How to make a living of other people's mistakes! The Faebook scam!

This is so sleazy (and clever) that it must have taken a genius to figure it out!

Here's a brilliant way to make a fairly good income off other people's mistakes - it is the 'faebook' scam. Yup, that is facebook without the C!

This is one weird scam. Someone registered the domain Faebook.com (Facebook without a C) and redirected it, using an iframe, to Amazon - of course, with his/her own Amazon referrals. It’s the good old tactics of using misspelled domain names for profit, but it’s uncommon to see such an obvious misspelling of a site as big as Faebook used like this.

It's not Amazon's doing - it’s hard to believe that they’d try to profit from Facebook's popularity in such a sleazy way. You can see who the domain Faebook.com belongs to with the help of whois:

Domain Name: FAEBOOK.COM
Registrant [1003228]:
Moniker Privacy Services
20 SW 27th Ave.
Suite 201
Pompano Beach
FL
33069
US

Amazon’s own records look different:

Registrant:
Amazon.com, Inc
Legal Dept, P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226
US
Domain Name: AMAZON.COM

What’s weird about this example is this: why on Earth would one use a misspelled Facebook domain name to link to Amazon? Are there really people out there who want to go to Facebook, misspell the name, land at an Amazon looking page and then go: oh, let's buy the new Harry Potter book? I'd say that a generic AdSense farm would work better, but then again, I’m not an expert on scams. Alexa's numbers don’t put the site in the top 100.000, but Compete begs to differ, and I really wonder how much the owner is making out of this. Perhaps I’m in the wrong business (:.

Thanks to Otis for the tip

Technorati tags: facebook scam scam, faebook, clever, passive income

Avusa (formerly Johnic Communications) is making a blunder of epic proportions!

For the first time in South African history a blogger is being prosecuted BY A MEDIA COMPANY for speaking his mind...

There goes freedom of speech! Today at 3pm Avusa (formerly Johnic Communications, the Black Empowerment company that owns many newspapers such as the Sunday Times and the Sowetan) will be having a disciplinary hearing for Llewellyn Kriel. The cause of this hearing is an honest and realistic piece that Kriel wrote about the state of morale at Avusa and its newspapers.

Click here to read the article. I am not suprised by its contents - I know MANY other corporations in South Africa where the feelings and sentiments are pretty much the same as those expressed by Kriel....

Over zealous affirmative action, loss of skills, unequal remuneration, and blatant discrimination are the order of the day in many institutions.

However, what makes this so shocking is that this is a Media company that has gone to court to protect the right to Freedom of Speech for its paper news sites. Yet, when someone speaks the truth about them on the internet they want to shut him down....

I small a rat here... Shame on you Avusa.

I for one will not be buying either the Sunday Times or the Sowetan if this is your approach to freedom of speech.

You can read a detailed report on this matter here.

Technorati tags: Freedom of speech, discrimination, Avusa, Johnic Communications

The negative side of religion... British school teacher jailed in Sudan for making an ignorant mistake...

Us religious folks tend to take our religion pretty seriously (note that I am pointing the finger at myself here!) I have often gently asked someone not to blaspheme, or to exercise a little restraint in their criticism of my faith (Christianity) or another faith (e.g., Islam)... It is all a matter of respect.

However, there are times when we take it all just too seriously! Read this story about a British school teacher in Sudan who has been jailed for her ignorance. In some societies (like that in the UK) religious education is not normative, and so persons are not raised either with an understanding of religious sensitivities, or with the knowledge to avoid upsetting overly sensitive religious individuals or cultures... Perhaps she should have known better. However, the Sudanese government should CERTAINLY know better than to JAIL someone for an issues such as this? Surely they could have found a more progressive and caring way to set this woman right?

The way of submission and peace (which is what Islam means, by the way) has just done the opposite of what it stands for! Just goes to show, one should never allow one's government to claim an exclusive religious allegiance (to any faith), they will simply represent it very poorly!

Here's the story:

Reason's Hit and Run blog reports that a British schoolteacher is will be tried for "blasphemy, inciting hatred, and insulting Islam" because she named a teddy bear Muhammad.

