Quibids.com shifty auction swindle.

Late last night I saw a television commercial for Quibids.com advertising good for ridiculously low prices. So I though I’d check it out and apply to old “If it sounds to good to be true” routine and see how the site makes its money.

Quibids is an auction site where people can place bids on items with incredibly low price tags.

To place a bid on any of these items you must first purchase credit with the site, these credits are called “Bids” and each “Bid” is worth 60cents. You can then place these Bids on items of your choice and if your Bid is the last in when the counter reaches zero then you win the right to purchase at the final auction price.

Seems legit on the surface, but here is where the scam lies. Unlike a normal online auction once the counter gets down to 20 seconds it will begin resetting back to 20 seconds each time someone places a Bid. Eventually the timer will get moved down to 10 seconds where it will constantly reset back to 10 seconds every time a bid is placed and will continue to do so until people stop bidding. So in theory an auction could go to eternity.

Here is the real key to the scam. Bids (credits) used to bid on items are non-refundable so even if you lose an auction you have still payed for the privilege of bidding, not only you but everyone who bids on these auctions is paying just to take part with no guarantee that they will be able to purchase the item. Even the winner of the auction is still out of pocket for the Bids (credits) they used to bid on the item which they can now purchase.

The constant resetting of the counter is used to drive people into a frenzy (it works) and start bidding like mad to be the last one before the counter hits zero. But 10-20 seconds is actually a long time at auction so they are easily outbid by someone else who is in turn outbidded again by another person. This can go on for hours with people spending their non-refundable Bids (credits) just to outbid each other.

Legitimate auctioneers don’t charge you to place each bid, or constantly reset the auction to keep you all bidding. However Quibids.com currently does both. The most well known online auction house is eBay, but you only pay on items that you win. The same goes for House, Car, Antiques and all legitimate auctions. I am happy to call Quibids.com a scam because the old “If it looks too good to be true” is certainly correct here. I am also convinced that naming their credit “Bids” is a deliberate attempt to trip users up with cleaver wording.

A visit to the National Museum of Computing

Back in January I visited the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, England. Unfortunately I was running short of time and didn’t get to look at everything. But here’s most of what a captured with a camera phone. Click the images to enlarge them.

Apple Macintosh -1984 (above). IBM Personal Computer – 1983 (below)Here is an Apple Macintosh, I remember using one of these in school. The Greyscale Monitor is build into the system case and a keyboard and mouse plug into the front. If I remember correctly the power switch is on the back right-hand side (to the user) and is either orange of grey. The all-in-one design that made the Macintosh stand out in 1984 is still popular in modern Apple computers.

The computer below it is an IBM Personal Computer XT, it is the first IBM PC to come with an internal hard drive. It’s 4.77 MHz processor was impressive back in 1983.

I have no idea what the Hewlett Packard pictured below is about. It appears to be built into the desk. It is clear that the system doesn’t have a mouse and I suspect the interface would amount to allot of green text.

Hewlett Packard – Let’s see Apple beat this all-in-one design.

Surprisingly many of the systems in the museum are still in working order. There was a working Commodore 64.Commodore 64 – 1982 (centre)

The Commodore 64 was one of the best selling personal computers of all time. The keyboard is built-in but it didn’t have a monitor. Instead of a monitor you plugged it into a TV, this made it cheaper and more affordable for the average person to acquire. It’s name is a reference to it’s 64 KB of RAM.

Here is the largest calculator that I have ever seen.

Friden Model 132 Calculator – 1965

As you can see there is a lot to go through.

These days the average phone has more processing power than all the computers in the museum.

I recognise a PDP-8 on the end there, here is another one outside of the cabinet.

PDP-8 – 1965

I also found an (early) Internet simulator.

An Internet without YouTube?

I regret not having the time to look through the museum thoroughly. There is so much to see and I have only photographed a small portion of what I saw. Now that I know this Museum is at Bletchley Park I can plan my time better on a future visit.


AVN wants to get personal.

Oh Dear, it looks like the Australian Vaccination Network is is upset by Stop the Australian Vaccination Network a group of skeptics intent on holding the AVN to account for the dangerous and misleading information that it spreads.

