In fact I have been around on the internet for quite some time now. My first modem was a 1200/2400 baud thing that is larger then this laptop! I still have it somewhere (well it's stored at my parents house) and I will have to get pictures sometime.

Anyway, I received this email just now, slightly edited as I mention below:

From: Google Promotions [winners@google.co.uk]
Reply To: Google Promotions [mrg_benfield@msn.com]
Subject: GOOGLE GIVE-AWAY WINNING NOTIFICATION!!! GOOGLE GIVE-AWAY WINNING NOTIFICATION!!!

This E-mail is to inform you that your e-mail emerged as a winner of £850,000.00 GBP (Eight Hundred And Fifty Thousand British Pounds) in our online Give-away draws. Over £20,000,000.00 (Twenty Million British pounds) is to be given out for this Draws. No purchases of tickets were required. Participants for the draws were randomly selected from a world wide range of web searchers who use the Google search engine (Googler) and other Google ancillary services. Google is now the biggest search engine worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine, Google is running an e-mail beta test.
Your email address was linked with our Computer Generated Profile Numbers(CGPN) and attached to the following details: Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):[REMOVED], Ticket number: [REMOVED], Serial numbers:[REMOVED], Lucky numbers: [REMOVED], was picked among our lucky winners to receive £500, 000.00 British pounds. Winners were selected randomly through a computer ballot system from worldwide users of the Google search engine.
YOUR WINNING DETAILS ARE AS FOLLOW:
Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):[REMOVED]
Ticket number: [REMOVED]
Lucky numbers: [REMOVED]
Serial numbers: [REMOVED]
To claim your give-away prize, send the following. Your full names................. , sex...............................,Location............................Alternate e-mail address..................Your winning details.................
To your processing agent (Mr Grahams Benfield) who have been assigned to handle your winning file and payment processing.

Your Processing Agent contact:
Mr. Mr Grahams Benfield,
Email: mr.g.benfield@gmail.com

Sincerely, 
Mrs Lisa James.

For the benefit of anyone who Googled this page, this is fake.

We can see this fairly easily from several things.

1. Seriously, why would google just give away money to you without actually making a huge deal about it. They would have ads everywhere saying 'in September, win a million bucks just by Googling' or whatever. I haven't heard anything about it, so they didn't.
2. The 'from' email address is Google.co.uk. This ties in with the prize being in GBP, but 'from' email addresses are way too easy to fake so we will ignore this.
3. The 'reply to' email address is an MSN account! Google would have an @google.com or @google.co.uk account (see 2 above) and would never use a competitor's email account!
4. The email at the bottom is a gmail account, again a free email account and not a real Google account. This is different from the earlier email address.
5. Grammar. Mr. Mr Grahams Benfield. Mr Mr? Grahams? Many other things are wrong also so this looks like it's not a proper company communication.

There are more reasons I'm sure, I could dig through the headers.  But basically it's a scam, they will try to get all your details (bank details also) from you and then probably even say that taxes have to be paid, so can you send them the money. Don't fall for this.

Yes, my regular readers are unlikely to, but I figured people will Google for this and I'd make it sure.

Just installed Piwik an Open Source Web stats program.  Going to keep Google Analytics for a little bit longer to compare them, but it's all looking good for now :)

Was trying to edit something and borked the themes up... so please bear with me whilst I fix it back the way it was!

** Update **

Actually partly it was my fault and partly my hosting company had some issues.  They had a borked /tmp directory which was causing me issues as well.  At least it seems coincidental that I didn't change a new theme I uploaded but the menus on the left didn't appear, but the moment the tmp dir was fixed the menus came back!

** /Update **

Stop freaking out.  Keep washing your hands.  Don't sneeze on people.  Normal flu kills 36K people in the US a year (according to CDC stats).  Only a SINGLE person has died in the US so far from 'swine flu', and they were a 2 year old visiting from Mexico.  Stop worrying!

Anyway here are the jokes, curtosy of my mother.

I called the Swine Flu hotline today but I couldn't get through ... all I got was crackling.
 
How do you know if you have Swine Flu? You keep getting these rashers!
 
Doctor, Doctor. I think I have Swine Flu! Don't worry, just rub in this oinkment.
 
Oinkment won't work for Mexican Swine Flu. You need Juantibiotics!
 
Doctor, Doctor. I've just eaten a bacon sandwich, am I going to die? Depends if the bacon was cured or not.
 
Doctor, Doctor. My daughter woke up this morning in pigtails. Should I be worried?
 
