Hamarana

In October 1997 a young law student at the Australian National University, Anu Singh, made a bizarre plan to murder her boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the the dinner guests, also mostly law students, had previously acquired for Singh, the heroin with which he was murdered, and had taught Singh how to inject, on the assumption she was going to kill herself. They said they did not believe she would, or that she would murder Joe.

Anu Singh and her best friend were charged with murder.

Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. She became very involved, to the point of emotional involvement with the Cinque family.

The book is interesting, and frightening. To think that such a callous act could go virtually unpunished was something I found quite shocking. Additionally, the issues of duty of care and duty to act are examined in the book, and found lacking…

Its worth reading.

I’ve been a fan of Tetris since having the original game on my Amiga 500, 15 years ago. It’s a clear winner in the longevity stakes.

I haven’t ever found a Tetris clone which quite had the same feel to it, although I have played many. since moving to the Mac, I haven’t bothered. Until today, that is. I went to Tetris.com and discovered Tetris Zone. It only gives 10 minutes of gameplay in the trial version but its enough. I bought it right away.

Its available for both Mac and Windows (and is Vista compatible). Theres an online ranking system, your scores are automatically stored.

Min Specs PC:
* Windows 2000/XP/Vista
* 512MB RAM
* 64MB Video Card
* 65MB Disk Space

Min Specs OSX:
* Intel or PPC-based Mac (G3 or better)
* Mac OSX 10.3 or higher
* 256MB RAM
* 32MB Video Card
* 65MB Disk Space

AND, its only $US9.95. Excellent value.

[Edit] The music within the game is a combination of the old Tetris theme and a rockin’ version of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. I suddenly found myself whistling along as I was playing. hrmmm.

When I was a Windows user I often thought I should buy BOClean because it was one of the better antitrojan tools out there. Instead I ended up going with the now defunct TDS3.

Apparently the Comodo company has bought out Privacy Software Corporation, and in keeping with their current policy, BOClean is now completely free.

http://www.comodo.com/news/press_releases/24_04_07.html
Comodo releases BOClean 4.23, formerly by Privacy Software Corporation (PSC)
Jersey City, NJ (April 24 , 2007) – Comodo, a global Certification Authority and leading provider of Identity and Trust Assurance (ITA) Management solutions, announced today the launch of Comodo BOClean 4.23. Building on Comodo’s recent acquisition of the assets of Privacy Software Corporation (PSC), the release coincides with the re-launch of the PSC website under the Comodo brand. Like all of Comodo’s desktop security software, BOClean 4.23 is free of charge to end-users.

I’ve been installing the free Comodo Firewall in friends’ computers of late, it seems to be an extremely effective program, and unlike Zonealarm which gives a free (but crippled) version, this is the real deal.

Check all the available free products at Comodo’s Free Product Area. Please note that BOClean is now known as Comodo Antimalware.

This would be my first stop if I bought a Windows computer again

I don’t know when the photographs were taken, it might have been any time since 9/11.

Whatever the case, between the people who think like this, the likes of George Bush, and the multinational companies who rape and pillage resources on a daily basis, not to mention the incipient environmental tragedy that is global warming, this planet is well and truly stuffed.

I wrote some time ago about an online game in which real dollars could be earned, and bemoaned the fact that as a Mac user, I could not play.

No such restriction exists in Second Life, and in fact there’s also an early alpha download available for Linux users, as well. Again, its an online “real” world, in which you earn Linden Dollars, which can be sent to a real world bank account as offline dollars. You go in with a fake name and an avatar, amd move in this world as you would in the real world. You can interact with other players, buy and sell property, go nightclubbing, buy clothes etc etc… It all costs money but you can join as a free member and take a look around.

I’ve only just joined and depending on how I find it, I MIGHT upgrade. For those who are looking for something different, here’s my link (yes, its a referral link, please don’t remove the referral code, its worth $2000 Linden for everyone who upgrades).

You can play as a free member, or upgrade with a monthly fee which entitles you to a certain bonus payment to begin, and then $300 Linden dollars per month as a stipend.

It should be noted that Linden dollars are NOT equivalent to offline dollars. I’m not sure what the exchange rate is.

Why don’t you join as a free member, and have a play?

I want to say something about Bittorrent. Its a fabulous way of getting the stuff you need, and stuff you are interested in. Its also about sharing. Its not like the traditional way of downloading… someone pays for a space on a website or ftp server and you get to leech off them at no cost. With bittorrent, everyone wears the cost because the uploading and downloading happens all at once, from and to everyone who has the file.

So: I am downloading File A and File B. So are a gazillion other people. But because of how Bittorrent works, as I am downloading from person a, b, and c, so I might also be uploading that which I have downloaded to person d, e, and f. They might have bits I don’t, and so I will also be downloading from them as well, and I may well be uploading to a, b, and c at the same time.

It sounds complex, but its not. Its actually a very efficient way of doing downloads and sharing what you have.

Before you start thinking bad things about me, there are many, many legal torrents out there. Many of the opensource community now distribute via bittorrent as well, and there are sites dedicated to only legal torrents. (When I speak of a torrent, I am simply referring to the 60k or so file which defines the downloadable file and tells us where it can be got from)

You can get legal files from Legal Torrents but you can also get them from Torrentspy. There are many sites out there, I find those two most useful.

So.. what to use? You can’t use a browser, or an ftp client with torrents. You need a specialised client which knows how to read .torrent files.

For Windows:
uTorrent: comes highly recommended. I’ve never used it, being on a Mac, but I understand its the bees knees at the moment.

For Mac:
Transmission: Just updated, this has become a very nice piece of software and for the moment it has replaced my usual favourite

Cross-Platform (for Linux, Windows and OSX)
Azureus: Java based, it was my favourite until Transmission came along again in its updated form. It does everything including washing the breakfast dishes, but you do need to forward your ports.

The only downside with BT is that if you have a net provider which limits your data transfer (as happens in Australia)… if you have one which counts data going both ways, up and down, you’ll chew through your allowance in no time at all. Bigpond is one of those which does that to you. I don’t know of others, though I’m sure all Bigpond resellers would do the same thing.

I don’t think I’m going to upload them.

Need a new theme. On the hunt.