Don't get angry at Google, get angry at the Government

So, a whole bunch of moronic dipshits are pissed at Google for not allowing Android Marketplace in Australia according to ZDNet. Guess what idiots - it's NOT Google's fault!

Do you think they deliberately want to hold back their market? Do you think they want to stop people in Australia watching things on their phones? Do you think they're sitting in their ivory towers, cackling with evil glee that they've fucked Australia over?

Of course not!

And do you have such short attention spans that you forget it took the Apple iTunes Store TWO YEARS to launch in Australia after the USA Launch? What's the difference here - you've learned to whinge more about more useless shit in the last 5 years?

This is SOLELY the Government's fault - both the current Labor Government and the former Liberal Government.

They have continued to bow to USA pressure to sign the DMCA, which restricts consumer rights and access to international content, and continue to bend over backwards to Sony, EMI, News Limited and other media and distribution companies to stop the free flow of content into Australia through price fixing and geo / region locking.

The governments claim it's to protect local industries... but we all know that's bullshit. How is getting to see Torchwood at the same time as the British and Yanks going to impact the filming of Neighbors?

If you want things like Google Android Market, Spotify, Turntable.FM, Hulu - you need to fight for it. You need to petition, protest, agitate, and defy the Government and Opposition and Greens on these matters, and let them know consumer rights are more important than protecting local companies profits.

We live in a democratic capitalist economy. If a local company can't complete with an international, especially when they're OWNED by another international company, they don't deserve protection.

EDIT:
And if you don't believe me that the Governments of the world are in collusion with copyright companies, the Wikileaks scandal proves that the the very least New Zealand has been: New Zealand's Three Strikes Paid by USA

Science sucks!

The current trend of media reporting on science experiments as fact about the entire population is really starting to annoy me.

What I want to know is why 14,000 out of 21 Million people is an OK sample size to determine that Australia is a nation of fatties? (source)

Why 13 people out of 6 Billion is an OK sample size to see that brain patterns are different when playing games? (source)

Why 21 people out of 6 billion is an OK sample size to determine that marijuana shrinks brains? (source)

It's ridiculous! The sample sizes are so small that it makes the reports questionable, if not thoroughly erroneous.

It's like looking at the moon and determining all moons are like that. Yes, we used to think that when we could only see our moon, but now we've got the technology we look at more moons and find that a lot of what we used to think about moons is wrong.

When looking at humans, we've got every opportunity to look at millions more than we do now.

So why are we looking at a mere handful and saying "they're representative of the 6 billion of us here", and worse still, bringing in policies and laws to restrict those 6 billion based on not even 1% of that population?

Differences in Opinion

Andrew Bolt has done it again.

On the one hand he claims that the bombing of Hiroshima was necessary to save further bloodshed, but then he condemns Penti Linkola a Finnish green thinker for believing the world needs less people in order to save the planet.

I'm really confused by this, because I see these as the exact same kind of thinking.

I'm not sure if my comment is too long, but Bolt has said he's writing a larger article tomorrow, so I might re-post it in those comments. I really hope I get a response, because I'm legitimately worried that I'm the stupid one for not seeing a difference, and hoping he can clear it up for me...

Here's what I wrote:

Andrew, didn't you just today say that the bombing of Hiroshima was required to stop a greater catastrophe?

I'm pretty sure you did:

"In making such judgements, the utilitarian is driven above all by the moral imperative to preserve as many people as possible from harm. Given that, the utilitarian would also seek in war to avoid any needless deaths, especially of civilians."

Unlike many of your blog posts, these are completely your own words. [LINK]

So you agree that those Japanese killed in the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima needed to be sacrificed to save the planet from the greater threat of Nazi and Japanese Imperialism.

Is that correct?

So how can you condemn these people - you were saying the EXACT SAME THING in that people need to be sacrificed for the greater good??

I really can't see what the difference is here.

One the one hand you had the annihilation of everything we hold dear by the Nazis and Japanese, and on the other hand we have the annihilation of everything we hold dear by environmental breakdown.

