So I am a South African and I find myself in Manila in the Far East, so anything I write below is based on my experience of Internet in South Africa and comparing it to an Internet service provider in the Philippines called “Sun Cellular”.

Let me get right to the point. Under no circumstances unless you are desperate and have no choice use them as an Internet service provider.

Some tech info. I have 97% signal. I have nothing else running, the computer I am using is well setup and clean.

Here are my reasons:

1) The advertise speeds of up to 2000kbs. This is a marketing scam. What they mean is for about an hour a day you will get 200Kbs, then the rest of the time your connection is strangled at a constant (and I mean it hardly waivers unless it gets worse) 20Kbs. You might as well go dial-up.

2) Their service and web support is pretty much non-existent. They clearly got a bunch of kids together with crayons to build their website. They say if it looks cheap it probably is… in this case Sun Cellular both look and are cheap. Don’t expect to have a modern day support system, just a call desk full of people with no technical ability.

3) Don’t expect to play any games like World of Warcraft or DOTA. It seems the trained monkeys who work at Sun Cellular don’t know how to prioritize legitimate traffic. Let me put it this way, I pay more for my World of Warcraft subscription than I do for my Internet… so I am forking out a lot of money for this. Its legal LOW BANDWIDTH legitimate traffic. Playing World of Warcraft requires a constant stable stream of data (it’s a very tiny insignificant amount)… but Sun Cellular techies are unable to identify legitimate traffic from p2p traffic.

If you play WOW, expect your internet connection to drop around 50 times a night.

4) Your internet connect gets shaped, mangled and perverted in many ways. There is no routable IP address if you want to run services, there is no real quality of service.

5) Don’t expect to browse websites like YouTube, listen to streaming audio, or most things you would use an Internet connection for. Forget about it. Get another provider if you actually want to use the Internet for more than just browsing Facebook at slow speeds.

6) Don’t expect to be able to run VoIP services on Sun Cellular. A VoIP connection uses more bandwidth than my game of WoW… so you can imagine how terrible this important service runs on their network.

In my opinion there are only three types of Sun Cellular clients. Those that don’t know any better so continue to use them. Those that are desperate and have no other choice… and prostitutes. I say prostitutes because the only reason you would continue to use them as an Internet service provider is because you like being f##ked.

To the management at Sun Cellular. WAKE THE HECK UP! Even Africa provides better quality Internet than you do! Hire people with real experience and know how, and don’t over subscribe your network!

To everyone else. My suggestion is use a DSL provider like PLDT:
http://www.myworldmydsl.com/

Currently I am paying 799 pesos for “unlimited” (what they mean to say is “strangled and throttled to dial up speeds) Internet. When you get the bill at the end of the month there is also however an extra 200 peso (what I call) “mystery charge. So in all and all you are paying 1099 peso for a terrible connection.

Rather get PLDT Mydsl for 999 pesos (at a constant 512kbs).

If you are wondering where I got the time to write all of this, it’s pretty simple. Sun Cellular’s service is so terrible; I am unable to do anything else.

A couple of months ago I decided to start playing the massive multi-player online game, Travian. Travian is a browser based game that lets you choose one of three races (Romans, Teutons or the Gauls), and then you have to create and build up a village (and its resources) while creating alliances with other gamers in your area to try create a competitive team to make it to end game.

The game, while simple when you start, gets extremely more complex and political as the months go on, and by looking at previous game play, games tend to last 12 to 15 months. I have being informed that after 10 months no new entrants are allowed in the game, and the final 6 months is a race to conquer a computer controlled race and build a Lvl 100 World Wonder.

When I first started playing Travian I was skeptical. How could a browser based game be as fun and as entertaining as the current list of games I play (Battlefield 2, COD4, World of Warcraft), but a couple of months into the game and I am completely sold. I really want to see if I can take my village to end game. However, to do that, I am going to need to make sure the alliance I am associated with 'keeps with the program', and that all enemy alliances and villages in my area are cleaned out and conquered.

There are currently over 20 000 players in the game of Travian that I am competing in. When I started writing this post, the point was not to give a review of the game (as I have just done), but rather to give a list of very useful links (as I am about to do) I have found to enable you to be better equipped for your Travian experience.

List of useful Travian links:

- Travian Website - http://www.travian.com - This is where you register and login to play the game.

- Official Travian 'manual' - http://help.travian.com - A mostly useful manual on the game and its units, resources and infrastructure.

