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  • Inquisitr Changes

    Just a short admin note for The Inquisitr: we’ve recently terminated one of our syndication deals. I won’t go into the details, however I wish the company involved future success, and although the product wasn’t working for us, I still like what this company does as a competitor to AP, so I’ll still be cheering a bit for them.

    What that means is that in the last 2 weeks we’ve had a significant drop in posts on The Inquisitr. Roughly 7-10 posts a day. It means we’re not covering as much general news stuff as we were.

    I’m not sure quite yet as to whether this is a good or bad thing. It’s less to read, but likewise it may also help our original content stand out some more.

    It does mean though that we are short in some categories, particularly science and health (and we had to delete the old content from them as well per the termination of the deal.) I haven’t made the call yet, but we might fold science and health into a sub-tech category going forward vs remaining stand-alone.

    Not ready to hire or expand again until we get out of the first quarter ad slump (there always seems to be one this time of year), so we’ll wait until at least mid April to review.

  • Stranger Than Fiction

    Imagine leaving your long term marriage to be with the husband of the woman you tried to donate your eggs to.

    Would make for an interesting Mills and Boon story.

  • Channeling A Particular Ben Folds Five Song

    Where do Fairfax find these people?

    The Age: W-class shake and rattle should be rolled into retirement

    It’s quite possible that any resident of San Francisco, Vienna or even Bendigo – all of which have trams – might have seen photographs of the flying W-class at the Commonwealth Games and thought Melburnians a tad backward.

    October last year

    Second Melbourne tram joins San Francisco’s historic streetcar fleet

    One of Melbourne’s iconic W-Class trams was presented to San Francisco as a gift to run on the city’s heritage streetcar service.

    Yes, they think us so backward they ask for more W class trams.

  • Getting Public Transport Wrong

    The Age: Airport road won’t cope with demand, study shows

    In its brief to IMIS, the Department of Transport specified it must measure the likely popularity of the train line based on a $16 one-way fare (the cost of the existing SkyBus).

    It found few people who now drive to the airport would be convinced to use the rail line, and it would instead take passengers off existing bus services and taxis.

    It also found an airport rail link would ruin the taxi industry, which relies on 7000 trips a day to the airport.

    Wrong. So very wrong.

    Sure, it would kill the Sky Bus, but it wouldn’t ruin the taxi industry. When was the last time anyone could say they visited an airport with a rail link and not found a busy cab rank. I haven’t been into Brisbane that often but always see cabs. Have been to Sydney fairly regularly, and I always have to queue for cabs, even though there’s a perfectly good rail line that connects into the city.

    The misunderstanding is one of taxi use: people catch a cab now because it’s quicker and drops you to your door.

    The Sky Bus on the other hand gets caught in traffic and is piss poor.

    If you had an express train to the city from the airport, you’d actually have more users than the Sky Bus.

    Would some switch from cabs: yes. But likewise it may also force Melbourne cabs to reduce charges to the airport as well, which in my experience traveling are some of the worst in the world price wise.

    To get from Mont Albert to the airport costs me a staggering $90 in a cab…to travel 38kms. If I could get on a train that takes 10 mins into town, and a 25 minute trip out, hell I’d consider using it…because in traffic and thanks to a piss poor situation at the end of the Eastern Freeway, it takes just as long, if not longer in a cab, unless it’s early morning or late night.

    I’m not anti-freeway or anti-car by any means: connect the Eastern to Citylink tomorrow I say, but likewise if Melbourne believes it’s a serious city in a global sense, it would also build a line to the airport.

    PS: and it should connect to the Doncaster line, which should ALSO be built ASAP.

  • Rudd lies on filter again

    Via The Age

    Rudd also defended the government’s proposed internet filter, which is designed to block child pornography, terrorist material and other extreme and offensive information, saying it was in line with how movies and videos were censored.

    Except it’s not, is it Kevin Rudd, because you can view/ buy R and X rated movies. Under the filter, games suitable for adults are completely banned.

  • Finally The Whole Indian Racist Attack Thing Might Be Over

    The Age: Most attacks on Indians not racial: report

    One in seven assaults on Indians in Australia in the past 14 months has been racially motivated, an Indian government report claims.

    But here’s the kicker which The Age completely ignores:

    A list collated by the Indian high commission in Canberra and tabled in the Indian Parliament, records 152 assaults on Indians in Australia since the start of last year.

    The 152 is a very significant number, because the assault rate in Australia is (according to NationMaster) 702 per 100,000 people.

    According to Wikipedia, there are 235,000 people of “Indian origin” living in Australia.

    If the 152 figure is correct, that’s an assault rate of 66 people per 100,000.

    Indians are assaulted in Australia at a rate 10 times less than the “average” person.

    Does that sound like a racist crime wave to you? Indian media, does that sound like Indian students are being singled out vs non-Indian residents.

    Let me repeat that: the assault rate against people of Indian origin living in Australia would appear, at least according to an INDIAN GOVERNMENT REPORT to be more than 10x less than the average in Australia.

    Game over.

  • The Dark Days Of Fascism Are Upon Us

    It’s one thing to introduce Internet censorship in Australia. It’s Nazi like at the basics. But in the last few days the media, led by News Corp is pushing this country into the dark days of fascism.

    The target is Facebook, as I wrote yesterday. But the scope continues to get darker.

