Here at Piistakr we are joining in the fun that all the arses of the world share in at this time of year – making predictions!

And most of all, we recommend that ours will come true – unlike some of those other columns which ‘claim’ to have the inside information. So here it is, 2007 predicted…

1. George W Bush will piss us all off. Without a doubt. You didn’t see that one coming did you???!!!
2. After a year of performing on stage badly, Steve Ballmer will ‘up the ante’ and become the face of Playstation’s Singstar.
3. Larry Ellison will try and refrain from buying more companies from ex-hires who provided great ideas but, because he was too arrogant to listen, (and because they weren’t his ideas to begin with), he was left with having to buy them.
4. O’Reilly Media will patent the term ‘2.0′ for everything. And you will have to pay a royalty fee of a $1 every time you use the term.
5. You will become so uber uncool for using the term ‘2.0′ after everything you have or do, like ‘lunchbox 2.0′ or ‘fart 2.0′ or ‘picked my nose 2.0′
6. Steve Jobs will become a charity leader. He’s the next in line. You wait your turn.
7. Some other social networking space other than YouTube and MySpace will reign supreme and all of these capitalists will realise that they have bought mega-flops (and I don’t mean a data storage).
8. George W Bush will piss us off.
9. George W Bush will piss us off.
10. George W Bush will piss us off. Hopefully someone will do something about it. For God’s sake someone use the words ‘Bush’ and ‘impeach’ in the same sentence this year.

Have a great 2007 and keep reading.

In a move that most right wing libertarians are applauding tonight, the Australian government has released a proposal requiring all pedophiles and sex offenders to register their own page on social networking site MySpace.

Phillip Ruddock, Attorney General, has called for the parliament to accept the proposal when it returns to debate in 2007.

The proposal will see that all offenders listed in the national child and sex offenders database, will have 28 days from the time they re-enter the community to register their own page on MySpace listing their heinous crimes and what they are doing to right their wrongs.

Ruddock stated in a press conference today that the move will provide the community with a 2 fold safety mechanism, while allowing the offenders to share their guilt publicly.

“This is a naturally a great concept. For once the public will be able to see what heinous crimes these people have perpetrated against our community. And then our own citizens will be able to follow these people through cyber-space and keep a watchful eye on them.”

“We all know that sex offenders always re-commit, so if they are exposed in the first place in a public forum then the chances of them re-committing may be reduced. And if the programme works, then we will be able to save on resources in the Australian Federal Police force in sitting around chat forums pretending to be ten year old girls to catch these perverts.” Ruddock claimed today.

“To balance the fine edge of the legal sword that dangles here, MySpace offender sites will also allow those offenders riddled with guilt over their crimes the ability to share their ongoing illness with the community in a view to redeeming themselves”, Ruddock added.

Amanda Vandstone, Minister for Immigration has stepped up in support of the proposal.

“Quite clearly, the MySpace offenders proposal is one born with merit. If members of our community can have a go at helping law enforcement monitor perverts in our community, then this empowers our nation against these offenders.” Vandstone stated.

“And look, if the programme is successful, then we may extend the programme even further and require all detainees in Immigration detention centres to register their own MySpace page. That way, all Australians could lend a hand in keeping an eye on these new arrivals, should they escape in to society or breach conditions of their stay.” Vandstone added.

MySpace were unavailable for comment on this story.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced this week that as of 1 January 2007 internet video services provider YouTube will be blocked at the ISP level in his country.

President Ahmadinejad made the announcement in a press conference today that the proliferation of the Borat videos on YouTube and the support that Borat is raising against their neighbor Kazakhstan, will not be tolerated anymore in his country.

Kazakhstan’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Rakhat Aliyev, has welcomed the ban stating “we welcomed Borat (aka actor Sacha Baron Cohen) to come here and see the damage he has done to our country but he not come. Praise to President Ahmadinejad for doing something proactive to stop Borat.”

However President Ahmadinejad has retaliated at the idea he agreed to the blockage of YouTube on the basis that one his neighbors is being hurt by the videos on YouTube. His concerns are of Sacha Baron Cohen’s next character portrayal.

