Category: Media

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Mark Day perpetuates Internet us-and-them

Once upon a time Mark Day (pictured) was relevant. As publisher of The Australian from 1977 and then its Editor-in-Chief, he ran what is still Australia’s only true national newspaper and didn’t fuck it up.

But today his column Net-gen forces state-sanctioned double standard tries to perpetuate the divide between old and new media, casting it as a generation gap using last week’s kerfuffle over South Australia’s electoral laws as a hook.

(As it happens, I wrote about that kerfuffle in a ZDNet.com.au opinion piece, SA’s Govt 2.0 became mob rule. I’m rather pleased that ITjourno.com.au‘s Phil Sim called it “a smart, thought-provoking column”. It generated a few good comments too. Thanks.)

Mark Day can be a bit of a fossil, says meta-journalist Margaret Simons. I agree, and in this case I reckon he’s got it wrong.

Since there’s no guarantee The Australian will post my comments, I’ve written him this open letter…

Continue reading “Mark Day perpetuates Internet us-and-them”

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Patch Monday: Contactless EFTPOS and Google privacy

ZDNet Australia logo: click for Patch Monday episode 26

Privacy issues on the Patch Monday podcast this week.

Contactless EFTPOS and credit cards that allow you to make payments without a signature or entering a PIN, and the vast honey pot of personal data that is Google. It’s not just Gmail, but everything else.

My guest is the Chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation, Professor Roger Clarke.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please, let me know what you think. We now accept audio comments too. Either Skype to “stilgherrian” or phone Sydney 02 8011 3733.

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Cheap fake tan and fat thighs? Snooki!

“There needs to be a special word for the combination of a cheap fake tan and fat thighs.”

I expressed that view on Twitter early this evening. Thanks to @SophieAG I now know there’s already such a word: Snooki.

This class act’s name is Nicole Polizzi (pictured), though she goes by the nickname “Snooki” and “stars” in an MTV reality TV program called Jersey Shore.

Watching the trailer tells you everything you need to know.

According to The Hollywood Gossip:

She fake-tans and acts like a bit of a skank. Then again that sums up the whole cast, so what are you really gonna do. That’s just what she does…

Nicole has made headlines already … for having brown skin. Like for real brown. Not tanned, like she’s been rolling in the mud or something. Yech.

Apparently Snooki is such a skank that advertisers have pulled out of the series.

Snooki’s response?

“I just have one thing to say to Domino’s, Dell, UNICO and all the other haters out there: Fuck you! If you don’t want to watch, then don’t watch.”

Snooki added: “Just shut the hell up! I’m serious… Fuck you!”

…

UNICO, the Italian-American organisation that claims the show perpetuates negative stereotypes, plans to keep pressuring sponsors to boycott the show.

“She is not an embarrassment to Italian Americans. She is actually an embarrassment to the entire human race!!!!” UNICO said of Snooki in a statement.

Apparently Snooki’s idea of the ideal man is the Guido stereotype.

Given the monumental appropriateness of naming an entire sub-class of humanity after this woman — and I do mean sub-class — other suggestion faded in comparison.

Continue reading “Cheap fake tan and fat thighs? Snooki!”

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Patch Monday: Intel’s new 32nm 2010 Core chips

ZDNet Australia logo: click for Patch Monday episode 25

Amongst the goodies at the huge Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, Intel announced new processor chips that scale down to 32 nanometres — and that’s the topic for this week’s Patch Monday.

The chips are faster and use less power, sure. But what else does it mean? My guest is Benno Rice, a freelance systems architect based in Melbourne who’s particularly interested in embedded systems — so he knows about processor chips.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please, let me know what you think. Feedback very, very welcome. And do let me know if there’s any topics I should cover, or guests we should interview.

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Sea Shepherd whaling discussion kicks off

Needless to say, since I posted yesterday about the collision between Sea Shepherd’s Ady Gil and Japanese security ship Shonen Maru 2, the hard of thinking have confused me being anti-Sea Shepherd with being pro-whaling. Just to make it abundantly clear, I’ve written a long comment over on my original post.

[Update 11am: Simon Rumble has complained about me turning off comments on this post. Sorry, I should have said that comments are open over at my January 2008 post. I wanted to keep all the comments related to Sea Shepherd in one place.]

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Sea Shepherd? Gave my opinion 2 years ago

Self-appointed whale-defender media whores Sea Shepherd always provide great photos of their “direct action”, so it’s no surprise that when their boat Ady Gil was damaged by Japanese security ship Shonan Maru 2 yesterday it looked spectacular.

Sea Shepherd of course claim it was a deliberate attack. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Thing is though, guys, if you don’t want to be involved in a collision at sea, don’t fucking well deliberately put your boat so close to another.

I won’t say any more about this specific incident today. I have other things to do, and I’ve already written about my opinion of Sea Shepherd two years ago — along with plenty of references to material which points out that things are all much murkier than Sea Shepherd makes out.

If you’d like to comment on this issue, do please do so after reading the material over at my original post. I’m very interested in separating out the emotion-laden rhetoric and the zealotry surrounding whaling from the practical environmental and legal issues, and I think Sea Shepherd are a noisy distraction.

So, I’ll close comments on this post, and you can comment over there.

As an aside, the life and beliefs of Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson make for an interesting read too.

[Update 8 January 2010: To clarify, yes, comments are closed on this post — not to limit the discussion, but to ensure that all comments relating to Sea Shepherd are collected over on my January 2008 post. Sorry if there’s been any confusion.]