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Crisis at the Herald!! | Mar 07, 2003 12:22
Apparently. Having spent half the week calling his PA several times a day to try and get an answer on whether the New Zealand Herald's managing editor Gavin Ellis could speak briefly to Mediawatch about his paper's redesign and new weekend magazine, I was told late yesterday he would be available at 10am this morning, by phone.
This is outside our usual production window, but we made the necessary arrangements, waited and called at 10am. He was in a meeting "with eight people", we were told, but could be out in five to 10 minutes. We waited, tying up busy studios in Auckland and Wellington, until 11am, when after yet another call, we were told he wouldn't be available at all. He had gone into another meeting and would likely have meetings until the afternoon, when he would be going out. There was, we were told "a crisis".
One would hope so. I realise the managing editor of the country's largest newspaper will be busy, but so are all of us. On the understanding that an interview would actually take place, we spent an hour waiting, rather than looking to fill the show.
When "soon" eventually became "never", we didn't even have time to reclaim some of the material we'd cut from an interview with a Middle Eastern media analyst, or to record some more script. As a result, our 24-minute programme will be only 17 minutes long this Sunday. Sorry about that.
Anyway, Sony sprung a surprise this week - it showed off the first consumer-level blu-ray recorder:
Blu-ray uses a blue laser to record data on discs, while CD and DVD systems use red lasers. Blue lasers have a shorter wavelength than red - when means a smaller area on the surface of a disc is needed to store one bit of data. So that means much greater capacity - like 23GB, or two hours of full-whack DV, or four hours of digital broadcast quality video. And it's out next month. If there's a civil war within Sony, then I think the hardware side just won.
Most people had expected the blu-ray recorders to be held back until a little closer to the release of the PlayStation 3. That jaw-droppingly ambitious project posits a whole new model for computing design: one in which you scale up from a handheld to a server simply by adding more processors.
With the PS 3, Sony will apparently put 72 processors on a single chip: eight Cell chips - each composed of a IBM PowerPC microprocessor controlling eight auxiliary processors. The architecture is such that if it needs more processing power, the PS 3 just reaches out across the network to other Cell devices and borrows a little CPU time.
Well, that's the theory anyway. I'm not quite convinced they can pull it off - certainly not the whole enchilada at once. But I'm glad they're trying.
Interestingly, such cell or grid computing is already big in Japan. Their economy might be in a permanent yawning fit, but the Japanese perspective on IT continues to serve the world well.
And hey, Apple Computer is about to launch its own digital download music service for Mac and iPod users. The big five record companies (with the possible exception of Sony) are on board - even though Apple is proposing to protect their music with something other than trussed-up, Big Brother, Microsoft-style DRM. Steve, I love you man …
And finally, a judge has declined to send Ike Finau to jail for refusing to obey council bylaws and take down his signs - because proceedings in court had led him to believe that Finau is being manipulated by others and is "but a pawn in a game being played out by others, using him for their own ends …In short, the persons truly responsible for his defiance of the court's order are not before the court."
Brian Rudman is annoyed. But if Finau really is being used the way the judge says he is, I think it's sad. Not entirely surprising - given the form of the people involved - but sad …
The Bosnian connection | Mar 05, 2003 10:46
My occasional correspondent Neil Morrison has been back in touch:
"I'm not sure why you have adopted the Listener's penchant for disparaging 'pro-war lefties," he says. "It seems that the intolerance bug is spreading.
"I don't see how you can possible allege that pro-war lefties 'in particular' pay no attention to issues of international law. It is exactly they who, ever since US intervention in Bosnia, have made an attempt to look at the moral and legal issues surrounding military intervention on humanitarian grounds. Has there ever been a Listener article that actually explores these issues rather than being an anti-American rant?"
I appreciate Neil's emails. He's sincere, and his reasoning is sharper than that of many of those pushing for precipitate war in Iraq. He has a viable and genuine point of view.
But he has sequentially advanced at least three firm and confident rationales for what's going on: the US and UK are bluffing to draw out the hidden weapons (I'd love to believe that); the US is seeking to forcibly change the UN by breaking up its old order in favour of a new one more to its liking (a deceitful and undemocratic way to behave, I would have thought); and, now, that the weapons inspections should be a pretext for invasion on humanitarian grounds.
The Bosnian debacle was a serious European failure. But the people of Iraq are not in anything like the clear and present danger that the Bosnian Muslims were - they're not besieged by snipers, being subjected to daily ethnic massacres or being driven from their homes. It's a bullshit comparison.
