His latest piece of artwork follows the underground river that runs from the top of Table Mountain, down Orange Street, through the Company Gardens, past Parliament, down Adderley Street all the way through to the Cape Town Harbour where the rain water is discharged into the harbour.

Doung wants to take artwork outside of “elitist galleries” and bring it out into the open, where the ordinary person on the street can view and appreciate it. He wants to use his artwork in order to educate people about the finer things in life in an attempt to force people to question art, and to come up with their own ideas of what they consider art to be.

What do you think?

I don’t think this would surprise anyone, but PowerBalance—manufacturers of plastic wristbands with hologram stickers on it—have admitted that there’s “no credible scientific evidence that supports [their] claims and therefore [they] engaged in misleading conduct.”

Here’s their statement:

In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility.

We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct in breach of s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

If you feel you have been misled by our promotions, we wish to unreservedly apologise and offer a full refund.

They had to publish that in Australian media. The company has been under attack by consumer associations all over Europe because of their bogus claims and pseudo-scientific mumbojumbo, but this seems to be the first time in which a regulatory authority has made them admit that their claims are a simply a fraud.

The whole PowerBalance and similar magic wristbands swindle reminds me of the old magnetic wristbands my grandma used to wear in the 80s. Those were able to cure anything, from rheumatism to diabetes and, like this modern powertrickery, they made people feel better because the metal vibrated in the same frequency as the planet does, whatever that means.

Of course, these pseudo-scientific amulets have been made and distributed since the beginning of civilization. From magic stones to sanctified pendants made of holy chicken bones, charlatans have been devising miraculous devices to take advantage of often desperate people. These are just fancier versions of those, used by a new generation of gullible people. But that doesn’t mean the governments should stay still and not do anything. Like in Australia, the US and the European Union should smash all these companies and prohibit their misleading commercials.

The story is now a trending article on Twitter!!!

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5723577

Link: http://www.powerbalance.com/australia/ca

Posted via email from Andrew Goldy’s posterous

Posted via email from Andrew Goldy’s posterous

The iPad WiFi+3G is carrier-locked and we cant use the U.S ones here, so we only expect availability toward September.

is absolute BULL and is CLEARLY intended to create confusion around the importation and use of US-purchased iPad 3G’s for use in South Africa.

I raised this point directly with Nicole in an email which pointed out that the quote on their website was incorrect.

On your website you state that: “The iPad WiFi+3G is carrier-locked and we cant use the U.S ones here.”

This is not actually true at all…

The Wi-Fi + 3G model has a micro-SIM slot (not mini-SIM ) located on the side of the device. The 3G model may be used with an AT&T data plan that does not require a contract. Apple has heavily advertised the uses of the no-contract plan on their website. Unlike the iPhone , which is usually sold locked to specific carriers, the 3G iPad is sold unlocked and can be used with any compatible GSM carrier.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad

I don’t know if you’ve included this statement on your website to try encourage local South Africans to purchase a WiFi version now, instead of waiting for later in the year once the iPad is officially launched in SA?

I don’t think that it’s right, and your statement is merely creating confusion regarding the 3G iPad and its use outside of the USA!

As you can see I raised the point of whether their intention was to encourage local South Africans to purchase a WiFi version now (from them at INFLATED RATES) instead of waiting for later in the year once the iPad is officially launched in SA, or instead of importing either the WiFi OR 3G model from the US for use now.

Nicole completely disagreed with me, and shot back a brief email which merely contained a quote from the iLounge website which Nicole used to back up her claim:

One big difference between the iPhone and iPad with Wi-Fi + 3G needs to be underscored at this point: every iPad ships unlocked and unsubsidized, without any requirement that you sign up for a cellular data plan. In other words, if you don’t purchase a cellular subscription for the iPad, it can still be used with any 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi network—just like the iPad with Wi-Fi. But if you want to be able to access the Internet with the iPad outside your home, office, or free Wi-Fi hotspots, you’ll have to pay a monthly service fee to do so, and as of review time, AT&T remains Apple’s only cellular partner in the United States.

It is clear that the above quote is stating that “AT&T remains Apple’s only cellular partner in the United States” and that “if you want to be able to access the Internet with the iPad outside your home, office, or free Wi-Fi hotspots, you’ll have to pay a monthly service fee to do so” and basically because AT&T are the only cellular company in the world that makes the micro SIM cards, you essentially can’t use the iPad on any other cellular network in the world.

The quote even states that “every iPad ships unlocked” … so where’s the confusion?!?!?

(We know that all you have to do is to take a pair of scissors to your Vodacom SIM card and cut it down to size and it will work perfectly in the iPad 3G)

I then wrote Nicole a whole long email explaining the difference, including a whole host of source articles on the subject, and telling her that she was wrong, and should amend her website accordingly.

