Given that I didn’t get around to writing any sort of general round-up of 2010, you might as well enjoy Charlie Brooker’s 2010 Wipe, broadcast on the BBC earlier this week.

It’s not anywhere “official” that I can discover yet, but of course it’s already on YouTube in four parts: 1, 2, 3, 4.

It doesn’t hold a candle to His Benevolence Stilgherrian’s Christmas Message from 2008, but it’ll do.

Following yesterday’s news that a memo claiming McDonald’s deliberately rips off customers was a fake (pictured), I spoke about Internet pranks on ABC Radio 891 Adelaide this morning. I figured you might as well see my notes.

Oh, and the audio is below.

The fake memo was the work of Adelaide-based satirist and prankster David Thorne who, amongst other things, runs the website 27bslash6 as troll-bait and is flogging t-shirts and a book of his pranks called The Internet is a Playground.

Personally, I reckon pranks that just waste people’s time or otherwise annoy them without making any more significant point about society are pretty cheap.

Thorne’s attempt to pay a bill with a drawing of a spider is perhaps amusing, and it’s good that the victim saw the joke. But I put it at the same level as The Chaser bringing a horse into shops. Whereas The Chaser‘s breach of security at APEC, which you can see on video, made an important point about security theatre and social engineering attacks.

Anyway, this is what I discovered while poking around…

A US ABC News story listed their Top 5 Website Hoaxes of All Time, including the original website for The Blair Witch Project, Bonsai Kittens, a Victorian-era robot called Boilerplate and The Yes Men‘s stunning disruption of Dow Chemicals.

The Web site DowEthics.com looks pretty convincing at first, but it has no affiliation with Dow Chemical’s real Web site, Dow.com.

Even so, it fooled the BBC in 2004 when an unknowing researcher used the Web site to book an interview with a Dow Chemical executive.

While on-air the “executive” said Dow would finally clean up the toxic chemical plant in Bhopal, India and pay billions in compensation to the victims on the 20-year anniversary of the disaster. Dow Chemical’s stock dropped sharply.

In reality, Dow Chemical does not claim responsibility for the lethal gas that killed at least 8,000 people and poisoned about half a million.

The Dow stunt was pulled off by The Yes Men, a loosely knit group of Internet pranksters who spoof prominent corporations and organisations.

I also stumbled across the Exploding Cactus Spider Hoax, how the story of Jeff Goldblum’s death was created and spread using a “celebrity fake news generator” at FakeAWish.com, and the Museum of Hoaxes’ list of The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time.

I suppose I should mention that to check if something’s a hoax or not, Snopes is your friend.

So, which are your favourite Internet hoaxes?

[The radio interview is probably Copyright © 2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but since they don't archive them I reckon it's fair enough putting it here provided you just listen to it and I link back to the ABC Adelaide website and encourage you to listen.]

Just start type in the first part of a question, like “Why does he…”, and Google tells you what’s important to people.

• Why does he do that?
• Why does he ignore me?
• Why does he like me?
• Why does he love me?
• Why does he cheat?
• Why does he push me away?
• Why does he lie?
• Why does he stare at me?
• Why does he text instead of call?
• Why does he hurt me?

Asking the same question about females gets a similar-but-different result.

• Why does she stay lyrics?
• Why does she stay ne yo?
• Why does she ignore me?
• Why does she cheat?
• Why does she stay lyrics neo?
• Why does she love me?
• Why does she like me?
• Why does she lie?
• Why does she play hard to get?
• Why does she stay youtube?

Asking “Why do they…” is rather more differenter.

• Why do they call New York The Big Apple?
• Why do they call getting sick a cold?
• Why do they call it the birds and the bees?
• Why do they call it the clap?
• Why do they always send the poor?
• Why do they call it Fat Tuesday?
• Why do they rock so hard?
• Why do they act that way?
• Why do they drive on the left side of the road…?
• Why do they leave lyrics?

And finally (for now), asking “Where is…?

