Spy equipment is within the reach of anyone now as technology has become cheaper and smaller, gone are the days when you would have to fork out £3,000 for a miniature video camera. Now you can simply visit our industrious friends in China to get your hands on some really cool gadgets.

The “Spy Tie”, featured to the right, comes complete with a video recorder you pop into your pocket to capture the images from the tiny camera hidden in the tie. Although, by the picture, why you would want to take video of two people messing about with shaving foam is beyond me - unless it was going to be aired after midnight. On board memory is 1Gb, which is expandable with a memory card too. Other examples from this company are a packet of chewing gum with an inbuilt video camera, spy “sunglasses” that shoot video of your peripheral vision and various wireless recording devices. I spent most of my time wondering why I would want any of these things, but still felt myself wanting them anyway!

In an experiment to find out the popularity of different operating systems with illegal file sharers, I thought I would query isohunt.com to give me the answer..

There are two numbers associated with every download. Firstly you have the number of seeds. These people have a complete copy of the files, and are purely uploading them to share with others. Secondly you have the leechers. These second type of people are both downloading and uploading - although they don’t have complete copies of the files. So seeds are the people allowing others to get access to the files, and are an indication of interpreted demand (how much they themselves think people might want the OS), and also past demand, while the leechers are an indication of the current demand. Or at least, that’s how I see it. So how did the different OS’s fair?

Windows Vista

Vista is, surprisingly after all the bad press, one of the most sought after OS’s in my test! With 1142 people actively trying to get hold of this particular version, the demand is higher than any other. Interestingly there are only 303 seeds. This (rightly or wrongly) says to me that not many people are hanging onto it once they get it!

Windows XP

In a not-so-surprising twist - Windows XP has the largest number of seeds for any OS. At 656, a lot of people are hanging on to this. Is it because they’ve read the news and think people will want it more? Or are they just lazy? Equally as interesting in the number of leechers, at 152, it appears not many people actually want it. Now you could argue it’s because most of us have a copy now, of one description or another..

OSX Leopard

Apple’s latest OS is looking strong amongst the Windows contenders. A lot stronger than recent years, which probably shows a move away from Microsoft for the home user towards something a little more intuitive. I’m sure all you Mac users out there will have smug faces on now..

Windows 98

Wow - now this is pretty cool. 10 years after it’s official launch, Windows 98 is still going strong with a lot of interest. 202 people have the OS available, although demand is a little low with a meagre 58 leechers.

Windows 2000

Demand is pretty low for this OS - a lot lower than I thought it would be. I was expecting half to a third that of Windows XP. I thought Windows 2000 was a solid OS and I’ve still got it running on a few PCs at work - and it never gives me any problems.

OSX Tiger

Incompatibility problems with PC architecture probably are the reasons this OS is so far down the list. Not a bad OS, and not particularly old, I think it’s just the superior Leopard that’s always more likely to be a hit with intel-based PC pirates looking for a change.

Windows 95

20 Seeds? Who are these people? Sure Windows 95 was groundbreaking, but only for a couple of years until Windows 98 came along! And that lonely leecher, downloading it in the hope it will work on the old 486 he found in his dad’s garage. I have one piece of advice for you my friend - Linux. It’s a question, and answer and a solution all in one word.

Windows 3.1

I was half expecting a “no show” for 3.1. How surprised I was to find, although demand is 0, there are still people that have a copy of the OS on their systems for anyone that might be passing - and only 5 less than Windows 95! I can’t think of a use for this OS nowadays of course, the hardware it was destined to run on has probably rotted away by now at the bottom of some garbage heap somewhere.

Windows ME

No graphics for this one. Why? I couldn’t find it! Please don’t think I want a link to it, I made sure I did the most basic search, hopefully copying what a normal pirate would type into the search box. I guess you could try different search terms, but why would you repeatedly try to find this OS? Is this the biggest OS mistake Microsoft ever made? Or is that happening now?

So what does this all mean?

Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure.. On the face of it, the demand for Vista is strong. Windows XP has a strong perceived demand, by the seeds that are keeping it available for other potential downloaders. Windows 98 is still “downloadble” now, 10 years later, and Windows 95 is just a poor cousin of Windows 98, as we’ve always thought. Windows 3.1 is available for the hardcore elite, and Windows ME will always be the mutated-dog-from-the-fly-2 we love to look in disgust at.

Finally, I thought this wouldn’t be a balanced test, without the most talked-about OS amongst geeks - although it is also worth noting that this is a free OS - read into that what you will with the figures, but I presume it’s because people have 0 hangups about downloading a free OS, where they may have moral issues with pirating software.. Anyway, ladies and gentleman, I give you:

Ubuntu 7.10

How many seeds????

A quick post - My wife sent this to me today, and I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s brilliant. It’s like a story from the computer’s point of view and what happens when a peripheral thinks it knows better than the user… Read it now!

Or is it?? After inspecting Amazon.co.uk, Assassin’s Creed is available in November and not tomorrow as the rest of the world has been led to believe. But when you look a little closer, it appears as though Amazon.co.uk are having problems with the dates supplied by their sources on the other side of the pond - or is it just co-incidence that the date is the 4th of November (4/11) instead of 11th of April? (11/4)

Only in America (sorry guys over the pond!) It appears that a couple, aptly named Mr and Mrs “Boring” are planning to sue Google for “intentional” invasion of privacy with Google’s Street initiative, because they have the word “private” on a lane next to their house. They want damages because their property has apparently diminished in value (I guess because people can actually see it) since Google visited their neighbourhood. Maybe they should pay Google instead for driving potential buyers to their property? Check out the full article here.

Sorry to alienate the viewers from across the pond, but I do believe there is a Tesco or two available in California now.. Anyway, I was queueing up at the self-service section of Tesco - you know the sort with the weigh stations, and manual bar-code scanning? Well one of the machines went down, had to be rebooted by accessing the machine in the bottom of the blue box, and guess what? A copy of Windows XP fired up - complete with the windows login tune.

So next time you’re getting your shopping the “quick” way and wonder why the machine is complaining that there are “unexpected items in the bagging area” or shouts “please wait for assistance” just remember that it’s Windows under the hood!

A great Google hack that can be adapted to search for any file type that you need. Just use the examples below, typing the bold text into Google’s search box to find whatever file extension you’re looking for, then include as many keywords as you need to narrow down your search.

Example 1 - searching for any mp3’s with “the orb” somewhere on the page:
-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:”index of” mp3 “the orb”

Example 2 - searching for a pdf to do with programming in C#:
-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:”index of” pdf “programming C#”

Example 3 - searching for a jpg image of a mountain view:
-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:”index of” jpg “mountain view”

As you can see, it makes Google an even more useful resource for tracking down files you would otherwise spend hours trying to find. Just adapt the search string and search for what you need.

In another anti-Microsoft post (God I’m getting good at these recently) it appears Microsoft’s email servers are down.

Just remember, don’t fret if you see the “Service Unavailable” message when trying to access your hotmail account - maybe it’s fate just whispering gently in your ear - “time to move to gmail…”

This is a great tip, and one that I will attach a warning to: Use at your own risk, and don’t blame me if you find something you didn’t want to see - it’s almost like a lucky dip so anything and I mean anything could appear!! But for those of you who are brave, go to Google and type inurl:/view/index.shtml into the search bar. The vast majority of the results you see are from real webcams available on the net. Some of them even let you pan/tilt too. Great for the nosey minded or just plain curious.. Some others to try in Google with the “inurl:” are /MultiCameraFrame?Mode=, /axis-cgi/mjpg and also /ViewerFrame?Mode=

If you’re not familiar with the term “wall walker”, I think you’ve probably seen the thing I mean: They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, an octopus, spiders, a man & even cars. They have a sticky underside and they slowly make their way down to the bottom of a door or wall. Where else in the world would you think to take an innocent child’s toy, make a 5ft version and let it walk down a skyscraper? Japan that’s where of course! It has a great ending too. [SHOW ME]