Tackling the global economy woes another great episode by Farrant and Nanni.

I dunno how these guys are funding their Rap News but I hope they’ve got a revenue model up and running so that they can keep releasing their vids, they’re too good to lose.

Here’s to the next one guys!

Sometime in the last few hours Google have gone and changed what used to be a fully functional, efficient and easy to read mail application and have completely ruined it.

Adding a 2.0 bloated flash feel to the iGoogle application, Google have gone and made all the navigation bars HUGE.

Working primarily on a Asus EeePC, this is bloody hopeless as now I can see about half as much information as I was able to read before on about half as much space.

Design wise there’s simply way to much white space and do I really need giant freaking stars next to every email taking up valuable real estate?

Some clown has also decided to move the delete button to the bottom of the gadget so now if I want to delete anything, I have to check it and pysically scroll down. BRILLIANT GUYS!

The only new useful feature I can see is the ability to compose mail from the default iGoogle homepage whereas before I had to click on the little mail text which enabled the Gmail application to take over the browser window completely to compose anything.

Not happy Google, gimme back my original iGoogle Gmail interface!

I’m not entirely sure when it rolled out but sometime over the last few hours I’ve started to get a google voice search option (a little microphone icon) appear in my search bar after I’ve conducted a search.

It could have been implemented earlier but to be honest with the amount of time I spend behind the PC I’d be more than surprised if I hadn’t noticed it earlier. I could have sworn it wasn’t there earlier today.

Regardless, as with any potential change to my search habits I decided to give it a try and test drove voice search with the simple phrase ‘ozsoapbox’.

Using my normal accent gave me this result;

Post football? What the hell is that?

Naturally this was nowhere near ‘ozsoapbox’ so I decided to try again with some different accents. With Google being a US based company, I kinda suspected that I was going to have to Americanize myself to start getting accurate results.

Or so I thought.

A northern US accent got me this;

Whilst a drawling southern accent was no better;

Kinda pondering the overall usefulness of voice search by this point, I decided to give a it a few more tries – here’s what a UK accent returned;

followed by a Scottish accent;

and even my best stereotypical Japanese Asian accent for good measure;

As you can see neither of the search results comes remotely close to ‘ozsoapbox’. Whilst I appreciate that the term isn’t your standard dictionary word, still it’d be nice for voice search to at least be in the ballpark.

As it stands for me personally Google voice search isn’t even on the same planet as what I’m searching for.

After the failed attempts I decided to give it one more shot with my normal accent and this is what I got;

Also cocks?!…

Yeah, back to text search for me I think. After seven unsuccesful attempts, Google’s voice search seems pretty useless to me.


Footnote: Argh, there doesn’t seem to be anyway to turn it off either! Looks like I’m stuck with an annoying microphone icon cluttering my search box.

‘Epsiode 8: Osamacide’ gets back to some solid rhymes and beats discussing the recent assasination of Osama Bin Laden;

I can’t say I agree with all of it but Foster does raise some inconvenient questions about the US’ jurisdiction and various issues surrounding Osama’s death (such as the Geronimo codename and decision to assasinate Osama rather than have him stand trial).

The highlight of the episode is definitely the Terrence Moonseed rant in the middle about Geronimo – loved it.

I’m happy to see Juice Media removed a lot of gimmickery of the last few episodes and gotten back to just being clever which is what I loved about the series in the first place.

Cameos and fancy pants special effects all detract from the message of Rap News which is where Hugo really shines. Hopefully the music and lyrics of Rap News will remain the focal point of the next episode!

With Planking, the basic idea is that you get someone to take a photo of yourself face down with your arms by your side and toes pointed at the ground.

Other than that, there are only four other guidelines to follow;

• More Public the Better
• Larger the Group, the Better
• No location is out of bound when playing the game
• A disregard for personal safety is to be held in higher esteem


Unfortunately as with anything that is open to the general public, in the last few weeks Planking in Australia has seen it’s fair share of idiots. Two particular idiots that have caught the nation’s attention are Simon Hallam and Acton Beale.

Beale died after falling from a seventh story balcony and Hallam is lying in a hospital comatosed after falling off the back of a moving car.

Obviously both men are complete morons and only have themselves to blame… but ask the parents however and it’s all somehow the internet’s fault.

Because y’know, the internet made them do it.

After a Saturday night out drinking on May 14th, Acton Beale returned to an apartment and thought it’d be a good idea to attempt planking off the balcony railing.

Being drunk, he lost his balance and plummeted to his death. No harm, no foul and just another not too bright spark removed from the gene pool.

Well, at least that should of been how it ended. Instead we had the police pleading with the public to not be idiots and even had PrimeMinister Julia Gillard weigh in, describing

the incident as “really tragic”.

“There’s a difference between a harmless bit of fun done somewhere that’s really safe and taking a risk with your life,” she told reporters in Sydney.

“Everybody likes a bit of fun, but focus has to be on keeping yourself safe first.”


Safety sure, but was Beale’s death really tragic? Hardly.

Beale’s death was nothing more then a completely avoidable celebration of stupidy.

Less than a week later, in what appeared to be the second national Planking story, Simon Hallam fell of the back of a moving car whilst allegedly Planking.

For his contribution to the Darwinian hall of fame, Hallam (photo right) is now lying ‘in induced coma in intensive care‘ and ‘may never recover from (his) horrific head injuries‘.

In light of his idiocy Hallam’s father, Terry Hallam, decided it was all the internet’s fault;

The internet and Facebook, they’re just dreadful things … they encourage this sort of behaviour among the young ones, and young ones don’t think about consequences of their actions, they think it’s fun, so they do it with little thought for what could happen – like this.


Yes, the internet and Facebook really are dreadful things. You know what else is dreadful though?

Shitty parenting.

To claim Simon Hallam was nothing more than an impressionable ‘young one’ at age 20 is laughable. Mate, if your 20 year old son doesn’t know that attempting to Plank off the back of a car moving at speed is probably not a good idea then that’s some catastrophic parenting failure right there – the intenet doesn’t have anything to do with it.

To further highlight the stupidity of Simon Hallam’s behaviour, turns out he wasn’t even planking. After reviewing mobile phone footage taken to no doubt impress Hallam’s mates, police are now claiming that he was ‘car surfing’ rather than planking.

Car surfing hey… well I bet the evil internets and Facebook are still responsible for that. It couldn’t possibly be as simple as Simon Hallam being a complete and utter moron now could it.

Meanwhile the planking death/injury craze looks set to continue with reports coming in this morning of three men caught Planking on top of a moving car.

A police spokeswoman told AAP the threesome had been issued with on the spot infringement notices.

The female driver, 20, will face court on June 15, for a dangerous operation of a motor vehicle charge.


