1. Cyber bullying /stalking

After spending almost half of my life online, it had become increasingly difficult to stay anonymous. I made the conscious decision to lower the shield and treat the web as I do real life (knowing full well that it would be incredibly easy to dig up dirt on me in 10 years time if one feels inclined to). Unfortunately this made me a target for stalking/bullying.

When it comes to stalking, I’ve occasionally had dodgy eMails, calls on my phone and people turn up at my front door thanks to my online presence. I’m not overly too fussed about it, its moreso annoying and has forced me to screen my calls and use a PO Box. I don’t find the concept “scary”, I know how to look after myself in those situations but I do find it extremely concerning that I know a number of females online who have been stalked to a point where real-life restraining orders have had to be put up.

2. Swearing on blogs

Honestly I don’t know why people even bother complaining about this kind of stuff. It’s the net for gods sakes.. If you don’t like it, then don’t read it. Simple as that. Now I know this sort of attitude also allows things like hate crimes and child porn to exist online - but who should draw the line at what should be considered acceptable in an online community? Nuff said.

3. Qtrax

I say this has been brilliant marketing on behalf of Qtrax to begin with (I wondered if this was used to manipulate stocks). Firstly the whole platform was completely stupid - you’re forced to download a itunes-like player which is based on the songbird platform and watch ads whenever you play the music. Plus the songs allegedly can’t be loaded onto the Apple iPod - which suggests to me that their “DRM free” claim is completely false. In the end the only reason why people cared about it so much is that the blogosphere hailed it as the killer app. I’m happy to pay for my music and I’ll break the DRM if I need to stick the music on a player that isn’t compatible, as long as there is a way.

Anyways, good work on the podcast. Thoroughly enjoyed this episode and wished I was there to contribute.

Raf, ever read the bible? It’s half porn. Incest, harems, butt sex…

A boy and his mother get into a car and the mom starts driving. Suddenly, the child asks the mom:
- Mummy, where are all those fuckers?
- They only come out when daddy’s driving, dear

It still puzzles how the bible-abiding nation like the united states has the biggest porn industry that defies the whole so-called christian values they want to fight for.

Cheers, Guy!

I’ve been thinking more about Duncan’s criticisms of Scoble on the show too and his statement that Scoble only had a high profile because he worked at Microsoft. I thought I should point out that Scoble was neither the first nor the only Microsoft blogger. There were bloggers there before him and during his time at MSFT I think there were at least 6000 employees blogging. You have to ask why HE was the one everybody knew.