In one real sense - the eventual relief of sanctions - armed invasion would make Iraqis safer. But, Saddam's hideous record in dealing with political opponents notwithstanding, Iraqis are clearly at much greater threat from an armed invasion and its aftermath than from anything their leader will deliver on them in the short term. As an argument for precipitate war, it's unconvincing.
Yes, there are Iraqis, inside and outside the country, who would like to see an invasion. There are clearly others who wouldn't. There would be no shortage of Palestinians who would wish an invasion of the land where they live to address their humanitarian issues - which, on a day-to-day basis, significantly outweigh those of ordinary Iraqis. But we haven't charged in there.
Perhaps we should re-orient international governance to bring more persuasion to bear on matters of democracy and human rights. But if we do, let's do it with our eyes open, without the need for pretext, and not merely to satisfy one country's strange and risky foreign policy gambit.
Unfortunately, as this intriguing, scary column suggests, that is nothing like where the current US administration is heading.
UPDATE: Public Address reader (and editor of The Listener), Finlay Macdonald, says hello: "Please pass on to our Mr Morrison that if he wishes to disparage the Listener's journalism he can do it via our own letters pages, but that he should be mindful not to misrepresent our coverage in the kind of intemperate, ill-informed, pompous and strangely aggressive way that he seems to be doing if he wants to be taken seriously. We're happy to engage his excuses for an argument any time he wants, which might at least disprove his fuckwitted theory that we're only interested in one side of the 'debate' about killing people. By all means quote me."
UPDATE 2: Here's the Human Rights Watch 2002 report on Iraq ("widespread and gross human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests of suspected political opponents and their relatives, routine torture and ill-treatment of detainees …") and its page on the new US "ally" and host to US troop deployments, Uzbekistan ("systemic torture … human rights abuses on an epic scale").
Oh, and there's also Israel and the Occupied Territories and the United States ("Global support for the war on terrorism is diminishing partly because the United States too often neglects human rights in its conduct of the war …").
Barbarians at the email gateway | Mar 04, 2003 11:24
Yes, well, I suppose, as one or two readers have pointed out, sending an email whose text included the words "Enlarge your penis" was pretty much asking to be blocked by corporate email systems, even if it was about John Banks. That particular phrase might justifiably have been caught by a spam filter.
But responses indicate that readers are with me on the general use of nannying mail filters - especially the we've-just-installed-Mail-Marshall-and-we've-got-all-the-filters-on syndrome. It does seem in the private sector that the better admins eventually come to their senses and either cut back the filtering or introduce some exceptions.
In other cases, filtering can be fairly destructive. Sky TV still runs an enthusiastic bowdlerising machine for its sensitive employees - even the ones who schedule the dodgy porn on Sky One - but I don't get bounces from them any more. It looks like the Hard News readers there have either resubscribed on their home addresses or just given up. A member of a little rugby mailing list I'm on keeps missing out on our Super 12 picks competition because Mail Marshall seems to think it's something else. We also have to clean up and repost match comments so she can read them.
Anyway, here are some of the responses to last Friday's email. I've removed names where it seemed prudent to protect people from their raging IS managers. Strangest banned word? "Peace", in a Crown entity system. "Peace" is a dirty word?
Check out the KPMG list below - which seems a fairly restrained one by comparison ("snatch" is going to cause problems though, isn't it?). Pardon the language and all that ….
---
Long time reader first time writer here. Thought you might be interested in the KMPG email blocking list thingy. I have a few friends who work there and I've fallen afoul of this a few times, so one of my friends helpfully sent it to me so I'd know why.
[__Contents__]
KPMG-Profanity=MIMEsweeper Lexical Analysis Expression List
[KPMG-Profanity]
Comment="This list contains profain words."
Comment=""
Language=English
Expression=False,5,".REGEXP. fuck?*"
Expression=False,2,".REGEXP. sex?*"
Expression=False,5,"asshole"
Expression=False,5,"bastard .NEAR. (is .OR. you)"
Expression=False,10,"bitch .NEAR. (.REGEXP. fuck?* .OR. stupid)"
Expression=False,7,"blow job"
Expression=False,7,"blowjob"
Expression=False,5,"cock .NEAR. suck"
Expression=False,5,"cocksucker"
Expression=False,5,"cum"
Expression=False,10,"cunt .NEAR. (silly .OR. stupid)"
Expression=False,5,"dago"
Expression=False,5,"darky"
Expression=False,5,"dildo"
Expression=False,5,"dyke"
Expression=False,5,"ejaculate"
Expression=False,2,"fag"
Expression=False,10,"gook"
Expression=False,10,"gooks"
Expression=False,5,"homo"
Expression=False,10,"jungle bunny"
Expression=False,5,"masturbate"
Expression=False,5,"motherfucker"
Expression=False,2,"orgy"
Expression=False,10,"penis .NEAR. (small .OR. enlarge)"
Expression=False,10,"pussy .NEAR. tight"
Expression=False,2,"screw"
Expression=False,5,"shit"
Expression=False,5,"slut"
Expression=False,2,"snatch"
Expression=False,10,"teen .Near. (.REGEXP. sex?* .OR. .REGEXP. fuck?*)"
Expression=False,2,"vagina"
Expression=False,5,"virgin .NEAR. young"
Expression=False,5,"virgins .NEAR. young"
Expression=False,5,"wanker"
Expression=False,5,"whore"
Anonymous
--
Corporate blocks us from sites containing 'woody' … a small problem for a Foresty company.