Personally I welcome this sort of behaviour. I obviously don’t condone or encourage it, but I find it hard to fault idiots doing the world a favour and eliminating themselves from the gene pool.

I mean cmon, if you need someone to tell you that lying on a balcony railing of a seventh story apartment whilst drunk is a bad idea, or that car surfing off the back of a Commodore is not so smart or lying face down on top of a car with three mates will probably get you killed – it’s probably only a matter of time before you wiped yourself out anyway.

I hope this spate of Planking craziness continues and that there are many more ‘tragedies’ to come. We all need a bit of cheering up every now and then and these morons aren’t going to be missed anytime soon.

Thankfully if the last week is anything to go by, we won’t be running out of them anytime soon. Yay!

#revolution follows the uprisings currently taking place in the Middle East and seeks to draw a comparison between the recent protests in the US over union restrictions.

In this episode, RapNews experiments with the formula of Farrant playing all onscreen characters and introduces a whole host of cameos. At first I thought this detracted from the episode but after a rewatch I was comfortable with the idea and thought they actually added an extra depth to the episode.

This could have easily been lost had the rhyming been out of place with the cameo changeovers but it all flows smoothly throughout.

Musicwise RapNews also feels more sophisticated as there’s several style changeovers that have been seamlessly melded together. You’ve got subtle variations to the main beat throughout the episode (most notably the middle eastern theme that plays when we cross over to Eygpt and Palenstine), and there’s even a fully fledged Bono song mid episode that plays out.

And if I’m not mistaken, Bono himself is played by none other than Farrant’s partner Giordano Nanni.

I really enjoyed this episode of RapNews but it definitely feels like a more matured and refined version of the previous episodes. Coming in at ten minutes there’s a lot to absorb too and I was a bit overwhelmed during the first viewing.

After watching episode 7 a few times though it all sinks in and you really appreciate the work that’s gone into creating ten minutes of stimulating and indepth poetical rhyme. It’s been great to watch the production and musical level of RapNews increase with each episode over the past year.

The comedic element feels somewhat toned down but I hope the boys crank it back up in the next episode, although #revolution does have its moments (protests outside suburban McDonalds anyone?).

You can watch the full episode of #revolution below;

After somewhat of the mixed feeling I got watching episode 5, it’s great to see RapNews return to it’s strengths of linking current events, heavy hitting intelligent lyrics and entertaining visuals together in a single broadcast of pure win.

Episode 6 of RapNews explores Wikileaks latest Cablegate release, some 250,000 US diplomatic cables currently been drip fed to the public. Highlights of the episode for me were the throwback to internet meme ‘Antoine Dodson’s Bed Intruder autotune remix‘ and Hugo’s fantastic Hillary Clinton impersonation!

Enjoy;


Can’t wait for the next one, well done guys!

As such it’s a little disturbing, but not totally unsurprising to see attempts to latch onto this global publicity. The latest of which is a homegrown attempt by none other than Ruslan Kogan, owner of Australian electronics retailer, Kogan Technologies.

Touted as the ‘business world’s answer to Wikileaks‘, upon further inspection ‘Tradeleaks’ ultimately fails to draw the remotest comparison to Wikileaks and leaves you wondering why Kogan bothered to set it up in the first place.

The purpose of Tradeleaks is laid out simply and clearly. From Tradeleaks ‘about’ page;

TradeLeaks enables any source to post information, including source material, directly to our website.

After the material is posted, it will be available to all users around the World. Sources can post information anonymously.


Now don’t get me wrong, this sounds good from the onset but hen it gets messy.

We do not independently assess the veracity of any information posted on our website. Rather, we rely on users to assess the merits of all information posted through posting reply comments and queries, and by rating the quality of the information posted.


So unlike Wikileaks, where a team decides what is and isn’t published and all information leaked is credibly sourced, Tradeleaks relies on randoms uploading unverifiable data.

And then they rely on users to assess the leaked information which, if confidential and privileged, users have absolutely no way of accurately ascertaining the credibility of.

Randoms uploading non sourced or verified information to be judged by other randoms who themselves cannot verify it beyond wha they decide is ‘believable’.

Yeah, this is gunna end well.

My first though when I read how Tradeleaks worked was how soon before we start to see an avalanche of lawsuits?

Tradeleaks appears to be hosted by AussieHQ, who are an Australian hosting provider. As is commonly known, free speech doesn’t exist in Australia and thus should anyone actually upload actual business secrets to Tradeleaks, there’s nothing stopping them from suing the pants of Tradeleaks and Kogan himself. Well, at least if they’re a business with less than 10 employees.

In Australia when it comes to libel cases, the onus is on the defendant to prove that the published information is not defamatory.

So should someone post something about a small business, Kogan are going to be left wondering how they’re going to prove the content is true. Of course they could always appeal to the source but wait, that’s right… they’re anonymous.

Addressing this, the Tradeleaks website states

We do not censor our information, unless the information is likely to defame an individual, including where an individual is not named but can be reasonably ascertained.

We request that our users inform us of any information which is likely to be defamatory so that we can remove it from our website.


Given that business with over 10 employees can’t sue, I’m assuming only mentioning the censorship of information regarding individuals is an oversight.

How Tradeleaks plan on verifying if something is defamatory or not without a court case remains a mystery. And even if it wasn’t, the likelihood of someone starting a long drawn out and expensive court case is probably going to result in the removal of the material in question anyway.

So what we’re left with is a website where people are able to post worthless nonsense of no real value, and the certainty that should a real leak ever be uploaded, that all it would take would be a persuasive letter from a lawyer arguing that it was defamatory to have it removed.

Looking at the current uploaded information (of which appears to be the personal address and telephone numbers of Kogan’s General Manager of Operations, David Shafer), rather than compare Tradeleaks to Wikileaks perhaps a more accurate comparison is Andrew Pallant’s Whozadog.

In a similar vein to Tradeleaks, Whozadog allowed users to ‘anonymously upload information about anyone they wanted to. If someone disagreed with the information or thought it was defamatory, they had the option of contacting Whozadog’s owners. The owners then demanded a cash payment to remove the content.

These days Whozadog has faded into oblivion and is nothing more than a slagging match between internet randoms. It’s usefulness, if there ever was any original value in the site, has long since diminished into childish incomprehensibility.

Judging from the content currently hosted on Tradeleaks, its journey into internet irrelevance isn’t too far behind.

Curiously, Tradeleaks’ ASIC ACN entry lists BPay and Billpay biller codes. One can only wonder if charging businesses to remove content, specifically corporations who are unable to sue them, is the financial endgame Kogan has in mind for Tradeleaks.

About as far as a comparison to the purpose of Wikileaks as you could get.

Update (18/12/2010): Reader ausGeoff has pointed out that the Bpay and Billpay biller codes listed are those of ASIC and not Tradeleaks themselves.

