Here we go again - Judges, wtf??

This landed in my inbox today...

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22946347-2,00.html

TWO men and three teenagers who sexually abused an 11-year-old boy at a remote Top End Aboriginal community should not be called rapists, according to a Supreme Court judge.

Ok, so the judge explains himself in a manner I reckon is just plain confused but further on in the story, there's this bit of utter stupidity...

"They have to prove not only that the victim didn't consent, but that the offender or offenders were aware that the victim was not consenting."

For fuck's sake, the kid was 11, he's not ABLE to give consent. Are you all fucking sunstruck up there or stupid or what? What the hell is the judiciary coming to? Are they all following last year's lead of UK judges who trotted out similar bullshit?

I just don't get it.

These people are supposed to be legal authorities.

The cops do their job and I have enormous respect for the work they do. Investigations are actually able to proceed despite the unbelievable amount of mire through which cops have to wade so how do the poor coppers feel when a year long investigation ends up with a bullshit result like that.

I've got 4 things on the go with cops at this moment. Every day brings new information, every day there's another kid telling me stuff they're embarrassed to tell the authorities. With a judiciary and legal system that trots out this kind of insanity, what the fuck am I supposed to tell those kids????

And the wheels on the bus...

This guy asks a "serious" question...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMY8vr2ktGY


This guy is your perfect answer...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gj36RklMJY


Just bring back the noose, there is no such thing as rehabilitation for those creeps because they refuse to accept there is anything wrong with themselves for a start AND they're campaigning for equal rights and protections so they're not subjected to the same prejudices and hate propaganda formerly suffered by gays, blacks and women and, they say, Jews.

Gimme a break!

Spend just one week doing what I've been doing all year and then come back with a pedophile apologist's line. One week. I fucking dare you.

randomness.

Last week I was given an email address to communicate directly with a particular detective sergeant here in Melbourne.

Bonus points or what!

Met Rutger Hauer the other week too. What a great bloke! Really friendly and actually spent some time to talk, not just parrot some crappy show-biz lines or advertising schtik.

I also bullied a particular social networking site into removing a member who is known to put the hard word on kids for webcam sessions. The CEO of the site himself came to visit my blog and within minutes, the profile had been blocked.

There is, of course, other stuff going on as well, but the people involved in all of that don't need me crowing on about what a great bunch of people they are so I won't, except to say it's the best bush telegraph ever.

Facing up

From last Monday's Register...

Mark Zuckerberg has been given a taste of his own medicine: his personal information is being plastered all over the web forever.
The Facebook boss has failed in a court bid to gag a magazine that published data including drunken extracts from his college diary and his social security number.

Federal judge Douglas Woodlock told the 23-year-old's lawyers on Friday that the independent Harvard alumni magazine 02138 had the right to release the documents, which were part of another court case.
02138's investigation centred on the dispute between Zuckerberg and the operators of ConnectU, another Harvard-founded social network. It's alleged that in the early days of Facebook, "the new Bill Gates" nicked ideas and source code from brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who had asked him to work on their project.
Digging into that period, freelance reporter Luke O'Brien turned up a series of depositions and other documents on a visit to the courthouse, and the magazine ran them in support of his article. The piece is sympathetic to the Winklevoss twins and reports accusations by classmates that Zuckerberg had lied in front of them.
Facebook lawyers applied to have the documents taken down on Thursday, saying the court had ordered them to be sealed.
A spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal: "One reason the court ordered certain documents' protection was to prevent exactly what has happened: misusing documents and taking documents out of context to sling mud."
Their failed application also attempted to force O'Brien to reveal how he obtained the files, since they had been locked up. He has maintained he was given them by a Federal Appeals Court clerk.
The judge denied all Facebook's claims. According to the New York Times, the clerk mistakenly handed over the files to O'Brien.
Zuckerberg and Co. will be hoping Friday's decision marks the end of a run of public embarrassments for Facebook. On Thursday, it was finally forced to bow to pressure over its creepy new ad system Beacon.
There could be more privacy-related defeats ahead, however. The UK's Information Commissioner is investigating Facebook's "Hotel California" policy on user data that means accounts can only be deactivated, never deleted.


For what I really want to say, well.. that's for my MySpace.

Good lawd!

There appears to still be one poor misguided idiot who thinks I have claimed to be anything more than a complete bastard.

Others, bless them, have credited me with being possessed of moral virtue, I never have.

Of course I can actually PROVE where others have said I'm a nice person, the liar leaving comments on my recent posts can't prove any of their claims. Not one. It's just the same old accusations based on distortions, false claims, misconceptions and half truths. But not one skerrick of evidence.

Of course, this being the internet, unfounded accusations are par for the course, however what is absolutely unforgivable is to comment on someone's blog with the most boring lot of repetitive, sanctimonious and pompous load of old bollox time after time and more and more longwinded each time...

Look at my code of conduct... now look at the very first item in my code of conduct.

Got it?

Post whatever, just don't bore the fuck out of me with repetitive drivel which showcases your penchant for adjectives over actual objectives.

A lot of people??

One comment in the barrage of desperate (but amusingly prolific) comments to this blog yesterday said a lot of people are wondering about me.

It is, of course, a lie.

In the website Outfoxed, the argument from authority frequently used by Fox News journalists is exposed for its dishonesty. Some people say - is a fallacious argument.

Being from Liars Team HQ though, this sort of dishonesty is only to be expected. It's what they do, after all...

So, if a lot of people are wondering about me, the anonymous commenter must therefore be able to name at least a few of them...

They won't - that would lead to all sorts of discomfort for them. But it'll be interesting to see what lie they use to escape the burden of proof.

Go for it, liars.... who are these "lot of people"?

Truth comes out again...

I was wondering what had prompted the rash of attendees to this blog from Liars Team HQ last week, so I had myself a bit of a peruse for the 2nd time in about 4 months or so and found the following exchange...

c.I refuse to argue with someone who acts like Chatrat and who refuses to acknowledge when she fucks up and does the wrong thing.

This must be why Lea the Liar thinks she's perfect. (She SO did not tell me to tell her I love her even if I didn't mean it. -->fkn amazed emote picture here <-- ) She also SO ordered a copy of the play, (read "credit card declined" - couldn't afford $15)

The riposte by Clorox was fairly passable though...

C. Acting like ChatRat? Lol. I am so sick of your emotionally charged overreactions lately. I teased you in chat, and you said "I'm not talking to you anymore" just like Reesa does when someone disagrees. Now you're doing it here again. If I disclosed your credit card information, and told you you're fucking up your children, then perhaps you may have a point. However, you don't. You're lashing out, much like Reesa, and making random nonsensical stabbing motions. You're dropping your basket. Yet again. Quel surprise.

Welcome to the "Sick of Loopy Lea Club", Claratyne. Nice going though, the stupid cow had to come and revisit the dead brother theme she sooooo regretted last year. Truly though, how could anyone be surprised that Lea and Reesa are friends? They're both barking fucking mad schizoid breadknifing maniacs. (At least Reesa is good for a laugh though, even if it is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.)

Oh, in case you both hadn't noticed, ChatRat has moved on. Clearly, you freaks need to do the same.

Pedophiles are such fkn cowards.

dave harry says (2:59 AM):
asl

Paul says (2:59 AM):
40 male Australia and a friend of the girl you're trying to wank on cam for.

Paul says (2:59 AM):
guess what creep.

Paul says (2:59 AM):
you're busted

dave harry says (3:00 AM):
what

dave harry says (3:00 AM):
u taking a bout

Paul says (3:00 AM):
you want a c&p?

dave harry says (3:00 AM):
what

Paul says (3:00 AM):
dave harry says:
u like cock
me says:
if some1 finds out u have been sayin this stuff
dave harry says:
they wont
dave harry says:
any way
me says:
how do ya no?
dave harry says:

dave harry says (3:00 AM):
not me

Paul says (3:01 AM):
nice try

Paul says (3:01 AM):
ain't gunna cut no ice with me

dave harry says (3:01 AM):
so what u going to do

dave harry says (3:01 AM):
come on

Paul says (3:01 AM):
hahaha..