Either way it's still total Annihilation.

BUT WAIT - I know what you're going to say "Environmental Annihilation isn't certain."

Well mate, neither was cultural annihilation by the Nazis.

If you look at history, you'll see that the Romans tried to do the exact same thing as the Nazis, and they succeeded, and then the Saxons, and then the Christians, and so on and so on, but traditions thousands of years old that we hold dear still exist.

The world took a different course, but many traditions people held dear and fought for were preserved despite them losing to another culture.

So, can you please explain what the difference between Linkola's position and your position is, because I can't see one.

Melbourne media makes me want to stab!

The news in Melbourne is absolutely pathetic.

Oversensationalised bullshit everywhere you turn.

I thought it was just Andrew Bolt, but it appears to be the all over the Herald Sun.

Sunday's Herald Sun had a story about knifes. One sentence read "Critics say Melbourne's "stab city" reputation has been festering for years, but is only now being taken seriously." but then makes absolutely no mention of who these critics are or where they have been saying it 'for years', at all.

A google search for "stab city" brings up many hits, but bugger all related to Melbourne. You would think that these critics would at least have a blog hit or two!

I realise it's imaginary critics making imaginary comments that is trying to pass for news, but unfortunately the suburban Melbournite dumb fucks believe this tripe day in, day out.

I'm yet to pick up the Age, but I don't hold Fairfax in the highest regard either.

But even the ABC suffers from it! I used to watch ABC news because in Adelaide the presenter was really good, one of the reporters really hot, and the stories were the least sensationalised out of the lot.

Yes, they're biased to some degree, but I don't mind bias. The Herald Sun is biased too. So is the Age. I can see that bias and accept it as part of modern media.

However, the ABC's story about the Beadeez toys that made children sick was so over the top I ended up turning the news off. "Toys banned in all states except Victoria"... "no comment from the manufacturer"... Maybe because it was a PUBLIC HOLIDAY and even I was hard to reach?!

The ABC host is also terrible at reading the news. Where did they dig that fool up from?

It's sad, sad times when the Weekly World News looks like something that rivals the New York Times.

Αφρικανοί πηγαίνουν στο σπίτι

I was in Melbourne this week, and watched the news on Thursday night.

Seriously, the Chaser boys have nothing on Channel 10 Late news...

They showed this old Greek guy, full on Greek accent, barely understandable and who would under normal circumstances be subtitled, talking about how the Africans should be sent home.

It was the single most wonderfully ironic moment I have witnessed on television.



(The title is African's go home in Greek, BTW)

The Truth about Ecstasy

I'm really, really disappointed that no journalist has the balls to stand up and tell the truth about ecstasy.

Since Anna Wood, no journalist in Australia has dared question the hardline stance on the drug, even though deaths from the drug have been very few.

Truth of the matter is pure MDMA is one of the least harmful 'illegal' drugs available.

Yes, it causes brain damage in rats, but anything that simply makes a case for rats shouldn't be able to take it.

The infamous "hole in the brain" on Oprah has been proved as precisely what it is - bullshit. The brain scans have been shown to be false, and the scientist involved in initial testing on monkeys to back up this claim somehow mixed his MDMA sample with a methamphetamine sample and drew the wrong conclusions. This was the same scientist paid by the DEA in the 1980s to first investigate MDMA and it's impact on the brain.

There is one guy in the UK who took 40 ecstasy pills a week for 14 years who is severely mentally retarded, but you'd have to be pretty retarded to take 40 a week in the first place.

Even though Australia's ecstasy pills contain little MDMA, and the substitutes can cause both physical and mental health problems, proper testing of pills will reduce some of the harm that can do.

I'm not proposing everyone go out and take the drug. That would just be silly.

But I am amazed that all the Johns debacle has done is made people call for tougher testing.

It's predictably pathetic of the Australian press. These people need to grow a pair and seek the truth, not regurgitate the garbage the Government feeds them.

If anything, Johns has shown that being a regular taker of the drug has little impact on an individuals performance within society.