Although this rules out direct donation as a method of income generation, it still leaves the question as to how Kogan plans to generate revenue from the site. He didn’t generate his 28 million dollar fortune running charities.

Somewhere along the line however this has since turned into layer upon layer of secrecy, backhand dealings and outright withholding of information from the public. So long as the tax dollars keep rolling in, why should governments feel the need to be accountable to the people they serve?

Lately Wikileaks has proven to be an ever growing thorn in the side of governments worldwide. They’ve achieved this by doing nothing more then the spreading of information. Information that has shed light on the oft closed doors of government, information that we were never meant to see.

At the heart of Wikileaks lies Julian Assange, an almost forty ex-hacker but more importantly, an Australian citizen. A citizen who’s time appears to be running out.

As the political noose tightens around Assange’s neck, standing as a fellow Australian citizen – I for one am definitely not happy with our own government’s actions.

A few days ago now Wikileaks began the drip release of a massive haul of sensitive political cables sent from government embassies all around the world. Shortly after this release, Australian Attorney-General Robert McClelland, announced that

the Australian Federal Police is examining whether revealing 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables could be criminal


The reason?

“From Australia’s point of view we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached.”


The big question of course is what criminal laws? Australia doesn’t have an explicit ‘Secrets Act’ so as far as I know it’s not a crime to leak classified information into the public domain. Let alone the fact that the information leaked in this case relates the US government and is being hosted somewhere in Sweden.

Anyone would five minutes worth of work by the AG office or the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would have brought this to light.

Ruling out any actual criminal charges though, no doubt the US are probably leaning heavily on Australia to do whatever they can diplomatically to incapacitate Assange and indirectly, Wikileaks itself.

Announcing to the world that the AFP are launching a criminal investigation into Assange is a pretty good start. Then of course there’s the issue of Assange’s Australian passport which the AG has also not ruled out cancelling.

Because y’know, it’s not like that’s not going to set a dangerous precedent for future whistleblowers or anything.

In a similar grandstanding vein, today Interpol issued a warrant for Assange’s arrest;

The France-based international police organisation has issued a “red notice” for 39-year old Julian Assange – the equivalent of putting him on its most wanted list.


I mean really, cmon. When was the last time you publicly heard about anyone being put on Interpol’s most wanted list? Does anyone really believe that if Interpol wanted Assange they wouldn’t already have had him by now?

Anyone would think Assange was the greatest criminal mastermind the world has every seen. Able to evade the authorities, yet speak at publicised events around the world…

- it’s Assange the Anonymous!

No doubt Interpol’s very public arrest warrant issuing holds about the same weight as the AFP investigating Assange for possible criminal action.

Meanwhile all of this detracts from the real culprits here. The various governments showcased in the Wikileaks release, dubbed ‘Cablegate’.

As of yet there hasn’t been anything really all that damaging or embarrassing to the Australian government made public. That however hasn’t stopped one and the same Attorney-General Robert McClelland from sending out a letter to every news organisation in Australia asking them

to consider a voluntary agreement to censor sensitive national security and law enforcement information.

In his letter the Attorney-General stresses that the Federal Government is not trying to legislate to impose a censorship regime, but wants the media to consider “mutually agreed arrangements” whereby some information will be suppressed.


For a government not trying to impose a censorship regime… they’re trying pretty damn hard. Just what the hell else is a ‘mutual agreement’ between the media and the government where the government dictates what information is ‘supressed’?

Uh, sounds like censorship to me guys.

Keep in mind this is the same mob that want to introduce a mandatory internet filter to Australia as well. Is there any doubt that had the internet filter have been in place that we wouldn’t have even been hearing about proposed suppression agreements?

It’s these very backhanded underground government policies that Wikileaks seeks to make public. And good on them.

The alternative is the Australian government adopting perhaps the more persuasive measures taken by the Chinese government in response to the leaks.

Earlier this year China categorically denied any involvement in cyber attacks carried out against Google.

“Accusation that the Chinese government participated in [any] cyber attack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China,” the official Xinhua News Agency quoted a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as saying.

“We are firmly opposed to that.”


These cyber attacks, during which Google claims some of their intellectual property was stolen, resulted in the search giant temporarily pulling out China.

Despite the strong assertions from the government that they had absolutely no hand in the cyber attacks, a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks paints a very different picture;

The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government.

They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002.


China’s response?

The government added any media coverage of the story to their firewall including the Wikileaks site itself.

“As for the content of the documents, we will not comment on that.”

-Hong Lei, Chinese Foreign Ministry


Despite this response being woefully inadequate, the Chinese government holds the luxury of ultimately not being accountable to its people. A luxury I imagine the US and Australia currently only wish they had.

As an Australian citizen I don’t recall having any say in the possible apprehension or investigation of Assange and Wikileaks. If anything, I demand to know why the hell my government isn’t doing more to protect him?

If Assange hasn’t broken any Australian laws, which I’m pretty sure he hasn’t, then he deserves nothing less than the full protection and support currently offered to all other Australian citizens.

If media organisations around the world weren’t in bed with governments, as evidenced by the sheer audacity of the Australian AG even daring to suggest mutual censorship between media organisations and the government, sites like Wikileaks wouldn’t need to exist.

Yet this is democracy in the modern era, and as little as our government’s would prefer to have us know, thankfully there are those willing to risk everything to hold our governments accountable.

Both were potentially to be up in jeopardy if Labor lost but fortunately for both policies, they won. With the election now over, the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy provided Stephen Conroy with a list of ‘shit he needs to get on with’ (yes that’s an official name).

Despite being made public, in what is fast becoming a disturbing trend regarding anything to do with Conroy and public reports, sizable chunks of the report were blacked out. What we did learn however is that in all probability, Australia isn’t getting a mandatory filter until sometime in 2013.

So just what the crap is going on between now and 2013 I hear you ask?

Well, not much.

Last I heard the internet filter had been shelved due to a pending review of the entire classification system in Australia. Shortly after this announcement however everybody shutup about the filter and got on with the election.

National Broadband this and National Broadband that was the order of the day with the hope of people forgetting that with Labor being voted back in power, the entire country once again would have a filter hanging over our heads.

With the election over and Labor back in power, it’s time to get on with things and the first order of business is kicking off a review of the classification review process.

Well actually no, the first order of business is deciding if we even want to ‘proceed with the RC classification review‘. Shock horror, just because Conroy said it’d happen doesn’t mean it will.

The decision rests with the standing Committees of Attorneys-General (SCAG) and they will decide yay or nay on the review in their November meeting. Presumably this meeting is sometime in the next two weeks.