Paul says (3:01 AM):
call her a bitch did you

dave harry says (3:01 AM):
nothing

Paul says (3:01 AM):
blame the kid

Paul says (3:02 AM):
go on, coward

dave harry says (3:02 AM):
i did

dave harry says (3:02 AM):
why are u chatting with her then

Paul says (3:03 AM):
because she asked for my help dealing with a cretin like you who thinks it's cool for a 25yo to j/o off cam for a girl he knows is only 14

dave harry says (3:03 AM):
she added me to all this

dave harry says (3:03 AM):
msn and net log??

dave harry says (3:03 AM):
so its chat

Paul says (3:03 AM):
so you're going to blame her again...

dave harry says (3:03 AM):
and when she want to me

Paul says (3:03 AM):
still isn't going to cut any ice with me.. you're the adult.

dave harry says (3:03 AM):
i wont any way

Paul says (3:04 AM):
what's more... I know you have her phone number and I'm warning you if you try to contact her by phone, she and I will both notify the police immediately.

dave harry says (3:04 AM):
i dont have her number

dave harry says (3:04 AM):
so how can i

dave harry says (3:05 AM):
so u are in her then

dave harry says (3:05 AM):
i am sorry

dave harry says (3:05 AM):
and when she gets on i will delete her

Paul says (3:05 AM):
She's already blocked and deleted you anyway

dave harry says (3:05 AM):
sweet

dave harry says (3:06 AM):
just seem that a 14 is want sex and cam with any 1

dave harry says (3:06 AM):
any way

dave harry says (3:06 AM):
its cool

Paul says (3:06 AM):
don't keep blaming her, she's a kid and as an adult you're supposed to know better

dave harry says (3:06 AM):
i wont txt/ msg at all

dave harry says (3:06 AM):
its chat

Paul says (3:06 AM):
how can you, you don't have her number

dave harry says (3:07 AM):
maybe she shoud lead guys on like she has

Paul says (3:07 AM):
it's not chat when you offer to j/o off cam... and the law takes a real dim view when you know she's underage

Paul says (3:07 AM):
oh man.. you best block me now.. you're just digging yourself into a deeper hole

dave harry says (3:08 AM):
point 1.... the day i she added me.... why

dave harry says (3:08 AM):
??

dave harry says (3:08 AM):
why??

dave harry says (3:08 AM):
tell me

dave harry says (3:08 AM):
..................................

dave harry says (3:08 AM):
u canrt

dave harry says (3:08 AM):
bye

Paul says (3:08 AM):
you are blaming a 14yo

dave harry says (3:09 AM):
no

dave harry says (3:09 AM):
i am not

Paul says (3:09 AM):
you knew she was 14 yet you still offered to j.o on cam for her

dave harry says (3:09 AM):
why the fck would she add some of that age

Paul says (3:09 AM):
you tried to deny it when I challenged you

dave harry says (3:09 AM):
and why would she lie about her age

Paul says (3:09 AM):
and she's talking to me - and she knows I'm 40

dave harry says (3:10 AM):
i have chatted with her 6 or 7 times and she hasnt told difrent

dave harry says (3:10 AM):
and why would she look at my cam if she was like want some

dave harry says (3:10 AM):
dont make sence

Paul says (3:10 AM):
then you don't need to bother talking to her any more then do you.

dave harry says (3:11 AM):
i wont

dave harry says (3:11 AM):
if she chats with me

dave harry says (3:11 AM):
she will be canned

dave harry says (3:11 AM):
not on

dave harry says (3:12 AM):
dude .... again sorry

dave harry says (3:12 AM):
but at her age why is lead guys on

dave harry says (3:12 AM):
??

Paul says (3:12 AM):
I have an answer to that but you're not going to get it.

dave harry says (3:13 AM):
in ur words

Paul says (3:13 AM):
In my words, I have an answer to your question but I'm not going to give it to you.

dave harry says (3:13 AM):
when?/ where

dave harry says (3:13 AM):
thats poor

dave harry says (3:13 AM):
say it

Paul says (3:14 AM):
There's nothing to say.. she told you she is 14 and you kept on with your chat. You've broken the law now just hope to hell she or I don't report you to Crimestoppers for it.

Paul says (3:15 AM):
we're both pretty familiar with the ceop.gov.uk website too.

dave harry says (3:15 AM):
i am from tasmaina dude,,, not the uk

dave harry says (3:15 AM):
so no

Paul says (3:15 AM):
so yeah... crimestoppes applies right to you...

Paul says (3:15 AM):
1800 333 000.. ring any bells?

dave harry says (3:16 AM):
no

dave harry says (3:16 AM):
why would i

Paul says (3:16 AM):
that's the cop hotline right around Australia

Paul says (3:16 AM):
it's a free call

Paul says (3:17 AM):
anyone can call anonymously...

Paul says (3:17 AM):
There's a website too

dave harry says (3:17 AM):
thanks 4 the tip

Paul says (3:17 AM):
where chatlogs can be uploaded

Paul says (3:17 AM):
am I being clear enough yet?

dave harry says (3:18 AM):
i am here 4 chat

dave harry says (3:18 AM):
and thats all

dave harry says (3:18 AM):
i am pissed and should be in bed

dave harry says (3:18 AM):
i am goin now

dave harry says (3:19 AM):
by the way

dave harry says (3:19 AM):
she been look at me today at net log?? why

Paul says (3:19 AM):
you're married with a kid.. why would you j/o on cam for her?

dave harry says (3:20 AM):
i am going to leave it here

Paul says (3:20 AM):
I bet you are

dave harry says (3:20 AM):
she has been deleted

Paul says (3:20 AM):
say hi to the missus for me

27 years ago...

My brother Christopher was born...

Not a day has passed when I haven't thought about him at least a hundred times.

Social networking sites

Suck.

They do. I've seen more heartache, pain and misery emanating from social networking sites than I've seen in a lot of places for a long time.

The filth are like a hidden army running through those sites, sometimes in packs and often in more than one site at a time, luring kids into god knows what.

Oli's brother grabbed me into one such site and after lurking there for a tad over 6 months now, I've managed to get one kid out of a nest of filth and I hope for all I'm worth I'm not too late to extricate another - and that's not even beginning to address the more than 850 kids who were on John Quan's friends list before the posse hounded him into submission, forced him to hide his MySpace picture, caught him out at Ringo and eventually stole his account. (that was me... lulz!)

Dirty fucking bastard was tricking underage girls into webcam shenanigans.

One bloody site, so many unhappy kids.

But in the midst of it all, and in the back of my mind has been my friends. In particular Oli, Marc and Anton. I've been giving so much of my time to fighting perverts at that shithole that I've been completely absent from those friends I really do love so much. (There's also the slight inconvenience of having to actually go into work and spend 8 or 9 hours at the office which I would otherwise have spent at home being pleasantly distracted, but hell, for double the pay, why not.)

So anyway, the upside of it is there's a bunch of new people to care about, in particular Justin, Andrew, Nick, Sara, Rory, Simon, Alej, Kat, Ray and Sue. It just makes me feel pretty low that I haven't been around at all for Oli, Marc, Wilbur, Mel and - and of course, His Lordship.

OMG!

They've killed Pete Doherty!

Lulz. Those crazy guys.

The things we do...

I joined a couple of groups on Tuesday and now I'm fearing the worst. I met a couple of decent people and had words with one of the admin before we 'parted' on good terms but I also started something there that already looks like it's more than I can handle.

I'd like to do it but I feel too strongly for the friends I have already to even give the appearance of looking at moving on. Anton, Oli, Mel, Seth, Chris, Marc and all the rest mean a great deal to me and this new thing I did on Tuesday would not only demand more time than I am inclined to give it, it would be pretty much in competition with what the crew and I are still hopeful of achieving.

That's about all I feel like making publicly available right now.

Fuck timezone differences.

Uh oh.

I'm getting seriously twitchy about Vanessa Amorosi.

There are some voices that are pure, smooth, bell-like, have a great range etc...

Well, I'm not making any observations about the first three, but range? My GOD!

2000 Olympics rings in my ears, this 19 year old as was performing to an audience of billions and she carried it off just perfectly. Perfectly.

