For the last little while, Christopher Soghoian has attempted to highlight the dangers of the zero-day exploit market. The basics are that some vulnerability researchers are selling exploits to make money, without vetting who the end user will be, and in some cases knowingly selling them to militaries (he phrases it as governments, but the implication is that they aren't using them for defence). Soghoian, as I read it, is trying to highlight this trade, and get some sort of legislation passed to regulate it. (A darker reading would make it seem that he has a more, aggressive agenda, but let's leave that aside for a moment.)

The worrying thing here is neatly summed up by Haroon: 

The scariest thing about you, is how certain you are that you are right. Regulation is a scary instrument

In his ZaCon talk, Haroon Meer worked in a fascinating comparison, by Michael Anissimov, between the fears that drove George Orwell when writing 1984, and those that drove Aldous Huxley when writing Brave New World.

I was woken up by a message from Planet Fitness this morning, informing me that the contract I though had expired in Aug 2009 had happily been renewed each month and I now owed them a large sum of money. I was not informed of any of this, and have not attended a Planet Fitness gym since 2009. While the guy on the line agreed this was pretty dodgy, "It's in your contract," he says without having a copy of my contract. So, now I'm waiting to see this contract while they look for it. In the meantime, I was cheerily informed that if I rejoin the gym, then will write the debt off, or if I pay half I will get 6months "free" and the rest written off. Better yet, while the system says I owe Rxx.xx, the consultant through the use of his calculator assures me I actually owe Rxx.xx * 1.5. Nice to know their billing systems are as dodgy as their customer service.

Julius Malema has exploded into political prominence by making himself hard to ignore. Inheriting a platform that drew attention to the accidental outrages he tripped into, he quickly learned to stoke outrage and roar back at any responses he provoked. For the media, trying to gauge the state of the nation’s health from moment to moment, this makes him a much more attractive candidate than the business-as-usual official announcements of the ruling party proper. But Malema’s sound and fury signify little, and his disproportionate voice in South Africa’s public conversation is only hurting our ability to speak to one another, and to speak sense when we do. We think it’s time to ignore Julius, and invite you to join us.

For the week of 7-14 April 2010, we undertake to talk about this country, its challenges, its promise, its news, and to ignore Julius while doing so. Join us in this initiative. If you blog, join the roll. If you Tweet, add the hashtag #ignoreJulius to your daily output.

However you communicate, take a week off from Julius.

Donn is being bullied by QVC for their Carlswald based marketing. He is being sued for defamation. Now I'm no lawyer, but I'm sure truth is a defence to defamation, as is it being in the public interest. If someone asked me whether to buy services from QVC, I would strongly recommend against it for the below reasons based on my experiences (and reiterated by a wealth of negative complaints on hellopeter, even with them diluted through their user of different company names, and several blogs).

P.S. The exact link between QVC and the marketing front is unclear, but based on their (now removed) documentation sent to Donn, and the information from commentators below, there definitely seems to be one. Given the years of bad press, QVC certainly can't claim they didn't know/endorse this. Either way, make up your own mind, don't take my stuff as gospel.

Donn Edwards is being sued by QVC, the group who appear to be behind the less-than-honest "You've won a car" scheme I previously blogged about. Read his story, and press statement, and send in an affidavit, legal support or donations if you can.

I was interested to see if my political leanings (as described by the Political Compass test) had shifted since having left University, gotten a job, started paying taxes, converted to Catholicism and having grown older.

It is interesting to note that my results are very similar to what they were in 2004, and less libertarian and economically right wing than they were in 2006. Me and Nelson Mandela are still home boys though.

Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.13

Deloitte has gather together some good climate change resources. If you want some white papers, formal research or the like, this has some good links.

Satire: Blending criticism and humor to expose a fault or problem; often used ironically.

David Bullard, a noted South African columnist specialising in satire, had a dig at bloggers. There has been a major sense of humour failure [1], and there is a full on multi-blog, distributed flame war going on against the guy. I guess this is why satirists aim for the holy cows: the response is so much fun.

[1] Personally, I rarely find Bullard's satire funny.

Jason van Niekerk has put an excellent article together for the iCommons site. He details the theoretical and moral force that underpins the necessity for the types of collaboration being pioneered by movements such as free software and creative commons. It includes a podcast too.

Definately worth a read for those of you that think Ubuntu is a linux distribution.

This is a copy of an e-mail I was forwarded by iCommons (the international arm of Creative Commons) by Teresa Hackett of Electronic Information for Libraries. It very neatly lays out the problems with the TRIPS+ FTA Australia caved in to and America is trying to push on the rest of the world (South Africa only narrowly avoided it in our negotiations earlier this year). Even though it applies to libraries, it is well worth a read if you don't know what TRIPS+ is or why it is the devil.

The competition to the bloated bureaucracy, Telkom, was launched on the 1^st of September. Ladies and gentlemen, Neotel.

They currently aren't offering consumer services but plan to by April 2007. They have a fairly comprehensive FAQ available. Currently they are only offering wholesale broadband which should result in lower broadband prices from ISPs soonish. They have also done a good job of selling international carrier throuput to the cellular providers and claim we will soon have international CLI as a fringe benefit.

While it is a pity our government has chosen not to pursue a policy of full deregulation of this market (gosh, did I just say that), I welcome any competition to our evil monopoly Telkom.

The iSummit starts today in Rio. Daniela has been hard at work for the past couple of weeks organising it. I had a listen to the summit CD, there are some great tracks, I was particularly proud of South Africa's contribution. The DVD is more, um... bizarre, the documentary on Chinese body-builders is a hoot.

The iSummit page hasn't gone live as yet, but I have some inside info, you can check out two SAffies (Vhata's word for South Africans) profiles (daniela, colin), both ex-Rhodes students. Despite his picture, Colin is actually a nice guy.

Recently the ANC Youth League claimed that the fact that Jacob Zuma was found not guilty proves that the rape allegation was a set up whose purpose was to discredit Zuma and his political aspirations.

This has a very dangerous presupposition that I have seen trotted out in far too many articles and quotations on the matter.

Daniela has recently started her work for Creative Commons South Africa. It seems they are in charge of the iCommons, an organisation trying to extend the reach of the Creative Commons into other free culture areas. Lessig explains it better. Daniela has been hard at work and already regularly writing for the iCommons blog. Check it out.