If they vote yes, then they will do absolutely nothing until March 2011, upon which the review would begin. For whatever reason, this review and the resulting report will not be ready for analysis by SCAG until early 2012 – almost a full year later.

And knowing just how much anything Conroy touches develops massive delays, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the review timeframe extended even longer.

From here, the DBCDE estimate that it could take SCAG yet another year to decide on any of the recommendations made in the review report.

How on Earth it takes a year to review the classification system and then another year to review the review I have no idea. I mean what, are SCAG reading one page of the review a day? I’m pretty sure we could get even bloody kindergarten kids to do it quicker.

All in all any parliamentary legislation is not expected to be up for consideration until well into 2013. And remember, that’s assuming it all goes to plan.

Total cost? Well over ten million.

Seriously, another two and a halfish years and over ten million dollars on a filter that may or may not get crushed in the next election, should the Liberals win.

And even if Labor win the next election, all we’re talking about here is legislation into parliament. God knows how long the actual implementation of the filter will take. I suppose we’ll need another six years for that too.

…and here’s me thinking that I’d had enough of Stephen Conroy under Rudd.

So, with the internet filter on the backburner, what are the DBCDE going to get up over the next two years? Well there’s the NBN that nobody is signing up for and trying to record every Australian’s internet telephone calls and emails under OzLog still to sort out; that should keep them busy for a while.

Can anyone remind me why Australia even needs a Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy again?

To cut a long story short, Trkulja is claiming that Google made him look like a criminal. By caching a third party website, when you searched Google for ‘Michael Trkulja’, the search results came up allegedly linking Trkulja to Melbourne’s underworld.

Despite Google obviously having nothing to do with the original publication, Trkulja has tried to drag them to court for some profit and failed three times previously.

Since writing about about the Trkulja vs. Google case I hadn’t really heard anything about it until a curious email popped up in my inbox a few days ago.

Somehow I’ve invariably wound up on what appears to be a mailing list of Trkulja’s. The entire email was in Serbian which was kind of pointless seeing as I can’t speak or read Serbian.

How I got onto Trkulja’s mailing list I have no idea but I was able to decipher the gist of it via Google translate.

The subject of the email was kind of laughable. Titled ‘David protiv Golijata, srpski biznismen tuži Google SVET – internet izdanje’, or translated, ‘David against Goliath, a Serbian businessman sues Google WORLD – Internet Edition‘, an amusing attempt at drawing a comparison between being a righteous underdog and suing a large company to make a quick buck.

The email opens with a photo from the Herald Sun and an article in Serbian by some guy called Predrag Vučinić. Vučinić appears to write for ‘the World Media’ and I’ve provided an English translation of the article below;

Milorad Trkulja businessman from Melbourne in the Serbian community known as the most successful pop manager. He was the golden age of Yugoslav music scene, when the concerts in Australia brought together tens of thousands of Yugoslavs brought the biggest stars of that time: Saban Saulic, Miroslav Ilic, Safet Isović, Nedu Killers, “Rockers from Morava” …

Milorad after the breakup of Yugoslavia turned to other jobs , and his name is these days the main interest of the Australian public.

Highest circulation newspaper in Australia, “Herald Sun” released on 31 October article titled “begins litigation against Google.” The paper explains that Milorad Trkulja “music promoter and community leader in the former Yugoslavia” has sued the giant, one of the world’s richest companies, “Google.”

Basis Trkuljine complaint is that when someone types in his name in Google search, his name appears along with the most famous Australian criminals, and with a clear association to belong to the top of Australia’s organized crime.

As the paper says 2004th The unknown assassin is Trkulji, in a Serbian restaurant in Melbourne, shot back and wounded him. He was blamed for the attempted murder of the local Serbian priest, but the police did not agree with that, considering that there are other Mott.

Newspaper learned that the “Google” tried several times through their lawyers that the case of “silence”, because if you get Trkulja dispute that could have, according to court experts, and dramatic consequences on the future of search methods on the Internet.


As you can see, the article heralds Trkulja as the second coming of Christ, or at least as the most successful pop manager ever. Oh, and apparently he’s the golden age of Yugoslavian music himself.

Oh and apparently Google are trying to hush hush the case up. Yeah, Google want to ‘silence’ Trkulja because they don’t want to deal with ‘dramatic consequences’ of future search methods… that sounds plausible.

The email continues with what appears to be commentary from Trkulja himself.

I also got an offer from Yahoo.com dishes before the first $60,000 to stop the trial, my lawyers have advised me to decline.

Important note that this is the first trial in the world against the two giants in the world, it is important that I could not stop to the U.S. billions.

This is Australia and the law must be respected nemoze no one to put my picture with the Australian criminals.

Owner www.serbiancafe.com gosp. Kuzmanovic I gave a chance to erase my name from www.serbiancafe.com and to provide all the IP addresses of all who have put a variety of rigorous reportage against Milorad Trkulja.

Milorad Trkulja
(email removed)
Tel: (mobile number removed)


I’m not sure if Yahoo actually offered Trkulja $60,000 to settle, but it’s an interesting claim. As for putting Trkulja’s picture with the Australian criminals, given that a third party published the website, I still have no idea why Trkulja is suing Google.

The SerbianCafe bit at the end was of interest and after firing up my browser and having a quick search I found that no mention of Trkulja on SerbianCafe was to be found.

Curious, I sent off an email requesting any further information about the claim and received a rather concise response;

Hello,

Mr. Trkulja reported some forum posts for deletion and we complied with all of the requests. That’s all from us.

Sincerely,
SerbianCafe.com Team


No word on whether legal action was pending and I’m still unclear as to what ‘rigorous reporting‘ is. Either it’s a bad translation for ‘writing nasty things about me’ or Trkulja himself is trying to stop people discussing the himself and the case.

That’s pretty much all that’s in the email and as I said I’m not entirely sure why I received it or how I got onto this mailing list. I say mailing list because this email appears to have been sent to over one hundred people.

After reading the email I had a quick look through the internet to see if any other news had been published regarding the case and did find this little exchange between Trkulja and ‘Marko’.

Marko wrote

I could not believe when I read the title, and then the text.

Milorad Trkulja, whom I know personally from Melbourne, not at all a businessman, but a man who sorrow all around looking to pull compensation.

Never a single lawsuit is not won, but it must be noted that most of them ran against our immigrants, why are many Zavicajna society teamed in the complaint that he be stripped of legal capacity to sue when randomly just want to obtain financial gain.

Otherwise, throughout his life he engaged in selling pirated video projects, local music, TV shows, movies, etc., as well as for being sued (of course all the complaints were rejected) all Serbian bishops in Australia from the 70s onwards, the leader of the conspiracy against him etc…etc…


To this Trkulja replied;

Veljko Veljko Velho
you will not be able long to hide behind false names.