The song of choice, Heroes, could not have been better and I couldn't think of any other artist who could even have performed that song, let alone done it with such emphasis and heart as did Vanessa.

I remember back in the early 80s not thinking anything at all of Madonna. She was, to me anyway, just a slaggy popstar who sang trashy pop songs that I didn't especially like. Then, listening to the radio on my way home one afternoon, I heard the song "Live to Tell" and my mind was blown. That woman has been an idol of mine ever since. I haven't gone ga-ga about all her songs, but even JS Bach did stuff I don't like. But I still respected the woman.

I didn't pay a great deal of attention to the Olympic Games opening ceremony in 2000 either. I did arc up when they announced an obscure artist was going to sing - because I wanted to see who the obscure artist was. (Nicki whatsernamie floating above the arena was just way too creepy for me and I don't like her strangled canary voice either) I was hoping it wasn't going to be her.

Then came the trumpet fanfare, the arena went quiet and this song of enormous pathos filled that space and charged it. The echo, the atmosphere and the aura of anticipation as the subtle beat behind the flow of the lyrics generated the sort of electricity it is impossible to ignore.

Then at the climax, the beat takes over and the lyrics sound out like a clarion call to the essence of humanity. Heroes live forever. And don't they?

What a way to open the biggest competition Earth has to offer. Mindblowing.

And that final burst of Heroes Live Forever - how long is that last note? How many beats? I can only just hold my breath for that long and she's belting out that note like her lungs were about to explode out of her chest and there's not a hint of fade in it.

Just incredible.

And to think, she was just 19. If what she did 7 years ago isn't deserving of admiration and respect, nothing ever was or will be.

In this message, you laugh, you lose.

http://www.netauthority.org/offenders/1863.shtml

I lawled big time.

Netauthority is a byword for racism and aids on the internet. The subtly filthy designs of their website and their IAUP are more hateful than anything I read in Mein Kampf or Machiavelli. The arseholes behind netauthority are the cancer that is killing society. I hope they all fuck off and die today.

They have banned the Wiggles for "hateful content". Yes, The Wiggles. How demented are these people? They also say there were no dinosaurs, God put the fossils there to test man's faith in him. Bitter irony, eh.


Also Bags, since you'd been vanished for 2 years or so, I've lost your contact details. If you wants to catch up, you is going to have to give them to me again. My details are all still the same.

Moar wtf!?

The New York Times is messing with my head.

They're having another crack at Google which makes me seriously doubt the sanity of the people who write these articles.

Where to begin?

1. Google is bigger than its two closest rivals Yahoo and Microsoft - by a longshot.
2. Googling is part of the language now, which I noted previously in this blog.
3. The article talks about search engine startups with alternatives to Google's hyper-secret search algorithm and the nature and content of the returns provided by those alternatives.
4. One of these start ups is boasting a return of 5000 relevant returns for the search term "Paris Hilton". Google returns 59,700,000. Clicking Google's News results returns a further 21,310 results.
   
5. The article talks about little search engines snaffling tiny percentages of users from Google and it crunches some numbers which add up to (potentially) billions of dollars in returns for relatively small capital outlays - making search an attractive business proposition.
   

I suppose the aspect of this article that has set me off is the headline:

The Human Touch That May Loosen Google’s Grip

Pardon me, but BOLLOCKS.

The one line in the entire article with a solid footing in reality didn't appear until the 6th paragraph, towit: "Even gathering the crumbs of business left behind by Google could generate a lofty market capitalization."

Which does not in any way equate with the headline. What Google leaves behind, Google obviously doesn't want.

The article also skirts nimbly around the search terms that might prick the collective conscience of NYTimes readers, namely porn.

Some people, like myself, like to go through the back pages of search results to find off topic returns for a particular search. I wouldn't have found seedsofdoubt.com if I'd just gone looking for what someone else deemed as 'relevant' to my search query which was bush+hitler.

This leads me to feel that whatever you can't get from a Google search, you really oughtn't to be searching for anyway. So where does that leave these potential rivals to Google's superiority?

Either with piss-poor search returns, probably all of which Google would return anyway, or a database full of cp, links for terrorists and goatse. Oh, and 5,000 'relevant' links for Paris Hilton.

Back to the relevance aspect, the article (on page 2) goes on to talk about search engine optimisation.

To those in the trade, outsmarting the algorithm is called “search engine optimization.” For the rest of us, it produces Web pages littered with spam.

Don't include me in your "rest of us", buddy. It doesn't take long to work out which sites are crap and which are going to provide good information. That sort of navigational information also travels like wildfire around the net. Who hasn't heard of The Onion? (Here, have a laugh.)

It also doesn't take much effort to hit the back button or the little red x (top right of the window) to return to the results page and go find another link.

And speaking of being "littered with spam", would it hurt if I mentioned that reading NYTimes articles online is made awkward because of the massive advertisement taking up the right side of the page and the links to 'relevant searches' intruding into the article from the left?

Ok, so at the end of the day, little search start ups might make for themselves some nice tidy profits and set an example or two of what can be achieved if one looks at alternatives. They're incorporating a site ranking by user-vote system, which is nice, but it isn't going to affect the dominance in the market place by the one big search company that is so big because it gives the people what the people want.

All this leaves me wondering why such an esteemed news service is repeatedly waffling garbage when it comes to Google.

Love, ChatRat

Lots of goodies in the news this week...

Top of the list has to go to a zdnet report on the US Homeland Security department with the trojan ridden computers.

The man in charge of IT security for the US Homeland Security department may lose his job after the revelations that his department’s IT systems have misconfigured firewalls, suspicious botnet activity, trojans and virus infections.

In response to reports of persistent cybersecurity flaws at the Department of Homeland Security, a top congressional Democrat on Wednesday questioned whether the agency's chief information officer deserves to keep his job.

Nah, they'll promote the incompetent swat. That's what they do in the public service. Kick them upstairs to get them out of harm's way without provoking the union to a revolt.

Some poor old Aussie spreader of good cheer will serve 15 months in chokey in the U.S. after having been extradited from Oz to LaLaLand for his leading role in the interweb piracy website drinkordie, which was shut down by U.S. Customs and Interference. Poor bastard. Total sentence - 51 months, time already served means he'll be out in time for next year's Melbourne Cup. The silly prat boasted he'd never get caught. PROTIP: Hew; in order not to get caught, you might consider not doing crime.

Finally, the one that is closest to my heart:

This from Reuters:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Putting feelings into words makes sadness and anger less intense, U.S. brain researchers said on Wednesday, in a finding that explains why talking to a therapist -- or even a sympathetic bartender -- often makes people feel better.

I have a massive bent against the destruction of our language at the hands of people either too inept, too lazy or just too uneducated to be considered responsible users of words.

The reason being; if you deprive a person of language, the means to communicate, you remove from them the very essence of what it is to be human.

Misusing the language to the extent it reduces one's own ability to express thoughts and feelings has exactly the same effect. It increases frustration, accentuates isolation and reduces one's efficacy for life in a society which functions because of its use of language.

This cold hard fact is borne out even the Bible! At the fabled Tower of Babel. To thwart the plans of the fabled people to build a tower to an even more fabled Heaven, the fabled god "confused their language."

By not having and appreciating an adequate grasp of language and how fundamental it is on every aspect of our lives, we reduce our understanding of ourselves and each other.

The report goes on...

They said talking about negative feelings activates a part of the brain responsible for impulse control.

"This region of the brain seems to be involved in putting on the brakes," said University of Southern California Los Angeles researcher Matthew Lieberman, whose study appears in the journal Psychological Science.

Putting this into the context of the Virginia Tech shootings and the fact we have since discovered that Cho Seung Hui was an isolate - according to reports quoting people who knew the guy - one might start to realise that communication is fundamental to a healthy society. And that means not just watching tv or getting news from the internet, it means communicating - expressing oneself.

The better a person can communicate their thoughts and feelings to people around them, the better that person will be able to function both as an individual and as part of a broader group.

Erode the means of interaction and you diminish the person. See "1984" for an up to date list of un-words. It's double plus good.