Apparently the anti-vaxxers are so upset about the disruption to their disease advocacy that they want to make things personal.

Neither Stop the AVN nor it’s members dispense medical advice. Neither do the Australian Skeptics so I’m not sure what ‘Medical Advise’ those two groups are supposed to have made; other than recommending people speak to their doctors.

Anti-vaxxers want to target the individual.

This should be good. I’m sure the health authorities will really appreciate a known public health menace wasting their time with childish vendettas. However it’s not the first time the Australian Vaccination Network has hit out at people who criticise them.

These are just my favorites I could go on as there are countless examples but I’m not sure I would finish the list before the heat death of the universe.

Twat sues Twitter over Tweet.

A Melbourne man is suing over a defamatory tweet, but rather than suing the author of the tweet he plans to sue Twitter itself.

It all began when a writer by the name of Marieke Hardy mistakenly identified Joshua Meggitt as the author of a “Hate blog” written about her. Hardy wrote on Twitter ”I name and shame my ‘anonymous’ internet bully. Liberating business! Join me,” she then linked to her blog where Mr Meggitt was incorrectly identified.

It was a tweet seen around the world, and now that Hardy (below) has already reached a confidential legal settlement with Mr Meggitt, believed to be about $15,000, and published an apology on her blog, his lawyers are seeking damages from the social media site where the original defamation had the greatest exposure. –Sydney Morning Herald

Normally I would sympathise with Mr Meggitt as he had false information posted to the Internet about him. However this is not one of those times. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald a settlement has already been reached with the offending party. Needless to say I don’t think Marieke Hardy had any malicious intent she just stuffed up and made a genuine mistake. A mistake she is now paying for.

So Joshua Meggitt has his compensation (If the article I quoted is correct) by way of a legal settlement. Personally I would love $15,000 every time someone wrote a false accusation about me on the internet, I would never have to work again.

Mr Meggitt’s lawyer Scott Gibson told Fairfax Media his client was now seeking legal redress from the social media company: “Twitter are a publisher, and at law anyone involved in the publication can be sued.” –Herald Sun

However the offending Tweet never appeared on Twitter. Hardy posted the offending content on her blog. She simply used Twitter to notify people of her blog post, a post she has since apologised for making. Twitter had nothing to do with the content of that blog post.

So why does Joshua Meggitt want to got after Twitter. I personally suspect that greed is playing a role here and Twitter has deeper pockets than Hardy does; at least $140 Million USD per year.

All Australians should be pissed off by this assholes (I held out as long as I could) attempt to hold a service provider liable. In this country we are already a technological backwater and while Twitter is outside Australian jurisdiction to set such a legal precedence here will have dire consequences for us all. If service providers are held accountable for content created by their users it will completely abolish the Web 2.0 in this country. Afterall who in their right mind would host a website or other communications platform if they are to be sued and censored every time someone gets upset with what someone else writes about them.

I host my website offshore because it’s already too easy for miscreants in Australia to bully service providers into taking content offline. But if someone emails me and shows me that information is false I will gladly correct it. Misinformation is damaging and should be addressed, but the correct way to deal with it is by dealing with the author. Most people; at least those who attribute their names have no desire to publish inaccuracies and are happy to correct false information when they are called on it.

However attacking a service provider who has nothing to do with the creation of the content; anymore than the post office or phone company is simply the wrong approach and any sympathy I might of had for Joshua Meggitt is long gone.

Darwin Day 2012 at Perth Zoo

Yesterday marked the 203rd Birthday of Charles Darwin, and it was 152 years, 2 months, 19 days ago on 24 November 1859 that Darwin first published his ground breaking work titled: On the Origin of Species which gave us the theory of evolution by natural selection. The book was written with a laymen audience in mind so that the general public could understand the significance of Darwin’s findings, and to this day Darwin’s theory still stands as scientific fact.

To celebrate the Birthday of Charles Darwin Perth Atheists held a picnic in Perth Zoo.

 

Charles Darwin was also a member of the Glutton Club which would meet once a week for the purpose of eating animals not normally found on menus. During the voyage of the Beagle, he ate many of the animals that he discovered. Including the  Lesser Rhea which he ate by mistake thinking it was the more common (and already documented) Greater Rhea. Realising that he had just eaten one of the specimeins he was currently searching for Darwin gathered up what was left of the Lesser Rhea and sent it back to London to be studied and now Rhea Darwinii is named after him.. 

