To the dogs
You know, I was born in South Africa and have been proudly South African all my life, I refused to pack up and leave when things got rough, I wanted SA to remain my home, sure I travelled but came straight back to SA because I missed it, the people, my family and friends.
I put my faith in the new government and decided to give them time to adjust and iron things out.
12 years later however I not only have my doubts, I am beyond disgusted.
There is something seriously seriously wrong with South Africa and we are undoubtedly heading tobecome another banana republic.
The problem is that South African’s have become so complacent with problems that affect every single one of us.
I realized this last night at 8:30 when the electricity died (while I was in the middle of an online poker game) and my father shrugged and said “oh well, off to bed”
and THAT is the exact thing that pisses me off, we accept it because there is little we can do about it and we just accept it as being normal. Soon its going to get worse, Water is next.
Let’s just take a look at the entire picture.
- Starting with the load shedding, yes I blame the government. Stop supplying neighboring countries with power they can’t afford to pay in the 1st place and look after your own. Charity starts at home.
- Crime – Let me not even get started with this, maybe if you stop employing criminals to be policemen and comissioners we may be in with a chance.
- Wasted Money – Why on earth is the government so focussed on changing the names of roads, cities, provinces and towns when the MILLIONS of Rands that are spent on changing these things should be better spent on the infrstructure of South Africa, like, I dunno, maybe another power plant?
Thank God they haven’t realized that the word for our currency, The Rand, is actually an Apartheid Era Afrikaans word, or we’d be spending BILLIONS of Rands so we can have MILLIONS of Pula. - Unemployment – Maybe with tougher border control and harsher deportation laws, we’d have less illegals in the country, making it easier for our people to find jobs. in 1996 it was reported that we had nearly 5 million Illegal immagrants living in South Africa, that was 12 years ago, that number has easily tripled by now. Hell, we have more Nigerians living in Berea than there are living in Lagos.
- Presidential hopeful is a criminal – JZ is without a doubt, guilty of a lot of things, maybe he got away with Rape, but he is corrupt and rotten and is spoiling the rest of the barrel of apples.
- Ignorant Leaders – JZ, the anti Aids shower, need I say more? Manto Babalas Msimang – Beetroot and Onion anti aids diet? These people are ignorant beyond comprehension and yet we have them as leaders? Sure, they may have a bit more savvy than most Black South African’s but then again, in the land of the blind – the one eyed man is king.
This is not a racist remark, it is a “Who is the best person for the job” remark.
Why not put the best people for the job, in the job? I am not saying employ more white people in goverment positions, not at all. But put educated, savvy people of any colour into meaningful positions.
Cyril Ramaposa or Tokyo Sexwale would run this country like a business – if a particlular part of a business is failing, you don’t get rid of the people at the bottom, you start at the top. Without smart _LEADERS_ any organization is in for a world of hurt and by leaders I don’t mean popular people who can pull the wool over the eyes of just enough people to be voted in, but I mean people who can lead by making an example. - Telecommunications – another ignorant”leader” Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has no idea half the time waht she is talking about, we are without a doubt the most expensive country in the world when it comes to telecomms. She fails to act on behalf of the masses and I’ll out and say it, CORRUPTION! Maybe if Icasa and Telkom stopped slipping her a few bucks to shut up and say what they want her to say, we’d have someone on our side.
- Drunk Judges – but he claims he was “drinking tea”
- Reverse Racism – AA policies are nothing but reverse racism, fucks sakes give the best person for the job the job.
- Politics in Sports – hoo boy… why is it that there exists a policy to enforce more players of colour in our cricket and rugby teams but there exists no policy to enfore more non-black players on the SA soccer team? Smells like hypocrite bullshit to me.
- Important Jobs pay the least – this was carried over from the old regime, but if anyone had any insight, they would seek to change this. Let me put it into perspective, Police and Teachers are 2 great examples of important jobs that pay shit. In my most humble opinion, these should be the jobs that pay the most, thereby forcing a strict policy on who can become a teacher or a cop. There’d be less corrupt cops, less criminals becoming cops and less cops likely to be bribed. If its a sought after well paying job, people will queue to become a cop.
Teachers – no disprespect to those people who want to be teachers, i think this is great, however the number of people who started out studying that wanted to become teachers is far less than the number of people who became teachers by accident because they did not get sufficient points at varsity to go onto other fields and they settle for teaching. So essentially what we have are people who maybe scraped through varsity, some with crap marks that are going to be teaching our kids. Now I ask you, would you want a less than qualified person to teach your children ?