"I think we all believe that by talking about our feelings, we reach deep new insights, and that understanding is what transforms us,"

"It's not just the deep thoughts," (Lieberman) said. "It's something about the way we are built."

Amen!

Now, this report was not specifically about humans and language, how language helps us identify our own thoughts and feelings as well as those of the people around us, it was a report on the findings of a study conducted on 18 women and 12 men.

What they found is that when people attached a word like angry to an angry-looking face, the response in the amygdala portion of the brain that handles fear, panic and other strong emotions decreased.

I've been trying to explain this to a number of my younger friends that emotions do respond to intellect, rather than the other way around, and thinking improves with practice. Thinking, as distinct from feeling, is generally done in our minds using words. Continual improvement in skill at using language facilitates better understanding, comprehension and communication. It makes us more "human".

Technorati?

Announcement!

I'm not usually given to devoting much time to politics except to rant about some particularly offensive bit of bullshit, and I certainly don't give much of an airing to matters of a political nature in this blog. Having said that, I was poking around the interweb tonight in pursuit of enlarging my substantial knowledge of all things Nazi Germany when I chanced upon letters addressed to Hitler emanating from the Watchtower and Bible Tract Society, Magdeburg.

Cutting to the chase, I arrived at the blog of one Mr Doug Ross.

So impressed was I that I've added a link over there on the right.

Ok, announcement over. For those of you who want to see what else I found whilst lurking about the wires, here's one for all of you who think there is any difference in politicians just because of the date or the skill of their speechwriters.

I lol'd.

The imdb mini-bio of Hitler contains more than its fair share of misinformation and doesn't cite any of its sources.

And here's a picture I found at this url...

http://www.seedsofdoubt.com/images/monkeys-new-ag.jpg (I love the pic title.)

Google maps

I find it slightly peculiar that sections of Baghdad are unavailable for viewing at higher resolutions and the map mode has no roads, town names or names on any other geographical features.

You have to go to Turkey before they start putting labels on things.

You can look at the refinery in high res mode, you can look at Baghdad suburbs and the government buildings bits, but you can't look at the market areas in high res.

Fallujah - forget it. It's like looking at a jigsaw puzzle with two thirds of the pieces missing.

Coincidence?

Oh dear...

Reuters has added to the long long list of U.S. foreign relations disasters breaking the news about the Bush administration's funding of the Fatah Party in Palestine.

If this link doesn't work, and this one also doesn't work, then someone is trying to bury this story. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to get a link, the better not to bother with copypasta, but when I went back for it less than a minute later, it had vanished and I had to dive into archives to get it back again.

Here's the first paragraph anyway...

By Jonathan Saul

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Tuesday Washington's support for the Palestinian Fatah group and the blocking of aid to Gaza were part of a mistaken policy aimed at dividing Palestinians.

Ok, so Jimmy Carter wasn't the best ever President, but is there anyone who's going to disagree that Bush is the worst ever - and by a country mile?

In other news, two weeks old now, but who cares about that anyway, the L.A. Times (from New York to L.A. - reminds me of a song I heard once when I was a kid...) had this to say in support of my aversion to porn and music download websites...

Whatever threat online pornography might pose to society's morals, online music might pose a bigger threat to society's computers.

A study scheduled to be released today found that about 9% of adult sites that turned up high in search-engine rankings had such PC-damaging problems or annoyances as spyware, adware and spam associated with them.

Yet searching for digital music was twice as risky — more than 19% of the sites produced by such queries were risky for computer users, according to the study by McAfee Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based company that makes computer-security software.

Actually, that report reminds me of the replies I get from PayPal, Bank of America, Chase Bank and iwf.org when I send them notifications of interweb nastiness. I did get a bit of a grin after reading the first sentence, though.

We can see newsreel footage of all manner of carnage and killing, but the world caves in on itself if someone sees a pair of tits or some full on rumpy pumpy. What is the matter with some people?

Did Salman Rushdie come out of hiding and risk a drubbing to get his dubbing?

Eighteen years after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill him, a government minister in Pakistan (Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz ul-Haq) said yesterday that Rushdie's recent knighthood justified suicide bombing.

Suicide bombing of whom, where and, above all, WHY?

Oh, of course; ul-Haq is RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS MINISTER. These fucking imbeciles make me cringe for the 99% of muslims who wouldn't hurt anyone. Speaking of religious nutbags, I tripped over this little number yesterday.

Their address?

Museum and Research Center
10946 Woodside Ave. North
Santee, CA 92071 <---------<--------<---- California. Could there have been any doubt? (619) 448-0900 (General Office) (800) 628-7640 (Customer Service) info@icr.org


Why am I doing this at 5 in the fucking morning???

WTF?

Just reading the New York Times Technology supplement today, and I had to wonder almost aloud, whether or not there's anything unusual in the water coolers up there.

Click here to read it for yourselves; I can't bring myself to do the copypaste thing because it's a great big page of absolutely nothing.

I clicked a couple of the links away from the page, most notably, this blog, which also left me completely underwhelmed.

The Times has really gone downhill lately.

Something of an anomaly for editorial staff who produce snippets of this sort of calibre to allow the above headscratcher to appear in the same paper on the same day.

Ok, I also plundered the Boston Globe and grinned persistently at two items therein.

Firstly, there is no excuse needed for this sort of behaviour

Secondly, there is no excuse possible for this.

Reqwests plz

can u get a folder of your longcat pictures and send them too me please

There are 369 of the bloody things on my machine. Was there anything else you wanted me to do over the next fkn week while I'm there?

At least you said "please".

Sorry, but we censor after all.

Shucks, did the home of free speech on the internet get forced to remove pr0ns from their messageboard again?

Gee... too bad.

btw, what was the ip banning thing all about? Wasn't I supposed to be in there or something?

Google vs Microsoft

This is a battle that verges on the absurd.

Here's a quote from today's edition of the New York Times...

Google has accused Microsoft of designing its latest operating system, Vista, to discourage the use of Google’s desktop search program, lawyers involved in the case said.

Is anyone surprised? Has Microsoft done anything right since it replaced Windows 98? A little further on, we read...

Google complained to federal and state prosecutors that consumers who try to use its search tool for computer hard drives on Vista were frustrated because Vista has a competing desktop search program that cannot be turned off. When the Google and Vista search programs are run simultaneously on a computer, their indexing programs slow the operating system considerably, Google contended. As a result, Google said that Vista violated Microsoft’s 2002 antitrust settlement, which prohibits Microsoft from designing operating systems that limit the choices of consumers.

And therein lies the absurdity.

Google has its own entry in Webster's dictionary of the English language. It's viewed with such favour and positive sentiment, the company name has become part of our collective social psyche. Google is the new "sliced bread". On the other hand, all things Microsoft are regarded with such scorn and derision that unless they embark on something radically different from their current path, it'll go the same way as IBM. It'll become a shadow.

Microsoft and Windows will become by-words for shit. They already are to those in the know. MSN search will never be regarded as anything but second rate and nobody is ever going to say "MSN it." I mean, we're going to Google stuff on Altavista! Google means search.

Google taking Microsoft to court for anti-trust violations is just ridiculous. It looks like money-grubbing. It's the sort of thing we'd expect from Fox News. Windows doesn't work, Vista is the worst system they've produced in years. Your shit doesn't work on Windows - nobody's shit works on Windows. Windows is a dog's breakfast.

However, the Google toolbar is useful, it's unobtrusive, convenient - and best of all, it doesn't need Windows or Microsoft to run. If the Google toolbar doesn't run on Windows Vista, as appears to be the case, it's just another certain step Microsoft is taking towards its own demise brought about by corporate arrogance. If they were smart, they'd just tweak the damn package and let it run the Google Toolbar - even use it as a selling point.

Oh yes yes I know they want to make money with their own search crap as well but as I've already said, we're never going to MSN it, we're always going to Google it. If they were smart, they'd charge Google a fee for having their toolbar pre-installed on Microsoft's products.

Google, for its part, should forget about Microsoft and just have some quiet whispers in the ears of the boffins at Apple. 1 virus in 30 years compared to 300,000 + in the history of the p.c.?