She ignored me.

Since then my iPad 3G has arrived from the US, and I duly purchased a Vodacom 3G SIM card, RICA it, activated it, loaded on a data bundle, CUT it up – and guess what: IT WORKS PERFECTLY ….

So I sent Nicole another email updating her:

Just thought that I would drop you a follow-up email to confirm that my US purchased 64GB iPad Wifi + 3G is working perfectly and has been for the past week on the Vodacom 3G network… Just had to cut the SIM card a little smaller, but got it right first time around.

I trust that this puts the rumour that the iPad 3G is network locked to bed.

Her reply was brief:

This message has been marked as spam and will not reach the intended recipient.

Clearly there is no getting through to the people at iGear … it makes you wonder what’s going on there!!!!

O well, it’s really another SA company trying to make a quick buck by spreading rumours ….

There are some amazing shots there!!!!

geohot twitter conversation

Serious scooter envy. http://post.ly/Ap5f

@geekrebel kinda leaning towards brand names over Chinese ones. Yamaha one looks good. Any other ideas? Anyone looking to sell a scooter?

I am getting a scooter. We are being ripped off to park in CT! http://post.ly/ABRX

So, I thought that I would help him out with this, envy, by adding to it. I decided to do a little undercover “scooter assessment” by checking out all of the scooters currently parked in my complex, and found the following:

Some slightly old ... and purple!	Pimped out with real Ostrich leather seat!
Another "oldie" parked off in the corner	Closeup of the Ostrich leather seat
old or new? At least it's blue! Looks nice!	Something a little more "modern" for the kids
And finally ... something a little more "off road"	Hope that you enjoyed the pics Rob! Can’t wait to see which you decide to buy!

If you answered YES to all of the above four questions, then you will probably LOVE the following “iPhoneDelivery” application for your iPhone! It is a very simple application that you can install on your iPhone, which will enable delivery reports that you have loved and missed!!

What is iPhoneDelivery?

iPhoneDelivery is an application written by Francois Guilleme for iPhone users around the world who are frustrated that Apple did not build delivery report functionality directly into the Apple iPhone’s operating system (OSX). Why Apple decided that we did not need delivery reports is beyond me, but they didn’t.

Basically once iPhoneDelivery is installed on your iPhone it “hooks” into the CommCenter service that is run by OSX and monitors when you send and when you receive an SMS message.

When you send an SMS message, iPhoneDelivery picks up on the AT+CMGS command used to send the SMS, and it replaces the bit 5 in the second byte of the SMS message to request from your service provider that it should send you a delivery report once the SMS message has been received by the recipient. (Regarding long SMS, since they are basically concateneted SMS, only the last one is patched. Orignaly the first fragment was patched but the delivery report was receive before the message itself. It was pretty disturbing for some.)

It does not change anything else in the SMS, only that one byte of information. Really just changes the “Request delivery report: No” to “Request delivery report: Yes“.

When you receive an SMS message, iPhoneDelivery determines if the SMS is a normal +CMT message (which it leaves), or if the SMS is a +CDS delivery report message. In the second instance iPhoneDelivery rewrites this +CDS message to a +CMT message, and then links the delivery report to a specific SMS message that you recently sent. It then uses sqlite3 to map the phone number to a name in your address book, and then accesses the SMS database.

The flash mode allows you to either get the delivery report as a normal message or get it as a full windows message.

A nice feature of iPhoneDelivery is the “tick mark” that is displayed in the SMS bubble in your conversation window once the SMS has been successfully delivered. When a message is sent iPhoneDelivery stores the reference returned by the SMSC (SM service center) in the sms database. When the report arrives this reference is included in the payload so iPhoneDelivery knows which message it relates to. iPhoneDelivery then updates the SMS text in the database and prepends a nice looking “tick” character to the SMS message which symolises that the message has been delivered to the intended recipient correctly.

Prerequisites:

You need to have jailbroken your iPhone.

Installation Method:

1) ADD the following source to Cydia: http://iphonedelivery.advinux.com/cydia

2) Search Cydia for the “iPhoneDelivery” application, and install it.

3) Open up your “Settings” application, and go down to “Messages”.

4) You then have the option to enable “Delivery report” as well as “Flash DR”.

5) Click on your “home” button, and then test it out by sending a friend a test SMS.

Note: A big Thank You to fxit_man from the mybroadband forum for making this information available to the general iPhone South African users, and creating a little “how to” guide for installing it!

mybroadband forum

iPhoneDelivery Homepage at Google Code

Cyide Source: http://iphonedelivery.advinux.com/cydia

P.S. I have iPhoneDelivery working 100% on my jailbroken iPhone 3GS on the Vodacom network!