I therefore sue Google and Yahoo a lot of you are game worldwide matletirali poor people through the Internet.
Nazalos your IP address can not be hidden. You are not FINANCIAL, bjede you are a mental patient and nazalos bjede in the head.

All can check

Milorad Trkulja


Interesting reading.

My opinion on the matter remains largely unchanged. Firstly I still fail to see how Google or any other search provider are responsible for content indexed by third parties and secondly, where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Trkulja’s been publicly named as an ‘associate‘ of Mick Gatto, one of the most famous and persistent personalities  in Melbourne’s underworld. For me, being linked to Gatto and having hitmen after you in broad daylight isn’t mere co-incidence and nor is it the result of an internet search.

That and seemingly wanting to throw around the fact that you’re able to sue anyone who publishes anything negative about you (and demanding IP addresses from third party publications) isn’t a good look either.

At the latest hearing between Trkulja and Google, the court struck out several parts of Trkulja’s statement of claim and asked that he ‘provide further and better particulars of the allegation of publication‘.

The strike outs are a good start and I can only assume that there’s an air of doubt by the court of the actuality of insisting that Google themselves published what is clearly a third party website.

How Trkulja intends to prove Google themselves published a third party website I can’t wait to see. No idea when Google and Trkulja are back in court but hopefully it’s not too far away.

So strong and central is this viewpoint in the pro-filter campaign that when asked what he thought about an opt-in approach to the internet filter, this is what Conroy had to say;


Yes you heard that correctly, Conroy and the Australian government firmly believe that anyone not in favour of a mandatory filter is opting into child pornography.

Now despite the insultingly flawed argument that it is, this time around a virtually identical argument is being made to push mandatory service provider logging of ‘the source, destination and timing of all emails and telephone calls‘, including internet telephony services such as Skype.

The argument for such big bother’esque measures?

You guessed it: ‘won’t somebody think of the children?‘

Back in June this year the Australian Attorney-General’s department confirmed it had been investigating the plausibility and benefit of adopting a directive similar to the European directive on data retention.

The European directive of course requires the mandatory logging of the aforementioned provider services.

Last Friday a senate inquiry was held into online privacy and for the first time Australians got to hear a bit of public discussion regarding the Attorney-General department’s ‘research’, known as ‘OzLog’.

Ironically, when quizzed about when investigation into the feasibility and benefits of ‘OzLog’ began, department employee Catherine Smith stated

she could not precisely remember when discussions around the issue commenced. “Can I say it’s been around for a very long time — I can’t remember how it started”.


Perhaps if the Attorney-General’s own record keeping were as thorough as those being proposed, the department would have some clue as to what they were researching and when.

Delicious irony aside, the other main point of interest was the reasoning behind the investigation in the first place. When asked to justify OzLog, Australian Federal Police assistant-commissioner, Neil Gaughan, cited AFP case ‘Centurion’ from back in 1998.

‘Centurion’ needed the sort of data that would be collected under the OzLog scheme.

The agency started off with just “IP addresses”, he said, but ended up being able to execute some 340 search warrants for child pornographic materials, arresting 140 people and confiscating 100,000 illegal images.


Now excuse me if I’m misunderstanding something here, but from the sounds of it, ‘Centurion’ was a roaring success arrest wise. Exactly how would introducing mandatory logging of telephone, email and internet telephony have made it any more successful.

As with the internet filter and Stephen Conroy, there’s a disturbing pattern seemingly re-occuring here. First introduce completely over the top security measures, claim it’s in the best interests of protecting our children and then label anyone who is against it as in favour of child abuse and/or pornography.

The last past hasn’t happened in regards to OzLog yet but you can bet it won’t be too far away if the AGD ever progress beyond their research stage.

For me the very idea that my government believes I’m automatically in favour of child abuse or pornography disgusts me; and make no mistake, this is exactly what the government are assuming with mandatory logging.

By logging everybody, the Australian government is automatically drawing the conclusion that anybody, at any given time could be involved in child abuse and/or pornography.

As a citizen I strongly believe the government is there to serve me, not run around assuming the worst about me. As evidenced by ‘Centurion’, if the police are doing their jobs then it’s quite possible for arrests to be made, so why do we even need to consider mandatory logging?

As of now the future of the AGD’s research is yet to be known. The AGD’s official line is that their ‘still gathering informaton’ but that they are committed to an ‘open, transparent and consultative process’.

This despite the fact that the AGD has already spoken to ISP’s and made them sign non-disclosure agreements. Additionally the AGD has also spoken to ‘representative groups such as the Communications Alliance, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner‘, with thus far none of the details of the discussions being made public.

That along with the atrociously unpublic manner Labor’s internet filter was introduced and pushed forward without public consultation doesn’t inspire any confidence at all. Infact I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in the next twelve to twenty four months Australian’s just woke up one day staring down the barrel of mandatory data retention.

Open, transparent and consultative processes my arse.

If the AGD were actually serious about protecting children, perhaps they could look into the recent Tasmanian case of 200 plus men sleeping with an underage child.

Despite having evidence and the details of over 200 men who slept with an underage girl, as of date no charges have nor look to be ever laid against any of those who participated.

By all means look out for the children but there’s a hell of a long way to go before the government chasing internet ghosts becomes even mildly relevant.

Lately, receiving as much attention as the organisation itself, Wikileaks frontman Julian Assange has been increasingly appearing in the headlines himself. Often seen as a distraction from Wikileaks itself, the news surrounding Assange of late has been nothing short of controversial themselves. Rape charges, calls for assassination and infinite detention have all been thrown about, now with an ever increasing frequency following Wikileaks latest release.

On the 21st of October Wikileaks sent out almost 400,000 Iraq war documents, later known as the ‘Iraq War Logs’. Despite being the largest leak of classified documents in history and containing mountains upon mountains of data for analysis, once journalists were given access to Assange it became apparent they were more interested in the man himself than the actual leak.

This was most apparent in the recent interview Assange had with CNN’s Atika Shubert;


Despite repeatedly stating he wasn’t going to discuss his personal life and that he was there to talk about the Iraq war logs, Shubert just couldn’t let it go.

Whether walking was the right thing to do or if there was a better way to handle the situation is obviously up for debate in its own right, but regardless the illustration of the press’ fascination with Assange himself is self evident.

With that in mind, hot on the heels of Wikileaks Iraq War Logs comes the next installment of Juice Media’s Rap News. Robert Foster and co. are back to provide ever amusing social commentary set to some pretty decent rap beats.

Unfortunately it seems though that even Rap News couldn’t escape the Assange’o'sphere of detraction.

Back in August this year I came across Rap News’ ‘Wikileaks vs. the Pentagon‘ and instantly became a fan. Not quite Rage Against the Machine (yet), but intelligent rebellious music is something that’s been missing from the political scene for a long time now and it was great to see someone doing something about it.