Contrary to reassurances from the Sudanese embassy in London, Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher in Khartoum who did not realize naming a teddy bear Muhammad was verboten, has been charged with blasphemy, inciting hatred, and insulting Islam. The possible penalties include a fine, 40 lashes, and six months in jail. The government promises a "swift and fair trial," saying, "she will be brought in front of a judge, and now she must prove her innocence"—which gives you a sense of how the court system works in Sudan. Gibbons' lawyer says the defense will be straightforward: She had "absolutely no intention to insult religion, and for blasphemy to take place there must be an insult."

Link | Time Online article

Technorati tags:religion, ignorance, Islam

Bizarre! The launch of 'satlav', just SMS to find the nearest toilet!

This is a bizarre, although very practical, news story from London...

The UK's first SMS service for finding the nearest toilet launched in London today. Just text the word "toilet" and SatLav, run by the Westminster City Council, points you the nearest public toilet. Someone should build a recommendation system on top of that and name it George, after the Seinfeld character who knew the location of every good bathroom in Manhattan. From the Associated Press:

The system, which covers 40 public toilets, pinpoints the caller's position by measuring the strength of the phone signal. The texts cost about 50 cents, and most of Westminster's toilets are free.

The council said it hopes the service will stop people from urinating in alleyways, saying some 10,000 gallons of urine ends up in Westminster streets each year.

Link

Technorati tags: satlav, toilet

Pimp my ride African style... AKA Put a HUGE stereo system onto my bicycle [Pic]!

Those of us who live in South Africa will be quite familiar with those wonderfully decorated 'dik wiel' (Afrikaans for 'thick wheels') bicycles that are pimped to the max! You don't see as many as you used to!

But, this picture from the US brought a smile to my face!

Check out the stereo on this guy's bike! Heck he even has a fold out DVD player on there!

Now that's the kind of bike you want to see someone logging over the 'ou Kaapse Weg' in an Argus cycle race!

In today's NYT, a feature (with lots of great photos) about folks who build elaborate stereo soundsystems for their bicycles. It's not a new phenomenon, but it's neat to see it treated with such formal examination. Link, and pix here shot for the Times by Tyler Hicks. (thanks, Mark Hurst)

Technorati tags: Piimp my bicycle, stereo, crazy picture,

Do you remember the excitement of the last day of school? I long for it!

Do you remember how excited you used to get on the last day of the school year.  Today is my daughter's last day of school for 2007 (next year she goes to grade 3).  She is so excited about the holiday, and all of the fun and relaxation, that lies ahead!  I rejoice with her and for her.

It got me thinking...  When last was I that excited about leave or time off?  It seems that the longer one is alive the more the pressure mounts.  I know that I will get some leave in a few weeks time.  However, like all other years I will spend my leave anticipating all that needs to take place at the start of the year.  I shall also probably spend some of my leave working (preaching, writing, with one or two meetings etc.)  Somehow leave doesn't seem quite as carefree as those school days.

However, please don't get me wrong.  I am not complaining about the tasks that lay before me.  There have been times in my life where I have not had any reason to get up, no tasks to look forward to, or plan for.  That didn't feel good either.

For me there must be a good balance of relaxation and purposeful activity.  I suppose in some ways it is not activity (or lack thereof) that creates a child's excitement for the holidays, it is innocence...  

I pray for innocence as I face the tasks of this day - today I shall spend the day in appeal hearings for students who have appealed the findings of their results....  Innocence Lord, please, Innocence!

Technorati tags: school holidays, excitement, innocence, balance

Top 10 WORST tech products rated by C-Net... Can you guess what number 1 is?

I always enjoy looking at these lists to see what the best (and worst) products are...

This is a C-Net list for the ten worst tech products. Can you guess what Number 1 is!? Yup, it's Windows Vista!!! Or should that be Windoze Vi$ta....

Click here to read the whole story.

PS. I hope that you're not running Vista... Although, I don't know many Vista boxes that actually allow their owners to connect to the internet! Ha ha! If you are running, OR HAVE TO RUN, Vista... then all I can say is sorry for you!

Technorati tags: 10 worst tech products, Windows Vista, terrible, sorry for you

Sunday school for atheists. What do you think?

One of the common misconceptions among persons without an active and lived faith community is that religion is ONLY about teaching people values and morals.

Of course morals and values are an important part of most faiths. However, Christianity would certainly say that worship, and a deepened relationship with God and the world that God loves is a central part of the Gospel (values and moral conduct are an aid in doing this effectively).

