Could this be the new Progressive party's website -- and if so, is this a message to those members who might not be prepared to toe the Anderton line?

Are you just a little disappointed that Dr Oingo Boingo from Nigeria hasn't contacted YOU with an offer of millions just for allowing him to launder some illicit cash through your bank account? Fear not, Mike has collected plenty of Nigerian Scam emails for you to reply to.

Have you ever wondered whether those "make money from home" offers you receive by way of junk emails are legit? Well The Onion has done a good job of explaining the minor details involved -- but I say go for it!

The Sky "Pub Carpark" Decoder
Boy, I got a good load of email following yesterday's column and my piece about the use of free software to crack Sky TV's UHF service.

Even the NZ Herald has written a story about it in today's edition.

The number of people who have tried (generally with good results) or are actually using this software to watch SkyTV has surprised me. I now wonder how long it will be before we see stolen PCs with copies of the software pre-installed turn up in pub carparks as a cheap, no-subscription required Sky decoder?

Any crim with just a few clues could cobble together such a box for no more than a few hundred dollars -- remembering that it needn't have a monitor or a mouse and can get-by with a tiny hard drive. Such a box configured to auto-start the decryption program and fed with the video-output from a VCR would become pretty much a black-box and be easy to sell.

Readers Say (updated hourly) From Yesterday... VideoCrypt... - Ben VideoCrypt decoding... - Pete hvcplus for decoding sky... - Richard Have Your Say

I can see it now -- thousands of big burly guys huddled around their TVs watching "interesting and educational documentaries" on the Discovery Channel through the illegal PC-based decoder they bought from the boot of an old Holden in the car park of a South Auckland pub on a Saturday night. Oh yeah...

TV News -- Objective? I don't think so
Regular Aardvark readers will recall the huge amount of anger and frustration expressed by users of Sky's digital pay TV service when the broadcaster decided to "upgrade" the firmware in the set-top box.

Almost without exception, people were less than impressed by the way the "upgrade" turned their channel-changing experience into something akin to wading through deep mud in gumboots.

Aardvark covered this subject on several occasions and the NZ Herald also published several pieces on the matter -- but there was not a single mention on TVNZ's One News or TV3's news broadcasts.

Let's be quite clear about this -- here was a problem that affected as many as 300,000 households and produced more reader feedback than any other story ever published on this site -- but neither TVNZ nor TV3/4 would touch it with a bargepole.

Clearly there's a very sensitive relationship between Sky TV (who just happen to carry TV1,2,3 and 4 on their digital satellite service) and the free to air (FTA) broadcasters.

It was no surprise to me therefore, to notice that TV news has also completely ignored the fact that a surprisingly large number of people are using their PCs and some free software to watch SkyTV for free. If that number were just 1,000 people then it's a theft of more than half a million dollars a year -- hardly petty crime.

When TV news is prepared to ignore stories because they might upset a business partner you have to wonder about what other news they're carefully choosing to ignore -- because it might also upset someone they do business with.

If you've ever wondered whether TV news was really objective, I think you now know it's not.

I suggest that you stick to print and the Net for your news -- it may not be perfect but at least it hasn't demonstrated quite the degree of self-interest that our FTA TV broadcasters have.

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