The judge in the case seems to agree, the case was thrown out.

How's yer arse, Dwight?

Do not provoke the Anonymous Army, Mr Silverman.

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/

Too late!

Must keep an eye on this for the next couple of days as well whilst the hoards of Caturday Lovers descend upon the Houston Chronicle website in all their fury at the exposing of one of their treasured private haunts.

The complaint - everything you love, everything you hold dear and sacred, will be appropriated, mishandeled, repackaged, and sold to the people you hate - is a valid complaint too.

Anonymous does as Anonymous pleases and that's not always to the benefit of pussywhipped socially conditioned robots who do as their lord and master Rupert Murdoch commands. What they like most is to be left alone and anonymous, not have battalions of curious Christian missionaries complaining everytime someone posts porn or says horrible things about... well, everything really... and then trying to have the site shut down.

Anonymous hates desperate housewives and Kathy Sierra types who prefer their interwebs to be full of flowers and niceness and aren't-you-so-sweets kind of puke.

Unfortunately for Dwight Silverman, he's blundered into a nest of bullants and left a trail of breadcrumbs to Anon H.Q. and there's already talk of a raid.

I bet that's one full up inbox he's dealing with this morning.

In true Tony Hart style?

Yes, that's what she said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W_gInR3gXs#s_X2IS_KMTM

There is a short series of other hopeful submissions for the logo of the 2012 Olympic Games being held in London, and the backing music for it is taken from the old kids' tv art show, Take Hart - which I used to watch when I got home from school. (It's where I first heard Cavatina, for those who delight in useless bits of social clutter.)

Anyway, the first alternative picture they trot out is a showstopper.

The comments beneath the video itself are even funnier than the video. I will return to this tomorrow and see how many more people have left evidence of their extreme amusement. As I watch though, the related links section just grows and grows and Goatse is going to be as famous as YouTube by the end of the week, it would seem.

Would the real Sean Scayte please stand up!

Jumpin Jack Cruise

Werd in da hood is that Elron "Jackboots" Hubbard's loony master race has taken exception to stuff that has been said about the increasingly weird cult known as The Church of Scientology.

Well, as it happens, I know what pisses the cultists off more than anything else and it's pictures of Big L's handwriting being bandied about by people like me who think... correction ... who KNOW that Xenu is the biggest acid-tripping wankfest that ever was or will be.

The Wikipedia entry on it is hysterical.

Let's go clear about this: Hubbard was a con-artist. His followers are ALL fools. Level 9 in the hierarchical maelstrom is nothing short of deranged paranoia brought on by drug induced psychosis.

Are all you Scientologists wigging out yet?

Just wait! There's moar!

Someone in your organisation has been fighting tooth and nail to shut down any website that exposes the truth about Scientology. The number one taboo is putting up images of Elron Bastard's handwriting. Wonder why...



Come and get me, Tom. (just for the lulz, you understand.)

As soon as your fuck knuckle buddies see what I've done here, as no doubt they will because the P&A Liars Team will doubtless point it out - Trevor's the creepiest freak yet to be incarcerated - they'll appeal to blogger to have me cease and desist for whatever mongy reason the CoS legal department deems fit. Just like they did with codebot.org last year. http://theunfunnysequel.ytmnd.com/

So here's some moar of the same scribble from the same bent page as the one above...

It says:

Data (1) (1)
The head of the Galactic
Confederation (76 planets around
larger stars visible from here)
(founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera)
solved overpopulation (250 billion
or so per planet) -- 178 billion
average) by mass implanting.
He caused people to be brought to
Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bomb
on the principal volcanoes (Incident 2)
and then the Pacific area ones
were taken in boxes to Hawaii
and the Atlantic Area ones to
Las Palmas and there "packaged."
His name was Xenu. He used
renegades. Various misleading
data by means of circuits etc.
were placed in the implants.
When through with his crime Loyal Officers
(to the people) captured him
after 6 years of battle
and put him in an electronic
mountain trap where he still
is. "They" are gone. The place (Confed.)
has since been a desert.

Good God almighty! How could any sane person take this shit seriously?

Oh, they don't. They deny this shit until you're deemed insane enough to believe it and you prove your insanity by giving them millions of dollars to take the anti mental health training. (Or jumping on furniture on television, right Tom?)

Lermanet has been fighting the evil Choich for quite a while and apparently it was all over the public display of snippets of Hubbard's barely legible scrawl. Praps it's because it's amazingly similar in scrawlage quality to that of Adolf Hitler - although his signature is somewhat more elegant - almost gay. Have a look at it at the bottom of this begging letter he posted in 1947.

He wasn't well. As this shopping list of complaints will illustrate.

Speaking of not well, click here to see "a day in the life of an Operating Thetan at level 7." I imagine this is how Trevor spends most days too.

So why am I bringing this up all of a sudden?

Well, as I mentioned right at the start, The CoS has taken exception to stuff being said about it on the interwebs and they've apparently had websites shut down and without going through the legal and proper channels to do so.

They've upset Anonymous.

Anonymous is rounding up his mates.

That means it's party time!

*edit* It has begun! As requested by comment:

http://www.theargus.co.uk/display.var.1422841.0.0.php

There are of course shitloads more links exposing the Choich of Scientonomy for what it really is but you can find those for yourself by googling them.

Messages

Some I don't like getting, most I don't like leaving, some I really don't like not receiving.

Especially when I've grown somewhat accustomed to receiving them. Sometimes sending them is a huge thrill. Just saying "Hey, job well done!" and getting a nice "Thanks" in reply is all it takes to make hours of trawling through one's inbox an activity worth doing.

The most recent is still the reply I got from Massachusetts Democratic Representative, Brad Hill over driver licen(s)ing reforms and it's on my mind because Victoria's own Premier, Steve Bracks was over there earlier this month.

Had I been awake to his trip before he went, I would have got in contact with him to discuss the issue with Mr Hill.

I rang Sarah today and left a message for her. The accent still makes me laugh. I was going to get on messenger tonight but Denton interviewed Richard E Grant and it was the best interview I've seen in a long time. Denton is a brilliant interviewer. So too, it seems is Richard Grant. It was a real tennis match of an interview, but hilarious.

Enough Rope is the show, sux not to get it if you're not in Aus. :)

It was a lovely weekend the one just gone. Andrew in Brisbane sent me a link which I passed on to Will in Canada who had just closed the site as I popped the link up. Freaked him out.

Seems the bloke with whom Andrew shares was poking around on Digg and some person to whom Will was talking was also poking around in Digg and they both saw the same link, passed it to Andrew and Will respectively and Andrew passed it to me and I passed it to Will.

Small world.

Then, of course, there was the inevitable discussion about The River (lmao!) and Will declaring it never happened because he hadn't seen it and then I found the vid of it on YouTube.

RIVER! Is now a meme.

Now, if only I can impart the joys of faits accompli to someone who hasn't yet had the life experience to be able to understand the absolute supremacy of faits accompli over pre-emptive strikes.

Ah yes.. messages, messages, messages...

OMGOMGOMG! KING TRIGGER!!

For those of you who are old enough to cast your minds back to 1982, do so immediately. It was the birth of the alternative music scene and the age of the one hit wonder bands who got their ambition from Patrick Hernandez.

In the midst of the birthing pangs of Madonna's career, Abba's transformation from mindless pop to more meaningful songs, Elton John doing a video in cartoon fashion because no club at the end of the street would let him film it there and way before Billy Joel went walking in his sleep in the middle of the night, there was...

THE RIVER!

Forget Devo, forget Madness and their Baggy Trousers, forget Our House in whatever part of the street. All parvenus.

King Trigger came along in 1982 and with one song told them all to go fuck themselves. This song is the trump card of music that beats the shit out of all those sad deadhearted old farts who just don't get it.

And if you "don't get" this song, you really have no right to be exploring the wild frontiers of cyber space. Seriously. Go back to Yahoo or wherever you came from and swap avatars and tofu recipes and look at Homes & Garden online until the nursing home staff come to fetch you from pools of your own effluent.

The campaign is afoot to re-release this song. I won't say the best song ever, but it's right up there. It's the song they tried to bury because they couldn't understand it. Couldn't understand that THERE WAS NOTHING TO UNDERSTAND.