And isn't that what they whole drug debate is meant to be about - limiting the impact of harmful drugs on individuals, ensuring people performing well in society?

Isn't that what makes someone who drinks a bottle or two of wine a night but can still go to work the next day "better" than a bum who does the same but doesn't go to work?

The Advertiser Editors have some bloody nerve!

I had to laugh at the editorial entitled “Free people must be allowed a free press” that was on the AdelaideNow website on April 28, 2007.

The gall of the Advertiser editors to claim that they are some kind of bastion of democracy is phenomenal. If they actually think that they need to stop smoking the crack they are obviously are on and come down from their ivory tower and actually participate in the local community, because it's obvious they have an over inflated perception of them selves and their newspaper.

I couldn't help myself - I had to write in:

You claim that “A free media, the freedom of speech and expression of opinion, is the heartland of any democracy”.

The moment News.Corp appropriated all of Adelaide's papers into one was the moment the “press” ceased to resemble anything remotely associated with the word “free”. Murdoch's constant and consistent meddling in political affairs in Australia, the UK and USA stripped his media of any claim to the democratic process. Add to that the Federal Government's recent relaxing of media ownership laws to allow Murdoch more control and your entire diatribe at the government and lawmakers becomes fallacious at best, diabolical at worse.

You claim that parliaments are “the epitome of half-truth and obfuscation” yet in the last few months the Advertiser has shown itself to be more than equal to that task.

You claim that we are “fed a diet of misleading and shrewdly crafted press releases” but who publishes these releases? Who constantly publishes unresearched feeds from PR people and foreign newspapers?

The story about Knut the polar bear still has not been corrected in ANY news corporation publications, although the ABC's mediawatch showed that elements of the story were completely false and the animal rights activists involved now fear for their life because you “copy and pasted” the article from AP's news feed.

Examples of this sloppy journalism on corrections has increased phenomenally in recent years and yet your responses to such places as mediawatch when queried on it are unapologetic in most cases, and downright rude in others.

I have a challenge for you – you research and report the truth properly according to the MEAA's code of ethics, and when you do screw up the truth of the story you print a prominently positioned apology, and we, the public, will help to fight to stop your freedoms being eroded.

But until that time to ask that we support you would be laughable if it wasn't such a disturbing and disingenuous use of the Advertiser's editorial.

Knut the cute polar bear

Remember that story about those horrible animal activists who wanted to have that mega cute little polar bear called Knut put down?

For example THIS STORY



The cute little fella was even in the Colbert (or should that be Colbear?) Report!

Well, the whole story is a fiction. A lie*.

There's a bear called Knut, and that's about the extent of the "truth" behind this story.

Thank the world for mediawatch!


But I just wanted to bring this up to say that journalists never do their jobs correctly. I know the reasons for this - lack of funds, lack of time, publishing deadlines - but I don't CARE about them.

In any other industry, if something similar happened, the people who took this story as truth and reported it from the AP feed would all be sacked.

Yet I'm betting in 90% of newspapers and websites you won't even see a correction, let alone an apology to all involved.

It's utterly disgusting that these people go about their lives, after ruining the lives of others, without any feelings of guilt or remorse after reporting a story so badly. The media has totally screwed this up, and are unapologetic about it, and it makes me so angry!

Please, to all my readers, all 3 of you, can you link to this post, to the mediawatch page, blog about it, email about it, just spread the word about this, and get the media to admit their mistake and apologise to the men whose lives have been threatened with violence because of this poorly researched story.




*I'd go further and say it's a dirty smear campaign against Animal Rights and those who support them, and then by extension the Leftist and Green movements, but that would make me seem paranoid...

Save the Glass House

Personally I'm not a great fan of the Glass House, but I find it incredibly strange thatthe ABC axed it given the amount of viewers it attracted week after week.

In the current government climate, I think shows that send up news, politicians and celebrities is important.

This show was NOT a news program, so it doesn't need to be "balanced or unbiased".

If you think it's unfair that the Glass House has been taken off air, there's a petition online to save it...

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savetheglasshouse/index.html