- Travian map tool - http://travianmap.nl/index.php?ln=en# - A great tool to work out where you are in the Travian world, and who is around you.

- Travellog - http://travilog.org.ua/en - A tool to let you post battle and scouting reports to your friends and alliances members.

- Travian toolbox - http://www.traviantoolbox.com/index.php?lang=en - This tool does all types of really good calculations for you. Useful for working out battle coordination.

- Travian analyzer - http://www.travian.ws - The Travian world analyzer is a great tool for when you are doing research on a village or an alliance you have to interact with, or if you just want to have a look at whats going on in the world of Travian.

- Farm finder - http://traviantool2.ww7.be/frame_T.php?lang=com&titre=inactive - This tool lets you find inactive players so you can "farm" (thats when you raid their resources) them.

- Cropper finder - http://asite.110mb.com/cropfinder.php - This is a great tool for finding croppers (resources areas that you can take over that are very valuable) close to you.

Playing guides:

Here are a couple of guides to give you the best possible start in your game of Travian.

- Gauls. The Gauls are the best defensive race in the game. http://forum.travian.us/showthread.php?t=6302

- Romans. Romans are the economic powerhouses of the game. http://ionutbatman.trei.ro/

- Teutons. They are the most aggressive race. I could not find a decent enough guide that I would like to show you.. so if anyone is able to find one, please let me know so I can post it here.

That should be enough information to start you on a successful road to conquest. Let me know if you think there should be any other links added here.

For all of those on the South African http://www.bidorbuy.co.za website be very careful. Due to bad coding (as reported by Bradbowlllama on MyADSL ) it is possible for users to obtain your personal email address by simply going through the code.

To give an example:

- Find a user that is selling something you wish to bid on
- Click on the "Community Watch" link
- View the source on the "Report suspicious behaviour" page

Your result should look something like this:

INPUT class="dfont" TYPE=TEXT VALUE="communitywatch@bidorbuy.co.za" NAME="from1" SIZE=55 MAXLENGTH=100 disabled
INPUT TYPE="hidden" VALUE="youraddy@address.com" NAME="from"
INPUT TYPE="hidden" VALUE="otheruser@adress.com" NAME="cc"
INPUT TYPE="hidden" VALUE="123455" NAME="abcde"

As you will see, the email address of the user is easily accessible to anyone, including the hundreds of Nigerian scammers and identity thieves.

For those of you wanting to open an account at BidOrBuy... be very careful

This vulnerability is valid as of 3/4/2008 (Lets see how long it takes them to fix this very serious issue.

Linux for years has being one of the best quality server operating systems on the market and there are currently more Linux servers on the web than any other operating system. Over the last couple of years, with distributions like Ubuntu pushing into the desktop market, the Linux desktop has come of age.

I was simply amazed at the native driver support that my Ubuntu desktop offered me. My blue tooth dongle, my Skype phone, my USB wireless device, HSDPA modem, my Ipod Nano and flash disks were all picked up automatically by the system and the correct drivers and applications loaded.

I have never seen an operating system with so much support for all my devices right out of the box. The Linux desktop has come of age and is in almost every aspect, superior to its Windows Vista and Windows XP counterparts.

Instead of paying a lot of money for hardware that struggles with the most basic versions of Vista, rather install Ubuntu and get a quicker, faster... superior desktop.

It was not too long ago I was speaking to a friend about how awesome it would be to be able to use an application like Google Earth to look around our solar system with.

It seems the guys at Google are way ahead of me. Have a look at how to use the recent version of Google Earth to explore the universe around you.

Click on this link to download the latest version of Google earth for both Linux and Microsoft: http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html

Online Gaming these days has become massive and it is no longer just for the kids. In fact recent statistics show that the average age of a gamer is 31.

I thought I would show you two video's created with graphics created in game. The first one I am going to show you is a song that was created for the online multiplayer game, Battlefield 2.

The APC song

The next one is a video made in World of Warcraft and is called, "The Internet is for porn"

The Internet if for Pr0n

There are a multitude of others out there and some of them are very funny. As I come across them I will post them here for you to enjoy as well. They are not all music based and some of them have even being turned into a type of series for people to download weekly, such as the famous Halo Red Vs Blue series.

If you have come across any really good ones out there please let us know so I can put them up for people to see.