“I’m not fussed if they (the Kazakhs) are getting the mickey taken from them by Borat directly – that’s their battle to fight. But I hear Cohen is thinking of making me his next character. I just can’t have that.” Ahmadinejad noted.

“I am just watching what Borat can do to one country and how YouTube has made that popular. What hope do I have with my people if they start making fun of me on YouTube? I mean there’s so many things they can do to poke fun at me – and I don’t like it.”

“I’m having too much trouble with Condi at the moment and all this talk of war. The last thing I need is Borat making fun of me.”

In response to the Ahmadinejad’s comments and concerns, YouTube executives released statistics to the media today identifying that Iranian people made up 0.000000000023 of all hits on YouTube on a daily basis.

“Really, we don’t give a rat’s arse about this move by the Iranian government to block us from their country. However, we are in talks with Cohen to produce a goofy Iranian president character with sadistic ways that we can promote on YouTube to 199 other countries around the world”, spokesman Ronald Johnson stated today.

The Swedish Laboratory for Usability Testing Studies has just released its 2006 study on Usability of all operating systems at the corporate and home user level. The clear winner from the findings for 2006 has been the Microsoft Windows XP Professional operating system.

While Bill Gates was understandably ecstatic about the news, talks from the other major camps, Apple and Linux, state that the study is full of bias and even ‘rigged’.

The study, conducted for a period of 9 months of 2006 and comprising of over 240,000 is said to be the largest private study of its kind anywhere in the world.

However, the integrity of the study is under fire today as the origins of the survey and the survey base have been revealed.

Of the 240,099 people surveyed, 239,322 worked in an office environment where the operating system was Microsoft based.

Steve Jobs and other members of the Apple camp came out today scathing at the findings, calling the team from SLUTS “a scam and nothing but a front for the Microsoft push.”

Jobs added “I wouldn’t even be surprised if Steve Ballmer has paid for this study to be conducted within the confines of the user group that the SLUTS team has selected. Nothing surprises me of his antics these days.”

However, advocates for the SLUTS team have come out fighting in support of the independence of the SLUTS survey.

Johan Anderssen, CEO from SLUTS made a statement today to the press indicating that “our study is amongst corporate users, and corporate users only. It is not about the warfare that is being fought in the home desktop front.”

There have been claims made by the Linux community that the SLUTS team is being offered free licensing (by Microsoft) of their operating systems and servers if a favourable view of Microsoft is presented.

As to whether there has been any funding of the study by the Microsoft camp, Anderssen added “we run Linux boxes here, and not the Novell Suse install either, so we’re pretty neutral. And who would want to run Vista anyway? We can’t afford the sort of desktops required to run Vista.”

After the departure of Yellow Wiggle, Greg Page, last week due to a battle with an ongoing medical condition, feminist activist Germaine Greer has lashed out at the Wiggles for not replacing Yellow Wiggle with a woman.

Sam Moran, the understudy for Greg Page for the last five years, has been filling in for Page on the last US tour when Page was too ill to perform. Commentators have stated that children will most likely not notice the difference becuase Moran has dark hair like Page.

However, Greer has lashed out at the Wiggles for not making a change in the female direction. “These Wiggles have made a lot of money from children as an all male group – it’s time they invested some time with the kids in teach them things such as Equal Employment Opportunity.”

“Kids these days look up to so many idols from an earlier age and here is a prime opportunity for the Wiggles to show kids that women can be a part of the Wiggles lineup.” Greer added.

Management for the Wiggles’ Rob Sternly, has publicly stated in defence of their decision to go with Sam Horan as the replacement that “Greer has finally lost it. First she accused Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, of being cruel to animals at the time of his death, and now she is accusing of being sexist.”

“What she doesn’t understand is that we are an all male children’s group. All male. There are mixed groups like Hi-5 who could replace a male with a female if necessary. It would be like trying to put Britney Spears into New Kids on The Block and would look out of place.” Sternly added.

