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Untitled Document

madibabayguesthouse At It Again

Personal Articles


	Looks like Floris Botha From Madibaguesthouse.co.za is at it again.... Watch This spot as i update it and launch a possible website dedicated at this! Save Our Pets! The Original Article: http://www.thavinci.za.net/mixpix/PE%20Express.jpg The Latest Incident: http://www.thavinci.za.net/mixpix/florris1.jpg Advise On How Too Take Legal Action Against Him: http://www.thavinci.za.net/mixpix/florris2.jpg

	Friday, May 01 @ 18:51:04 SAST

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Untitled Document

e-soul technologies

Personal Articles


	‘Autocrat‘ leaves top Bay college without funds Sbongile Dimbaza HERALD REPORTER PORT Elizabeth College has run out of funds and is operating on overdraft due to the alleged “autocratic” style of its principal, according to a top college official. Ever since Joy Grobler took over as chief executive officer of the college five years ago, she has been embroiled in a bitter battle with governing council and staff members over her management style and alleged misuse of funds. At the centre of the row is the chairman of the council, Port Elizabeth businessman Mkhuseli Jack, who allegedly has a “sour relationship” with Grobler due to his constant questioning of her decisions. He was saved from being sacked earlier this year when Nehawu and Sadtu intervened and dissolved the new council, asking for its reappointment in full in terms of the Further Education and Training Act. Jack said: “I got fired because I had been trying to put things in order all the time and that did not go down well with some people. I made objections about certain funds that were to be spent because I found that the exercise was wasteful expenditure.” Grobler‘s “one-woman-show” management style has allegedly resulted in the loss of nearly R4-million, which was spent on consultancy work and lawyers, according to documents in The Herald‘s possession. She also allegedly transferred R1,9-million of government funds into an attorney‘s account in 2006, reflected as money to be spent on paying suppliers in a letter which she handed to a group of attorneys she hand-picked to manage the account, according to the documents. A top official at the college said the appointment of these attorneys raised suspicion as Grobler had ignored college procedures in the matter. The documents indicate she also conducted all college affairs without consulting the governing council, which claims Grobler often made it clear her decisions were “not to be challenged”. The official said the financial records also showed that the college had no funds. A letter the official wrote to ex-education MEC Mkhangeli Matomela in 2004 calls Grobler “autocratic” – someone who would tell staff members in meetings that “I‘m the boss” and by “virtue of powers vested in me as CEO, I am going to implement this whether you like it or not”. The revelations follow Grobler‘s recommendations to the council on employing IT company E-Soul to develop an ICT system for the easy registration of student records in 2004. The company allegedly worked on the system from 2004 until 2006, at a cost of R2,7-million, but the work was never completed. When the firm was told the contract would be terminated due to non-delivery, it requested all money owed to it be paid in full “for work done”. Grobler allegedly made an out-of-court settlement of R326 000 in separate instalments between September and October of 2006, after the contract was terminated. The source said there had been no logic from the start in Grobler employing the company as there were highly qualified IT practitioners at the college to develop the system. ROFL, That is absolute bull, can personally confirm that! No developers are present in PEC staff at that stage. “The woman is an autocrat. She personally directed the finance office to pay an amount of R28 000 last year to a lawyer for work she described as pro- bono,” she said. “She went on to hire a consultant to assist with the tendering process for a company which was going to do garden and cleaning services.” Documents in the possession of The Herald also reflect an hourly rate which was paid to the consultant. He was paid R163 863 for work that was never done following a series of meetings he held with committee members, as well as time he spent on preparing documents for these. After these processes, the consultant was told the firm to be hired for cleaning services was no longer going to be used. “This college is doomed for closure if the government fails to investigate these activities,” said the source. “People are also worried that she was appointed to this powerful position even though she was a public relations officer in her previous job. “Because of the way she is conducting affairs, some educators have left and we have a critical staff shortage. “She has ignored the cries of managers regarding her behaviour after they refused to sign documents to approve any irregular financial activity.” Grobler is also accused of appointing her “friends” to the governing council without following legal processes. Her “sick” management style had allegedly driven out 45 lecturers, who chose to remain on the government‘s payroll rather than that of the college. This happened after colleges merged in 2006 and staff members were given a choice of being employed by the department of education or the college. The source said the group had for the past three months spent their days at the education district offices because they feared their future was not guaranteed under Grobler‘s management. The council is also concerned that although it raised its grievances with Further Education and Training (FET) and Adult Basic Education (Abet) director Khaya Ngaso, he apparently backs Grobler. When contacted by The Herald, Ngaso denied receiving any complaints. As far as he knew, audited financial statements reflected a “healthy financial balance”. “Everything that you are asking and telling me is news to me. If you furnish me with those documents then I‘ll be able to respond,” Ngaso said. Grobler said there was an “internal investigation” she was personally pursuing and the accusations against her were made by an individual who did not like this. She refused to elaborate and said the college was subject to external audit. Grobler said: “If there is substantial evidence that indeed I was mismanaging funds, then that would have been picked up a long time ago. This is just to slander my person – it will impair my reputation.” She referred further queries to Ngaso. Provincial education department spokesman Loyiso Pulumani said colleges were moving towards autonomy and the department had no right to intervene. “Colleges are governed by a board of directors or a council ... Even if the college had deposited any money from the government into a separate account, we would know because we have an internal audit mechanism which oversees how the money is being used. If there is something irregular, it will not go unnoticed.”