Great for SoupUnfortunately we were not allowed to eat any of the animals at Perth Zoo, not even the Meerkats which look like they would go well with soup. So instead of eating the Zoo’s animal collection we held talks on the topic of Biology and Evolution. Our speakers were Rachael Richards, high school biology teacher who has seen creationism taught in high schools in WA. Mike Bamford, zoologist / ecologist / ornithologist / herpetologist and David Frank; head of Perth Atheists as MC for the event.

After the main event David and Mike had a brief discussion about the possibility of eating a Galápagos Tortoise and other animals not commonly found on Australian menus.

So Happy Darwin Day 2012, go and eat an endangered species to celebrate.

Google owes you nothing; get over it.

Pseudonyms on Social Networks

Today it seems that bitching about Google is a fashionable trend. Last year we had the so called ‘Nym Wars‘ where people complained about having to use their real name instead of a pseudonym on Google Plus a new social networking site operated by Google.

Given that Google Plus is a social networking site the idea of being anonymous is an oxymoron because a name does not equal an identity. Names alone mean nothing, it is the information attached to that name that make up the identity. A pseudonym offers no privacy in the context of a social network because if you’re going to maintain a friends list and communicate with people on that list in a forum that allows other to observe your discussion, then you’re are very quickly building a profile of yourself for the world to see. Combine that profile with photographs and information shared by your friends and suddenly any privacy you thought your pseudonym offered is gone; and it’s not coming back.

Keeping your eggs in one basket.

When Google began to suspend users for non-compliance of their real names policy some users found themselves locked out of not only Google Plus but also Gmail, Calendar etc, because Google links accounts across it’s multiple services. Therefore if you get banned from one service, you get banned from all services. I don’t know if Google has a means in place to only terminate individual services linked to an account rather than ban the whole account, but I hope users would learn a lesson from this.

It’s never a good idea to put all or even a significant amount of data into any one company. I know plenty of people who use Google services for everything Documents, Email, Calendar, Address Book, it’s insane how much data people are trusting to Google. Not because Google are bad (they aren’t) but because Google is a single entity. If you find yourself cut-off for any reason then you’re screwed. Especially if you use a Gmail address in which case you lose your email address aswell. (This is why I use my own domains)

You can opt-out.

Google has just announced that it will begin sharing user data amongst the multiple services that it offers.

Google announced on Monday that it would be enacting a new privacy policy that, when customers agree to it, will allow the company to collect and store information across all of its services. Not only that, but Google will share information gathered across those services in order to “maintain, protect and improve” the services, but also to target search results and ads for each user. There is no way to opt out of the information-sharing aside from deleting your entire account and saying goodbye to your Gmail, YouTube videos, and Calendar, among other things.

….

Privacy groups such as Common Sense Media are concerned about users’ inability to opt out of the information collection and sharing. “Even if the company believes that tracking users across all platforms improves their services, consumers should still have the option to opt out,” 

–ArsTechnica

This is just common sense, Google are going to collaborate their records to make statistical analysis more efficient. This is for data that Google already collects from their own users, people who choose to use their service. The concern is that users “Can’t opt-out” which is not true. Users have to option of not using Google services. I should point out that most of Google’s services are provided for free, and no one is “required” to use them.

Google is a private company offering services to the public; they don’t owe the world. If you don’t like the terms of service them your opt-out is to simply not opt-in by putting all your information into Google. I’m a Google user myself but there is some information I choose not to put into Google, while other information I am happy for them to have.

You have a way to opt-out of Google, by not using their (free) services if you don’t like the terms that come as part of the deal. You will only become Google’s bitch if you let it happen. The same applies to Facebook and Twitter. Take control of your data and realise that Google don’t owe you anything.

Justice for Wakefield

The modern anti-vaccination movement began when a paper written by Dr Andrew Wakefield was published in the Lancet medical journal in 1998. The now infamous paper suggested a link between the Measles Mumps and Rubella vaccine and the development of Autism in children.

