All 6 entries tagged Anyone Can Post On The Internet

Slight change of tone.

Follow-up to Evil Extortion Scheme from Anyone Can Post On The Internet

Those of you who are devotees of my blog (you know who you are) may remember that way back in March I wrote about a guy online who'd set up a website called SaveToby on which he planned to kill nad eat his pet rabbit if he didn't raise $50,000 by June 30th. Realising that it's now July I thought I'd check out how Toby was doing. Last time I'd checked, probably about a month ago, he'd raised $25,000 and it didn't look good for Toby

The website now says that Toby was a rabbit he found after an attack by an alley cat, not a beloved pet. The deadline has now been put back to November 6th 2006, and the target to 10,000 copies of his book. Currently sold 3,467

By now it seems pretty obvious that this guy has no intention of eating the rabbit, and the biggest risk to its life is old age.

: 04 Jul 2005 14:16 |  Tags: Anyone Can Post On The Internet |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Interesting article

Writing about web page http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

About the actual point of a school system and the six main lessons you learn, summarised here

1. Stay where you belong.

2. Show up before the bell rings, and stay until it rings again.

3. Surrender your will to a predestined chain of command.

4. Learn only what you are told to learn; curiosity has no place.

5. Your worth is assigned to you by certified officials.

6. You are being watched.

: 28 Jun 2005 00:35 |  Tags: Anyone Can Post On The Internet |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

I hate these people

Writing about web page http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/09/nve09.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/09/ixhome.html

So an EU commissioner links rejection of the EU constitution to risking another Holocaust by clinging to "nationalistic pride". Hmmm. Is it just me, or was the perpetrator of the Holocaust the one who was trying to build a single European state under his own flag?

This woman's (Margot Wallstrom) the "vice-president of the commission for institutional relations" and was speaking in a former "Jewish ghetto" in the Czech Republic. Hmm, inciting fear to try and drag people with you. Isn't that rather reminiscent of the tactics that the EU absolutely hated when Bush tried it on them, but it's perfectly fine for them to use it on their own citizens. And surely someone ought to find a better job for this woman? Isn't the Czech Republic a bad choice for giving this speech? The Czechs are probably slightly more familiar with a tyranny that subjugates nationalism for support of the Union/European Project/Motherland than a Swedish commissioner.

"Her fellow commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the draft constitution for Europe." I'm sorry, but I think these people are actually scum, willing to jump on any bandwagon or use any event to ensure the continuation of their gravy train. After all, they can, and did, veto the auditing of their own expenses. They don't want this thing to end, they get too many perks out of it.

"The commissioners also gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of Nato and the United States." Should people with such a lack of understanding (or who care so little about the truth, either way) of history really be the ones we entrust to make our laws?

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

-George Santayana.

: 09 May 2005 13:13 |  Tags: Anyone Can Post On The Internet |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Supervillians Dream Hideaway

Writing about web page http://www.theworld.ae/

Ok, the latest tourist scheme. 300 islands off the coast of Dubai arranged into the shape of the World, with most of the islands representing a country, or region in the case of larger nations like Russia and the US.
Investors are invited to apply for consideration to own one of these regions and it is supposedly intended to be "a balanced mix of private investment and commercial development"
Visiting and area of the site somewhat ominously titled "Master Plan" allows visitors to download pdf descriptions of each region. Each of these appears to give a diagram which "may be subject to change" and an estimate of the area of land which each region will cover. The UK is 4.0 hectares/9.88 acres apparently. Since the Falkland Islands are going to be 2.88 hectares, The World isn't exactly to scale, but when the entire thing is shown the general idea is visible. There are also "celebrity islands, which appear to go pretty unexplained.

If I'd noticed this a couple of days ago, I'd have written it off as an April Fools joke, but the site itself seems too serious and a little too professional for that.

As far as I can tell the "investors" are free to do whatever they choose with their island, and as the blog Boing Boing says, there's no reason why it couldn't be a perfect hive for a supervillian, complete with "hidden missile silos, or possibly a labroatory for breeding a race of superbeings."

I wonder how much these things cost, I've always fancied owning France, and surely it would appeal to our wonderful Vice-Chancellor for Warwick to own an island.

Update: Watch the video on the Home page of the site

: 05 Apr 2005 14:58 |  Tags: Anyone Can Post On The Internet |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

More Extortion

Follow-up to Evil Extortion Scheme from Anyone Can Post On The Internet

As i said in the above entry, the main problem I could see would be that savettoby would generate imitators.

Well, here's the first one SaveFred Seems a bit less thought through, but the same principle. Now how long before these guys start sending bulk e-mails "Hi, my name is Fred and unless you help I will be eaten"

Let the floodgates open!

Update: 20/5/05 SaveFred is now offline, don't know how long it has been down for. SaveToby is still up, and now up to $28,000

: 31 Mar 2005 16:46 |  Tags: Anyone Can Post On The Internet |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Evil Extortion Scheme

Writing about web page http://www.savetoby.com

Ok, this is just worryingly sick. Some guy in America has concocted a plot to raise money. Put lots of pictures of your cute pet rabbit online, then say that unless people donate enough money or buy enough merchandise ($50,000 worth) by a certain date, then the rabbit will be taken to the butchers and then eaten. Put up a gallery, a shop and a recipe book with lines such as:

"1 Toby cut in serving-sized pieces"

and watch the money come rolling in.

The worrying part is that if he succeeds then soon we can expect to see our inboxes filling up with lots of "Save the cute furry bunny" spam as well as the usual "You have won and iPod" and "Phwooar, look at these jugs" crap that we get anyway.
Even more worrying is the fact that he appears to have raised $20, 000 already.

Ok, it even has a video of the rabbit (Which is currently unavailable). Very, very sick people out there.

Especially the people who gave this guy a book deal!!!

: 28 Mar 2005 19:04 |  Tags: Anyone Can Post On The Internet |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem