Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Rockin' | Dec 21, 2007 10:34

One News has a mobile phone video shot in what looks like a Pak 'n' Save minutes after last night's earthquake in Gisborne. As people pick through the debris wondering what the hell happened, the PA system crackles into life: "Could we have a checkout operator please … we've still got customers to clear here."

I'm not sure where the checkout operators had gone, but clearly, a mere convulsion of the earth itself was not about to be allowed to interrupt the flow of commerce.

The citizen journalism that accompanies all modern calamity was present last night, if in mild measure. The Trade Me forums -- always a good place to check for chatter -- launched a thread 18 minutes after the quake struck, with reports coming in from all over the place, including Auckland, where two people claimed to have felt it. Not me, I'm afraid. I called our friends in Wellington and it was news to them too.

Tony Hughes at Geekzone posted the news and got some great reader reports in his comments. I liked the one that starts: "Have i got a story to tell you, well i was playing guitar hero 3 with my cousin and we were on the last level -teardrop- man we were rocking and then that's when the rolling part started ..."

The Geonet page for the quake even shows a little wriggle way down in South Westland, which was fairly swiftly confirmed in the Herald's Reader Reports by Keri Hulme.

Given the size of the quake and the degree of damage to some building's it's a mercy that no one was badly hurt. Although the Soho bar depicted in reader photos being published by the Herald appears to have lost its top shelf in spectacular fashion.

On the other hand, here's something to bring you right down for the festive season. On Morning Report today Larry Baldock said that he and his swivel-eyed pro-hitting friends have enough signatures for a CIR on repealing the Child Discipline Bill, to be held along with the general election. Can you imagine the crap we'll have to endure there? The hysterical advertising campaigns from the deep pockets of Family First?

Things might get a bit bumpy all round, with the appearance of court of people charged subsequent to the October 15 police raids. We can also look forward to more crazy talk from EFA opponents, who will try breach the new laws as we run up to the election itself.

Speaking of which (hat tip: No Right Turn): has the Herald now gone completely mad? Today's attack on democracy is, um, the traditional practice of MPs sending out Christmas cards, funded from an electorate budget provided to cover such things as communicating with constituents. The Herald story appears to suggest that the offence is compounded by Phil Goff and Rodney Hide including contact details for their electorate offices in their cards. Somebody needs a holiday.

But enough of that. And while there may be further communications before Tuesday, now is a good time for me to wish all Public Address readers a Merry Christmas, however you and your loved ones may choose to celebrate it.

Our family had a good year this year, after a pretty difficult 2006, and I'm still marvelling at the kindness shown by everyone involved with the fundraiser for our children earlier in the year, which also resulted in the creation of the humans website. We still haven't quite sorted out where Leo belongs, but Jim's doing well in the mainstream and picked up a good haul of NCEA credits. Their respectively unique experiences of the world are instructive to everyone who comes into contact with them. And Fiona is well.

I have some plans to refresh Public Address in the new year, including bringing some voices out of the discussions here, where I still think are the best of their kind in New Zealand. I'm delighted with the reception for Emma Hart's guest post, and with the quality of her writing. Be assured that you'll hear from her and others again. I'm grateful to all our regular bloggers, to CactusLab, and to everyone who has come here and made this site what it is. I also have a Big New Thing coming up in 08, but I can't tell you about that yet.

So, to conclude … the last time I saw a dear old friend (I originally typed "dear old fiend", and that works too) I thought that he wasn't in a very good way. It turned out he wasn't in a good way at all, and although things have quickly improved for him, I realised that I could have done more, sooner. It was a good lesson, and perhaps the right one to conclude with here. Have a great Christmas and a fine summer -- and just keep an eye on the people you love.

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Freely-exercised contempt | Dec 20, 2007 10:29

One of the more familiar arguments against a homegrown anti-spam law is that it would be purely a gesture; that all the serious spamming is done in foreign places. It was never a very good argument; and yesterday's events show why.

A story based on the BBC Radio 4 investigation that prompted yesterday's police raids in Christchurch notes the "New Zealand connection":

We weren't the only people on the trail of Elite Herbal. Henrik Uffe Jensen, an IT consultant from Denmark had also been plagued by their e-mails. So he turned the tables on them, setting a trap by placing request for pills, but hid a code in the order form.

This allowed him to see the location and the unique IP address of the internet user accessing his order. Henrik noticed one of the computers tracking his order was in New Zealand.

Jensen has been on the trail for a while. He determined back in July that whoever was behind the penis-pumping spamhaus Herbal King (which is associated with Elite Herbal) was using connectivity provided by Ihug, and filed the appropriate abuse reports.

After being initially unresponsive, Ihug responded. His contact at Ihug suggested that the activity wasn't necessarily illegal -- which may well have been true. The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act didn't come into force until September 5.

Things picked up markedly this month, when, as Jensen relates, the BBC investigation made some discoveries of its own -- and found Shane Atkinson at the end of one of its trails.

Anyone familiar with these matters will know Atkinson's name. His activities, exposed through a 2003 investigation by Juha Saarinen for the New Zealand Herald, have earned him his own Wikipedia entry.

Internet NZ tried to have him investigated by the Commerce Commission in 2003. But that attempt failed because there was no specific law covering spam activities, even on the egregious scale practiced by Atkinson's companies. The government was considering such a law even then, but indicated that issues with freedom of expression were problematic.

Atkinson and his Australian-based brother Lance were investigated the following year as part of a US Federal Trade Commission case, under that country's Can-Spam Act. The products being touted in that case were purported to contain human growth hormone. By that point Atkinson was claiming to have retired from his abusive activities.

It seems he had not. But now, according to the BBC, the bastard may have been got. These people invariably claim to be simply business trying to turn a dollar while the authorities seek to suppress their business communications.

It's much nastier than that. These kinds of operations can flood the internet with as many as 100 million junk messages a day (that's the figure Atkinson gave to Juha). We don't see most of that because it's filtered at the ISP level, but the sheer volume of this filth -- as much as 90% of all email -- is the major factor in ISP email failures. The cost of resources to deal with it has a direct impact on your internet bill. Such operations commonly make use of botnets -- networks of compromised PCs whose operation involves trespass onto your computer and the theft of its use. The products being touted are commonly worthless and occasionally deadly.

We should, of course, allow for the possibility that Atkinson's continued denials of responsibility are legitimate, or that it's someone other than Atkinson who was raided. But it seems remote. And if he has been doing what Jensen and others allege, there is now a law to deal with it, and penalties of up to $500,000 to be levied.

It might be useful to remember which party voted against the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill in Parliament: the Act Party. The same party whose MPs have previously displayed a contempt for decent practice in their use of New Zealanders' email information. And whose chief fundraiser phone-spammed (not illegal, unfortunately) 80,000 Aucklanders this month. It's not free speech: it's freely-exercised contempt.

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Staying geeky, the results of AUT's chunk of the World Internet project have been published. The media release dwells on our social selves:

Sixty-four percent of survey participants who used the Internet say it has increased their amount of contact with friends while 58% report an increase with family members.

"There is also strong participation in social activities through the Internet such as networking websites like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace," Professor Bell says.

In contrast to this however, 22% say that since starting to use the Internet they spend less time interacting face to face with family they live with, although the amount of such time with friends has stayed the same.

And the report itself finds that 81% of us use the internet -- and that a possibly overestimated 68% of home internet connections are broadband.

The digital divide, as you might be able to guess, runs along lines of wealth, age, local and ethnicity, but even amongst households earning less than $25,000 a year, internet use stands at 58%. The highest rate of use (90%) is amongst Asians, while Maori (78%) are only just behind Pakeha and Pasifika people (66%) are the least wired group.

The perceived importance of internet connectivity is highest amongst the young, the urban and the wealthy, and lowest amongst rural people. Twice as many Asians (77%) as Māori (39%) rate the importance of the Internet highly

Also:

New Zealanders use the Internet frequently to conduct their everyday business. 60% buy things on the Internet and 62% book travel online. On an at least weekly basis, 40% of users access information about products online, 23% pay bills and 51% use
their bank's online services.