A woman runs out of petrol and phones her husband "I've run out of petrol but I daren't go to fill up because of this Swine Flu". The husband says "you daft ayputh, it's in Mexico, not Texaco!"
 
I won a holiday to Mexico, but I can't go and I'm pig sick about it.
 
Feeling bored on the bus/train/underground? Take out your mobile phone and pretend to have a conversation with an imaginary caller all about your recent holiday in Mexico. Hang up. Then sneeze...
 
News Flash .... this just in. The world's religious leaders have issued a joint declaration that the Swine Flu pandemic is the start of the a-pork-alypse!
 
This little piggy went to market
This little piggy stayed at home
This little piggy had roast beef
This little piggy had none
And this little piggy went "cough, sneeze" and the whole world's media went mad over the imminent destruction of the human race, and every journalist found ut that they didn't have to do too much work if they just did "Find 'bird', replace with 'swine'" on all their saved articles from a year ago, er, all the way home.
 
The World Health Organisation has confirmed that a Swine Flu pandemic is now imminent, raising fears that millions of people obviously have no idea what a pandemic is.
 
Swine Flu is caused by exposure to Gammon Rays.
 
Apparently over 6 billion emails have been sent out in the last week about Swine Flu. Duh! Didn't you know spam comes from pigs.
 
A lion, a bear and a pig are in the pub, showing off.
 The lion claims, "I'm the mightiest creature on the planet, I roar and the plains shake."
 The bear claims, "I'm the mightiest creature on the planet, I roar and the forests shake."
 The pig replied, "Nah, I'm the mightiest creature on the planet, I cough and the whole world wets itself..."
 
Watch out for the following:
• Look out for any unusual blemishes or rashers.
• Unusual behaviour:  doing things you would normally find a complete boar.
• Bad temper:  things start to very easily rind you up.
• Overheating:  Feeling that you are absolutely bacon hot.
• Chills;  Feeling like you need to hog the duvet or curl up in front of a crackling fire.
• Wanting a fight:  Shouting out things like “Gammon have a go if you think you’re hard enough…”
If any of these symptoms show, then immediately call a hambulance, and go to the hogspital for treatment. Smokers please note it is a non smoking facility, so you won’t be able to have a snout.
 Of course all of this could be a false alarm, in which case you will return home shamefaced with your curly tail between your legs, but if the symptoms return, try going to your local pharmacy for some oinkment.
 
So it appears Swine Flu has replaced the fears about bird flu. I guess bird flu just never took off...
 
FIFA has banned Mexican Waves to prevent the spread of infection.
 
This Swine Flu is bad, I must have had it for about a Weeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!
 
Apparently, the BBC reports that the symptoms of Swine Flu are intense sweating, incoherent speech, pungent body odour and fatigue. I always knew there as something odd about Gordon Brown...
 
Anyone else awaiting the first Policeman to be diagnosed with Swine Flu?
 
You've got to hand it to the Mexicans. Even Osama Bin Laden didn't scare this many Americans.
 
Mad Cow Disease: Named after my wife. Swine Flu: Named after her mother.
 
Swine Flu is like Susan Boyle. It hasn't really done much, but anyone with an internet connection has heard of it.
 
Apparently my mate's got Swine Flu, I think he's just telling porkies, though.
 
Funny how 90 people get the Swine Flu and everyone wears face masks, but millions get Aids and no-one wears condoms.
 
Half price on return flights to Mexico, Its not like you're coming back is it?
 
The pigs are giving people the 'flu. As if arresting you on jumped up charges isn't bad enough...
 
I just heard on the news that, "Swine flu could potentially be a threat to every single person in England". Well it’s a good thing I’m married then isn’t it.
 
Apparently the first symptom of Swine Flu is that you get the trotts.
 
All of this makes me feel like America will view the term "Pigging Out" very differently from now on.
 
El Paso Fah.....Fahhhhh.........Faaaajita!
 
Swine flu has been reported in Israel. Oh the irony!
 
Looks like I'm going to have to cancel my salsa lessons.
 
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I have Swine Flu
And now so do you
 

(This one from Edy the Mighty)

What's the past tense of pigs fly? swine flu!

... but I'm going to have to comment on the latest piece by Bwyan.  No I'm not going to spell his name right so google can find it.  But the 'comic book' guy.  You know who I mean.

He did a talk at the LinuxFest North West entitled 'Linux Sucks".  Just to try to enrage people to turning up by using that title.  He basically says there are some issues with Linux and here is how to fix (some of) them.