Security analyst David Kierznowski shocked bloggers yesterday with a survey showing that 49 out of the 50 WordPress blogs he checked seem to be running exploitable versions of the widely used software. He said, 'The main concern here is the lack of security awareness amongst bloggers with a non-technical background, and even those with a technical background.' Mr Kierznowski also uncovered recent vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins that ship by default with the software, adding: 'WordPress users developing plugins must be aware of the security functions that WordPress supports, and ensure that these functions are used in their code.

Information directly from Slashdot, but I believed the information was important enough to share.

Related links:

- http://blogsecurity.net/wordpress/articles/article-230507/
- http://michaeldaw.org/papers/securing_wp_plugins/

I came across this clip in the local MyADSL forums showing a comparrison between the Linux Ubuntu Beryl desktop look vs that of the new Windows Vista Aero desktop.

As you can see by the video clip, Vista Aero stands no chance against the vastly superior Ubuntu's Beryl desktop. Not only can Beryl degrade itself to look as simple as Aero, Beryl clearly shows that it surpasses Aero in just about everything. With fantastic new concepts for your desktop that are out of this world, there is simply no reason why not to switch to Ubuntu.

I have heard the uncountable propagandic reasons on why Piracy is bad for South Africa, how its hurts the economy, yada, yada, yada... You have all heard the well thought up storyline. So I thought I would add something to it, and give you a couple of reasons why piracy is both good for South Africa and good for Microsoft.

Firstly, South Africa. This one is very simple.. every time you pirate some international software or media you help reduce the South African trade deficit. Yup, by not buying an imported product you help improve our trade deficit by that much. So if you want to use this line just remember not to pirate local products, otherwise you nullify the effect. However I will be honest, I doesn't seem like there is such a big demand for eGoli or 7de Laan media on the piracy market, but the world is a big place so I could be very wrong.

Now onto Microsoft. Loosing $1.5 Billion to piracy is bad. Assuming that figure released by Business Software Alliance (BSA) are truthful (its hard to trust these people), well Microsoft should be counting their blessings. That loss would be a lot more significant if all those people who couldn't afford Microsoft products (most of the world) moved to Open Source products.

This got me thinking, Microsoft most likely approves of piracy, so I did a little bit of an investigation and came across this information:

http://www.crime-research.org/articles/2383/

Which basically explains that due to Microsoft's insane pricing models most of the world can not afford their product. However rather than close all the holes in their systems they allow and need their product to be pirated. If they made it that no one could pirate their products they would loose ground to free Open Source alternatives.

Lastly, there is the myth that piracy is hurting the music industry. That's another fallacy. In fact it has been shown through RIAA's own research that people who pirate a song are more likely to go purchase the original music, and boosts music sales!

- http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4831
- http://news.com.com/Study+File+sharing+boosts+music+sales/2100-1023_3-898813.html
- http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5181562.html

Old corporate models of control of failing RIAA. Welcome to the power of social networking.

I think one of the advantages that I have over David Bullard and his column is the fact that I can call Microsoft scum. Unlike Mr Bullard (whom I find very amusing) I have no desire or need to brown nose the larger corporations like many of the journalists here in this country need and want to do. However, this is off topic and I would like to get back on on track with the topic of my post, "Microsoft scum still hard at work".

A couple of months ago, I noticed Novell and Microsoft getting into bed together and this had me very nervous. Microsoft is not a Google, with Google's wonderful motto of, "Do no evil". Microsoft seems to have the motto, "Only do evil".

When the headlines reached Slashdot about Novel and Microsoft I was instantly very worried. For instance... what is Microsoft's motivation for getting involved with Novell? Well today it seems the truth has come out in today's news edition of ZDNet.

Microsoft claims that free and open-source software violates more than 230 of its patents, according to a magazine report published Sunday.

In an interview with Fortune, Microsoft top lawyer Brad Smith alleges that the Linux kernel violates 42 Microsoft patents, while its user interface and other design elements infringe on a further 65. OpenOffice.org is accused of infringing 45, along with 83 more in other free and open-source programs, according to Fortune.

It is not entirely clear how Microsoft might proceed in enforcing these patents, but the company has been encouraging large tech companies that depend on Linux to ink patent deals, starting with its controversial pact with Novell last November. Microsoft has also cited Linux protection playing a role in recent patent swap deals with Samsung and Fuji Xerox. Microsoft has also had discussions, but not reached a deal with, Red Hat, as noted in the Fortune piece.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6183437.html

Now we know why Microsoft got into bed with Novell, so they can all of a sudden have a large amount of "patent infringements". Yet another example of a large corporation trying to stifle innovation through draconian copyright and patent laws.