The message was clear and understandable and rather then simply a mere reflection of current events provided insight and a strong opinion I could identify with.

The latest offering from Juice Media, ‘Rap News vs News World Order’ unfortunately falls short of this goal;


The effort starts off strong but turns into somewhat of a spectatorial account of current events sometime during the ‘O’Really’ footage. Admittedly probably about the time Assange breaks the broadcast.

The sentiment of ‘saluting those that disclose the necessary facts‘ is all very well but part of the beauty of Rap News thus far has been the lyrical insight. In story telling one of the key components of success is being able to show someone something rather then telling it. This has been demonstrated beautifully in the past Rap News episodes as evidenced by the lack of a need for flashy sets or cameos.

Towards the conclusion of News World Order the real Assange demasks Terrence Moonseed as the impostor and this was probably the pinnacle of failing to show rather then simply tell.

I’m pretty sure this was a reference to the recent bungle 700 news articles referring to a pending Wikileaks release that was never forthcoming or confirmed by the organisation itself, but instead of commenting on it or providing any insight, Robert Foster and the team instead just chose to showcase it metaphorically.

With Assange simply unmasking Moonseed, Rap News is merely reflecting current events rather then providing clever commentary. This clever rhyming commentary and over the top yet overbearingly true caricatures are what made me fall in love with Rap News in the first place.

By all means continue to rap about Wikileaks but please don’t simply become a visual passive reflection of what’s going on in the world today. This is of course just one scene but it does largely detract from the rest of the video and undermine the overall point Rap News is trying to get across.

Despite my criticisms, intelligent insight and commentary through music is something sorely missing these days and Rap News’ work is genuinely appreciated.

Keep up the good work guys, I’m already looking forward to your next video!

These emails usually contain some rubbish story and then ask for money. Despite evolving to use creative language and ever interesting storylines, they always come down to sending money somewhere. Always with the money.

Despite this template design though, fast forward to the year 2010 and people are still falling for scam emails en masse. So much so that last week NSW Fair Trading commissioner Virginia Judge issued an alert on online scams to the general public.

The irony being that the alert was only issued after Judge herself fell for the scam.

“According to the scam email, my friend, Ross Steele, was stuck in Spain, missing a wallet and no funds for accommodation or means to get back to Sydney,” she said.


No doubt Steele’s email account had been compromised and thus a bulk email had been sent out to his contact list. Typically such email hijacks occur when idiots people open dubious attachments or install suspicious software.

Now one would imagine the first port of call after receiving such an email address would be the telephone. It’s 2010, people carry their mobiles with them all the time when they travel.

Of course these experienced hackers were one step ahead of common sense:

“The email also claimed I was unable to be contacted by phone,” Steele said, adding that at least five of his friends had sent money.


‘Unable to be contacted by phone but I’m using the internet and please send me money’?

Why on Earth didn’t any of these people’s ‘something’s wrong’ blinkers go up? Had any of those five friends (NSW Fair Trading minister Virginia Judge included), they’d have quickly found out that Steele ‘was in fact in Sydney, having never left the country.’

Thus is the reason scamming people on the internet continues to be a profitable venture.

‘Hmm, my mate just sent me an email from Spain asking for money. He’s using the internet in a well known capital city but apparently can’t use the phone.

What do I do? I know, I’ll blindly send him some money!’

The irony of the fair trading commissioner being caught out is delicious and I find it highly presumptuous for her to release an alert after only having fallen for the scam herself.

Falling for the good old Western Union scam email and then sending out an alert because you assume the nation is as naive as yourself takes giant balls.

Bravo Ms Judge.

The only way this story could have been more delicious is if somehow Stephen Conroy was involved. Probably a good thing he wasn’t though, he’d probably have wired half the national treasury to stop the scams coming through the portal.

Of course when he was inevitably caught out he’d then he’d try and blame it on evil Russian mobsters…

One particular tweet from Wikileaks caught my eye;

Hilarious WikiLeaks rap gets it right. Is comedy the only honest commentary?


Hilarious Wikileaks rap? What did Wikileaks have to do with rap?

There was a link included in the tweet so naturally I clicked on it to check out what this rap business was about. Within seconds of the video starting and host Robert Foster taking the screen, I struggled to remember where I’d heard the all to familiar voice before.

About a half minute later it clicked, Robert Foster sounded a hell of a lot like Melbourne rapper Hugo Farrant. But surely I was wrong…

…was I?

Hugo Farrant first flew onto my radar after collaborating with the Treats on Keep Pedalling. Keep Pedalling was nice enough to listen to and the lyrical connection with bicycles resonated with me, but I had great difficulty not writing Hugo off as just another freeloading northern suburbs waste-of-space hippie.

With that said, Hugo seems to have completely reincarnated himself in this new clip from Juice Media. Having graduated from the backstreets of Brunswick and Fitzroy and abandoning the supporting cast of crazy no hopers, Farrant shines as the sole star both lyrically and visually.

Here’s the clip Wikileaks linked to in their clip, titled ‘Rap News: WIKILEAKS vs Censorship – INTERNET WARS’:


Now Rap Wars is a far cry from the fist pumping infectiousness of Rage Against the Machine I hold fond memories of, but it certainly puts an interestingly creative spin on the news of the day.

From one wordsmith to another it’s with great appreciation that I salute the work that Farrant and his partner, Giordano Nanni, have put into creating the rap news clip. So complimentary are the caricatures and general production quality of the clip itself to the music and lyrics, that I find the track incomplete to listen to without the video playing.

Once you get over the fact that Hugo’s pronunciation is impeccable, the fact that he’s not black and that his vocal register is a tad higher than the norm, you begin to appreciate just how much modern hip hop or rap has lost its political message. Not that I’m an avid follower of the genre(s) but Farrant’s effort is clearly the most politically driven production I’ve seen in a long time.

Since first hearing Rage Against the Machine all those years ago, politics and hip hop’s rhyming vocals have always had a special place in my heart.

Farrant and Nanni undoubtedly have the talent to hopefully turn this into a regular thing so here’s hoping that they do. The Wikileaks rap video isn’t the first production they’ve done under their Juice Media production company. Thus far four rap videos have been made and each is as entertaining and lyrically complex as the Wikileaks one. Definitely compulsory viewing and I’ve embedded the remaining three clips below.

Unfortunately date wise the rap clips are appear to be quite sporadic. I’m assuming this is due to the creative complexity needed to creat the beats but also the development of the lyrics themselves. I find it often a challenge to express myself exactly how I want to in a written sense, I can only imagine the compounded difficulty of trying to do so via rhyming lyrics set to music.