Or would you prefer that teachers get paid a fortune, thus making the qualifications to be a teacher rather stringent and again people will queue to go for these positions and thus meaning that our children are taught by the best minds in the country? Those that don’t make it as teachers can go and do some other arb job, like become a rocket scientist or something. - Aids – we have a fucking problem people, excuse the pun.
I could go on and on.
What other countries are there in the world where power cuts are the norm? where there is a task force to look after the police force? where the heads of police are linked to criminal activities? where the minister of health embarasses themselves due to their ignorance? Where the police are corrupt and will let you drive on if you slip them a few bucks? Where Accused rapists and corrupt officals are heads of political parties?
This has stopped being a joke.
Wiki open source search engine?
http://alpha.search.wikia.com/about.html
I signed up and did a few searches, hoping that I was stumbled upon the next best thing to hit the net, however , like many others, I was bitterely dissapointed with the search results. The novelty of the attached mini articles will wear off, although I do like the idea, it’s pretty novel.
I just hope for their sake that their search results improve.
The idea of including a mini article on the serps can definitely be improved on, kind of like Ask, but hopefully not that over done.
Wikipedia founder’s search engine gets bad reviews
But founder Jimmy Wales is as optimistic as ever.
By Farhad ManjooJan. 07, 2008 | “We are aware that the quality of the search results is low,” Search Wikia points out in a bold-faced notice on its site, but the concession isn’t silencing many critics. The new search engine, an ambitious effort spearheaded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, has been so long in the making — and so overhyped — that on seeing the product for the first time today, critics couldn’t contain their scorn.
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington calls it “one of the biggest disappointments I’ve had the displeasure of reviewing.” And at Search Engine Land, Chris Sherman labels Search Wikia “essentially useless as a search engine,” and he wonders if the project can ever succeed, and, indeed, if it’s even necessary.
As Wales conceives it, Search Wikia is not just a new kind of search engine, it’s an entirely new kind of Web project.
Jimmy Wales wants people out on the Internet to help build something as complex and useful as Google, in much the same way that people took his desultory online encyclopedia and transformed it, over the years, into the world’s best reference source. In fact, this project is even more ambitious — here people are working not only to edit text but to edit computer algorithms and policies, the arcane set of systems that companies like Google need an army of developers to run.
Can such a thing ever work? Wales can be a big talker, but mainly he’s self-effacing. When I asked him, a few months ago, about the difficulties of his project, he admitted, “I could fail. I have no idea. But I’m going to have fun trying.”
He also noted that the first version of the search engine wouldn’t be very good at all. He was right. You can try it out here. I ran many searches and, like other testers, found that a great deal returned poor results.
As one example, type in Paul Greengrass. The first result is the Amazon entry for the “Bourne Ultimatum” DVD (which Greengrass directed), followed by several haphazardly ordered links to reviews, sketchy DVD stores, and questionable foreign sites. Search for the same term in Google and you find, first, a link to Greengrass’ filmography at the Internet Movie Database, and next a Wikipedia entry, which tells you Greengrass is a kick-ass movie director. The results page is superb.
Search Wikia’s spotty results are by design. The trouble with the sort of project Wales is building is that, even if it may one day succeed, it’s got to start off sucking.
At its birth, the Google search engine pretty much beat out every competitor — that’s what made it so successful so fast. Search Wikia, like Wikipedia, will improve only if people help it. The site allows you to rate the search engine’s results — you can do so by clicking on the stars that come up next to some links. You can also alter its white list (which tells the site which pages to include in its results), and, more generally, you can help create new policies determining how the whole thing will work.
Wales wants people, now, to start doing that work. In an interview a few minutes ago, he told me, “We have enough features there that people will find useful in their day-to-day work. They’ll find that a reason to stick around and use the product even while the search results are improving in quality.”
In time — a long time, at least two years, Wales says — Search Wikia will return results that are as good as those of the other engines.
But search quality is not his only goal. Wales says we need an open-source, transparent search engine — one that explains why it’s returning the results it is — because search determines how we understand the world. What we get on a Google results page is too consequential to keep the method behind those results hidden.
Really, then, the debate over Search Wikia is more about philosophy than functionality. I mentioned to Wales that he’s got a chicken-and-egg problem — he needs people to use the search engine in order to improve it, but people aren’t going to use a search engine that gives them lousy results.
Sherman suggests that Wales’ push for transparency and community may not be enough of an inducement for people to join the project:
And as searchers, do we really want or need that transparency? Ten years ago I could look under the hood of my car and fiddle with my engine when I wanted to modify something. Today, just about every system in my car is computerized, completely inaccessible to my tinkering. But given the virtually maintenance-free operation of my car I’m perfectly happy with that change and don’t long for the lost days of “engine transparency” at all.
