Stilgherrian » hoax

Links for 26 May 2008 through 01 June 2008

del.icio.us — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:01:28 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 26 May 2008 through 01 June 2008, gathered semi-automatically and covering a disturbing range of topics:

NSLU2-Linux: Technical information for hacking the Linksys NSLU2 NAS device, along with the Synology DS101, the Iomega NAS100d, the D-Link DSMG600 and other ixp4xx-based devices with large attached storage.
Hacking WD MyBook World Ed: Western Digital's My Book World Edition network storage device is actually a little Linux RAID server. This Wiki has technical information on how to hack them.
Sarah Jessica Parker Looks Like A Horse: Well, she does. And here's the website. Proof that people have too much time on their hands.
A twittering experiment | eicolab: An interesting use Twitter, with a comment added by yours truly.
Friends, Enemies and My Army | Viddler.com: Another recent presentation by Mark Pesce, this one at the 2008 Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, on 25 May 2008. A nice trip through the power of Twitter, the "nuclear option", and the surprising influence of Josh Marshall's army.
Phoenix Lander “Talks” to Twitterers | NYTimes.com: Includes an interview with the NASA employee who's been playing the part of the Mars Phoenix spacecraft on Twitter (@MarsPhoenix).
Australian Strategic Policy Institute: "One for the feed reader", I've been told. I haven't explored this site yet.
A discussion paper on the singular use of “they”: This link looks like it solves this question forever. If only people read it…
Twitter Co-Opted by Users as Better SMS, Social Media Platform | URBEINGRECORDED: Yet another superb essay on the impact of Twitter.
The Gruen Transfer | ABC TV: A new TV series looking at the art and science of persuasion as used by the advertising industry. Much good stuff here.
Ern Malley | Wikipedia: Not exactly a new story, but I was recently reminded of this wonderful literary hoax from the 1940s.
Scaling a Microblogging Service - Part I | Hueniverse: A comprehensive but fairly technical explanation of the problems Twitter faces.
The Digital Media Revolution | YouTube: Mark Pesce, Technology Futurist speaks about the Digital Media Revolution at the SAGEM conference, April 2008, in Adelaide. Will the government heed his advice? In 5 parts, this links to part 1.
Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address | YouTube: An inspirational 15 mins about the importance of following your dream, even if the end result isn't clear. "You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking back."

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Czech artists on trial for fake nuke

Stilgherrian — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:12:56 +0000

Six members of the Czech art group Ztohoven, based in Prague have been charged with “spreading false information” and face up to three years in jail for hacking a TV broadcast and inserting images of a nuclear explosion.

The hack took place on 17 June 2007, when viewers watching webcam shots of Czech mountain resorts saw an explosion in the Krkonose or Giant Mountains.

Even though they’re being charged with a crime, the group was also awarded the NG 333 prize for young artists by Prague’s National Gallery together with a cash prize of 333,000 koruna (around AUD$21,000).

Hat tip to Boing Boing.

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The World’s Weirdest Conspiracy Theories

Stilgherrian — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 02:26:09 +0000

Which of The World’s Weirdest/Stupidest Conspiracy Theories do you find most convincing? I must admit, I like the idea that WWII never really happened. “The Illuminati employed elaborate special effects, stage magic, and phoney journalism to scare the world into pacifism.” Via BoingBoing.

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Day and Night

Stilgherrian — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:07:50 +0000

I’ve been looking at this photograph for hours, scattered over the last few days.

~~It was apparently taken from the space shuttle Columbia~~. No it wasn’t, scroll down for the comments. I shouldn’t need to point out that the big lumpy thing in the foreground is called Africa, and further back there’s the thing they call Europe.

It fascinates me because it — literally! — puts things in perspective. Some of the world’s greatest cities are invisible, at least in daylight. The Low Countries are just starting to blaze in artificial light. But the brightest lights are the flares of oil wells in the deserts of Algeria and Libya, and off the coast of Nigeria.

Hey, aren’t the people there starving? That can’t be right, if they’ve got all that oil, surely?

