Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Mood:  bright
  Hellboy II is the best message-provoking movie to-date I have seen this year from Hollywood. The script brings back memories of comic action-heroes save the day themes like the BBC "Dr Who" series.In one of the scenes, faced with the disparity and ostracision of the human race due to himself and girlfriend Liz being different, the enemy Prince Nuala reminded Hellboy that "if you can't command, you can only obey". This movie evokes the call of the human element and ostracision of the mutants as we see in XMen III. The only fundamental flaw in the whole movie is why didn't Princess Nuala think of killing herself in the first place to stop her twin brother until the very end.

Ex-garbage collector becomes new premier of NSW
NSW Premier Morris Iemma quit politics and his treasurer Michael Costa was blasted out of cabinet.  This was after his deputy premier and transport minister John Watkins decided to resign not long before.

Mr Nathan Rees, who had been Mr Iemma's water minister and has only been in parliament for 18 months, said he would have a "red-hot go" at tackling the clear service delivery challenges in transport and health.

Mr Rees has had a meteoric rise to the top of politics in the state.

A former garbage collector, he was first elected a member of state parliament in March last year and was immediately appointed to the frontbench as Water Utilities and Emergency Services Minister.

He said he did not believe the public deserved an apology from Labor but acknowledged the previous administration had left NSW in a poor fiscal state.

Wondering what will happen to the promises made by the ex-Premier such as bring in jobs to Sydney Financial institutions and whether the new premier will support these policies going forth ? http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/4993078/rees-replaces-iemma-nsw-premier/

Digeridoo is bad for women
"A book that teaches girls to play the ceremonial instruments should be pulped because there are cultural taboos on women playing the male instrument, they say. Academic and Aboriginal education advocate Dr Mark Rose said it was an "extreme faux pas" on the part of the publishers of the Australian edition of the Daring Book for Girls, set to be published in October. The book is a revised version of the US edition by Andrea J Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz. The local edition replaces almost half the original content with uniquely Australian material such as The Rules of Netball and How to Surf. But the chapter How to Play a Didgeridoo reflected "extreme cultural insensitivity and mammoth ignorance", said Dr Rose, a member of the western Victorian Gundjitamara Nation. The chapter says: "Playing a Didgeridoo appears deceptively simple, until you've got a `didge' on your lips and no sound comes out. But a few easy instructions and you'll be playing like a seasoned pro". Dr Rose, who is the general manager of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association (VAEA), said the inclusion of the chapter showed how "out of sync" the general community was with indigenous issues. He said there were specific cultural protocols around the instrument, including a ban on females touching or playing it. "Each nation has its own cultural protocols around it but it's a male instrument," he said. Dr Rose said indigenous people believed there were consequences for women who played a didgeridoo, including infertility." [Source :http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24283071-2,00.html]

New browsers sucks!

Google is releasing its new internet browser codenamed "Chrome". According to some reviews, there is a clause saying: "11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services./ " That means that Google gets rights to all the postings to your blogs and all your webmail.

The new Firefox 3.01 isn't anywhere better as it frequently crashes and closes your windows even before prompting a message to say if you would like to close them. Join in the complaints at their website.

Security lapse in telephone banking password
Mood:  irritated

This story in the BBC news:

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/7585098.stm 

a few days ago poses serious concerns in banks and financial institutions security procedures. 

The telephone banking password is most of the time conveyed by speech to the bank's client service representative and is susceptible to eavesdropping from anyone nearby especially if it is done in an office environment.

Perhaps banks/ financial institutions should consider keypad codes keying on top of securID numbers that changes every few seconds before allowing grant of access to a person's personal data.

One also need to take heed what are the banking/financial institution procedures are in place if a bank employee who worked as a banking advisor/cconsultant and have had access to client information were to leave the institution.