• Where is my refund?
• Where is the love lyrics?
• Where is Chuck Norris?
• Where is my mind lyrics?
• Where is my state refund?
• Where is the love?
• Where is my stimulus check?
• Where is Dubai?
• Where is your appendix?
• Where is the Grand Canyon?

OK, that’s enough. Back to work.

When I saw the photograph of Senator Stephen Conroy accompanying yesterday’s ABC News piece about the leaked blacklist, I couldn’t help but notice the similarity. Sorry, Senator. (AAP: Alan Porritt, file photo)

One of the Rudd government’s election promises was a national fibre-to-the-node (FttN) broadband network, putting at least 12Mb/sec download speeds within reach of 98% of the Australian population. Tuesday night’s Federal Budget kept that promise. I think.

Here’s how I wrote about it for Crikey yesterday:

Of $4.7b promised for the National Broadband Network, only 0.16% has been committed: $2.1m this financial year and $5.2m next for “establishment and implementation”. The remaining 99.84% — you know, actually building the thing — is all “nfp”. Not for publication. We’ll get back to you.

Spending is now “up to” the pre-election $4.7b figure. Broadband is competing with run-down roads, railways and ports for a share of the $20b Building Australia Fund, where “disbursements… will be subject to budget consideration, and will be spent responsibly, in line with prevailing macroeconomic conditions.”

Whatever the final budget, Australia will still be rolling out a 12Mb/sec network in 2012. Other countries are rolling out 100Mb/sec networks now.

It really is building yesterday’s network, isn’t it.

Mind you, my birthday on Friday is tagged as “International Be Sexually Inappropriate With Your Friends Day”. Apparently. Should I…? Oh, never mind.

… is Dr Betty Zilka in Petersham, Sydney. Please engage your handbrake and open wide!

Here’s some moving images on the Internet for your enjoyment.

1. You know how Westpac bank ATMs have that woman who gestures at you through the transaction? Does she annoy you? I especially hate how she asks whether you want a receipt, and then says you can’t have a receipt. Ignorant bitch. What about this version?
2. Check out the most in-demand video editing crew in the entire Sunnyvale trailer park.
3. A currently-running TV advert with a nice beaver. I encourage you to join the conversation there about the use of the word. Has the advertiser got it right for the Australian audience?

Now this is nothing more than links to things I found interesting. Should this be a full post like this, with a headline? A “Note” which, on the website home page at least, is shown without a headline but with a red line in the margin? Or should I just Twitter them as I find them?

1. “Somehow I suspect book lovers feel the same way about Harry Potter as music lovers feel about Jeff Buckley.” (Alastair Rankine)
2. Overheard while walking past a house where young boys were playing noisily: “I’m the birthday boy so I have to be team leader.”
3. “Someone in my office just said ‘cyberspace’. I hope I’m not paying them.” (abacab)
4. In response to my comment, “Stilgherrian is thinking about things that geeks think about”, someone who should probably remain nameless said: “Most geeks I know think about banging Natalie Portman in a blow-up-pool filled with custard…”
5. “Stilgherrian, one day in the future, your life will confuse historians.” (Nick Hodge)

• Over at New Matilda, Ben Eltham has written a fine summary of The Super Seasprites Saga. He links to an explanation of the sunk cost fallacy which probably contributed to this monumental fuck-up.
• Laurel Papworth’s piece 2020 Summit: Objective Journalists vs Passionate Blogging, which I’m planning to respond to at length some time this weekend.
• A piece from The New Yorker, Scents and Sensibility: What the nose knows, which ponders, amongst other things, why one molecule smells of spearmint when its exact mirror image smells of caraway. (Hat-tip to 3 Quarks Daily.)
• And for a change of pace, try the selection of First Dog on the Moon cartoons which were published in Crikey through January and February.

Four pieces feels about right for today.

Jaded by the sight of what it deemed “run-of-the-mill” orifices, the nation’s pornography-saturated populace released a statement Monday demanding a new bodily opening to leer at. “At this point, staring at an anus, vagina, or beckoning mouth has become so commonplace that it is no more titillating than ogling, say, the human elbow.”

Read the whole article to discover what the populace demands in its new orifice, so to speak. Hat-tip to Boing Boing.