However over the following years researchers were unable to reproduce Wakefield’s results to confirm this hypothesis. However despite this Wakefield paper caused panic amongst parents leading many of them to abandon vaccination all together, and so the modern Anti-vaccination movement was born.

Wakefield’s paper was later retracted from the journal after extensive research by the scientific community concluded that it was ‘bogus‘; for lack of a better word.

A prominent British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a 1998 research paper that set off a sharp decline in vaccinations in Britainafter the paper’s lead author suggested that vaccines could causeautism.
The retraction by The Lancet is part of a reassessment that has lasted for years of the scientific methods and financial conflicts of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who contended that his research showed that the combinedmeasles, mumps and rubella vaccine may be unsafe.
–The New York Times
Unfortunately by this time allot of the damage has already been done and we now have Die Hard Anti-vaccine fanatics the Australian Vaccination Network who continue to cite Wakefield’s discredited paper to scare parents into not vaccinating their children. 
Dr Wakefield was struck of the UK medical register for his misconduct.
A U.K. medical regulator revoked the license of the doctor who first suggested a link between vaccines and autism and spurred a long-running, heated debate over the safety of vaccines.
Ending a nearly three-year hearing, Britain’s General Medical Council found Andrew Wakefield guilty of “serious professional misconduct” in the way he carried out his research in the late 1990s. The council struck his name from the U.K.’s medical register.
…..
A 2004 statistical review of existing epidemiological studies by the Institute of Medicine, a respected nonprofit organization in the U.S., concluded that there was no causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Some autism activist groups, however, continue to advocate against vaccinations for children, despite the lack of scientific evidence for such a link. –The Wall Street Journal
and the trouble for No-longer-a-doctor Andrew Wakefield continues thanks to journalist Brian Deer who has further exposed Wakefield as a fraud.
THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.
Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.
…..
However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal. –Brian Deer
However the Die Hard Anti-vaccine fanatics are still backing Wakefield even after his research has been shown to be a fraud. Meryl Dorey certainly still supports him and she’s as fanatical anti-vaccine as you can get.
So I support calls for justice when Wakefield is concerned. That of course means a long prison sentence for this fraud who gave birth to the modern anti-vaccination movement.

Punished for paying; why piracy is the rational choice.

Some of my DVDs

I like movies and TV shows, especially if it’s comedy. Even more so if it’s British comedy. As a result I have four draws like this (picture right) full of DVDs. However despite the fact that I buy DVDs I am a strong advocate of digital piracy and strongly support the views of the Pirate Party of Australia especially the decriminalisation of non-commercial copyright infringement. But I’m happy to pay for quality content even if paying is technically optional.

So on a recent trip to the UK I brought some DVDs an amongst the DVDs I purchased was Series 1, 2 and 3 of The Inbetweeners a show I would never have known about had I not previously downloaded and watched it from The Pirate Bay.

Content piracy lead me to discovering the show and eventually purchasing it; presumably this should be a good thing…. Right?

Well not quite. It wasn’t long after arriving back in Australia that I decided to play a disc from the set.

This bullshit doesn’t happen on pirated content.

I know should have seen it coming, the disk is designed not to play in Australia I can still watch it on my PC, however I can do that with the pirated version anyway. In fact since the store purchased copy can’t be run from my DVD played this means that the pirated copy is actually more versatile than the copy I paid for. I thought paying for content was the right thing to do yet consumers get punished for doing just that.

This isn’t the first time I’ve run into bullshit on DVDs. There is a myriad of other bullshit that you need to put up with from DVDs, Clips and presentations that you can’t skip, menus that are slow to load and/or confusing, Scenes from you movie you’re about to watch, anti-piracy propaganda and commercials and region coding.

With a pirate copy you don’t have to put up with any of those problems. Just open the file once it’s finished downloading. In fact allot of DVD players today allow you to plug a USB drive into them and play the video file direct from the drive. No formatting to DVD required. So I have to ask….. What’s the point in paying for content when you are subjected to this sort of bullshit? It makes far more sense to just download the movies and tv shows. The pirated product is not only cheaper but works better too.

The Australian Vaccination Network is being brought to it's knees.

