Has it occured to anyone the Matrix would never work! I started to wonder, was the Matrix built on an open source or Microsoft platform? Because, of course, if it’s open source, once the original programmer moves on, noone’ll be able to figure out how it works; and if it’s Microsoft, they’d never keep up with the patches.

Well someone has to pay – and so a middle manager gets the bullet.

“TELSTRA’S recent email disaster has claimed its first victim, with BigPond chief Justin Milne having his operational responsibilities stripped from January 1, barely a year after being poached from internet rival OzEmail.”

Microsoft is now offering rewards to catch virus authors.

They’ve announced the creation of the Anti-Virus Reward Program, initially funded with $5 million to “help law enforcement agencies identify and bring to justice those who illegally release damaging worms, viruses and other types of malicious code on the Internet. Microsoft will provide the monetary rewards for information resulting in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for launching malicious viruses and worms on the Internet. Residents of any country are eligible for the reward, according to the laws of that country, because Internet viruses affect the Internet community worldwide.”

The Australian Capital Territory is wearing its I Hate Bill Gates T-Shirts in parliament now. They are just about to adopt a bill which says that public bodies should, as far as practicable, consider the use of open source software when procuring computer software. Which means not Microsoft basically – because they’ve already handed over $15 million to the Billmeister this year, and think they could spend the money more wisely. Can’t wait for all those beaurocratic funsters to sit at their desks one day to find their Windows desktops replaced with some other GUI. Let’s see how long it takes them to change their wallpaper, and learn how to print a document all over again. And more interestingly, the bill for technical support throughout any transition period from Windows to open source. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and I suspect, you can’t teach old public servants new operating systems.

Well we Australians are a love-lacking mob. “The country’s internet dating websites have experienced a 93 per cent increase in use in the last year, according to internet monitoring service Hitwise. ” Web site rsvp.com.au reckons they’ve hit 320,000 members. That’s a whole lot of people using online for a single purpose – an interesting market segment now I come to think of it. And this is just one of the dating services, there are several others.

Be interesting to know just how many Australians all up and signed onto these site. The technology is really pretty simple – content management on a medium scale. And the sites all work pretty much the same way (as far as I can tell, having not actually had the need to employ their services). It’s an age old formula, boy meets girl. The online sites just replicate that other most honourable tradition, the blind date.

Makes you think there must be a killer app around the corner somewhere, which could exploit this pool of registrants, in the nicest commerical way.

Not content with pursuing teenagers in court, the Australian music industry is now suing the employee of an ISP, who was unluckily the assigned staffer for an MP3 download web site, hosted by his employer.

Chris Takoushis was the sales person who handled the ISP’s client. He’s one of several people involved with the ISP, including two of the company’s directors, now named in court action taken by six record labels over the site mp3s4free.net.

The site only linked to music content, and did not host the songs. The Music Piracy Investigation Force reckons 140 million songs were downloaded as a result of the site’s links in a 12 month period.

The MPIF says: “employees of ISPs who were aware of illegal activities being carried out at work would be targeted in future if this case was successful, but would be granted “amnesty” if they informed the music industry. “

So now employees of ISPs are going to be held responsible for what the owners of hosted web site do? How can this just stop at music? If the principle is established the sky’s the limit in terms of taking legal action against ISP functionaries for all manner of copyright and legal breaches.

Bit like suing the bloke who runs the printing press at the local newspaper because of a libelous article!

The US House of Representatives has given final congressional approval to a bipartisan bill to fight spam, clearing the way for US President George W. Bush to sign the measure into law.

“The “Can-Spam Act of 2003” which sets penalties for the most deceptive kinds of unsolicited marketing email, was approved in the House by unanimous consent late Monday, after the Senate approved the measure on November 25 by a vote of 392-5. “

In the land of the free, a couple of university students are mounting a legal case suggesting pop up ads are free speech. They’ve been using the Windows Messenger system messagew system (different to the Instant Messenger program) to send ads promoting, ironically, software to block pop up ads.

Only just caught up with this from November:

“European Union digital privacy rules came into force Friday requiring companies to get consent before sending e-mail, tracking personal data on Web sites or pinpointing callers’ locations via satellite-linked mobile telephones. ” Full Article

But they leave it up to each individual country to work out enforcement. Interesting it includes rules that require companies to get permission from web site visitors before using cookies to collect information. Which is clearly reflective of the European penchant for privacy, but in practicality might not be easy – most web servers use cookies as soon as the visitor hits the site, for things like site statistics.

Having to ask every person who lands on your site if it’s ok to set cookies would be tedious. And if they say ‘no’, you can’t then do what would be standard practice to remember a preference – set a cookie! So they’ll be asked everytime they come to your site – a never ending circle.

The Join Me group got a big write up in today’s paper. Send in a passport photo and you too can join. Great story – and a positive outcome, with their Good Friday campaign, encouraging people to ‘do good’ each Friday.

Join Me was established by Danny Wallace, who partnered Dave Gorman in one of my more favourite frivolous comedic enterprises – travelling the world to track down other people named Dave Gorman, and introduced me to to the term Googlewhack. You haven’t heard of a Googlewhack, goodness:

“A googlewhack is what happens when two words are entered in to Google and it comes back with one and only one hit.”

Try http://www.googlewhack.com/ for all the info.