Wires Crossed 18 – Dec 7

Please Marry Me! Er, Before I Go To Jail

Please Marry Me! Er, Before I Go To Jail
This could only happen in the 21st century. We’ve heard of social networking sites being used for all manner of things – weirdos trying to pick up girls, breaking up with your girlfriend, rating pictures (see below), and even dissing people who have died as a result of an accident. Now some random guy is trying his luck, and what a turnout it will be if it comes off.  A Washington State man has tweeted that he would like to get married. Nothing unusual in that. Yet, we believe the chances are slim to none in this hopeful endeavour, because there is a catch. It seems our erstwhile Casanova wants to get married to some random bride because he’s about to head to prison for the best part of 3.5 to 5.5 years for theft and possessing stolen property. Although he already has felony and up to 35 misdemeanour convictions, he claims to be a ‘changed’ man. Yeah, right. And what are the chances of somebody taking him up on the offer? Fair to middling we reckon.

Christ Almighty Apple!
An iPhone app is causing a headache for Apple. The House of Mac banned an app called the Manhattan Declaration. No, it’s not a little-known alternative to the United States’ Declaration of Independence; it is an app that affirms a Christian statement that “supports religious liberty, traditional marriage and right to life issues”. It seems some secularists saw it more as a bigoted, homophobic appand demanded it be removed from iTunes. A group calling itself Change.org garnered a massive 7,000 signatures in protest to get it taken off, and Apple acquiesced. Now those who want the app reinstalled, and have gathered just over 24,000 signatures, are hoping to change Apple’s mind yet again. We can see this turning into a merry-go-round.

Sex Rating For Facebook?
Ok, ok, things are starting to take a silly turn on Facebook. If you watch the movie The Social Network, it gives the impression that CEO co-founder Mark Zuckerberg got an inkling of his idea for Facebook from the Hot or Not site, whereby pics of men and women were posted and they were rated by users. It seems a couple of high school students in Texas have taken things that one step further. Students are getting their pics pasted on a Facebook site call Smash and Pass – whether they want them uploaded or not. Apparently if you Smash somebody it means you want to have sex with them, if you pass, well, it means you want to pass. Cyberbullying? We think so, as do a few concerned counsellors, however schools can do nothing because the site is outside the boundary of the schools’ responsibility.

32 Million Reasons to Be Worried
So you hear over and over again, that there are viruses, malware, spyware yadda, yadda, yadda out there that will do your computer harm. But nobody has really put a number on how many threats there actually are. Until now. Security software specialist Kaspersky Lab believes there are over 32 million threats out there in cyberland. Of course, the company does have an interest in keeping us informed – even terrified – of security threats. It came about as the company tries to persuade us that protecting our computer is only as good as those running them – ie, us. And if we don’t download patches or updates then if something goes wrong with the computer, then we only have ourselves to blame. To which we say, “too right!”