Anyway, whatever the reason take this as me sending my heartfelt encouragement to you guys. The fact that they live and work out Melbourne is just a bonus.

Here’s the other three clips Juice Media have produced to date;

Nasa Bombs the Moon, 4/10/2009

Obama wins the Nobel ‘war is peace’ prize, 11/10/2009


Climate Change: Lord Monckton rap battles Al Gore, 17/11/2009

The dominant messenger program of choice was ICQ and such was the influence this software had on my teenage years that to this day I can still remember my ICQ number.

As Generation X gave way to Generation Y however a disturbing trend emerged whereas due to it being bundled with Microsoft Windows, MSN began making inroads as the messenger of choice.

Initially this threat was scoffed off by us messaging pioneers, I mean the only people that used MSN at the time were annoying teenagers and MySpace retards. This however was still an age of an emerging market yet to explode and sadly, eventually it did.

When the dust settled it was clear MSN was to become the social messaging service of choice. Diehards like myself were forced to switch over as by early 2000 there was a whole generation of internet users who’d never even heard of ICQ.

I don’t ever regret switching over to MSN but I’ve never really felt perfectly comfortable using it. Whilst ICQ was ‘cool’ and innovative, MSN always felt like it was a bloated “me too” cousin that lagged behind.

Fast forward to 2010 however and MSN (or Windows Live Messenger or whatever Microsoft are calling it) is the only messaging software that I’ve got installed on my Eee PC. Infact it’s been the only messaging software that I’ve used for some time.

Kind of hard not to when girls these days often skip your phone number and go straight for ‘so… do you have msn?’

A few days ago I noticed a Windows Live Messenger alert pop up for a new beta version. Because MSN isn’t really updated with any kind of frequency (I can’t even remember the last update) I clicked on the box and a flashy new website loaded up, “Windows Live Messenger Beta’.

The landing page contained your usual sales spiel telling everyone how MSN cures cancer, solves world peace and protects the environment but then at the bottom of the spiel is your real kick in the nuts.

Messenger combines the best IM with social networking, so you stay connected with the people who matter most. Share photos and videos in real time while you chat. Express yourself with 3D emoticons. Stay on top of what your friends are doing across social networking sites, right in Messenger.

Messenger beta requires Windows 7 or Windows Vista, and is part of Windows Live Essentials beta.


Windows 7 or Vista?… what?

I knew Vista was a bloated piece of garbage but I wasn’t even aware that Windows 7 was out yet. Not that I’d been keeping tabs on it but have we really come that far from good ol’ Windows XP.

My Asus Eee PC shipped with XP and I seriously doubt it’s even capable of running Vista or Windows 7. Besides, why the crap would I want to?

XP is hands down the best Windows ever put out and serves my needs perfectly. With the default cutesy theme crap turned off and the taskbar and sidemenus all reverted back to Windows 95 style it’s simply the most functional OS out there.

I’m not entirely sure if it’s just going to be this new MSN beta that requires Windows 7 or Vista or if the final version, whenever it’s released, will also require the newer operating systems to operate.

Either way I’m not upgrading and if Microsoft thinks a new version of MSN that’s incompatible with XP is going to make me they can blow it out their arse.

Seriously, what moron decided to restrict MSN to Windows 7 or Vista? That’s like restricting Facebook to Internet Explorer or some crap.

Marketing suicide guys… wake up.

Couple that with problematic worldwide jurisdiction, internet companies making billions and clueless internet users will dollar signs in their eyes and you’ve got a melting pot of litigation.

One such clueless internet user is Melbourne man Michael Trkulja.

Internet search engines cache snippets of the internet and present them in a searchable index for the general public. Common sense would dictate they don’t actually (inhouse content aside) create the vast majority of material published on the internet.

Search engines do have typically have a lot of money though and that makes them a target for money hungry opportunists.

Michael Trkulja was having dinner in 2004 with his mother in a St. Albans restaurant (the western suburbs, surprise surprise), when he was shot in the back by a man wearing a balaclava.

The police investigated and found no link between the shooting and Melbourne’s underworld. That however didn’t stop Trkulja from launching legal action against Google, Yahoo and Utah based hosting company BizHosting.

Some news reports are mentioning Yahoo and some are mentioning Google so I’m not sure if both were named in the court case or if Trkulja is suing them separately.

Here’s an article from News.com.au on Trkulja suing Google and another from APCMag on Trkulja and Yahoo.

For the purposes of this article I’ll just refer to them as ‘the search engines’, assuming Trkulja is looking to double his earnings and is suing both.

BizHosting were the company hosting the well known ‘Melbourne Crime: A journey into the Melbourne Underworld’ website. Originally hosted at http:/melbournecrime.bizhosting.com the site no longer works.

Trkulja insists that when someone punched his name into a search engine, the results displayed from the Melbourne Underworld website wrongfully linked Trkulja to Melbourne’s underworld.

Trkulja is ‘suing on the basis that the Yahoo page made it look like he was a criminal in the Melbourne crime scene, and so much so that someone had hired a hit-man to kill him.’

…really?

Not being a part of it I don’t profess to be an expert on Melbourne’s underworld but surely you need a bit more to go on then an internet search if you’re going to call in the hitmen?

Presumably Trkulja is claiming that he doesn’t have anything to do with the Melbourne Underworld, which then begs the question why was he shot? I mean if he truly doesn’t have anything to do with it, why would someone go and shoot him based off a search result? I’d have thought he’d have had to have done something, alleged or otherwise for there to be motive to kill.

Furthermore a police investigation found there to be no connection between the Melbourne Underworld and the Trkulja shooting.

So why was he shot?

Well one reasons could be that the western suburbs, let alone St Albans are the cesspools of Melbourne. Home to some of the scummiest people in Australia, people running around shooting, robbing, knifing and raping eachother is a daily occurrence.

If you live in such an area getting shot, although by no means justified, isn’t all that surprising.

Another reason could be Trkulja’s ethnic allegiance. Trkulja

says he is an organiser and a leader of the community of the former Yugoslavia in Australia and is well-known within that community.


Yugoslavia hey? Anyone who’s been to the Australian Open will testify that the entire Yugoslavian community is a little bonkers. Running around and shooting people, especially those ‘well-known within that community’ again doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

Regardless of what the reason is however one thing is for certain, search engines Yahoo and Google did not author or publish the information linking Trkulja’s links to the Melbourne Underworld.

The website in question, Melbourne Crime: A journey into the Melbourne Underworld, appears to have been taken down by its host BizHosting in early 2008. As far as I can see, apart from Trkulja’s legal action there doesn’t appear to be anything else on the internet linking him to Melbourne’s Underworld.

If we humor Trkulja and hypothesize a win and payout for him, has anyone actually thought of the consequences?

