Ok, I really need to blog more

I'm trying to figure out exactly why I should be blogging:

a. because I want to have 6million hits on my blog

b. because I really want to add to the great body of knowledge that is called the internet, like we don't have enough already.

I recently tried convincing a few friends of mine to join twitter and start tweeting away but they all suddenly got all middle aged on me and complained about how they had no reason to join another social networking service. Ok, while I don't understand why they're complaining, I think everyone should tweet, poke and blog (no matter how boring your blog topic is). Why? simples......

For the same reason we all dumped horses and bought cars, busted cassette tapes for cd's and stopped hating gay people; civilization, progress, changing times or whatever you want to call it-it's the same thing. The first time a friend walked in on me checking my bank account online 8 years ago, she freaked out exclaiming how dangerous it is and how she could not trust the bank not to somehow steal her money. You should see her now, she hasn't been in a bank in about 2 years and she lives in Nigeria. She does everything on-line even in Nigeria.

There will come a time when getting married online and attending burials via facebook will become normal. Whether we like it or not it will happen. So people; get used to it. Better still, get ahead of the game. Whatever it is you do, communication is vital and social networking can greatly enhance your results.

So to all my social networking shy friends, please stop complaining about an extra avenue to talk to people. Soon it will be more or less the only avenue we have to talk to people.

Are we noiser and lousier than we used to be, because of the likes of twitter and facebook

I recently removed a friend off my list of facebook friends simply because she had become a little too noisy and lousy for me. Hey!! Maybe it was a little extreme but.... I simply could not take it any longer. This is someone I've known since we were kids. I've always known she was very vocal but it appears that facebook has put a sonorus charm on her "noiseness" (for those of you who are not Harry Potter fans, sonorus is a magic spell that helps to amplify your voice greatly).

Is this good or bad?

For some circumstances, I guess it is very good if you are a public figure or a company. It will be very important to be seen and heard by your adoring fans or hateful enemies (whichever one you collect). But for an individual who loves to drop comments on a daily repertoire of his/her daily movements, it can simply be excruciatingly annoying. I don't want to know when he buys you flowers. I don't want to know how many times he called you last night. And I sure as hell don't care if he's your Rock and is by your side. Ok, maybe once or twice you can leave a note just to prove that you are being loved by some "he or her" who thinks the world of you but NOT EVERY 2 HOURS!!

The phenomenon of social networking has revolutionized the way we make friends and keep them. Everybody on facebook has a story on how they found some long lost friend from ages ago. I think that's great and the fact that you never have to get out of touch is fantastic. If you love to gloat about how successfull you've become, nice. It's good to know that your friends are doing well, and if you're not doing so well it can be inspiring.

But you shouldn't turn it into a chance to turn the front page of your fellow facebook friends into your hourly diary. I know we love to talk and despite the fact that we scream about privacy violations by the likes of Google, BT and Phorm, we all still love to display our world to the world.

When BT announced it will be piloting the use of Phorm's new revolutionary behavioural targeting advertising system, WebWise, we all could not stop screaming on how invasive it will be to our privacy. Even worse when it was discovered that BT had already run tests using Phorm's software on a number of their users without informing the users. BT and Phorm (formerly knows has 121 Media) took some very very bad press on the issue. If we are all so concerned about the possibility of our privacy being violated by big media companies then why do we still scream out all we try to cover on the likes of facebook and twitter? Are we all that hypocritical? Or would we simply will like to be able to control the information we put out there rather than have BT and Google do it for us?

I think softwares like Phorm's Webwise and Google's StreetWise are inevitable. We all love to think the internet is largely free; let me help you here.

THE INTERNET IS NOT FREE. You give up so much of your personal information to be able to use its so called free services. To get a simple mail box from google or yahoo, you tell them so much about yourself within 5 minutes of filling a form. An amount of information you will not give out even if you were on a date with the cutest guy or girl you've ever met; well at least not within 5 minutes anyway (depending on how loud you are as a person). What I'm trying to say is the fact that you are online reading this blog means that so much of you is already scattered on the internet. Either knowingly or unknowingly, you are screaming for attention on the internet, so complaining about privacy violation is simply poppycock.

Yes social networking has made us louder and perhaps lousier. Good or bad ? Up to you to decide. Is our privacy being violated by big media companies? I don't think so. We give them our info and we want them to serve us better. They need our info to do it. We just need to ensure that it's used properly and with the right amount of sensitivity.

For my friend who I took off my facebook list of friends, I love you very much but I need you to please stop with the 2 hourly updates; it is driving me up the wall!

Can you really go to jail for downloading music ?

Hi everyone.......

For those of you who keep your ears to the ground or in this case close to your laptops or pc's, you'll have heard of pirate bay, the Swedish file sharing website whose owners recently got themselves a jail sentence and 3million pounds fine for owning and running a website that facilitates the download of illegally shared copyrighted material. 

Ok, the last paragraph had a lot of English, but the point is these guys, unless they have a successful appeal are going to jail for a year. I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense. In my view it's preposterous and an absolute sham. If Warner bros and co want to sue someone they should go look for the millions of users who actually share these files, not at pirate bay and the millions of other companies who have file sharing websites. The site can be used to share both legal and illegal copyrighted material and it's up to the users to know the difference and abide by the letter of the law (whatever that letter's supposed to be).

