over $5m they say), that it’s the wrong court in which they should be tried, so ditch your claim against us!
3. They scammed people by so much that the class action lawyer’s fees alone will be $9m so same reasoning as point 2!

Quad Group Sums

Their sums in the above court removal document are in this screenshot.  There are others as well.  Of course, Quad (PWW with a different hat on remember) aren’t admitting any liability at all with this, so my use of the words scamming bastards reflects my personal opinions, not a statement of fact.  These opinions are based on the facts that:

1. Pacific Webworks acquiesced to all of Google’s demands when sued for illegal trademark usage.
2. Eborn and others lost their case when sued by the Texas AG when using PWW’s templates*, finance processing and networks to scam folks for millions of dollars.
3. PWW lost their case when sued by Uncle Sam.
4. PWW admitted filing untrue SEC accounts and changed accountants twice because of this.
5. One of the accountants was directly related to a PWW director.

It’s noteworthy that the sum of $43m is derived from one “illegal” charge of ~$80 plus one subsequent charge of ~$25 multiplied across the claimed customer count of ~455,000 persons – because I have evidence from people who’ve contacted this site and others that some people had up to half a dozen illegal account withdrawals before they could put on a stop, which implies that the allegedly scammed amount could be much, much higher.

It’s also noteworthy that Quad’s own suppositional sums show high value amounts from this “business” yet for all this time, no dividends were paid and the only way investors in the company could make money was through share price changes.  If you tie this information to the incorrect accounting and familial accountant/director relationships, plus the fact that PWW is largely the same people as Quad, then collusion looks highly likely over this time period and the SEC will quite possibly be knocking following the conclusion to this class action.

With regard to the SEC, the same SEC filing that revealed Quad’s dubious formation also reveals that;

Our client base includes approximately 30,000 active customer accounts. We rely on the efforts of our internal marketing staff and on third party resellers, including our wholly-owned reseller, TradeWorks Marketing, to add accounts to our customer base. – see SEC Link

Well they can’t both be right, can they, Quad?  Is it 455,892 customers in your sums or is it 30,000 in the SEC filing?

Linkages

Copious links are included in the articles referenced by the site references at the beginning of this article so I haven’t had time to re-reference all the above statements.  But they’re there should you wish to look.

I certainly hope that the Fabian tactics don’t work and that people see them for what they are.

Notes & Addendum

*     Eborn et al used website designs very similar to those provided by PWW.   Whether they were exactly the same is a moot point in my view, because like a burglar who learns to house-break from another burglar, the crow-bar used will not be exactly the same crow bar, but it’s the idea of using a crowbar that’s important to the final act of theft.  In other words templates, like crowbars, are just tools.  Eborn’s websites were almost carbon-copies of those from PWW using all the Visual “tools”, the money processing and the affiliate networks that they “employed”.   Many sites (I had a huge list of them and copied images directly from the site before they locked it down) were partly or wholly hosted on pantherssl.com  via Bloosky.  These co-incidences didn’t happen by chance and show intelligent design behind their purpose.  (Thanks Paul!)

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Win8 Dev Logon Screen

I’ve finally decided to test the next Windows edition, probably to be called Windows 8, although things like that are never certain in Microsoft-land.

Virtual Box

Win8 Dev VirtualBox Installation

I did a Virtual Box install, which is fairly straightforward.  There are many tutorials on-line now which show how to do this, so I won’t do a walk-through. I installed the 64-bit version which I downloaded from MSDN using my licence.  You can get the installs from the Microsoft Website here, which come in ISO format.  You can also find out more from the horse’s mouth here.

You can also set aside a partition on your hard-drive and install to that.  However, Virtual Box is the safe way to go should the partition install fail and corrupt your current installation somehow.

What I will say, is to use more memory allocation to the virtual installation than recommended elsewhere or as the default,  and to use as many virtual processors as your host machine has.….. My machine is an AMD 955BE, which is quad-core running at around 3GHz.  In other words, if you don’t want it to run like treacle, give it plenty processor and memory room;  at least the recommended values for Windows 7.  You can see all of this in the VirtualBox settings screenshot above.

Fast Install (added 24/11/11))

Windows 7 vs. Windows 8 time to upgrade

Microsoft, on their MSDN blog, have made a big thing about the rapid installation for Windows 8, particularly for the upgrade route.  See Improving the setup experience.  I can say now that the clean install into the VirtualBox environment was very fast….

Briefly:

1. You make a virtual machine in Virtual Box
2. You set it’s parameters – processors, memory size, footprint size, IDE/SATA storage etc
3. You set the downloaded ISO image to boot from in the settings.
4. You boot by “Starting” the virtual machine.
5. You install Windows into the filespace that you’ve previously set aside for it – I gave it a dynamic sized 50Gb.
6. After that, let windows do it’s thing.  It took 10 minutes or so.
7. Let it reboot.

Win8 Dev Loggged On Screen

Following this, you get a green screen from which country specifics are added, a username and finally, you enter your Live.com identity, if you have one, and if you want to!

