Made by the Friends School, Lisburn.

Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland is seeking proposals for an upcoming major exhibition HACK THE CITY, offering up to 5K for doing stuff like

• Installations
• Mass-participation experiments
• Events
• Performances
• New products/services/start-ups
• Workshops
• Apps
• Visualizations, maps and mashups

Call Opens: Monday 5^th December

Call Closes: Friday 20^th January

Exhibition duration: 22 June 2012 – 07 September 2012

Lots of detail here: http://www.sciencegallery.com/hackthecity

The brilliant Avaaz get mobilised for Aung San Suu Kyi, again.

Nokia: Connecting People to Classical Music

This is the latest trend emerging for cybercriminals, used to describe the practice of sending fake SMS messages “from” banks to unlisted numbers, usually saying that the account has been frozen and to ring a toll free number to unfreeze it. The toll free number then asks to caller to enter their 16 digit bank account number – then disconnects.  This information is then used to rip off the bank accounts.

The act of replying to these smishing messages also serves to confirm the unlisted number as active and puts it onto future text-spam lists.

What to do if you get a Smishing text message?  Don’t respond in any way (and if you’re really dedicated, notify the bank in question.)

HIS chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’

Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘ What then?’

All his happier dreams came true –
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
poets and Wits about him drew;
‘What then.?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’

The work is done,’ grown old he thought,
‘According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought’;
But louder sang that ghost, ‘What then?’

William Butler Yeats

Observation 1

In Ireland the bankruptcy laws do not allow you to discharge your outstanding debts for 12 years.  Therefore you lose your house and family and all income and you are forced to live on the streets in the cold and the rain begging for food for 12 years before you can earn a living wage again.

Observation 2

If you took a 12 guage rifle and created a bullet shaped hole in the head of the previous bank regulator, you would be promptly arrested and sentenced to jail for probably 15 years.  In prison, which by the way has a ceiling so less chance of getting wet from the rain, you get three meals a day, access to all of the tv, internet and higher education you can eat, along with personal bodyguards, or prison officers, as they are called there.  If you behave yourself and don’t try and steal extra butter from your cell mate, you would be released in approximately 12 years with a healthy diet, relaxed and refreshed with all of your future earnings available to spend on shiny things.

“There is Euro 1.3 trillion, give-or-take, in offshore funds sitting down in the  IFSC. tax-free, doing no good whatsoever for the country, apart from sustaining maybe a couple of hundred jobs for fund-managers.  A one-off 5% tax on it would net Eur 65billion if I am not mistaken. Then you stiff the Anglo/ Nationwide bondholders/ gamblers and re-finance a re-structured and purged Bank of Ireland and AIB. Adios IMF and thanks for all of your patronising bordering on racist remarks about the ‘pluck of the Irish’  Pluck you AJ Chopper!”