However, here's an interesting story about people in America who do not believe in God, but wanted something akin to a Christian Sunday school so that their children can learn good values and morals. I think it is a good idea (at least from that perspective, i.e., morals and values), however, I don't think that it replicates or matches what a good Sunday school should be (i.e., helping young people to learn to live with a sense of God's sacred, gracious, and loving presence in all of creation, and learning to honour and worship that God not only through moral acts but through spiritual discipline)....

That's what I think... What are your thoughts?

Sunday School for Atheists

"When you have kids," says Julie Willey, a design engineer, "you start to notice that your co-workers or friends have church groups to help teach their kids values and to be able to lean on." So every week, Willey, who was raised Buddhist and says she has never believed in God, and her husband pack their four kids into their blue minivan and head to the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, Calif., for atheist Sunday school.

An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion, and among 18-to-25-year-olds, the proportion rises to 20%, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies. The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. "It’s important for kids not to look weird," says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it’s O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.

It's all in the details... Did you notice that the guy who teaches the 'humanist pre-teen' class is called Peter Bishop!? Ha ha! Quite and irony.

Technorati tags: atheist, atheist Sunday school, morals and values

Follow up on Mark Driscoll and Rob Bell - the picture becomes clearer, perhaps Mark needs to learn a little graceful restraint?

Yesterday I published the story about Mark Driscoll referring to Rob Bell as a contemporary heretic...

A reader of the blog commented on that post with two very helpful comments (thanks Ted, I have not republished your comment on the front page since I haven't been able to reach you to ask if that's OK), but if anyone would like to read Ted's comment please click on the link above.

In essence Ted's comment pointed out two things:

1. Who the heck is Phil Driscoll (I had mistakenly called Mark Driscoll Phil - thanks for pointing that out)?

2. He encouraged me to check up on Mark Driscoll, who himself seems to be a remarkable individual who is seeking to bring the Gospel of Christ to a new generation in a novel and powerful way.

I looked up a few things on Mark Driscoll. On the whole I am impressed with what I found. However, I did also find that Mark Driscoll seems to have a capacity for overstating opinions - it is not necessarily that what he says is entirely wrong, it certainly is not entirely untrue, however, it is overstated and often insensitive (I shall include an example below).

So, my beef is not with a powerful young preacher who is clearly doing incredible work - rather it is to encourage persons with the influence that he has to make clear and critical comment, yet to do so with restraint and love. It would seem to me that there is a fine line that one can cross in being critical of another without recognizing something in them that is positive, a gift from God, and even a creation in the image of God.

How do I know this? Well, as you will see from MANY posts on this blog I am guilty of doing the same myself.

Like many young men I hold to my convictions with passion, yet sometimes that passion lacks grace...

Here's my comment to Ted (if you get a chance please follow the links and do a bit of reading yourself. I don't want to press people to agree with me, and where I am wrong please set me straight!):

Hi Ted,

Thanks for the correction! Where the heck did I get Phil from? I've fixed it up.

I have had a look at their website (for anyone else who would like to check it out, it is well worth the effort - here is the link)

A brief view of his wikipedia entry shows that he is certainly unique. Although it would seem that this is not the first time that he has caused sensation with a comment?

It would certainly seem to me that he needs to cultivate some restraint and care in his caricatures of persons or groups that differ from his perspective... I quote "article on The Emergent Church, Mark Driscoll was quoted as saying, "There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity." [the emphasis is mine]

This guy sounds like a fairly typical patriarchal, testosterone driven, stereotypical "America is King and we'll fight for that right" kind of guy...

I could be very wrong, so please set me straight if I am. However, he does seem a little brash and unrestrained in his criticism of others...

I recognise this in him, because I am often the same.

Ted, thanks for the comment, and also for helping me to find out a bit more about this incident and Mark Driscoll.

Regards from a COLD (summer?) in South Africa.

What do others think? As I considered this to and fro I thought to myself "how does a Mark Driscoll's personal opinion get such coverage?" When, however, I look at the Mars Hill website it strikes me that they must have a fairly formidable press team (or at least access to the Christian press), so someone must have pushed the story out there.

Perhaps it may have been better for this prominent person to contact his equally prominent and Christian brother and first discuss things before entering into the fray?