It was the ultimate 'up yours' to everything, from its style, its beat and its lyrics and especially the video clip.

It raeps the big name bands and artists and at the same time it mocks those crappy songs we had to sing in kindergarten. It's a Round with a disco beat. Cop that!

The River, by King Trigger goes beyond the ability of mere words to encompass it's awesomeness. To describe this song as merely awesome is to do it the most heinous injustice.

I am in awe of the sheer scale of the awesomeness of this song and the video clip which went with it.

The video is epic. It has an inflatable dinghy, a double barreled storm water drain, a fat man with his face painted, holding an umbrella and jumping around in his underpants, it has a scantily clad Jamaican woman, an animated crocodile and lots of other things as well. You should watch it and be swept away by it.

Here's the Youtube link. Copy this and keep it in your browsers for safe keeping. Just as Abba will never die, this song is going to haunt your dreams from now until you die. (Just in a good way, not in an Abba kind of way.)

*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------*
|                                                                                   |
|  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5tLpzVZi-0         |
|                                                                                   |
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

If you dislike this song, don't understand it, don't get it or can't see it, I want you to get the fuck off my internet right now.

About time!

Give that judge a pay rise.

No, give them both a massive pay rise. Give them a million dollar bonus as well for not only being sensible, being honourable and being judicious - but just for doing what was bloody RIGHT.

And more than that, they've set a precedent for lower courts which, if all goes well in Queensland, will prevent the sort of fucked up stupidity, blindness and moral and intellectual bankruptcy which saw the case end up in the court of appeal in the first place.

My hat is off to appeal court judges Margaret McMurdo and Anthe Phillippides.

District Court judge Brabazon can go fuck his poodle and may the fleas of a thousand camels infest his rotten stinking arse hole.

Strange politics

Before I get into that, the message I posted earlier today about the disturbing video has now had 306 reader comments appended to it.

Ooh, everyone's so appalled. How utterly predictable.

Some poor saps at Rupert HQ have had to sit there and read through all that, moderate and then post those comments to the website. No wonder advertising's expensive.

Anyway, I got this message in my inbox at MySpace - the one into which the filth tried unsuccessfully to gain admittance.

It reads thusly...

The Full Implications of what Ron Paul Proposes

Dear Friends,

A disturbing trend has developed here on MySpace and on other social networks that are currently beyond the control of the DHS: peer-to-peer support for a presidential candidate that intends to destroy the economic fabric of the United States. In the past, you have accepted our responsibility for selecting preapproved candidates for you to choose between, but with Ron Paul you are selecting someone outside of the preapproval process. Since you seem to want to take responsibility for this upon yourself, you should be aware of the full implications of Ron Paul's platform.

If elected as president, Ron Paul would have the means necessary to bring the executive branch of the United States federal government to within constitutional limits. This precludes the possibility of an Internal Revenue Service, a Department of Homeland Security, military action outside of wars officially declared by Congress, and hidden government agendas.

Perhaps that doesn't sound so bad to you, but you should be aware that all of the departments and actions Ron Paul proposes to do away with have one thing in common: they are necessary for your paycheck. Whether you like it or not, you are part of the world's biggest pyramid scheme. You can only get money in this system by paying up the chain of authority and trying to recoup your investment from those below you. The likelihood of your success depends on how well the unconstitutional agencies and actions of the federal government can force others to join the bottom of the pyramid through puppet governments, military threats, economic pressure, etc.

Through your taxes and other withholdings, you have already paid tens of thousands of dollars into this pyramid. In fact, most of the purchase price of any product goes directly into the revenue streams of investors rather than to the people who help create it. If we can get the people of the Middle East and Asia on board, you will be a primary recipient of the fruits of their labor. Do you really want to destroy the pyramid now that we are on the verge of adding millions of people to your revenue stream?

Please read my blog and consider the full implications of your actions before deciding to support Ron Paul.

Cyber Terrorism


Thank you for your time and consideration,

The Department of Homeland Security

Can't reply, their profile is friends only. My profile is friends only as well. That's to keep filth like Trevor out of it. I flagged the message as spam though so I guess they won't have long to be posting from MySpace.

For those who've been waiting for me to get on messenger for the last two days, my apologies. I've been otherwise occupied. I know you're all anxious for things to get moving but I'm trying to snare a nice little six month gig out of town and that's where my focus has been. There's always email so if you're that edgy about it all, use that.

Rupert catches up to the rest of us.

The commercial news networks seem finally to have cottoned on to what the rest of the internet has been discussing for at least the last two weeks and they've worked out how to present it to the audience of casual internet surfers.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21783123-2,00.html

Meanwhile, those of us who practically live in this medium have seen the video of the rather brutal execution of 29 men, 27 of whom were apparently involved in the execution by stoning of the 17 year old girl, Du'a Khalil.

If the stoning were brutal, the massacre of those 29 men was inhuman. They were laid face down on the ground and shot repeatedly by angry young men weilding the almost trademark weapon of the middle east, the AK-47. An inefficient way of carrying out an execution to be sure, that's why it took them 4 attempts before the job was completed.

I know you're wondering if I'm going to give you a link. I'm not. This may not be a family blog and I'm never going to pretend to be some sort of saint, but a murder by an angry mob is one thing, cold blooded and clumsy murder in that fashion raises an age old spectre of racism that I'm not willing to spread around. The term "sub-human" comes to mind.

When people all around the world decide to focus on building, sharing and fostering instead of destroying, converting and killing, I think this sort of occurrence will become an embarrassing aspect of human history. It won't happen in my lifetime, but it has to happen sooner or later.

People build. It's what we do. Governments and governing bodies, whether they're secular or religious, destroy. That's what they do.

It's why I seldom vote.

Professional lawl - idiots fight it.

The best and most effective ads ever are the ones the authorities try to ban. In the UK, an anti-smoking campaign ad has provoked the ire of too many softcocks for it to remain dull.

The fight about the ad is spreading its consumption like wildfire, far moreso than if the protesters had just shut their gobs and not tried to fight the lawl.

Or maybe some brilliant savvy ad-guru hit the jackpot by organising complaints against their own ad, thereby lighting the fuse to this stick of viral marketing dynamite. Who knows? Who cares.

I liked the paragraph that appeared in News.com.au's weekly wrap, though...

Back to more serious stuff, hardcore UK anti-smoking posters showing men and women with fish hooks through their mouths attracted one of the highest number of complaints the country's advertising standards watchdog has ever received, and had us asking whether they would scare you into quitting. Close to 150 readers wrote in - some said the ads were lame, while others said they were put off fishing for ever.

They just haven't had a beautiful little shark on their lines yet. :)

150 readers... meh. That's about the size of the typing pool at Clemengers.

More lawl. Don't fight it.

QUOTE
You stupid bitch, that's a satirical cover of the original. We are talking about the original NON-SATIRE piece by Fergie.You really are a fucking moron, Swords.

Completely unnecessary, Henry. What the hell is wrong with you lately?

The prima donna queen of Liars Team HQ objects when the site founder speaks the truth. Good God!

Well, Coral, she's not just a stupid bitch, she's a two-faced, ignorant, creep as well. She fits right in at Liars Team HQ. Still on about credit card details too, I see. Amazing really, given the fact what I posted is exactly the same info as the plonker himself posted in a Battlestar Gallactica fail forum. You're all just pissed off because Bint said she paid for something and I provided evidence to show she was lying to all of you.

Bint or Plonk posted a message on one of my other blogs a few months ago after I made mention of certain police activity in which I was involved in order to round up some baddies north of my place. Well, today, because of what I did, they were rounded up. If you like, I'll try to find details of it on the internet when it comes out so you can all eat even more of your own words.

Just say the word - any word, doesn't matter, I'll take it as an emphatic wish to see the evidence.

What's up with the headline, Rupert?

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21748407-2,00.html

US uni massacre game website taken down

... screams the headline.

But scroll further down the page (or this blog) and you'll see that the "other" website still making the game available is alive and well.

It's author had this to say...