But Wales believes people are yearning for transparency. He says that he has no worries that nobody will want to work on Search Wikia; what he worries about, in fact, is that he’ll get more volunteers than the project can effectively manage.
Wales was right about this for an online encyclopedia. Eventually we’ll know if he’s right about search, too. But not soon.
PageRank Explained
A layman’s guide to Google’s PageRank and why a high PageRank is crucial to the success of a dynamic content website.
The Google PageRank is a system that was deployed by Google to rank web pages by an importance factor, called PageRank. This is a rank that is given to a page and not the entire site. Many sites have a range of different ranks across all their pages.
It is factored on a scale from 0 – 10 where 0 is of least importance and 10 being the highest. Every search engine enthusiast the world over strives to get a site’s pages to its highest possible ranking which is PageRank 10.
A PageRank 10 is the Holy Grail of the search engine world, and less than 50 websites on the internet can brag about having pages being a PageRank 10.
A website can have more than 1 PageRank 10 page but the recognition is given to the entire site.
A page’s PageRank is loosely based on the amount of other websites that point to that page, although the algorithm is a lot more complex than that, bringing into consideration the type of incoming links as well as whether the links can be judged as “authoritativeâ€.
Articles and papers published by science and medical journals the world over are measured in importance based on how many other articles and papers reference them. An article by a well known writer or scientist or mathematician that makes reference to another article often lends a lot more credibility to the referenced article.
PageRank works on the exact same principle, where if a web page that has a Google PageRank points to another webpage, the second page is seeing as being important too because of the important page that is pointing to it.
PageRank cannot be bought. It cannot be traded, sold, bought, deleted, given away or shared. Many believe that one can pay Google to allow a site to have a PR10.
This is NOT possible.
PageRank is the foremost reflection of how important a site is based on the quantity and quality of links pointing to that page.
PageRank may fluctuate and often decrease over time if the resident SEO specialist within a company neglects the site.
Another common misconception is that a higher PageRank dictates that content pages will list higher in serps. This is NOT TRUE and a very common SEO myth.
While PageRank is a tool to determine the importance of a page, the biggest benefit of a high PageRank is that frequency of spider visits to that page to seek new content is relative to the PageRank. I.e. the higher the PageRank of a page, the more frequent Google’s Googlebot will return to the page. Although an undocumented perception is that Googlebot works out its own frequency pattern based on the amount of fresh content it finds with each visit.
In other words, the more fresh content is served on your website, the higher the frequency of the bot visit.
Process
• Googlebot crawls a page and returns the content to the index
• Googlebot returns to the page a few days later (determined by PageRank) to check for more content, if it finds nothing new, it will return a week later.
• If it finds new content on the 3rd visit, it then determines that content is being updated only once every X amount of days. (X = period of inactivity between first Googlebot visit + the amount of days until the next content update)
• If the last visit was 14 days ago and the Googlebot finds new content on its return, it will then return 13 days later to try and determine a fresh content schedule. If new content is found in that time, it will return again in 12 days until it manages to calculate an almost exact rate of frequency that fresh content is served on the page.
• The reverse also applies. The 1st time the Googlebot visits a page, it will return to that page based on the frequency schedule determined by the page’s PageRank.
• If it returns in 6 days and finds fresh content, it will return in 5 days, then 4 then 3 to try and determine how often fresh content is being served. However the Googlebot may not increase its own frequency to exceed the frequency of visits that are determined by the page’s PageRank.
• It takes approximately 2 weeks to get all content served across all Google’s Data centers. (Google have more than 1 server which house the contents of their indexes, these are known as data centers)
What is the significance of having a high PageRank?
The very best reason for having a high PageRank is because a site with a high PageRank will have its content listed on Google much quicker than other sites with lower PR ranking pages.
The following scenario explains the benefit of having high PageRank:
• A new item makes world news, e.g. Terrorists bomb Eifel Tower in Paris.
• Millions of internet users turn to search engines to find the latest news on this event and thus turn to Google and seek out the relevant news.
• As the news is being updated onto news sites, those sites with a higher PageRank get their stories into Google before others.
CNN has a PageRank of 9
FoxNews has a PageRank of 7
• Because CNN has a higher PageRank, their news can be found on Google in less than 6 hours.
• While news published on FoxNews will be found only after 2 or 3 days.
While many people do not really care that a site’s articles aren’t featuring in a search engine, they fail to realize that a site loses the possibility of gaining new visitors and thus have to rely on its loyal members and readers to sustain its self.
Sites that have more unique visitors have the ability to charge more for their advertising real estate inventory.