	Monday, April 14 @ 23:31:46 SAST

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Untitled Document

Floris Botha

Personal Articles


	Article Scanned In & Available Bottom: http://www.thavinci.za.net/mixpix/PE%20Express.jpg

	Saturday, April 12 @ 23:55:21 SAST

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Untitled Document

How The World Sees Us

S.A. Sucks


	Saturday Australian Paper. Wounded Nation AFTER bathing in the warm, fuzzy glow of the Mandela years, South Africans today are deeply demoralised people. The lights are going out in homes, mines, factories and shopping malls as the national power authority, Eskom - suffering from mismanagement, lack of foresight, a failure to maintain power stations and a flight of skilled engineers to other countries - implements rolling power cuts that plunge towns and cities into daily chaos. Major industrial projects are on hold. The only healthy enterprise now worth being involved in is the sale of small diesel generators to powerless households but even this business has run out of supplies and spare parts from China. The currency, the rand, has entered freefall. Crime, much of it gratuitously violent, is rampant, and the national police chief faces trial for corruption and defeating the ends of justice as a result of his alleged deals with a local mafia kingpin and dealer in hard drugs. Newly elected African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma, the state president-in-waiting, narrowly escaped being jailed for raping an HIV-positive woman last year, and faces trial later this year for soliciting and accepting bribes in connection with South Africa's shady multi-billion-pound arms deal with British, German and French weapons manufacturers. One local newspaper columnist suggests that Zuma has done for South Africa's international image what Borat has done for Kazakhstan. ANC leaders in 2008 still speak in the spiritually dead jargon they learned in exile in pre-1989 Moscow, East Berlin and Sofia while promiscuously embracing capitalist icons - Mercedes 4x4s, Hugo Boss suits, Bruno Magli shoes and Louis Vuitton bags which they swing, packed with money passed to them under countless tables - as they wing their way to their houses in the south of France. It all adds up to a hydra-headed crisis of huge proportions - a perfect storm as the Rainbow Nation slides off the end of the rainbow and descends in the direction of the massed ranks of failed African states. Eskom has warned foreign investors with millions to sink into big industrial and mining projects: we don't want you here until at least 2013, when new power stations will be built. In the first month of this year, the rand fell 12% against the world's major currencies and foreign investors sold off more than £600 million worth of South African stocks, the biggest sell-off for more than seven years. "There will be further outflows this month, because there won't be any news that will convince investors the local growth picture is going to change for the better," said Rudi van de Merwe, a fund manager at South Africa's Standard Bank. Commenting on the massive power cuts, Trevor Gaunt, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Cape Town, who warned the government eight years ago of the impending crisis, said: "The damage is huge, and now South Africa looks just like the rest of Africa. Maybe it will take 20 years to recover." The power cuts have hit the country's platinum, gold, manganese and high-quality export coal mines particularly hard, with no production on some days and only 40% to 60% on others. "The shutdown of the mining industry is an extraordinary, unprecedented event," said Anton Eberhard, a leading energy expert and professor of business studies at the University of Cape Town. "That's a powerful message, massively damaging to South Africa's reputation for new investment. Our country was built on the mines." To examine how the country, widely hailed as Africa's last best chance, arrived at this parlous state, the particular troubles engulfing the Scorpions (the popular name of the National Prosecuting Authority) offers a useful starting point. The elite unit, modelled on America's FBI and operating in close co-operation with Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO), is one of the big successes of post-apartheid South Africa. An independent institution, separate from the slipshod South African Police Service, the Scorpions enjoy massive public support. The unit's edict is to focus on people "who commit and profit from organised crime", and it has been hugely successful in carrying out its mandate. It has pursued and pinned down thousands of high-profile and complex networks of national and international corporate and public fraudsters. Drug kingpins, smugglers and racketeers have felt the Scorpions' sting. A major gang that smuggle platinum, South Africa's biggest foreign exchange earner, to a corrupt English smelting plant has been bust as the result of a huge joint operation between the SFO and the Scorpions. But the Scorpions, whose top men were trained by Scotland Yard, have been too successful for their own good. The ANC government never anticipated the crack crimebusters would take their constitutional independence seriously and investigate the top ranks of the former liberation movement itself. The Scorpions have probed into, and successfully prosecuted, ANC MPs who falsified their parliamentary expenses. They secured a jail sentence for the ANC's chief whip, who took bribes from the German weapons manufacturer that sold frigates and submarines to the South African Defence Force. They sent to jail for 15 years a businessman who paid hundreds of bribes to then state vice-president Jacob Zuma in connection with the arms deal. Zuma was found by the judge to have a corrupt relationship with the businessman, and now the Scorpions have charged Zuma himself with fraud, corruption, tax evasion, racketeering and defeating the ends of justice. His trial will begin in August. The Scorpions last month charged Jackie Selebi, the national police chief, a close friend of state