Despite the war of words, Greer has retaliated, with a plan to hold a protest outside of the upcoming Wiggles concerts in Febraury 2007 in London. At the protests, children will be urged to support mixed groups like Hi-5 where equality of roles is shared with women.

“We’ll shows these Wiggles that they cannot pretend to shrug off the necessity to show children just how important it is for women to have equal rights in the workplace” Greer stated.

Red Wiggle, Murray Cook came out in protest against Greer and her comments and simply stated “wake up Germaine!”

Microsoft has just announced that it is releasing the new colored Zune next week, just in time for Christmas in 13 different colors – bondi blue, strawberry, blueberry, lime, grape, tangering, graphite, ruby, snow, indigo, sage, blue dalmation and flower power.

News of the new range of colors has swept through the Zune community with pre-orders already occurring through the Urge site with a promised delivery date (in the US) pre-Christmas, if ordered before 10 December.

Bill Gates from Microsoft has come out in a press release today indicating that the new colors are a shot in the arm for those looking for a competitive offering to the Apple ipod this Christmas.

“Earlier this year we picked up a great industrial designer, Jonathon Ive, who is helping us design a number of new products for summer 2007. His flair and unique designs have been incorporated in to the new design schemes for the Zune. We’re all very excited.”

Ive, best known for his design work on the first release of the Apple imac in 1998, stated “I love the new color design for the Zune. There is something so retro about it. I’m excited to be leadig this project.”

The company, embarrassed after recent embarrassing chicken dancing, NASDAQ and Vista release incidents, has beleived to have been forced by its marketing department to release the colored Zunes earlier that originally expected to arrest the impact of the incidents on falling pre-Christmas sales.

Chuck Mosely from Microsoft’s Public Relations team in Redmond admitted today “ok both Bill and Steve have been playing the goose a little bit these past few weeks, but it’s been a hectic couple of years for them. They’ve been letting off a little bit of steam publicly, and that’s to be expected.”

The new Zune will be released at a special Christmas price of US$119.00 inc delivery to anywhere in the mainland USA.

Last month saw the discussions between Jason Calcanis and The Podcast Network (TPN) to establish a podcasting relationship. Calcanis has this week decided to join VC funding group Sequoia Capital. Now AOL are back in the seat looking for a podcasting partner and has turned its eyes to TPN.

And after all of the current fusses at Yahoo this week, AOL are keeping very tight lipped about any campaigns that they have to purchase players in the podcasting space.

Insiders say that the CEO of TPN, Cameron Reilly, is not particularly fussed about the potential buy out offer. Apparently Reilly is playing coy at the idea of being owned by such a big player and would normally not consider it. Insiders also indicate that Reilly has enjoyed the thrill of establishing TPN and it draws a significant revenue source for him already. A takeover by AOL at this stage may not provide him with any major personal benefit.

Other industry heavyweights are leaning toward Reilly accepting the offer, if made. Rod Hernly from Podcasting Global stated “Reilly has made noises in the past about the shot in the arm funding from a major would provide. In fact, a major player investing in Reilly’s network would also boost podcasting globally and would be a good thing.”

“Given the amount of time and energy invested into making such a successful network, the figure from AOL would have to be substantial.” Hernly added.

AOL sources would not comment on the potential buy out, with spokesman Jim McGrath stating that “any announcements made on purchases would be performed in the usual fashion to the press as a whole rather than some little dodgy fake press site.”

Ireland’s worst air disaster occurred early this morning when a small two seater Cessna plane crashed into cemetry.

Officials say that the plane has lost navigational direction and tried to land in what was believed to be an open field.

Due to the fogs of early winter mists, it is believed that the pilots could not see the cemetry’s grave sites and attempted to land the plane. The speed of the Cessna at the time of impact is not known, but the impact area is spread over a large distance, indicating that the Cessna may not have known the distance from the ground at impact.

Paddy O’Reilly from Ireland’s Air Investigation Unit spoke with the media today and stated “resuce workers have been working for the past 4 hours and have recovered 1826 bodies so far. We expect that number to continue as the digging goes on into the night.”