Which site would draw a lot more new visitors? One that has a low PageRank and whose content is only being indexed by search a month later after the news has already gone cold? Or a site whose content is listed in Google within the hour?
PageRank Schedule
While there is no exact listing of any schedule, the following is an estimated listing of each PageRank and its approximated associated frequency.
PageRank Approximate Frequency
PR0 30 days
PR1 30 Days
PR2 20 Days
PR3 14 Days
PR4 10 Days
PR5 7 Days
PR6 4 Days
PR7 2 Days
PR8 12-24 Hours
PR9 4-6 Hours
PR10 1-2 Hours
Normally new sites that are given a PR of 0 once found by Googlebot are crawled consistently till all content is spidered. Then Googlebot will then return approximately once a month.
However, there are a number of SEO tips and tricks to induce an overlap causing the Googlebot to index a site on a nearly daily basis.
Summary
In short, the Google PageRank is without a doubt a very important factor which will helpany site website become a formidable force.
To raise PageRank will take a lengthy campaign of up to 36 months.
There is no guarantee of getting a high PageRank in a short space of time, many webmasters have struggled for more than 4 years to obtain PageRank 8, however a plan of action can be put together to gain optimal leverage in obtaining a reasonable PageRank in a relatively shorter space of time (12-18 months for PageRank 6 or 7) and I will write a follow up to this which delves deeper into linkbuilding and rasing PR
Resume of George W. Bush
RESUME
GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC
20520
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
LAW ENFORCEMENT
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol.
I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver’s license suspended for 30 days.
My Texas driving record has been “lost” and is not available.
MILITARY
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL.
I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use.
By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam
COLLEGE
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average.
I was a cheerleader.
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE
I ran for U.S. Congress and lost.
I began my career in the oil business in Midland, Texas, in 1975.
I bought an oil company, but couldn’t find any oil in Texas .
The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money.
With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry, including Enron CEO Ken Lay, I was
elected governor of Texas.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS
I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union.
During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.
I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.
I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.
With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father’s appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT
I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.
I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.
I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S.history.
I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.
I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market.
In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.
I’m proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history.
My “poorest millionaire,” Condoleeza Rice, had a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.
I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.
My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. History, Enron.
My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with theU.S. Supreme Court during my election decision. I
have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution.
More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip- offs in history.
I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.
I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in U.S. history.
I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.
I’ve broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.
I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.
I refused to allow inspectors access to U.S. “prisoners of war” detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.
I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election). I set the record for
fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.
I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period.
After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the WorldTrade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the
world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.
I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the
record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.
I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation.
I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S.citizens, and the world community.
I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families-in-wartime.
In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.
I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.
I am supporting development of a nuclear “Tactical Bunker Buster,” a WMD.
I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden [sic] to justice.
RECORDS AND REFERENCES
All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father’s library, sealed and unavailable for public view.
All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.
I am a member of the Republican Party.
PLEASE CONSIDER MY EXPERIENCE WHEN VOTING IN THE 2006 MID-TERM ELECTIONS.
2010 world cup South Africa
NOTE!
Small update to this very old post.
This post gradually grew from being a harmless one that turned into a discussion regardless safety of tourists and other people while attending the world cup South Africa 2010.
Without a doubt, safety is a major concern at any World Cup, South Africa 2010 will be no different, however, South Africa is not just a different country, it is a country currently through massive turmoil and faces problems such as power shortages, corrupt police officials, corrupt presidential hopefuls, naive and ignorant cabinet ministers and other major problems which are slowly and surely turning South Africa into another Banana Republic.
I hate to say it, but I am concerned for people who visit South Africa.
Make no mistake, this is a beautiful country which has lots to offer, but sadly, its rotting from the core out.
Here are some concept images for the stadiums to be built for the world cup in 2010 in SA.
I must say they are groovy.
There is much indecision as to whether South Africa can actually pull it off.
Corrupt Politicians, Lazy Government officials, Inefficient staff in wrong positions everywhere and a host of other potential setbacks.
The Gautrain project is a prime example of the inefficiency of the current system, the project is already behind schedule.
If we do pull this off, I’ll be more than surprised, however only time will tell, there are 4 years and counting.
There are other setbacks already, the Taxi association needs to clean it’s act up so that there are more than adequate public transport systems by the time 2010 rolls around, but the process has been fruitless thus far, still many taxi drivers driving around out there without the proper papers, taxis in disrepair and posing major road hazards are still on the streets, the mere fact that the failure to get the Taxi drivers onto a payroll system controlled by the governing body is also a sure sign of the lack of ability to get certain things done before 2010.
If the WC2010 is taken away from South Africa, I will renounce my citizenship out of pure embarrassment.