I don't know what the answer is, but I do hope that this does not damage either of these Christian people or their effective and necessary ministries to bring the Gospel of Christ to bear on a 'fast changing and broken' world...

Technorati tags: Mars Hill, Rob Bell, Nooma, heresy, Mark Driscoll

Rob Bell - Is it heresy on tour? (SOLD OUT!)

This is such a sad situation. Mark Driscoll has accused Rob Bell (of the Nooma DVD series) of heresy.... Here's the full story:

Heresy on Tour?

Popular pastor/author Rob Bell's controversial message: God loves you.

Since late September blogs have been buzzing about Mark Driscoll's remark at the Convergent Conference labeling Rob Bell a heretic. Bell's broad popularity (due primarily to his books, NOOMA videos, and podcasts) make Driscoll's accusation all the more serious. Out of Ur has stayed out of the fray - until now. Rob Bell was in Raleigh, North Carolina last week as part of a 22 city tour. Leadership correspondent Chad Hall was there to report on the event.

When the babysitter arrived the night before Thanksgiving, she asked of our plans for the evening. Last week it was a concert, and three weeks before that we were headed to dinner and a movie. Tonight, my wife and I were going to.... I stumbled for words to describe Rob Bell's latest tour. I could tell by her eyes that she stopped caring about thirty seconds before I stopped trying to describe the event.

Bell's "the gods aren’t angry" tour packed about two thousand souls into Raleigh's Memorial Auditorium for what wound up being a 90 minute sermon.

Bell is a popular writer, speaker and pastor, and I found it easy to see why he's so popular. As a friend commented after the event, "The dude has some mad communication skills." Wearing an all black outfit (save a bright white belt) that could have placed him as a member of Green Day, Bell presented an insane amount of information in a style that held my attention and quickened my spirit.

In a nutshell, Bell talked about how humans - since the earliest cavewoman and caveman - try to appease the forces that bring or withhold life. These human attempts led to formation of god concepts and religious practices, which grew ever more sacrificial and eventually led people to harm self and sacrifice children in bold attempts to assuage anxiety about the gods' opinions of us. Like some sort of Ken Burns without a camera, Bell incorporated tons of tidbits and insights from history, cultural anthropology, theology, sociology and literature to weave a compelling story of religiosity that’s led to the anxiety-riddled human condition wherein we wonder, "Have I done enough?"

Into this system where humans guessed at what the gods want and then trying to give it, God spoke to Abram. Now the deity did the initiating. And the word from God was for Abram to forsake his father’s household: which Bell equated with forsaking the old system of trying to appease the gods. Rather than trying to bless the gods, Abram's role was to be blessed by God. This was big revelation number one.

According to Bell, big revelation number two came in Leviticus. He said that this strange and seemingly backward third book of the Bible is best understood as a gift from God to help alleviate people’s anxieties. Rather than leave us guessing and grasping for some elusive set of conditions by which God would be pleased, God presented Abram's lineage with an exact recipe for living and sacrificing, thus removing all doubt that God was not angry with them.

Bell said that big revelation number three came in Jesus. The sacrificial system outlined in Leviticus became corrupt and only led to more anxiety than it relieved. So at just the right time, God revealed that he never really needed our sacrifices anyway. Using quite a bit of humor, irony and pure wit, Bell painted a caricature god who is not complete without what people can provide or perform. Using various sayings from Psalms, Micah, Jesus, Paul’s letters and Hebrews, he drew an alternate picture of the divine: a God who is not dependent on what we do, but who freely loves and pours blessing on us.

The problem, according to Bell, is not that God is angry with us, but that we think God is angry with us. Thus, Jesus' purpose wasn’t to change God’s mind about us, but to change our mind about God: to notify us of God’s lack of anger and to free us from the prison of our misconceptions so that we can truly live well. The place of church and religious ritual is to remind us of our standing with God and freedom to live lives of sacrifice and service.

This tour stop still has me thinking. The sense I got from Bell is that the whole problem to be solved is a mental one: people are not aware of the already-true fact that God is not angry with them. I'm wrangling with the notion that what Jesus changed is not God’s opinion of me, but my opinion of God. For some reason, this makes me think of Jesus as a Post-It note from God telling us what has been true rather than making it true. I'm ready to dismiss this as too insignificant, except that Bell convinced me that the alternatives leave us with a small god who needs sacrifice to be appeased.