And:

71% of users rate the Internet as an important or very important source of information. This compares to 52% for newspapers and television and 42% for radio as rated this highly. The Internet even rates above interpersonal sources such as family and friends (56%).

And finally:

For 19% of users, a sense of identification with their ethnic group has increased (for 3% this has decreased). More Asians, Pasifika and Māori than Pakeha report an increase in their sense of ethnic identity.

33% of users say that their use of the Internet has increased their sense of identification with New Zealand (4% report a decrease). This is greatest amongst Asians (50%) and Māori (43%).

Interesting, to put it mildly.

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Random | Dec 19, 2007 08:57

I spent six hours in meetings yesterday, and I am not normally a meetings person. Worse, they were meetings in which I had to pay attention and contribute. I got home just in time to feed the kids, change my shirt and head off for drinks with, among others, a photographer, a costume designer, a novelist, a talent agent and an old friend who is looking forward to his sexual reassignment surgery. I drank slightly too much.

In just over an hour, I have to go and be funny for the radio. The coffee machine is playing up. And I wish it was just Christmas already. So forgive me for not having a clever, nuanced and fully-referenced rhetorical argument this morning.

But anyway, reader Gordon McLauchlan sent the following:

"Dear Russell: You may be interested for your blog in the following flyer sent recently (dated 13 December) under People Publishing letterhead to some businesses in Auckland … Seems a strange commercial decision to alienate a substantial number of potential readers with such a bad-taste flyer. Or would Auckland's middle class think this funny?

Latest issue of "weekend" (sic) magazine

Over the last five days 45,000* of Auckland's wealthiest homes received a copy of Weekend Magazine.

Weekend suits advertisers that have products or services that are enjoyed by "rich pricks" and "scumbags" who travel, eat out, shop and enjoy their weekends more than the poor bastards who votes for Michael Cullen.

Yours sincerely

[signed]

Mike Taillie
Publisher

Mr Taillie has a blog, where he expresses "random" views.

Also, Alison Broad was in touch with "a note of clarification":

Tokanui in Southland District is NOT the same place as Tokanui in Waipa District (which the single mum link takes you to). Southland's Tokanui is a great wee hub of a fabulous rural community, but your article muddles it with the Waipa version (with which i am unfamiliar). I profoundly hope we Southerners are spared the horrors of rapid population growth - cheap housing notwithstanding.
Happy Christmas to you!

And yourself, Alison.

I try not to go in for evil-MSM ranting, but I really have to agree with the bloggers venting about the Washington Post's awful front-page story about Barack Obama -- and about big media's own self-serving response to the subsequent furore.

In the story, headed Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him, WaPo staff writer Perry Bacon reels off a list of nutjob talking points about the Democratic candidate -- all revolving around the idea that he's a secret Muslim sleeper agent -- but neglects to say that they have not merely been denied by the candidate, but debunked by journalists doing actual reporting. The phrase "Muslim ties" in the headline reads as fact.

Yes, of course, it shouldn't matter that amid the armies of God-botherers in American politics, a believer in Allah might appear. But Bacon's story, as Paul McLeary of the Columbia Journalism Review points out, "may be the single worst campaign '08 piece to appear in any American newspaper so far this election cycle."

The WaPo's own Ombudsman wasn't too happy with the story either, pointing out that there was no new or credible information that justified the story even being written, let alone run front-page, and "that Obama's connections to Islam are slender at best; that the rumors were old; and that convincing evidence of their falsity wasn't included in the story."

So the New York Times writes it up -- and its big angle was: a journalism professor blogger guy was a bit mean and implied the 27 year-old reporter lacked the experience to be writing that kind of story. Um, really?

I'm with this guy: it's a "circle the wagons" scenario.

In other news, Hilary Swank swallows 45 food supplements every day while Amy Winehouse prefers cocaine (mildly NSFW celebrity site).

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