A teenage boy who has been dubbed “forest boy” by the international media is apparently keen to go back to the bush. The boy, believed to be a 17-year-old English language speaker, handed himself over to German officials in Berlin earlier this month after walking for about two weeks. Officials describe his story as “incredible”.
So they say this kind of thing is “new”, but I think what they really mean is that it’s “new” to public knowledge. It uses thermal imaging technology, something that’s been around for a while already, and it just seems impossible to believe that “scientists” wouldn’t have thought of it before.
Vodacom has popped a cap in the bandwidth of Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) subscribers who exceed a monthly data limit of 100mb – cutting the speeds from 3G to 2G. Vodacom claims that this should only affect around 5% of the user base, as the rest are all using the service “fairly”.
Look, let’s not beat around the bush here. We are a confident nation, and we do like to win. But, we don’t jinx ourselves here in South Africa. Especially when it comes to something like playing a Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, because, well, that’s just silly. Gautrain marketing department, we’ll remember this if anything happens.
We already have the Regulation of Interception of Communication Act (Rica), and as the ad hoc committee from Parliament yesterday adopted the controversial Protection of Information Bill after nearly a year of deliberations, we might now also see the decryption of BlackBerry messages become a reality.
This coming Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the attacks by al-Qaeda on the United States of America, and New York especially. Many iconic images depicting the terror of that day sit steadfast in all of our minds, but what is wrong with a photographer portraying a different kind of moment on that day?
Wendi Deng, better known as Mrs Murdoch, and pie face defender, has revealed in an interview with Vogue magazine that the ex British prime minister, Tony Blair, is the godfather of one of the Murdoch’s daughters. She went as far as to describe Tony as one of her husband’s closest friends.
You’re not all on Twitter. I get that; I know people who don’t drink alcohol, either, and I don’t judge them for that. To all you cool social media cats, though, this is troubling: Twitter is readying a new ad product that will serve up ads to users from company accounts they don’t already follow.
Screenshots from a Chinese military propaganda video uploaded to YouTube last month reveal a cyberwarfare app designed to make attacks look like they’re coming from any IP address. In the video, the Chinese government can be seen sending attacks from an IP address belonging to the University of Alabama.
Our Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, has caught a train to Russia and will meet and attend an energy summit with President Dmitry Medvedev later this week. The summit is expected to focus on energy cooperation and nuclear disarmament, no spice. But, Our Dear Leader is probably also after a business opportunity that will make money out of South Korea.
On Tuesday, 2oceansVibe reported that there were possibly going to be new charges brought against ANCYL president, Julius Malema. Julius and other members of the league managed to infringe upon the ANC’s constitution, and the new charges that were served earlier, relate to his comments that the ANCYL will work against the government of Botswana to effect a regime change.
Anne Hathaway decided she should show off one of her hidden talents to Conan O’Brien on his show: rapping. She was on the show to chat about her latest film, One Day, but of course she will also feature as Catwoman in the next installment of Batman. The “Paparazzi” rap proves that Hathaway is not just a pretty face.
Bad cellphone reception and weak signal strength might be caused by the sun, according to new research. Solar flares emanating from the sun could be to blame for telecommunications customers’ slow internet, signal reception issues and GPS problems, thus taking some the pressure off the network providers, for now.
And for the first time in years I actually have a reason to want a Motorola. Google today agreed to acquire the handset division of Motorola, Motorola Mobility, for $12.5 billion (around 90 billion ZAR). It’s always nice to have money lying around for these little impulse buys.
I was amused when I read that the article we published yesterday about Internet Explorer users having a lower average IQ than users of other browsers was a hoax. Not because I dislike IE users, but because this would have been the push they needed to, explore other browsers. Unfortunately though, sometimes global news agencies do get it wrong.
Piers Morgan might have been speaking nonsense when he made the modest claim that all he knew of phone hacking was that someone once told him that it was possible. The embattled CNN host, who has spent a fair amount of time defending his knowledge on hacking lately, appears to have forgotten about a 2009 interview.