I'm not ready to canonize Rob Bell, nor am I ready to fire up the Driscollian flame thrower and burn him a heretic. I chalk up my questions and concerns to the fact that no sermon - even a 90-minute one delivered with incredible veracity – can cover everything.

Chad Hall is an executive coach with SAS Institute Inc. in Cary, NC. He's also the co-author of Coaching for Christian Leaders: A Practical Guide and Vice President of The Columbia Partnership.

Link

Personally, I think Rob Bell is one of the most sensible, level headed, and effective teachers of the Gospel in years... He knows the Bible, he reads and uses it, and his message is responsible and well rounded. The fact that he tries to bring in people whom the traditional Church has excluded (people who look different, think different, and act different to mainstream society) is quite refreshing. I seem to remember the scriptures speaking of someone else who was accused of fraternizing with 'sinners' - perhaps Rob Bell represents more of the mind of Christ than many of his detractors!?

Technorati tags: Rob Bell, Nooma, heresy, Mark Driscoll

Facebook won't last - it is already on the way out...

I would be interested to hear how many people share my sentiments about facebook. A few months ago I would check my facebook page daily (sometimes more than once a day). I had a network of friends and family that I would follow. It was manageable.

However, I now only check my facebook account once every few days, sometimes not even every week. The simple reason is that it is a chore to reject all the silly invitations to join groups, attend events (half way across the world), and update applications just to stay in contact with the people I DO want to have contact with.

The reason for all the 'fuzz' and interference in my facebook account is that I accepted too many people that I wasn't sure about, or didn't really know, because I think I am a nice guy. I felt bad not accepting friends who wished to link to me... Now, however, their 'stuff' crowds out what I really wanted it for.

It won't be long and I probably won't use facebook at all - it's just too much hassle. Or, I may just abandon my account and set up a smaller, private, account....

Cory Doctorow predicted that this phenomenon would happen. Moreover, if enough people feel the way that I do then facebook may be heading for a collapse as people leave to find less cluttered ways of relating via the internet.

Here's his article:

My latest Information Week column is "How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook" -- in which I explain why Facebook and all the other social networking services live in a boom-and-bust cycle because they get crufted up with people you don't want to add to your friends list, but have to for social reasons.

You'd think that Facebook would be the perfect tool for handling all this. It's not. For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there's a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I'd cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, "Am I your friend?" yes or no, this instant, please.

It's not just Facebook and it's not just me. Every "social networking service" has had this problem and every user I've spoken to has been frustrated by it. I think that's why these services are so volatile: why we're so willing to flee from Friendster and into MySpace's loving arms; from MySpace to Facebook. It's socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list -- but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system and send out some invites (of course, chances are at least one of those invites will go to someone who'll groan and wonder why we're dumb enough to think that we're pals).

Link

Technorati tags: facebook, facebook sinks, social networking

I'm going to be on TV! 'In the name of God' documentary

Last night I was visited at the seminary (here in Pretoria) by Crispin and his crew from Cut2black and the SABC. They are busy filming a documentary on people and faith communities that made a difference in South Africa during the Apartheid Era. It is called 'In the name of God'.

They came across my Oxford Institute paper while they were doing some research and so asked to set up an interview - it was intimidating!

They came and 'scouted' the best location (which happened to be the College Library - so at least I'll look intelligent on TV), then we spent about two hours filming. Crispin had prepared a whole bunch of questions. He, and the producer from the SABC, asked about the history of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and the history of Methodism that places that strong relationship between social holiness and personal piety. Then we went on to discuss how at different points in the Church's history the Church took social stances that were seen as attempts at Holiness (honouring God, and participating in God's divine will).

In particular they were interested to hear about the ministry of Bishop Paul Verryn (both in Soweto in the 80's and 90's, but also his current ministry among Zimbabwean refugees).

It was intimidating to sit in front of the camera with lights and a whole crew of people (lights, sound, camera operators, administrators) looking on! But, let's hope that the message gets out there and we help to encourage a few more faithful, committed, passionate Jesus followers to match their passion for personal holiness with a passion for social holiness.

I'll let you know when it is going to air.

Technorati tags: In God's Name, television, documentary, Paul Verryn, Social Justice, Gospel