    Let me say upfront that I believe that the attacks of the two dead kiddie sites, and the sick Daniel Morcombe page is wrong.

    However, the response is more wrong.

    There’s a push here now to censor the sites where these things happen. There’s very little interest in tracking down those that wrote those things, well, presuming they did something illegal. In context, most didn’t. Sure, a lot was offensive, but illegal activity was with the minority.

    As I’m watching Sky News before I go to bed, I hear that there will be a “crack down” on such sites. The part ownership in Sky News from News Corp of course is never disclosed, and it’s key, because News Corp owns MySpace, Facebook’s biggest competitor. But that’s irrelevant in an Australian context (well, some what) because the pollies are gunning as well.

    As I said in the aforementioned post, the only way what is being called for could be implemented was with pre-approval of all content; and that would kill free speech and social media in Australia.

    I’d excuse the media to some extent, except that the obsession by News Corp vs Fairfax is so obvious: News Corp is gunning for a change, and it shows in the attention.

    One only needs to read the past history of News Corp (News Ltd locally) in politics to know their influence. Things may have changed, but News Corp, as the biggest publisher here has always had their ear on changes; that we’re reading this is fore warning of a change to come.

    It is in Australia the end of days when it comes to free speech.

    I’ve always been a proud Australian. When I’ve traveled overseas, I’ve always thought of home and never though of moving off shore. Ever. Not once, despite the advantages moving might present.

    But today I’m worried about the future of this country. Internet censorship is bad enough, but the mood led by the media here is now scary. Indeed, more than scary.

    A story I may have once told here: I wanted to be an historian when I was young, but realised that there was no money in it. I then thought I wanted to enter the law, but missed out score wise when I left high school. But I never gave up my interest in history. I still read it extensively, particularly my high school specialisation: inter-war. I’ve also read extensively in WW1 and WW2 history. And I still do. That doesn’t make me an expert, and I’ve been tempted recently to go back to Uni to get a BA in History…and I might still do so.

    But I’ve read enough to get my head around the failures of the past. My sons school has a saying: to understand where we are going, we must understand where we have been. In this country, the population seems blind to the past globally, and may allow the mistakes of the past to happen here again.

    Am I really going overboard? In the past month, Conroy has attempted to censor YouTube AND Facebook, on top of the general evil that will be the Great Firewall of Australia.

    Seriously, think me a nutter, but can you really believe that the Australian Government’s attempts to censor YouTube and Facebook are a good thing?

    The dark days are here. It started with the firewall, and now it extends into social networking. What next? what next will the Government target? Already Conroy’s lies about it all being about kiddie porn have been exposed: it’s not just games as well, he’s now gunning for Facebook, and on top of that, his comments on the iiNet case would suggest that copyright is next. Soon, China and Iran may look like minnows in the censorship stakes, and most Australians will stand by and let this happen. If I could move with my son (and I can’t, custody issues post divorce) I’d consider it. This once proud, free country is heading into the dark days of fascism.

  • ABC Fucks Up Web Terminology Again

    And this time it doesn’t come from someone called Tony

    Hate site targets Trinity’s accused killer

    Queensland police are monitoring a social networking site set up to vilify a man charged with the murder of eight-year-old Trinity Bates from Bundaberg.

    Except it’s not a social networking site that has been set up, it’s a Facebook group. But wait, later in the article

    Within an hour of Slater’s court appearance, more than 300 members had joined the Facebook group.

    It’s one thing to completely fuck up web 101 terminology, but it takes a specially inept sort of reporter to contradict herself in the same article 🙂

    Of note: it’s a bit of a beat up to begin with. The Facebook group is here. It’s basically people talking about capital punishment for child killers, and a couple of nasty words…the same sort of stuff you’d hear after something like this on say…well…ABC Local Radio 🙂

  • Australian Winter Olympics Success A Sign Of Affluence?

    We’ve won our 4th ever Winter Olympics Gold Medal: The Age.

    Of course everyone in Australia knows who won the first one, and it will be a story for the ages: Steven Bradbury is 4th in the final and looks out of it, and then the 3 people ahead crash into each other, allowing him to win.

    But I digress: how is it that Australia has gone from Winter Games minnow to moderately successful in the last 10 years?

    Skiing has always been expensive here: I can remember as a kid only the richest in school went on skiing holidays because it was that expensive, and if you’ve ever checked prices today, it still is ($100-$200/ day for a lift pass etc.)

    But I wonder whether Australia’s growing affluence may be reflected in our increased share of Winter Olympic gold?

    That is: more people can afford to ski locally AND fly overseas and do it vs in the past.

    The stats show every year record numbers of Australian’s holidaying offshore, and some of them might be heading for the snow as well.

    I haven’t checked any stats, but I’d love to know if you could chart affluence against Australian Winter sport success.

  • Is The ABS Now Racist As Well?

    The Age: Local-born more at risk of assault

    PEOPLE born overseas are less likely to be assaulted than those born in Australia, according to new Australian Bureau of Statistics data…

    It showed an assault rate of 3.6 per cent for Australian-born people, or 445,000 victims, compared with an assault rate of 1.7 per cent, or 82,000, for those born in other countries.

    Wait, if local born people are assaulted at twice the rate, isn’t that discriminatory against Australians? Or maybe we just treat our visitors with more respect?