Today I closed the old ‘binnsy’ Google account and signed up for a new one. The old one was so overridden with spam, both in Blogger and Gmail, that it was hardly worth keeping. Being bored, I had a brief flick through the T&C, and found this little tidbit of legalese goodness:
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
Ooh, er, guv’nor!
So basically, post what you want, you own it, all good – but if Google wants it, they’ll damn well take it! Google has this appearance of being an organic, innovative, progressive ‘community’ (as opposed to overlording corporation), but this is the way they will take over the world. The planet Earth will very soon be designated, for real, ‘Google Earth.’ We will all be known by our Google IDs. TV commercials, billboards, the lot, will be governed by AdSense.
Essentially, the world and all kinds of freedom will be nommed by the Goog.
Best start stocking up on canned goods. That’s gonna be a looooong winter.
Posted by Dan Binns under Uncategorized No Comments
In a spectacular and utterly wondrous move by Cityrail, train services all over the CBD will come to what may just be a literal grinding, sparking, splintering and shuddering halt next Thursday, the day after Pope Rodent-Killer arrives in town and thousands of non-commercial, non-religious anti-pilgrims flock to see a bit of the man in white.
Oh what joy warms my cockles, not only that Sydney will be thrown into even more chaos by the madness that is World Youth Day, but also that I’ll be interstate, watching the drama unfold on news coverage from Melbourne.
I wonder if perhaps the SES, NSW Police, ASIO, the FBI, the Stasi and whoever else has been granted superpowers will find this kind of behaviour ‘annoying’ or an ‘inconvenience’ and punish the offenders accordingly.
Well, everyone else is talking about the bloody thing, so I suppose I’d better weigh in.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more annoyed about anything that’s happened in Sydney than I am about bloody World Youth Day. This supposedly non-secular, non-commercial event will do absolutely nothing except annoy Sydney-siders for five days, virtually halt the Sydney roads network and public transport system and clog up just about every facet of infrastructure the city is run on.
Add to this the fact that police have been granted the power to arrest or fine anyone for causing ‘inconvenience’ or ‘annoyance’ to WYD participants. As Jules Morrow writes in the Herald today, these are two incredibly vague notions – and just who decides what fits into either category? My major beef with these new rules is that t-shirts that bear messages even hinting at anti-religion or just a simple religious joke can accrue a $5,500 fine. I have a t-shirt that says ‘Jesus is coming. Look busy.’ that even hardcore Christians have found amusing. But if I wear that into Town Hall between the 15th and 20th of July, I could be hit with a fine which I can’t possibly afford to pay.
What the hell happened to freedom of expression? Free speech?
People are not allowed to protest at all, and no areas have even been allocated for opposition of the event.
Basically in my opinion World Youth Day 2008 is a hypocritical, confusing, bureaucratic, government-funded, hyper-zealous, hyper-religious, super-commercial crock of shit.
Don’t get me wrong. As a Christian myself I’m all for getting the youth involved in churchy activities, but not at the expense of people who just want to live their lives, get to work and uni on time, express their opinions in a safe, quiet and law-abiding way.
And as for the papal visit, already it’s causing delays as his car is delivered down the freeway to await its occupant. So Ratzinger’s coming to town. Personally? w00t. I’m sorry but Benedict just doesn’t have the appeal to me that John Paul had. And JP2 could pull a crowd, could he what. Cos he was cool. And I could almost write Benedict’s speech now – and even if I didn’t predict it accurately, it would be an almost perfect paraphrase. ‘We seek peace in this time and always, and it is in you the children that we find our hope. God bless you all.’ Or some like.
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Sure – for the first time I actually knew what I was doing when I voted. Yes, I may have contributed, with that vote, to the greatest upheaval in the last ten years of Australian politics. But I’m afraid, in this case, I’m with ‘most voters’.
The situation is simply ridiculous. $1.60 a litre? Piss off. I remember Mum and Dad complaining about 80 cents a litre. Then it was 90. Then remember the news bulletins? ‘A dollar a litre! Surely this means the apocalypse is nigh.’ Then with Iraq again and everything, it’s just snowballed into the hideous situation in which we find ourselves now.
I need my car to get to uni, work and short trips around the area, maybe into the city once in a while. But it’s getting to the point where the 25-minute trip to uni is becoming a noticeable separate financial burden, no longer just a part of my fuel budget.
Something really must be done, though I’ve no idea what. What could the government possibly hope to do? Step in and wave their arms around going ‘Bad petrol people! Make price go down k?’ I think not. Entertaining though it would be.