Back in March 2009 there was an estimated 25.21 billion webpages and 109.5 million websites. Search wise, although no official numbers have been released, it’s estimated that Google alone provides results to roughly 2 billion search queries daily.

A win for Trkulja would mean some serious ramifications for search engine providers displaying results in Australia. Obviously nobody has the manpower to filter search results to ensure nobody’s feelings are hurt.

The greater problem though would be the certification that search engine providers are responsible for content published by third parties. Either we as the general public want the broadest information cached for our searching leisure or we don’t.

Even via the smartest AI currently available there’s simply no way to determine whether or not information is possibly defamatory based on local jurisdiction via content analysis alone.

Publishers are already liable and if found guilty of defamation or they voluntarily choose to remove content, procedures are already in place for the removal (either manually or via automation) of content in search results.

Between internet filters and stupid court cases like Trkulja’s, one can’t help but wonder just how much of a laughing stock of the internet Australia is. I think it’s high time a redraft of our laws that apply to the internet was at the very least considered.

The internet is only going to get more technologically advanced and sadly our judiciary are still living in stone ages.

I am one of them and yesterday night noticed the Whirlpool was down. Usually when Whirlpool goes down a maintenance message comes up but this time the site was just timing out. Figuring it was just heavy maintenance or something a little more involved I went to bed hoping it’d be up in the morning.

Not so.

Turns out Whirlpool has been the target of a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) over the last 24 hours or so.

DDOS in layman’s terms is what happens when a basement nerd somewhere unleashes his bandwidth fury at a specific target (usually a website or internet service) and causes the service or website to go down.

Usually it’s because someone insulted his or her favourite roleplaying game, accused Macs of being better then PC’s or some other such trivial nonsense.

In response to the attacks Whirlpool and their hosting company Bulletproof plan to hand over data to the Australian Federal Police.

Lorenzo Modesto, chief operating officer at Whirlpool’s hosting provider Bulletproof Networks, said the offending IP addresses were blocked within 20 minutes of the second attack starting. He said he has enough data on the attacks to pass on a solid lead to the Australian Federal Police.

“As a result of the latest Distributed Denial of Service attack, which started at approximately 9.40pm on Tuesday the 29th of June, Bulletproof Networks and Whirlpool will be reporting the recent DDoS activity targeting Whirlpool to the Australian Federal Police as defined under Commonwealth legislation within Part 10.7 – Computer Offences of the Criminal Code Act 1995, including denial of service attacks and distributed denial of service attacks using botnets,” Bulletproof told iTnews in a statement.


Whilst this sounds all legal and intimidating due to the nature of DDOS attacks and the general incompetency with the AFP when it comes to cybercrime, I’m assuming we’ll never know who’s behind the attacks or why they happened.

Stephen Conroy’s all for fighting imaginary villians with overbearing internet filters… but focusing on actual cyber crime?

‘Fuck it, we’ll let the portal sort itself out’.

DDOS attacks routinely employ the bandwidth of zombie computers worldwide and are directed by an individual or group who are usually smart enough to cover their tracks.

Given the target is Whrilpool, a technology forum and there’s no national security or massive amounts of money at stake I’m assuming the AFP will probably file the list of IP addresses sent to them in the ‘too hard’ or ‘we’ll get around to that later’ basket.

In response to the DDOS attacks Whirlpool seem to be content to just wait the attacks out. A recent Twitter update stated;

Whirlpool is going to be offline all day. Their attacks are no match for our laid-back attitude!

That’s all very well for Whirlpool but meanwhile there’s thousands of internet users around Australia going into serious discussion withdrawal. You think giving up cigarettes, alcohol, heroin, coffee or sex is bad…

…try taking away someone’s forums!

Work’s going to be a bitch today, ARGHHHHH!

Yesterday news.com.au were having rampant problems with server timeouts and today the entire breaking news section has disappeared off their front page.

I mean sure I can click on the breaking news tab at the top but that list is ugly and I waste half my day making that extra mouse click each time.

The website also seems to be showing a lot of news articles from the last few days as up to date news.

I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come when News Limited rolls out its news subscription paid service.

NOT HAPPY JAN!

Osama bin Laden put in charge of a construction team rebuilding the Twin Towers.

Kevin Rudd being asked to judge diving at the next Olympics, except for the backflip event.

All of these are horrifying absurd scenarios the world wouldn’t want to be confronted with anytime soon. However they’re nothing compared to the absolute nonsense that is Stephen Conroy recently being appointed to a United Nations Broadband Taskforce.

The International Telecommunications Union’s Broadband Commission for Digital Development’s key aim

is to accelerate attainment of those goals — and more — by the target date of 2015.


‘Those goals’ being the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Amongst other things, these goals aim to

deliver results for the billions of people struggling to meet their basic needs and to live in dignity and peace.


In a broadband sense I’m assuming they’re referring to internet access as being a basic need, which is far enough.

So the UN have created a broadband taskforce aimed at accelerating internet access around the world by a specific deadline, and they’ve gone and appointed Stephen Conroy to it.

Let’s have a look at Conroy’s credentials on accelerating the national rollout of internet access. Here’s Conroy in 2007;


Back in 2007 Stephen Conroy went on Australian television and told the public that he’d be connecting people by the end of 2008.

It’s almost mid 2010 now and to date not one person has been connected to the National Broadband network. Infact two and half years after Conroy and the Labor government were elected, the National Broadband Network doesn’t even exist yet. Not even on paper.

Recently the $25 million McKinsey study which investigated the viability of a National Broadband Network (yes the government is only now investigating the viability of the network after it was promised to us back in 2007), was finalised and made public.

In response Conroy has given Australia’s largest ISP, Telstra, till the end of June to decide if they want to be a part of it. After that who knows what’s next on the ‘stall for time’ National Broadband Network agenda.

The good news is that whenever the government does decide to actually put a plan into action, the network itself is estimated to take about eight years to build.

Living in Australia, do you remember what you’re internet was like eight years ago?

All up if we take Conroy’s 2007 National Broadband network promise to start connecting people by the end of 2008, assume the government starts building the network by the end of 2010 and whack 8 years of building time onto the equation, Australian’s will finally have a broadband network nine years overdue.

Meanwhile the guy in charge of this disaster, Senator Stephen Conroy has just been welcomed onto a taskforce designed to ‘accelerate‘ the rollout of internet access worldwide.

Seriously is the UN full of freaking morons or what?

When asked what he thought about his recent appointment, Conroy stated

“I look forward to sharing Australia’s experiences in developing our national broadband network as well as contributing to the work of the Commission.”


To date the only other achievement Stephen Conroy has had in regards to the internet is the announcement of a mandatory ISP internet censorship filter.

Yeah, I wonder how that’s going to go down at the UN when Conroy ‘contributes‘ it.