Thanks to Memex 1.1 for the pointer.

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Herald falls for joke, will they withdraw?

Stilgherrian — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 22:54:00 +0000

This morning the Sydney Morning Herald tells us how an economist’s research shows that AC/DC’s Bon Scott wasn’t as good a singer as Brian Johnson. Alas, it’s been exposed as a joke. Will the Herald give as prominent a place to their “correction”?

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NASA prepares for new fake Moon landing

Stilgherrian — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:44:59 +0000

NASA preps robots for future fake moon landings, reports The Register. Thanks to BAB for the pointer.

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Agreeing with Bolt and Downer, egad!

Stilgherrian — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:59:34 +0000

Tonight I find myself defending right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt and Minister for Cocktail Parties Alexander Downer over The Red Cross Ambulance Incident. What are they putting in the water?

In Crikey today, Sophie Vorrath whinges that Bolt relied on anonymous blogger Zombietime to bebunk the “Israel hits ambulances with missile” story as a hoax — just like I did on the weekend.

Apparently it’s OK for Bolt to rely on an unattributed blog called Zombietime to back his sensational claim – the same source, it seems, upon which the Honourable Alexander Downer based his concern about “evidence of dishonesty in the reporting out of Lebanon” during his speech to the National Newspaper Publishers’ Conference on the Gold Coast on Monday.

The website… claims to prove that the 23 July attack, in which two ambulances were fired upon and six people injured, never happened, using photographs of an interior of one ambulance that apparently show there was not enough damage.

Here’s how I’ve replied to Crikey, which I daresay will be published tomorrow:

Stilgherrian writes: Sophie Vorrath is way keen to attack Andrew Bolt — hey the gods know there’s plenty of reasons you’d want to. But Vorrath misrepresents Zombietime as “claiming to prove” the Israel-shoots-ambulance tale a fake “using photographs of an interior of one ambulance”. Zombietime actually presents a detailed forensic argument over 9000 words — starting with the supposed “missile hole” sitting right where other ambulances have a ventilator. Zombietime’s story certainly fits the facts better than any claim of “missile attack”. Why have a go at Bolt (or Alexander Downer) just because we don’t know who the messenger is?

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The Red Cross Ambulance Incident

Stilgherrian — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 00:15:35 +0000

On 23 July 2006, an Israeli aircraft intentionally fired missiles at two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances performing rescue operations, injuring everyone inside. So says the global media, including Time magazine, The Guardian, the New York Times and outlets around the world including The Age.

The incident would have been an indefensible violation of the Geneva Convention, and would constitute a war crime committed by Israel. But it never happened.

Bloggers have systematically debunked the story, explaining it as a hoax set up by Hezbollah to discredit Israel.

Michelle Malkin has posted a summary with photographs.
“Internet documentarian” and photojournalist Zombie has posted a detailed analysis.

Zombie speculates how this hoax became news and why the story still has legs:

Why did the media swallow the story hook, line and sinker? In their zeal to bash Israel, did they allow themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to be duped by Hezbollah supporters into broadcasting propaganda as news? Or is the media so eager to jump on any fresh scandal that they simply switch off their critical thinking and become absolutely credulous of any juicy tale thrown their way?

Well, I don’t see the US-dominated news media having “zeal to ban Israel”!

No, the real reason is that the news is a massively competitive business. If you’ve got a hot story with pictures then you’d better run it, despite any doubts — otherwise the competitors will run it and your bosses will be asking why you’ve missed the big headline.

And there’s no need to correct yourself afterwards. Unless you’ve got a basic fact wrong — sorry, John Howard wasn’t assassinated after all — then the media’s goldfish-like attention span will have moved on. Why draw attention to a mistake?

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Qantas “Gripe Reports” Debunked

Stilgherrian — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 16:58:49 +0000

I’m now sorry I published that link to funny Qantas Gripe Reports. It turns out they’re probably a fake that’s been circulating the Internet for ages, claiming to be variously from Qantas, the US Air Force and the UK’s Royal Air Force.