Author's comments:

LOL my site is down because they got too many
angry emails and they wont put it back up with
vtech still on it. Atleast Newgrounds still believes in
freedom of speech, thanks.

Love the attitude!

War in Iran in a month?

Whispers out of China say there is enough evidence to impeach Bush for an illegal invasion of Iraq.

No surprises there, but the same whisper (not actually from China, but apparently in Idaho) says Dubs is preparing to invade Iran and it's going to happen in just a few short weeks.

The source is a journalist, can't drop his name, and he knew about the first invasion of Iraq months before anyone else - even though it was fairly bloody obvious it was going to happen anyway. But it's one thing to see the writing on the wall, it's another to start bandying dates about.

Cheney is already sucking up Mubarek's arse in Cairo, ostensibly talking about stability in Iraq but also talking about Iran's nuclear policies, blah blah security blah aiding insurgents blah.

Coincidence?

I can't speak for the reliability of The Star though it would be pretty dumb to make up a report about Cheney being in Egypt having cosy fireside chats with Mubarek, but there are other sources out there promulgating all kinds of crap concerning Bush's war in the middle east.

This report in globalresearch.ca is 5 months old and parts of it are laughable. Or they would be if we didn't know Bush better. The bit about lawyers representing Guantanamo prisoners was interesting given what fate we know has befallen Major Michael Mori. On the surface though, globalresearch just looks like yet another paranoid racist hatesheet spreading bilge through the internet like any other fundy left wing blot on the journalistic landscape. Check out their latest news headlines and you'll get the idea. Wonder why I haven't seen them before...

Anyway, if there hasn't been some sort of action in Iran by the end of June, I'll wipe the last remaining brownie points from the tally of my source. If it does happen, you heard it here first.

Virginia Tech shooting game.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/378086

And now the media is all over this one as well. Not just in Australia where the guy who made it lives - Sydney - but I hear it's on the other side of the pond as well.

Kicking myself for not posting the link to this when I first saw it a couple of days ago. It's always nice to know about what the media is going to complain before they actually start complaining.

The author's comments were epic, though...

"I wouldn't have the balls to do this if I lived in America."

GOD BLESS AUSTRALIA!!

p.s. One of the sites where this game is being hosted has already been suspended. I have to confess, I do like the backing track and the game is not much different from any other game involving the shooting of... well... of anyone, actually.

And I said before, doing stuff like this IS how some people deal with it. Mock misery. Go to your local video shop, look in the sci-fi section and the STTNG series and get "Skin of Evil". Sadly, it's the episode in which Tasha Yar dies, but Troi's conversation with Armus is illuminating, if not entirely trite.

Creeeeeeeep

Isn't anyone perplexed as to why "paul" is okay with these convos being posted here?


Good grief! Why on earth wouldn't Paul be ok with it?

Swords, you're turning out to be creepier than Ergo and that's really saying something.

Dear Princess Thicky,

Years ago, I used to watch The Young Ones (who didn't) and I saw the episode wherein Neil joined the police force and became in the English vernacular, The Filth. "Open up, it's the pigs..."

The Filth to which I made reference has nothing whatsoever to do with the Old Bill, sweetheart, and if you were more interested in the context of that conversation rather than on what spin you might put on any part of it, it wouldn't take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out I wasn't talking about the Old Bill, I was talking about people like Trevor and Atmo - you know, FILTH.

Also, there was once a website which contained essay and exam cheats but it was shut down because someone stole exam papers and posted them on the website. I don't have plans quite that ambitious, but I do have plans to post content that will help students get through their highschools' coursework because, frankly, my opinion of formal education practices is that they are worse than criminal and any enterprise which gives victims of that system an edge is a good thing.

Naturally, it must be kept away from the prying eyes of the establishments, but because I envisage young person activity going on around that particular area of the site, I foresee the advent of perverts - and I will do everything I possibly can to keep those perverts (The Filth) from getting access to those areas of the site.

Oli knew what I was talking about, strange that "intelligent adults" couldn't figure it out.

Oh, I know why... it's because you're all perverts and all you think about is sex. One of your filth scanned the conversation transcript for creepiness. Shows where that brainless turd gets its jollies, huh.

Henry read the whole thing and responded with "very entertaining" and "ROFL". Kudos to him, even if he did misunderstand what was going on. It must have been a supreme disappointment to the filth at Liars Team HQ that the conversation didn't contain any subtle hints or other instances of interaction you might find posted at Monticello forums. Strange to say, none of my conversations have anything that would remotely interest them.

Only you.

And you proceeded to turn an entertaining debate about the difference between learning and teaching into something sexual and seedy. I can't help it if your minds are in the gutter. It sorta becomes the norm when you associate with people who can't get their minds out of the gutter at all. In a nutshell, you are sad, boring, limited, predictable and pathetic.

And I did have to laugh with Oli when he happened to mention tonight that the once proudly uncensored paragon of freedom of speech on the internet, Liars Team HQ, is now MODERATED!

Cheri would be so proud of you all - if she could get her own mind out of the gutter that is.

*edit!*

This time, someone posts a slightly creepy conversation, and we point that out (and laugh at it). And apparently this means we're "pwned".

Um... pardon me for being obtuse, but the purpose of the original message was to get a response to the proposition that teaching is a waste of time, that learning is the important activity and teachers are not a prerequisite to learning. The purpose of the message wasn't to guage how creepy the conversation was.

You don't need me to pwn you, you do it perfectly adequately yourself. And I suggested to Oli that what you've done is exactly what would happen.

Toodle pip, idiots. See you at the NEXT set up.

Will it happen?

Disgruntled ex-burger flipper says:

Moar raids

Just sitting patiently and waiting for things to happen and watching with mild amusement as they do.

On one hand, THEY who saged that bullshitting cow's blog a month or so ago are now saging the Strawberry Shortcake of internet communities.

The owner of the site, instead of just cleaning up the mess and banning the perpetrators had to go and fight the lawl. Now the whole /b/ army is on his case and they won't rest until they've brought the site crashing down.

These are the same people who have somewhat disrupted the normal day to day functioning of white supremacist internet radio thing, Hal Turner.

Turner Radio Main Site Back soon

I am doing some work on the name servers that handle my sites. Both my main site www.HalTurnerShow.com and www.TurnerRadioNetwork.com are presently unavailable but will be back within 24-48 hours.

http://turnerradionetwork.blogspot.com/

Don't bet on it Hal baby. In a nutshell, if they wish it, your shit is history.

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Hal_Turner


So too is Subeta. For the record, I didn't do anything to that Sierra woman before she spread her lies - which pissed me right off, btw, and I haven't touched Hal Turner's bits either. I also haven't done diddly to Subeta but I happen to enjoy watching it happen. I like watching the momentum build, the organisation take place, the zip files get swapped, thousands of passwords getting shared amongst enthusiastic supporters and the owners of those sites tearing their hair out trying to make it all stop.

The most enjoyable part is the bloke who owns the site, Trevor, is Trevor. The Trevors of this world just seem to be made of aids and fail. And who am I to stand in the way of sage and win?

And while I'm about, talking about things that are happening, have happened and may happen if I play my cards well enough, it just occured to me, after reading Eric Norlin's blog, that even though Web 2:0 (wtf is it anyway?) has only just been hushed up for being such a massive failure, Web 3:0 will be internet service provided by invitation only and will use a closed network of servers. The kids are already running their own servers, it won't be long before they work out how to build their own networks separate from those under the watchful eyes of Party Van drivers.

Web 3:0 or you're living in the past, people.

Will Smith :: Messages

News of the death of Will Smith does the rounds - again.

Messages of condolence and OMGWTF are following close behind.

I can't make up my mind which is funnier - the news itself, the "Farewell Fresh Prince" messages or how shitty they're all getting trying to convince everyone that he's not actually dead at Smith's official website.

Will Smith :: Messages

It's the 2nd time in as many months that Will Smith has died.

I would so love to be a fly on the wall when someone does it and then finds out it's true.

OMG You killed Will Smith! You bastards!

When shit happens...

Call /b/

Now don't get all shitty with me for posting this here. I didn't make it, the Anonymous post message is bodgy and yada yada yada.