What is pirate bay anyway……….? To answer that I got this extract from a BBC article on the case

“….it is described is the world's most high profile file-sharing website. It was set up in 2003 by an anti-copyright organisation, Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

The site is essentially a forum for people to post music, movies, computer games and other forms of electronic media so that other people can download them without having to buy their own copies - or to pay the copyright holders for them.

The site itself does not actually contain the copyrighted material, but provides links so that it can be found elsewhere……….”

The battle to stop the illegal sharing of music has been a long one and while my sympathies go to the entertainment companies, I don’t think they’ll ever completely win. As long as the internet is largely free (and it’s staying that way or I’ll have to find a new job) files will be shared whether illegally or otherwise is irrelevant. The point is people will always want to share stuff.

Recently, Virgin Media in associsation with the BPI (the body that represents the UK record industry ) started writing letters to some of its broadband users threatening them with prosecution over the downloads been made by the users. That’s kind of scary, receiving a letter like that will really upset me, even though they’ll probably have a good case. The only way illegal file sharing can be stopped is via prevention not punishment. How many will you punish, pirate bay alone has up to 22 million users, and probably 80% of them have at one time or the other illegally shared files. That’s way too many people to arrest and prosecute. Me thinks Warner bros and co should find some way to prevent copyrighted files been shared, while I have some ideas on how that can be done I won’t reveal them here as I’m not sure I’m ready to give ITunes 79p every time I feel like hearing something nice, so I hope they take forever in finding a solution.  

Anyway, my original question was can you really go to jail for downloading and sharing illegal stuff? My guess is that the Entertainment Company might probably try and arrest a few folks (maybe the ones who have downloaded enough stuff to start their own iTunes) but it won’t work, there are just too many of them. So my answer is No. I don’t see normal folk like you and me going to jail for file sharing or downloading stuff, although I’m pretty certain it won’t last forever. Eventually someone will find a way to stop it or reduce it to a bearable minimum. 

 

 

 

419 scams; why Nigerians?

Hi my name is Tunde, welcome to my blog.....
I've never really blogged before but i figure it's a good way to say stuff your friends never let you say, you know, if they already think you talk too much.

Anyway the main reason for the blog is to talk about the web. I love the web. I think it is man's greatest invention. It has made the world smaller, faster and a bit more effective but also it's made the world a more dangerous place or has it?

Again, welcome to my blog....

Not too long ago, a Caucasian friend of mine at work was always looking at me funny. Eventually I plucked up courage and asked him what his deal was and he explained that his dad had being scammed by a Nigerian via email. One of the very popular "419 scams:. He said he knew I had nothing to do with that particular scam or any other one for that matter but he just couldn't help looking at Nigerians funny.

Now I find that extremely annoying and disturbing. I am Nigerian and I love being Nigerian but I sure do not like being looked at "funny".

We're all familiar with the scam emails people get regularly; usually Nigerians telling about some uncle who happens to be the ex-president whose assets are frozen in some remote part of the world. And they need help in retrieving the funds. Eventually, they'll ask you to part with some of your hard-earned money as this will assist them in retrieving that which belongs to them and their family-obviously not true.

Most of us delete these emails once we get them. Unfortunately, some people do fall for the scam and money is sent across the ocean in the name of assistance and some unfortunate fellow is left with a huge chunk of money gone.

I'm not going to go into how to avoid them, there are tons of sites available that do that already. I'm more interested in this question, " why are the scammers mostly Nigerians?

Nigerians are one of the most hardworking set of people you'll ever meet. They are enterprising, amazingly intelligent and they love having huge rewards for their hard work-well, who doesn't? Now there's nothing wrong with having huge rewards for what you do, quite a lot of people do, they're called entrepreneurs and high risk takers. But if you take that love for high risk and huge rewards, combine it with a slightly less than normal sense of morality and a bad economic situation (where almost nothing works the way they should), you'll end up with a set of people who have a slightly warped sense of how to get what they want.

Before all my Nigerians brothers and sisters shoot me for the last paragraph, let's look at the matter without sentiments. I do not think all Nigerians have a slightly less than normal sense of morality. Personally, I think on the average, the whole world has a slightly less than normal sense of morality.

Most Nigerians are very moral people. It's just that the very few who are not, work so hard at the schemes making it look like the whole of Nigeria is sitting in some cyber cafe sending rogue emails to unsuspecting Europeans. Eventually, I believe the trend will die out. Certainly not the trend of trying to scam people on the internet because as technology evolves so do these schemes, but the trend of Nigerians alone spearheading the scamming. Better still I hope the art completely dies out even though i'm pretty sure it won't.

Nigeria is growing economically and pretty fast at that. In a few years, those guys doing so much hard work scamming, will find that they can do other stuff (legitimately) and have the same odds of achieving huge rewards.

So the next time you get an email from a Nigerian trying to scam you and there's a Nigerian on the table next to you, please spare him the funny looks. It's not the fault of the Nigerian scammer; he is just in the wrong place at the wrong time with opportunities that don't readily yield results. This is his justification for the scam but not all Nigerians agree.

If you have any comments feel free to drop me a line.
Next week i'll be talking about some new subtject on the web, i'll also be reviewing, what i like to call, secret corners of the web where you can find very useful websites, that can do stuff most of us never imagined possible.

have a great week folks.