So I turn it over to the readers of the Hovel – what could be done about fuel, short of nuking all OPEC countries and making them states of the USA?
Cos when you think about it, this guy has to put up with fire, theft, personal injury, water damage, not to mention Goombas. And also, he’s just a plumber. I mean, he’s earning minimum wage as a tradie, getting work where he can, in between having to go and save the Princess and Toad and his mates.
I bet he voted Labor. Can you imagine if Mario had to go on an AWA? His entire livelihood would go down the toilet, and he’d be left to save the world with little to no capital behind him.
And to think that we worry day and night about the war on terror. Mario mustn’t get any sleep, thinking about piranha plants, goombas, pesky cannonballs and crazy octopi.
Think of his psychological state too. Living in constant fear, putting on a brave face and giving a jovial ‘Woo!’ every time he jumps. Add to this the physical and emotional strain of having to deal with varying gravitational fields in his latest adventures in Super Mario Galaxy.
What a brave, brave soul that little plumbing hero is. Never give up, trust your instincts, and when the going gets tough, look for a 1UP. Truly an inspiration to us all.
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In not-all-that-surprising news for university students, scholars and academics, Wikipedia can now officially no longer be trusted as an authentic news source, with revelations that members of the Prime Minister’s office have been altering government-related pages. Kevin Rudd chimed in to say that making factual corrections is perfectly fine – that being the only kind of Wiki-editing done by the Opposition – but to change history is beyond reproach.
Even more shocking was information that the Australian Department of Defence was guilty of over 5000 erroneous edits, having made changes to entries on the Vietnam War and the 9/11 Truth Report. On reflection it’s not that shocking. When you consider than anyone can add a page or make changes to any entry on Wikipedia, it seems only a natural progression of human nature to try and alter history in the eyes and minds of Wiki addicts.
Personally I think this would make a fascinating doco or mocko on how altering information can change the way young people think. Youth are hooked on Wikipedia as a source of information. When contributions made by the general public are taken as fact, over more reputable, peer-reviewed sources, what could possibly go wrong?
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Through a combination of laziness, absent-mindedness (the extent of which my girlfriend, parents, friends and most of my family will readily and enthusiastically attest to) and sheer lack of motivation I managed to miss yesterday’s International Blogger’s Day. I knew it was on, but I couldn’t have been stuffed getting on the net.
So I thought today I’d just ramble for a bit about democracy and blogging in this new age.
The world is a dangerous place in the current era. The threat of terrorism, wars in the Middle East, the ever-growing power of Japan and North Korea, famine and disease in Africa and elsewhere: these paint a dull picture of what we’ve done with our world. Not to even touch on the crappy way we’re treating our world, and how much the world is going to kick our mortal butts for it.
Despite all this sadness, bad administration and danger, however, we live in an age where people all over the world are telling their stories through various mediums. Digital storytelling and foreign independent documentaries are springing up from terrorist hotspots and from underneath oppressive regimes. People flee to the West to tell their story. However no other medium has had more of an impact on the Western world than the blog.
MySpace, YouTube and others have tried, but the online web journal, weblog or blog is by far one of the most dynamic, engaging and intriguing media of the twenty-first century. An evolution of the personal web page, the blog is updated instantaneously, from anywhere in the world, with information, opinion, images and videos, and people all over the world flock to them for new information and insight.
Some are very personal, some not all that intellectual, some anarchic, some conservative, some somewhat opinionated, but they’re all there, and they’re all there because someone, somewhere in the world, has something to say.
Only now are world leaders (and dictators) realising the sway and power bloggers can have. In totalitarian governments blogs are slowly being banned alongside books and independent cinema. Blogs are such vehicles of opinion that they have changed human psyches – one only has to look at the impact Salam Pax had to realise this.
Blogs won’t be stamped out though – because of their sheer will of opinion, of perspective and of self. Bloggers have stood together in defending each other readily and on many occasions – despite the individual bloggers never having met in the real world. It is this online cyberspatial public sphere, solidarity, democracy, that can only increase in power – and one day, hopefully, spill over into reality.
In the coming days I’ll post bits and pieces from my paper on bloging to illustrate the above points. Meantime, fellow bloggers, stand together and be counted as the few who bravely state their cases in a world where everyone seems to stick their heads in the sand and pretend everything will fix itself.
In other news I went to the dentist today. Evil, sadistic people they are. I still can’t feel most of my mouth.