I watched it (it's on his website if you want to look) and have some thoughts on what he said.  I tried to make notes on everything he said, although I skipped the Q&A at the end.  Onwards!

• Projector Issues.  First up, the projector doesn't work right and he needs help from someone else.  He goes on about how he tested it but then says "hey it was working at home".  That is NOT testing it.  Even if you bring your own projector (which I doubt - someone in the audience said it was giving issues to everyone) you STILL test when you set up at the new place.  You try to get in the room 15 minutes early or so and set up in readyness.  Maybe that's just me, but if he codes the same way I don't want any of his stuff because he'll just tell you it works on his home machine!
• OO Issues.  He asks if anyone has had an issue and fixed it with Open Office.  Only two people say they have, so he says everyone else must therefor think Linux and OO suck.  That is a non-sequitor.  I haven't fixed anything in OO, but then again I so rarely use it.  When I do it's just to open a Microsoft Office doc my mother has sent me.  So I don't have any issues with it so I don't NEED to fix it.  I have no itch, so I don't scratch it.  He did not ask how many people in the room even use OO, and of that how many have a problem with it and of those ask how many fixed a problem.  So you can't use the statistics for anything.  I think this is specious reasoning.
• Kernal Issues.  Kernel updates bork NVidia drivers.  Yes we know.  They won't release the source, just a binary that has to have some weird compile for each new kernel version.  Some woman in the crowd complained about every month when a new kernel comes out it messes her up at work for a couple of days.  Why the hell are you downloading and installing software without testing it at work then?  Get a test environment set up and test the damn software, just like everyone should do for Microsoft.  It's a business, and things do break sometimes.  You have the one piece of hardware this update doesn't work on, or similar, and it breaks your stuff.  Test it first!  Yes I would love not having the NVidia issues.  But this is also NVidia's problem and not purely a linux issue.
• XOrg Issues.  He calls it old and clunky.  Then admits they know it is and are fixing it.  Why is this an issue then?  Because they haven't fixed it yet?
• Kernel and Xorg update issues.  Then don't update!  Of course you won't have any security fixes either, but you don't have to update the second an update happens.  Why do people always bitch about the new stuff breaking things.  Then don't update and don't get the new stuff and keep something that works.  Windows users haven't all updated to vista just because it's out, and many have paid to downgrade just to keep the old one that works.  Then keep the old one.  It doesn't cost either way in linux.  If you are going to always update then yes there will be issues.  Whenever you get the latest and greatest there will be.  Give it some time for the bugs to be ironed out and then upgrade.
• Hardware issues.  Can't drop support of hardware apparently.  Actually I'm not aware of anything that has been dropped.  I know my NVidia driver is old and NVidia themselves have stopped support of it so the linux drivers are just repackages of older ones basically, but I've never heard of something that was dropped and suddenly didn't work for people.  Windows does do this though all the time.  Mrs Xoke has a scanner that she has never used.  She had a machine with Win 2000 or something on it that got spyware infected.  She ended up getting a new computer (long story there) with XP and now the scanner doesn't have XP drivers.  I tried it out under Linux thinking I could get it working easily however the power has gone dead on it.  Either the power supply or a wire somewhere.  I've not heard of anyone complaing how a scanner worked in Ubuntu 8.10 but was dropped in 9.04.  Yes sometimes things get broken (see above) but they get fixed again.  It was never broken on purpose because they dropped support.
• Package Issues.  Yes there are too many types of packages out there.  Yes it is a hassle for developers making each one.  I would love to have a single type of package management out there, but of course I would want it to be deb files.  Try and get everyone to agree on what type of package though and I don't think you will.
• Audio Issues.  He goes on about how we a good audio editor.  He doesn't mention Ardour here (although he does a lot later on in the Q&A).  But in the Linux way of if you have an itch then scratch it why on earth didn't he make an audio editor or improve an existing one instead of making a comic book reader!  One word though - Bounties.  See after this all for my final thoughts for more info here.
• Video Issues.  Yes we need a good video editor.  He doesn't give any solutions.  I do.  Bounties! (See below again).
• "The current open source development model has failed to deliver these advanced and neccersary tools".  I believe that is a direct quote from him.  He follows this up with "This is just simply true".  Well glad you explained that one.  Yes there are some gaps.  Considering how much has been done shows the open source development model does work.  It could be improved, as everything could.  That is what the bounties is for (See below).
• What you can do on Linux is less then mid-90s Windows and Macs. Err... do I even have to argue against that one?  Mid 90s, so Windows 95?  I can plug a USB device in and it gets detected which Windows 95 didn't do (that was Win 98 SE I believe).
• "We need to fund these apps".  Yes I agree.  That is what the bounties are for.  It doesn't have to be commercial software!
• "We need photoshop".  Why?  You say that there are all these people that will only run photoshop, but they are going to jump onto the linux bandwagon if there was a linux version?  Rubbish.  Yes there must be some Linux geeks out there that also use photoshop, but I don't believe that all these companies that are running Windows and Photoshop are just itching to move over to linux but can't because of photoshop.  If they are that ingrained that they have to use photoshop I imagine they will only use windows either becaue they don't want to learn / try something else.  Also given that you are blowing a grand or whatever the current cost for the top of the line photoshop is, the extra cost of a windows license isn't that much more!  Yes I would like to see photoshop on linux, just because it gives more credibility to Linux as the big Adobe company is doing stuff there.  But I don't believe we will gain widespread adoption overnight just because photoshop gets ported!
• Funding issues.  Various things mentioned here, none of which I disagree with (yes they are funding methods - can't argue with that).  But I want to add the bounties on there.  And please stop saying "Developers need to eat".  So does everyone.  Bounties is one way of offering this and a very good one I believe.