president Thabo Mbeki, with corruption and defeating the ends of justice. Commissioner Selebi, who infamously called a white police sergeant a "f***ing chimpanzee" when she failed to recognise him during an unannounced visit to her Pretoria station, has stepped down pending his trial. But now both wings of the venomously divided ANC - ANC-Mbeki and ANC-Zuma - want the Scorpions crushed, ideally by June this year. The message this will send to the outside world is that South Africa's rulers want only certain categories of crime investigated, while leaving government ministers and other politicians free to stuff their already heavily lined pockets. No good reason for emasculating the Scorpions has been put forward. "That's because there isn't one," said Peter Bruce, editor of the influential Business Day, South Africa's equivalent of, and part-owned by, The Financial Times, in his weekly column. "The Scorpions are being killed off because they investigate too much corruption that involves ANC leaders. It is as simple and ugly as that," he added. The demise of the Scorpions can only exacerbate South Africa's out-of-control crime situation, ranked for its scale and violence only behind Colombia. Everyone has friends and acquaintances who have had guns held to their heads by gangsters, who also blow up ATM machines and hijack security trucks, sawing off their roofs to get at the cash. In the past few days my next-door neighbour, John Matshikiza, a distinguished actor who trained at the Royal Shakespeare Company and is the son of the composer of the South African musical King Kong, had been violently attacked, and friends visiting from Zimbabwe had their car stolen outside my front window in broad daylight. My friends flew home to Zimbabwe without their car and the tinned food supplies they had bought to help withstand their country's dire political and food crisis and 27,000% inflation. Matshikiza, a former member of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre company, was held up by three gunmen as he drove his car into his garage late at night. He gave them his car keys, wallet, cellphone and luxury watch and begged them not to harm his partner, who was inside the house. As one gunman drove the car away, the other two beat Matshikiza unconscious with broken bottles, and now his head is so comprehensively stitched that it looks like a map of the London Underground. These assaults were personal, but mild compared with much commonplace crime. Last week, for example, 18-year-old Razelle Botha, who passed all her A-levels with marks of more than 90% and was about to train as a doctor, returned home with her father, Professor Willem Botha, founder of the geophysics department at the University of Pretoria, from buying pizzas for the family. Inside the house, armed gunmen confronted them. They shot Professor Botha in the leg and pumped bullets into Razelle. One severed her spine. Now she is fighting for her life and will never walk again, and may never become a doctor. The gunmen stole a laptop computer and a camera. Feeding the perfect storm are the two centres of ANC power in the country at the moment. On the one hand, there is the ANC in parliament, led by President Mbeki, who last Friday gave a state-of-the-nation address and apologised to the country for the power crisis. Mbeki made only the briefest of mentions of the national Aids crisis, with more than six million people HIV-positive. He did not address the Scorpions crisis. The collapsing public hospital system, under his eccentric health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, an alcoholic who recently jumped the public queue for a liver transplant, received no attention. And the name Jacob Zuma did not pass his lips. Last December Mbeki and Zuma stood against each other for the leadership of the ANC at the party's five-yearly electoral congress. Mbeki, who cannot stand again as state president beyond next year's parliamentary and presidential elections, hoped to remain the power behind the throne of a new state president of his choosing. Zuma, a Zulu populist with some 20 children by various wives and mistresses, hoped to prove that last year's rape case, and the trial he faces this year for corruption and other charges, were part of a plot by Mbeki to use state institutions to discredit him. Mbeki assumed that the notion of Zuma assuming next year the mantle worn by Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first black state president would be so appalling to delegates, a deeply sad and precipitous decline, that his own re-election as ANC leader was a shoo-in. But Mbeki completely miscalculated his own unpopularity - his perceived arrogance, failure to solve health and crime problems, his failure to deliver to the poor - and he lost. Now Zuma insists that he is the leader of the country and ANC MPs in parliament must take its orders from him, while Mbeki soldiers on until next year as state president, ordering MPs to toe his line. Greatly understated, it is a mess. Its scale will be dramatically illustrated if South Africa's hosting of the 2010 World Cup is withdrawn by Fifa, the world football body. Already South African premier league football evening games are being played after midnight because power for floodlights cannot be guaranteed before that time. Justice Malala, one of the country's top newspaper columnists, has called on Fifa to end the agony quickly. "I don't want South Africa to host the football World Cup because there is no culture of responsibility in this country," he wrote in Johannesburg's bestselling Sunday Times. "The most outrageous behaviour and incompetence is glossed over. No-one is fired. I have had enough of this nonsense, of keeping quiet and ignoring the fact that the train is about to run us over. "It is increasingly clear that our leaders are incapable of making a success of it. Scrap the thing and give it to Australia, Germany or whoever will spare us the ignominy of watching things fall apart here - football tourists being held up and shot, the lights going out, while our politicians tell us everything is all right."