Speaking in New York yesterday, the former French finance minister and now new IMF head, Christine Lagarde, warned that despite the positive response in the financial markets to bailouts, fresh turmoil could easily boil over if debt crises aren’t properly managed now. She also really wants the Republicans and Democrats in Washington to stop squabbling so much.
Where are you going to be at 18h00 this evening? I know what I’m going to be doing – and let’s be honest about this – you know what you should be doing too, right? Something awesome might happen. The Old Spice Guy has accepted Fabio’s challenge and they will have some sort of bathroom face-off, live, on YouTube.
The younger Murdoch’s credibility was tested last week, after he told a parliamentary committee that he was not aware of evidence that eavesdropping at the News of the World went beyond a jailed rogue reporter. At least three former top executives, including a former editor, have pointed fingers back at James. What happens next is critical to his future.
With this whole News International Rupert Murdoch Phone Hacking Scandal (NIRMPHS) taking over our lives, there seems to be a large misunderstanding in terms of what exactly ‘phone hacking’ is. I will begin by saying that they do not ‘intercept’ calls and listen to live conversations. No, Sir. It’s a lot easier than that. As […]
Earlier this morning, 2oceansVibe reported in morning spice headlines that James Murdoch was accused of misleading British parliament about his knowledge of phone hacking at the News of the World. Two former key players at the paper issued a statement contradicting one of Murdoch’s key claims. Now Cameron wants answers. Real ones.
The pressure finally got to the fiery red-headed Rebekah Brooks. In the last few minutes news agency Reuters has officially announced that News International CEO Rebekah Brooks has resigned and will be replaced by Tom Mockridge. This comes after a scathing attack in an apparent four-page letter from Elisabeth, and the second biggest NI shareholder declaring “she has to go.”
The real Cell C CEO, Lars Reichelt, will be leaving the company with immediate effect according to the company’s board. Reichelt joined Cell C two-and-a-half years ago and has since commuted extensively between South Africa and Switzerland, where his family lives. According to a statement, his resignation is for personal reasons.
Hugh Grant has joined the fray against the News Corp phone hacking calamity and was on hand to deliver his personal perspective of things outside the British House of Commons yesterday. He told the BBC that Margaret Thatcher was an undignified sycophant and that every prime minister since then has basically tickled Murdoch’s belly for him.
Yesterday, police in Australia’s New South Wales state were handed more authority to remove burqas and other face coverings to identify potential criminal suspects. The move follows the recent case of a Muslim woman who was acquitted after a judge ruled her Islamic veil made a positive identification of her impossible.
A fair portion of the smartphone market in this country belongs to BlackBerry, because unlike the rest of the world, we still pay rather exorbitant data fees to the carrier firms that run the market. And free messaging is like, so cool. Not internationally though, where BlackBerry maker, RIM, is in a serious make-or-break space.
A female mayor from Davao City in the Philippines has punched a court sheriff, in front of numerous TV cameras, because the sheriff insisted on demolishing 200 shacks despite her request for a two-hour delay. She’s since been told by her husband to take leave for five days while the Department of Interior and Local Government investigates.
Come on, you all know what we’re referring to in that headline. It’s just a little bribe and you’re done. In there. RICA sorted. It’s actually hardly surprising, but it deflates the high we all experienced with the relatively hassle-free event that was reported in a lot of the mainstream media.
A strange number has appeared on the screen of my phone, twice a day, every day this week. I left it – as I do most phone calls – because I was/am usually doing something at the time. And even if I’m doing nothing, that does qualify as doing something these days. My voicemail message […]
This week we have seen two interesting reasons why the information bill, in its current form, needed amending. We learned of South African sniper weapons in Libya, and we have now learned of the many millions Gauteng tax payers will likely fork out for the lack of passengers using the Gautrain.