Nick points out things are a bit quiet lately, both on his blog and elsewhere. I was actually thinking the same thing the other day as I looked at how many blog posts I had done this month compared to this time last year.

This was before I did the little flurry of posts today, however I've got several long and in-depth posts which have been on the go for quite a while which I haven't had time to get finished, perhaps I'm suffering from a little bit of the Mondays. These blog posts include......

/insert drum roll

How Venezuela is an example to the world! Yup that sounds interesting, It's about half written and I started it 13 months ago. Stay tuned for at least a couple of years for that at the rate I'm working on it.

An article about the conspiracy mindset, how once you fall into the trap everything becomes evidence of a conspiracy and so on, largely seems to be an American fascination, covering the Moon Hoax nonsense, JFK assassination nonsense etc.

An article explaining that Planet X, Niburu, Vulcan or Nemesis is not about to swing into the inner solar system and destroy the Earth. Although the Nemesis stuff (a brown dwarf companion star to our Sun on an orbit of tens or hundreds of millions of years), is feasible - minus of course its going to kill us argument (if it exists its probably about a light year away at the moment). It was originally put forward by geologists to explain a semi-regular pattern in mass extinction events. What's really interesting is we may of already discovered it, the trouble is we don't know the distance and motions of all the stars, particularly things like brown dwarfs. Perhaps I could get some funding to do research into the probability of this planet existing based upon the existing data we have (the funding can go on a new telescope and help plug the hole in my seemingly increasing money haemorrhaging situation). Heck may be just some funding to do supernova surveys - at least a lot of that can be automated. Yeah as this paragraph implies it is a pretty big topic.

Two articles on a semi related note. One on that I expect we'll find evidence of alien life within 20 years. We've got projects under way using space telescopes, which we should have the results from in 2 to 3 years, I'm confident these projects will show a significant number of stars have terrestrial planets. That will give the Darwin infra-red telescope which hopefully will launch in 5-7 years hundreds, if not thousands of targets to look at. All we need to do is find oxygen which will be a strong indicator that life is present. Oxygen will naturally bind with other atoms forming H2O, CO2 etc. Free oxygen can only exist if it is being constantly replenished, aka by life. There's also places like Europa and Enceladus within our solar system look quite promising, but we could share a common ancestor with them, so in that case it won't really be alien. Finding another Genesis will shake the world.

The other topic was on simulating the human brain, this I think we could of done in 30 years. Amazing research has already been done simulating one hemisphere of a mouse brain, which very well modelled the activity in an actual mouse brain. I think this is important because once we can pull this off, it'll be like dropping an atom bomb on the dualists. The materialist model of the brain, although fitting with every prediction and observation. Still won't convince those who think there needs to be a ghost hiding in the brain somewhere, and that a physical brain alone cannot lead to conciousness despite the obvious evidence that it is. Simulated human brains - with no ghosts, will demolish dualism in everybody but the most ideologically committed.

I'd like to do a rant against pop-psychologist Tanya Byron's stupid conclusions regarding video game ratings too, but if that doesn't get done soon it'll be too late. Maybe tomorrow, time permitting.

I can't say I'm honestly surprised judging on how crappy Apple's record is at patching vulnerabilities over the last few years. Windows Vista has consistently out performed all other major operating systems in this regard and Microsoft have spent a considerable sum on improving their development process in regard to security.

So anyway at the PWN to OWN contest held over the last three days crackers have been competing for a $10,000, and $5,000 prize. Their task was to crack a computer, there were three computers all running different operating systems. One running Mac OS X.5 (Leopard), one running Ubuntu 7.10 and one running Windows Vista SP1.

The first day was limited only to attacks over the network. All three machines survived.

The second day, the participants were allowed to open web pages, or e-mails. Mac OS X was compromised inside of two minutes.

Both Ubuntu and Windows Vista survived the day, and now the crackers can request that the judges allow "popular" 3rd party software onto the machines. As of this moment I believe both machines are still standing.

Both Linux and Windows have their fair share of crappy 3rd software, but I think Linux generally has more privilege escalation exploits, so we'll have to see how it goes.

So anyway, the next time some smug Apple fanboy comes up to you and goes on about security, politely remind them that they are full of it. And also consider reporting Apple to advertising regulators over their utterly misleading and down right false adverts.

I'm slowly getting through my e-mail, anyway I had a question e-mailed to me a few days ago from a chap called Nathan.

Could you please make a list of differences between leninism and marxism i cant find one anywhereand you seem to know alot, it would be greatly appreciated.

This is one of those questions you can ask 10 different socialists and get 10 different answers, unfortunately there is no such thing as the Communist Check-list, where everything is neatly divided up and we can just quickly run down and decide what is what.

I've already written a bit on this topic on the request of one of my readers, but it looks like Nathan is after a more direct answer and so I will try to be brief which I know will simply and overlook many concepts.

Marxism I suppose could be summed up as a broad set of ideas on how capitalism works, on how working people must liberate themselves from capitalism and on how history is driven, namely through class struggle.

Lenin, in my opinion brought forward two key additions.

1) Updates on how capitalism functions, from 1900 onwards, through imperialism, what he called the highest stage of capitalism. Where the imperialist countries maintain their control of, and exploitation of 3rd world countries by owning their means of production, allowing them to buy off a layer of workers in their own countries to attempt to offset revolution. Like so many aspects of Marxism, it is truer today then when it was written.

2) How in police states and under-developed countries like Russia at the time, the final act in a revolution needs to be led by a dedicated group of activists in a relatively small party.

Time and time again throughout history even in developed countries we've seen the working class led to the top of a hill by a social-bourgeois party, only to be led back down once the leaders are either brought off, or chicken out. A dedicated revolutionary party should help take them the extra step.

3) Some would also include Trotsky's work on making revolution in 3rd world countries by the small number of workers leading the peasantry to take power, and then carrying out the reforms that would of taken place in a democratic, developed country themselves, instead of sitting back and waiting for the capitalists to struggle to do them - if ever. Which essentially the Bolshevik Party adopted in the middle of 1917.

A lot of people would chuck all of that under Marxism, after all Marxism is a body of ideas and many people have contributed to it. Marxism-Leninism has I believe been widely misused by Stalinists and Maoists for their own nationalistic agendas, completely opposite to the internationalism of Marx and Lenin.

I also recommend having a look at the FAQ on YfIS.