Oh yes ... sometimes I really do wonder whether the real thieves are either at the production's side or at the download end.

Currently in the UK, the film and music industry is pressurising the government to either impose new legislations or force the ISPs to monitor every single packet of data in order to block any pirated material. Yeah of course, and is the film and music industry contributing money or is it not?

One thing is sure ... if the prices do get lowered down, people will go more for the original. Suckers!

The big companies are going philantropic! No sorry, they have just individualised a new opportunity with which to make their pockets fatter. I am speaking about the latest craze: low-cost computers aimed at the undeveloped countries. Countries where crime, illegal operations and corruption are the major sources of income and the cause for the country not moving forward, neither socially nor economically. So, what makes you think that if the equipped with personal computers these countries will suddenly improve?

The lack of knowledge in technology in the targeted areas will lead to an explosion of opportunities for spamming, hacking, phishing, scamming ... You will have people giving up the herding of goats for the herding of bots. It requires less work and also pays more. People will fall more for phishing and scamming as they are yet new to such things, which will make them poorer. Bandwidth, since it is expected to be limited, will be greatly affected if spamming gears up. Again, lack of expertise and experience will make the low-cost computer users vulnerable to hacking.

Also, one must consider the fact that even though these people might get highly skilled in computing skills ... will they find work? Work is already very limited in such areas - is there enough places for the thousands of students which will come through the system every year. Definitely not. Most probabbly they will be taken up by illegal organizations which as a plus offer even better salaries.

It must have taken lots of ships, submarines and other sea infrastructures to install underwater internet wires and plug in the Middle East and India to the WWW; but only one ship to pull off the plug.

75 million people have been affected with very limited internet connectivity if any - where India, Egypt and Dubai had total internet and phone usage slashed as by much as 70%. This loss was brought about by a ship which tried to moor off the Egyptian caost in a rather stormy weather last Wednesday.

This blackout has been detrimental mostly to businesses as online presence is nowadays a must for a firm to be successful. In fact, this situation lead to a high revenue drop whereas even the Government had to intervene in their aid.

One hopes that this event will outline how vulnerable the most important network in the world physically is, and that actions will be taken to prevent such a happening from occuring once more.