	Sunday, March 30 @ 12:23:08 SAST

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Untitled Document

4 Simultaneous Channels Okay For 802.11b

Wireless


	thavinci writes "Although this is old news its often not well known, so ive transloaded it to my site.... " Note: Last summer, before starting here at Ziff Davis Media, I did some work with a small 802.11b startup called Cirond. The following story is based on a white-paper analysis done by CTO Mitch Burton. After I read it, I wanted to tell the world. I'll make no claims on whether Cirond's forthcoming products are useful, but its Channel Overlap analysis is exciting. But in the interest of full disclosure, note that they did pay me for some of the work I did – although that was almost six months ago. So take this story with the proverbial grain of salt. I find it exciting, you may not. " " Current thinking in the 802.11b wireless space is that only three of the 11 channels used by wireless hubs in the US can be allocated simultaneously. But that's wrong, according to Mitch Burton, CTO of Cirond Networks. In fact, 4 of the 11 channels in North America, and 5 of the 13 in Europe can be safely used without significant interference or crosstalk – and this has significant ramifications for multi-access point deployments. In North America, the 802.11b spectrum ranges from 2400MHz to 2483MHz, and is divided up into 11 channels from 2412MHz to 2462MHz, spaced 5MHz apart. Thus However, each channel is 22MHz wide, so as you can imagine, there is great overlap. Channel 1, for instance, is centered at 2412MHz, but extends out from 2401MHz to 2433MHz. Channel 6 is centered at 2437MHz, extending from 2426MHz to 2448MHz. In a multi-access point installation, where overlapping channels can cause interference, dead-spots and other problems, Channels 1, 6 and 11 are generally regarded as the only safe channels to use. Since there are 5 5MHz channels between 1 and 6, and between 6 and 11, or 25MHz of total bandwidth, that leaves three MHz of buffer zone between channels. Note that wireless access points generally radiate waves in a sphere around the access point, attenuated by walls, cubicle material, ceilings and floors. With just three channels to work with, it can become difficult to deploy wireless access around a single or multi-floor location while only reusing those 3 frequencies" Here is the whitepaper to substatiate this.... Whitepaper "