Appearance

It’s a big green screen.  I don’t have a touchscreen, but it’s obviously designed for one.  It has massive buttons to a host of online services like weather & stocks, plus a few to your computer’s functions.

Win8 Dev Logon Screen

If you log off, you get presented with an American Rockies vista of a lonely winding road.  Essentially, the entry into Windows 8 is like a smartphone.  But what’s it like beneath the surface?

Windows 7 Legacy, and Vista Too!

Win8 Dev Double Click Control Panel Screen

Obviously, this is a development preview release, and we can expect more of the same to come.

Win8 Dev Double Click Explorer Screen

But most work has gone onto the main intro screen because beneath the surface, all the various apps and settings controls are the old (current) Windows 7 interface.

Bizarrely, some screens even have vestiges of the green Vista, notably the main screen itself.

Personally, I think it’s very, very dour.  I can’t believe that two years of effort has gone into doing something that Android does on a more than twice-annual cycle….

Win8 Dev Left Corner Hover Screen

Accessing the menus is the most unintuitive thing I’ve seen for ages!  Following on from the impressive Windows 7, it’s truly not just a user let-down, but somewhat infuriating as well…….    Whereas previously I just typed into the run bar to do almost anything, now I can’t even find programs or files!   No doubt there’s a way – but after Win7, it’s not intuitive and not helpful either.

I hope that’s not the end of the run box, because that feature in Windows 7 is awesome.

Control Panel

Win8 Dev Double Click Control Panel Screen

I haven’t checked through many apps (except a few desktop ones like the weird child-like paint thing and the weather which won’t do anywhere except California) but this is the control panel.

Win8 Dev Control Panel More Settings Screen

You then drill-down to get the old Win7 control panel on “More Settings”.

Initial Investigation Ends

Well that’s it for now.   To say I’m un-impressed by the big green monstrous front doesn’t give my opinion justice.  There doesn’t appear to be an easy way out of the front-screen apps and to have an app made for a  3-inch screen sat on a 23 inch desktop monitor really demonstrates the infantile  apps for what they are.

Way back in the nineties Microsoft tried their in-house Microsoft Network (MSN) which was a disc install that gave you a black desktop that gave dial-up access to features giving almost the same as this big green toy-town monster.

Not happy.

Watch this space as I delve more….

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Harry Secombe

Spinning, with Bendy Sticks

CC GCC Harry2 by Crawling Chaos
Still twiddling with Harry, after all these years. Always, there’s more to do. Again, using Reaper, which I’ve paid for….

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Foetus Products

In preparation for our next release, Spookhouse, I’ve set up a proper shop to sell it!  Our intention is to sell everything ourselves via this sole outlet. (Click image for the UK shopping site.)

The announcement is on the Crawling Chaos website here.

Kicking off the shop I’ve reworked (…er…shouldn’t that be ‘am in the process of re-working?…) all tracks from the two previous CD issues.  Finally I’ve had a decent handle of the articles…

Some have been substantially changed which may upset the purists, my current modus operandi being to imagine myself back then using the current software and equipment I now have at my disposal, then to change the existing 2-track recordings to best fit this basic idea.  After all, they’re already in the digital domain – so I may as well try and make them something like how I/we wanted originally, but was thwarted by technology.

In tandem with this, I’ve whipped out some jam and hidden parts in tribute especially to Paul, Jeff & Garry, because this was the core of many creations that appear on those two releases and turned them into something dark and tragic, as that’s how I currently feel about their absence from the planet.

As Steve Jobs once said,

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Close observers will spot the “new” tracks.  They are there to highlight our jollity, our bleakness, the tiny hidden gems of deftness in improvisational Jeff’s playing and Paul’s lyricism, the randomness of Gazza and the end that must come to us all.

All this stuff is competitively priced compared to the muffled output from the usual on-line stores.

Spookhouse

The Spookhouse design is currently being set.  Downloads from the CD will be available following the CD release.

Other Items

These will be released, mainly as download, for other artists wanting to contribute to to the Foetus Products collective sound resource.  This isn’t a joke.  We really mean it folks!

Technical

I’ve set it up using open-source software on the foetusproducts.co.uk domain.  All links are secure where they need to be using a SSL Certificate I bought from GoDaddy.com, as they were had a special offer going…!  It’s security level is the highest you can get (it uses a 2048 bit key), which means folks should have no qualms about their bank getting raided or whatever if they buy from us.

Users will have a choice of two financial transaction processors – PayPal and Google Checkout for which I’ve set up merchant accounts.  They’re ubiquitous and most people are familiar with their operation nowadays.  I thought about using Amazon, but they don’t currently process for digital items.

The reason that we’ve gone this route harks back to our (i.e. Crawling Chaos’s) independence of spirit – and because our returns will be on par to going the iTunes route, say, for distribution.  We lose about 10% commission in the transaction process compared to a lot more through online download stores.

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