There was a time when Mery Dorey of the deceptively named “Australian Vaccination Network” would be called upon as a medical expert on vaccination. When the media used to treat her as a credible source for information on vaccines. Before the Health Care Complaints Commission issued it’s public warning against her.

Since then things have been going downhill rapidly for Dorey and her organisation, very rapidly. Only a few months later the Australian Vaccination Network had it’s charitable status revoked preventing Dorey from engaging in fundraising activities.

The loss of charity status appears to be taking its toll. ‘Reasonable Hank’ from Stop the AVN has pointed out the difficulty Dorey is having delivering her magazine; to the point where she is attempting to redefine the meaning of the word subscription in a desperate attempt to justify failure to fill her orders. Of course this doesn’t stop Dorey from selling the subscriptions even if there is no magazine to ship.

Meryl Dorey sent out a newsletter on Monday confirming what many of us have already suspected and hoped for; the Australian Vaccination Network is indeed being brought to it’s knees by the skeptical community, health authorities, media and medical professionals.

It is necessary, once again, to ask you to read about another ignorant and vicious allegation by Stop the AVN (SAVN) and the Australian Skeptics. Without any cause whatsoever, both myself and the AVN National Committee are being accused of fraud because our magazine, Living Wisdom, is late.

You would know – and I have been quite open about this – that Living Wisdom magazine is very delayed in its publication. And there is good reason for this. Here are just some of the jobs that are necessary, day-to-day for the AVN to continue operating:

  • answering all phone calls;
  • entering all orders;
  • keeping the accounting programme up to date and reconciling all accounts;
  • sending out all orders;
  • writing the blog;
  • maintaining the Facebook and Twitter sites;
  • producing this e-newsletter;
  • moderating and contributing to the email discussion group;
  • organising regular seminars (arranging venues, accommodation, transport, slides, advertising, etc.);
  • preparing webinars; and
  • assisting an ever-increasing number of people who are in legal strife because of their vaccination decisions (more about this a bit later on)

Previously, we had 5 people in our office to perform these jobs – a graphic designer, a bookkeeper/office manager, her assistant, an advertising salesperson plus me. Now, there is just one person to keep it all under control – me. When it comes to the day-to-day work of the AVN, there is nobody else besides me to do the job (though our committee does an incredible amount to support me and other AVN members, the tranny of distance means they cannot be working here on the spot). -Meryl Dorey

So while Meryl Dorey insists that SAVN are not scoring any victories the truth is that the Australian Vaccination Network is battered and broken. Dorey has lost her hold on the media, lost all her staff and is struggling to keep the organisation together. All thanks to a dedicated group of individuals called Stop the AVN who are dedicated to holding Meryl Dorey and the Australian Vaccination Network accountable for the dangerous misinformation that they spread. As for the slow but certain demise of the Australian Vaccination Network, I’ll drink this scotch to celebrate.

Stephanie Messenger makes me sick.

One of the downsides of following issues of science denialism is that you often have to encounter the very worst of our society. There are allot of unpleasant characters out there who take advantage of people either for some quick cash or to back an ideology.

Stephanie Messenger is one such individual. She has written a book titled Melanie’s Marvellous Measles where she glorifies childhood disease. To make matters worse the book is intended for children, to tell them that disease is a good thing.

This book takes children aged 4 – 10 years on a journey of discovering about the ineffectiveness of vaccinations, while teaching them to embrace childhood disease, heal if they get a disease, and build their immune systems naturally. –Book Description

Meanwhile the World Health Organisation has this to say about Measles:

Measles is a highly contagious, serious disease caused by a virus. In 1980, before widespread vaccination, measles caused an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year.

It remains one of the leading causes of death among young children globally, despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine. An estimated 164 000 people died from measles in 2008 – mostly children under the age of five. –World Health Organisation

Yet, people like Stephanie Messenger openly advocate Measles for children. Messenger is not a doctor, knows nothing of medicine and yet she tells children that disease is good for them. Contrary to the overwhelming consensus of the medical community.

Stephanie Messenger is an inhumane child disease advocate. It is sickening that people like her exist, but unfortunately they do and those of us who see these people with their true colours have a moral obligation to shine the spotlight on them.