Now a lot of these issues can be fixed by bounties.  I have mentioned bounties before.  If you don't know, go read up on them.  But they will fix a lot of these issues.  The others I have tried to redress myself.  The upshot is, I understand what Bwyan is trying to do, but I completely disagree.  I think he is very self-centered here, thinking he is the only person that knows how to fix these problems.  Get over yourself and accept other people have cool ideas.  Yes, say that you don't like this or that, or this could be improved.  Admit if you aren't sure how to do something.  I would respect you for that.  Coming across like you are the only person that knows how to fix it makes me think you're just an arrogant prick just out for the publicity.  It reminds me of David Icke all over again (just google if you don'y know).

He posted the idea on Linux.com's Idea forge.

I had another one of those ideas.  y'know... the one's that keep getting me into trouble?

Anyway, I was listening to TLLTS today...Episode 290...
the one with that dentist who is creating the OpenMolar project and I was thinking that here is this large group of professionals who are now trained by the proprietary software companies to pay money through the nose on a regular basis. They're used to it...they don't mind paying if the software is actually worth it's salt. But this sort of niche software is often not worth it's salt. Often they're locked into proprietary systems and their client data is held ransom.

Why don't people like that have bounties?

Why isn't there an organization to coordinate software bounties for niche markets like that?

The organization would have to be an impartial third party to hold the funds until the bounty is met, or until a preset amount of time expires and it reverts to the party who posted the bounty. And the organization would also have to handle disputes over whether the terms of the bounty are met or not, and if so, eventual transferral of the funds.

If this system got big enough, the organization could support itself from the interest of the bounty money sitting in the bank.

It would act as intermediary between the niche markets and the developers, making it so that there is a monetary impetus to fulfill these niche needs.

Of course this system wouldn't be worth a damn unless it was widely used, but it could be a sustainable system if it got widespread usage.

If this was done by an already respected organization like the Linux Foundation, it would get widespread pretty quick because of the great reputation of the Linux Foundation. Of course all bounties set up would stipulate that the source code was open and would therefore benefit everyone by greatly increasing the free software libraries of the world. Bounties could be set for anything that the bounty poster desired, be it bugfixes or completely new software. And whether or not it was done would depend on how attractive the bounty is.

It would need to be set up so that people could add to existing bounties. There doesn't need to be five thousand different bounties for the same thing. If two ideas are similar, they could be grouped, or someone could just add money to someone else's pre-existing bounty. For instance... "Say, I too would benefit from a new orthopedic X-Ray database system... I'll just put another $500 on that bounty!" or "Say, if someone were to fill that bounty it would nearly fill my needs, but if they were to add this one extra feature as a plugin, then it'd actually be perfect for my needs, so I'll throw $100 on that bounty with this feature stipulation!"

From the developer point of view... "Gee, this software project has $5000 in bounties from different posters... if I tackle the main one, I'll get about $3500 of it, and then I can make some of the rest of that money working on plugins... so long as nobody beats me to it!" or "Oh crap, someone already beat me to the main course, but I think I can make some money fleshing out the requested plugins"

Developers wishing to work on projects would sign on to the project to let the bounty poster know it was being worked on and ask for more information about what the software is supposed to accomplish.