Eleven Orange County teenagers have entered into separate class actions against MySpace and FakeYourSpace simultaneously based on the recent action of MySpace to clean up against friend bots from FakeYourSpace.

The action comes as the eleven teenagers have had their MySpace friend rankings reduced from hundreds of thousands to single digit numbers. The teenagers were purchasing ‘friends’ from FakeYourSpace to bolster their MySpace position to become more popular. The ‘friends’ are ‘bots’, that simply insert a number of random hot comments each month into your MySpace account.

MySpace’s recent crackdown on ‘friend-bot’ sites such as FakeYourSpace has sent a shiver down the spine of thousands of American teenagers, happy to pay for such services in the hope of becoming popular amongst their real friends.

The teenagers met on a popular forum for people not happy with the services of MySpace, and, after realizing that they were all in the same area, decided to launch a class action against the two companies.

Initial reports have suggested that the class action on both companies is in the region of US$30 million. MySpace’s legal counsel has refused to discuss the class action by the teenagers as the matter is still before the Courts. FakeYourSpace’s legal counsel have taken a similar stand.

The action against MySpace is primarily for terminating the friend-bots and causing unnecessary harm to the individuals. The action against FakeYourSpace is based purely on the grounds of quality – in so far as that FakeYourSpace did not build a good enough product that could not be detected by MySpace as a fake.

MySpace’s Tom has come out publicly about the matter stating that these friend-bot sites are becoming a nuisance and taking the reality of the social networking that MySpace should be.

“I spend all day checking out new hot chicks on MySpace – that’s my job. Imagine how demoralizing I feel when I start to engage a hot chick and she turns out to be a bot. How am I supposed to pick up chicks? I had to get rid of these friend-bots.” declared Tom.

First impressions would lead anyone to believe that the issue is a problem surrounding young males. However, it’s the young females that seem to be the biggest users of FakeYourSpace.

FakeYourSpace’s Becky has stated to Piistakr today via email that “the hot young girls using our service for hot men are trying to show their friends and other hot men just how hot they are. It’s only natural.”

When discussing the male users, Becky stated “the hot young men using our service for hot women are trying to show their friends and other hot women just how hot they are. It’s only natural.”

The eleven teenagers have reportedly collectively spent over $100,000 in obtaining friends from FakeYourSpace over the past 8 months. Once popular amongst their friends due to their MySpace rankings, their popularity has all but dwindled after the removal of their friend-bots.

One of the teenagers involved in the class action, known only as Fernando, explained the situation. “I was taunted at school for a long time, but once people at school saw that I was part of this subversive sub culture with 16,000 friends (and a lot of hot chicks), my popularity at school was established.”

“Now that people have found out it was fake, my popularity plummeted and I started getting physically attacked by people in school. I’ve had to drop out of school altogether. My parents are not happy because the school will not refund my school fees. My life is ruined.” Fernando added.

Another of the teenagers, who does not want to be named, has started up a counseling site for other aggrieved teenagers called www.terminatetom.com. In the statement to Piistakr today, the teenager also advised that there is a consideration to start a ‘Terminate Tom’ day nationally, to be launched in all schools across America.

“MySpace and what it does to teenagers is social suicide and it must be stopped” the teenager demanded. “And we are determined to do something about it.”

After being counseled by Bill Gates and the board for his dancing and ‘hitler-esque’ antics at a recent Microsoft conference, it seems that Steve Ballmer has not taken the advice provided by his mentors.

Seen at a special concert put on by the rock super group KISS at the opening of the NASDAQ on the day of the Vista launch, Ballmer was caught on camera trying to mimick bass player Gene Simmons.

Despite being warned by Gates and the Microsoft board about curbing his behavior in light of recent negative publicity and destabilizing stock price, Ballmer continued with his antics.

After the concert was finished, Washington Press photographer Richard Drew showed Gene Simmons the photo that he had taken earlier of the Microsoft executive.

Simmons was reported to have stated to Drew “Me: I make this look good. Him…sh*t I feel sorry for the poor woman who has to have sex with that man.”