	Wednesday, December 05 @ 14:12:58 SAST

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Untitled Document

Wireless Security Live CD Distributions

Wireless


	thavinci writes "Grabbed of a site a list of wireless security live CD distrubutions. Would be fantastic if someone could give reveiws on them. Check them out at.... http://www.thavinci.za.net/Downloads/WiFi_Live_CDs_v1107.pdf "

	Wednesday, December 05 @ 13:20:10 SAST

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Fixed!!!!!

Having Issues


	Well after a long wait i have fixed it via a work-around. "New-Server" :p Enjoy

	Thursday, November 01 @ 16:58:31 SAST

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Slow Site

Having Issues


	It seems that we are having very slow responses. I am still unsure as too what is causing this. Please leave a response as to how fast this site loads. I think the database server is the issue.

	Sunday, July 22 @ 18:07:51 SAST

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Untitled Document

Defcon WIFI Shootout

Wireless


	New world record for unamplified wireless networking!! 125 miles! "Loaded for bear." That quaint phrase means that you have the biggest, baddest gun, loaded with the biggest, baddest bullet, because you may have to shoot a big, bad bear. It indicates that you have gone all out in an effort to be prepared for any situation. "Loaded for bear" describes perfectly a team of determined young college students calling themselves "iFiber Redwire," who, with parents, family and friends in tow, traveled from Cincinnati, Ohio to a rugged desert area near Las Vegas, Nevada to compete in the 3rd Annual Defcon Wifi Shootout Contest. The contest challenges teams to wirelessly connect two computers at extreme distances using the radio technology known as "WiFi," and, on July 30, 2005, the efforts of iFiber Redwire paid off in an impressive way. After part of the team drove a trailer loaded with equipment to Utah Hill, near Beaver Dam in the state of Utah, iFiber Redwire used a fascinating collection of homemade antennas, surplus 12 foot satellite dishes, home-welded support structures, scaffolds, ropes and computers to wirelessly connect to their comrades who were located southwest of Las Vegas at the top of Mount Potosi. The final result was a full 11 Mbps data transfer rate over a distance of 125 miles, a new world record for an unamplified wireless networking connection. ---------- Read more at : http://www.wifi-shootout.com

	Thursday, July 19 @ 21:07:01 SAST

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Creepy Google

Evil Google?


	thavinci writes " Google offers more storage for your email than other Internet service providers that we know about. The powerful searching encourages account holders to never delete anything. It's easier to just leave it in the inbox and let the powerful searching keep track of it. Google admits that deleted messages will remain on their system, and may be accessible internally at Google, for an indefinite period of time. A new California law, the Online Privacy Protection Act, went into effect on July 1, 2004. Google changed their main privacy policy that same day because the previous version sidestepped important issues and might have been illegal. For the first time in Google's history, the language in their new policy made it clear that they will be pooling all the information they collect on you from all of their various services. Moreover, they may keep this information indefinitely, and give this information to whomever they wish. All that's required is for Google to "have a good faith belief that access, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public." Google, you may recall, already believes that as a corporation they are utterly incapable of bad faith. Their corporate motto is "Don't be evil," and they even made sure that the Securities and Exchange Commission got this message in Google's IPO filing. ........................ Read More at G-Mail Is To Creepy!! "

	Wednesday, July 18 @ 11:40:04 SAST

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