This idea can be fleshed out a lot more in detail, but I think there is enough here for people to start talking about it. Canonical did bounties for a while, and they were a neat idea, but they weren't known about widely enough, and there was only one entity posting the bounties. In the case of the dentist on TLLTS, he paid thousands of dollars yearly for software that did not fulfill his needs. And he's one dentist. Most towns have at least one, usually more than one dentist. That is millions of dollars in just one niche market. Think about it.

Update

CyberCod forgot to mention there should be a minimum bid, just to stop people making stupid requests for a couple of cents.  Say 25 bucks for an enhancement, a hundred for a new system or whatever.

/Update

Anyway I think it's a great idea so go vote it up if you like it too!

I thought this was so awesome I had to mention it.  Basically someone made a Bento Box (Japanese lunches of rice and sushi or whatever in decorative shapes) of Half Life Headcrabs.  With a crowbar and half-life logo on the side!

I'm not going to steal the pics and put them here, although I did look for an email address for her to ask but didn't find one.  Anyway to there and look and see how awesome they are.

I'm wondering what she could do next... trying to think what other games you could do something similar.  Things like Grand Theft Auto might be a little hard to do (and would just be a car and a gun and could be from almost anywhere).

Can anyone else think of a game bad guy that is obviously just from that game?

If anyone visiting here is running NoScript then you may have noticed I use Google Analytics.  Lots of cool information there (if you let google-analytics.com run the script, anyway).

So here, if anyone is interested, is some of the stats for the last month.  Also it's a way of me linking back to people that sent people my way.

Referrels

73 people came here direct.  68 Googled for me, 8 came from HPR, 8 came from twitter, but only 5 from identi.ca.  4 came from Linux Cranks, 2 came from Google (referral).  No idea why this is different from above.  2 came from images.google.ca.  I have no idea.  2 came from Yahoo, A single solitary person came from deepgeek, another solitary person from facebook and one each from images.google.com and images.google.pl.  Seriously.  What is with the pictures?  Finally one person came from warrenjblog.blogspot.com following an old post I did about gwibber... which is out of date and wrong now.  And so I just updated it.

Searches

The top search is obviously 'xoke' but there are a few weird ones like "bbc the inside of the italian camorra transcript" which of course was one of the BBCs podcasts, which was stuck in the side in my aggregator.  The really odd one is apparently one person came to my site searching for 'xoke linux' but didn't visit!  Not sure how that works.

Browsers

Almost 80% of people visit with Firefox (79.21) but 15 people visited with IE.  3 people visited with Chrome also.  The rest are mozilla, konqueror and a few others like that.

OSs

Oddly, it's split almost 50/50 Windows and Linux (86 Windows, 82 Linux).  4 Mac users came here (hello) and one person is running Android.  Who is that, I want to know!

Flash

Everyone is a freedom hater.  178 users (100% of total) are running Flash.  18 different versions mind, but all Flash.  Then again are those that aren't going to report to Google Analytics?

Connections

Most are 'unknown'.  Then we have almost everyone on 'broadband' (DSL, Cable, T1) but 7 people are on dialup.  Hope the site isn't too slow for you - I try not to have too many big pictures lying around!

Countries

Top is the US, the UK is second, Norway and Canada are tied.  France beats Australia next, then Poland and then (3 or less visits from) Sweden, Chile, Thailand (I've been there), India, China, Czech Republic, Bangladesh, Germany (Fab?), Brazil, Finland.  New Zealand has only one and there are a ton more like Iran that I wonder how they found themselves here.  Welcome though, pull up a chair :)

Other

How come I got 24 unique visitors on Thursday, 29th January when I didn't post that day (or the day before)?

Almost every person is a 'new' visitor and not returning.

Over two thirds of people visit the site for 10 seconds or less.  Damn, maybe I need naked chicks on the front page to make people stay longer...

A similar amount only visited one page.  Then again of course, if they only visited for no more then 10 seconds!

Well that is about it.  Not sure anyone but me will care that much about this lot, but some interesting stats I thought.  OK I REALLY am going to go to bed now.  Night.

For anyone who doesn't know, UNIX time (which is number of seconds since Jan 1st 1970) hit 1234567890 now.

Yay!

Yeah I'm a geek.

There is a XokeCasts block on the left now that rotates through various podcasts I have done.  Yes I'm playing with Drupal :)