The news of the postings to the board has surfaced and one news site carrying the story of the posting of messages and images like the one above has already been taken down.

Or at least, it had been when I tried to have a look at it.

http://www.planetblacksburg.com/2007/04/sick_internet_joke_or_real_thing.php

This one is still up...

http://www.thestar.com/StarPM/article/204030


Well, you can see for yourself exactly what the "sick internet joke" was and yes, it was a joke.

Sick?

Fuck off.

The following screed may not be terribly eloquent in form, but in feeling it's louder than the sum of its words. (Caps in original.)

THIS IS THE SHIT WHAT US MEDIA WANTS
THEY ARE CELEBRATING ON THIS INCIDENT
THIS IS SELLING MILLIONS

FUCK YOUR "RIGHTS" TO BUY WEAPONS NEXT TO VEGETABLES AND MILK.
NO WEAPONS - NO SHOOTINGS

FUCK YOU

Who are you to wave your finger? So full of it.
Eyeballs deep in muddy waters Fuckin' hypocrite.

Liar, lawyer, mirror, show me.
What's the difference?

Do you think it's too soon to laugh at the latest tragedy? If so, how long do you think we should wait? A week? A month? A year? Never? Perhaps you might be generous enough to allow individuals to decide for themselves if, when and how they choose to deal with Cho Seung-Hui's actions.

There are some who are ridiculing the man and his actions already. Those same people are angry at the concept of going to a grocery store to buy milk, vegetables and a Glock 9mm.

The media are picking over Cho's dorm room, his classmates' myspace pictures of the victims, his writings - you name it. They're circling like vultures looking for the latest bit of soft underbelly to splat before the eyeballs of those with the ad-buying budgets.

The news items are screaming that Cho wrote "violent plays". FFS, didn't they go see The Matrix? Full Metal Jacket? Shakespeare wrote violent plays!

Now, you tell me what's sick: The picture at the top or the "respected" media outlets falling all over themselves for that exclusive bit of information about Cho Seung-Hui?

Addendum to something...

I was intending to have my last word on Kathy "Helen Darville/Demidenko" Sierra by mentioning one of the comments left on her blog which was "IMMA KILL YOU" repeated about 30 times and signed by Sage@desu.com because it's another meme and it really is bloody funny.
I know I've typed that somewhere before, maybe here but unsuccessfully or perhaps on one of my other blogs. (I'm only updating 3 now, not 5 and the other 2 are friends only.) Or it may be here and visible, I haven't scrounged thoroughly enough.

The reason I'm bringing it up is because her stupid story has assumed a halflife of its own and grown bigger than any of the people involved, indeed bigger than all involved combined.

That IMMA KILL YOU meme made me laugh embarrassingly loudly because the other places I've seen that meme posted almost to the point of it being annoying have as much regard for "codes of conduct" or "internet decorum" or any other Sunday School brand of niceness as a plague of locusts has for the people whose crops they're destroying, thereby consigning those people to slow death by starvation.

Those people who post that sort of thing are people I admire for their boundless creativity, their indomitable joie de vivre, and their unspoken creed that if you take yourself seriously on the internet, you are essentially, an idiot waiting to become an hero. And being an hero is another meme upon which the likes of Scoble and the "Curtail the Lawl" deadhearted cronies would frown for ever.

*Edit* I can't wait, it's just too funny to resist. Sleep can wait...

These might be old news to you, I don't care. You might find them offensive, I care even less. In fact, if they do offend you, I win.

Do you get it yet?

That picture of the cocaktoo in the linkages bit is still my favourite one of all though. I love it because of its unreasonableness. An unreasonableness which reflects the attitude of those who created it and continue to post it. The Anonymous army whose sole reason for being on the internet is to make a mockery of everything at which they can point a mouse. They live to offend the sensibilities, to eliminate boundaries without breaking the law (well, not too much anyway) and to make their world a bigger place where the price of admission is your ability to laugh at yourself.

Those other pictures are just samples of what goes on where I like to hang out.

The removal of all the all the incriminating evidence is annoying to them. If you can't provide links or pictures, as far as they're concerned, it didn't happen. To do what Kathy Sierra did, if they cared enough to bother with her - which obviously at least one did - well, she's lucky she didn't provoke a full on feeding frenzy. But once the Kathy Sierra Meme gets going...

LOL WUT!

Will Kathy Sierra Darville become An Hero?

Are we offended yet?

Are we feeling threatened yet?

Or is it clear there is no threat, no intention of being threatening, it's just pushing those boundaries, the limits on the freedom to think of these things and share them with like minded people for the purpose at laughing at (Heaven forbid) anything and everything including ourselves.

If you still don't get the idea...

The curse of the hanging blog

Right click, blog this!

Yes that's how I managed to get this 'update', for want of a better word, to happen.

I know I'm not the only one having a hard time logging into Blogger either. What I want to know is what the hell Google did to the place when they made it more betterer because the old Blogger was doing pretty damn well for the 6 years I've been using it and the instant Google bought it, things have been going wrong.

Can't log in, can log in but can't post, can post but can't publish... wtf!

Out of beta and into the hanging screen of blogless death.

Anyway, now that I'm here in spirit if not in physical presence, what I wanted to blog about was a report in today's Boston Globe about playgrounds.

Yes, playgrounds.

On the third page of the report, the following paragraph appears...

"And in the past 11 years, working with tens of thousands of volunteers and various corporate partners, the nonprofit organization KaBOOM! has built nearly 1,200 playgrounds all over North America, using a collaborative method in which local children help design the playgrounds that are going up in their neighborhoods."

Eliciting input from children to help design playgrounds?

Strikes me as being similar to asking an obese person to construct a slimmer's dietary regimen.

I'm curious to know what sort of input kids might have had in designing playgrounds.

Page 4 has the best info in the whole article though.

Gems like the following...

"According to psychologists and specialists in early childhood education, to be valuable, play needs to be creative, but there also has to be an element of danger."

"When they play, kids make their own rules -- then they have to negotiate to get others to follow them. In sports, adults make and enforce the rules for them."

"To a young child," Hart says, "the idea of a playground is ridiculous in the first place. The whole idea of being taken to a place to play is almost an oxymoron. Children want to play everywhere."

Roger Hart is director of the Children's Environments Research Group at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

When my mother wanted me to teach her how to use Photoshop, I told her to get a photograph and mess around with it. I told her to play with it until she got bored playing with it. That was 18 months ago and she's still not bored, but I have to admit I'm bored shitless of getting photoshopped pictures of her holiday snaps of Europe in my inbox.

What do most of us do on the internet? We play in it. We bump into each other and gets cuts and scrapes and bruises - and some people get bullied and take their modems and mice and go and play somewhere else.

What are the internet ogres trying to do to it? Stifle that rambunctiousness and make it a safe place to play, but more importantly to them - wait for it - to do business.

There's money to be made out of the internet and in online businesses - hadn't you heard?

But what kind of businesses open their doors in a playground? Particularly one which doesn't like the imposition of restrictions?

The smart ones operate in proximity to the playground and shore up their Windows against accidental or deliberate breakage stemming from activity going on in the playground. (Ok, rotten pun. Get over it.)

The even smarter ones learn how to operate as an adjunct to the playground and get as involved in its activities as it is practicable to do so.

Now, where have I heard THAT before?

Whilst watching my screen do nothing tonight, I noticed at the bottom that my Spybot S&D was preventing bad sites from loading. You know, those sites that drop tracking cookies on your hard drive? Never used to get those with the old blogger.

These new owners have messed around trying to turn this bit of the playground I've called my own for 6 years into yet another shopfront. In the past, I was offered the option to upgrade to a paid account where better features and tools would be available. Now, I'm being subjected to tracking cookies and my software is getting indigestion and preventing me from continued usage of the old free product. Mostly.

Perhaps getting kids to help with the design of playgrounds is less like fatties doing diet menus than it is like asking the sales department to design a better internet.

The answer, as became apparent in the Boston Globe story, was to take as much design out of the playground and let the users decide for themselves why they want that place to play at all and the answer was - to be creative. Provide sand and water and a place where the two could be mixed and let the kids sort out the rest.