Anonymous
---
Great to have the opportunity to compain about MailMarshall and its dumb rule sets. Ever since our IT people installed it, it's been bouncing Global Development Briefing, which is a weekly newsletter I subscribe to for a fresh look at world events from a developing-world perspective. The problem of course is the word 'Nigeria', which MM scans for, but happens also to be the name of a developing country. It took me a while to get our IT people to understand this subtlety, and tweak the rules to allow it through. While I was waiting for the penny to drop in IT, MM achieved something that should make its authors win an IT 'Darwin Award'. It bounced the weekly newsletter from the Economist, 'Polictics this Week', that I and hundreds of thousands of well-paid, well-connected senior managers all around the world subscribe to (many of them people who make decisions about IT purchases for large companies). It would be hard to imagine a device or product that is capable of cheesing off so many such people all at once, but MM managed it!
If you're interested, I attach an email I sent out yesterday, informing some friends of recent political events (it contains an apology for not being able to use certain a four-letter word, related to MM's scanning for 'obscenities') and a reply I received from one of the witty recipients.
Thanks for the opportunity to respond about MM.
Anne
From: Michael Xxxxxx [mailto:Xxxxx]
Sent: Friday, 28 February 2003 1:26 p.m.
To: Anne Xxxxx
Subject: MailMarshal: Censored communication
Your message "Good news: It's a war for peace!" has been censored for
unacceptable or pornographic language:
Peace: frequency: 2; weighting 5.
This is the second occasion on which you mail has been with-held.
Please consult FRST IT User Conditions Guide.
---
Name: MATT
Email: NO@HOTMAIL.COM
Message:
PENIS ADDS ON EMAILS SUK
OR DOES YOUR COCK NEED ENLARGING
---
Ok. So this isnt a email filter gone wrong, but is equally bizzare. I used to work for an "unnamed" multinational consulting firm, that may or may not have had some connections to enron, and was doing some work with the auckland area health board. Anyway, I was researching National Women's Hospital and thought I'd check out their website when the page come up with something like "YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO VIEW A PROHIBITED SITE, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR". So I did. The fact that it had the word "women" in the web address meant that our "global" mail filter thought it was probably porn. Well, there might have been a few naked babies I guess......The administrator said I had to contact head office in america, if I wanted the site to be viewed, and I spent 30 dollars on a cab and went down there myself instead.
Tommo
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I work for liquor king when I'm not beavering away at uni and they have a policy of blocking access to hotmail for some unknown reason. Supposedly it is to protect against viruses etc, but they have yet to find a way of keeping me out, after 18 months they still can't figure out how I get around cyberpatrol. That's what happens when you live your working life in an office though, your mind decays.
Anonymous
---
I hate the disclaimers people attach - but a guy at my work uses this one that's quite cool:
IMPORTANT: This email is intended for the use of the individual addressee(s) named above and may contain information that is confidential privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour or irrational religious beliefs. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is not authorized (either explicitly or implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas.
Unless the word absquatulation has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or no grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the transmission of this e-mail, although the kelpie next door is living on borrowed time, let me tell you.
Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this backwards, so just ignore that Alert Notice from Microsoft.
However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and your pets. If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and egg whites, whisk, and place in a warm oven for 40 minutes
Jos.
---
Enlarge your penis successfully?
That is totally asking to be filtered seeing as its near identical to much of the spam that sits quietly in my spam folder.
You got bounced, but you were asking for it … don't be too hard on mail admins if you insist on using key phrases like that.
I use a non-corporate system so I have desktop control and you are approved.
Its not the word penis, its the spam like phrase.
SirHugh
---
On the subject of stoopid corporate email filtering, I had a good laugh the other day when I sent my fiancee (who works for an Australian utility) a fairly innocent email and (as you do) ended it with a few pleasant kisses (xxx).
Of course the mail marshal stopped it as this is highly pornographic...
Oh and there was another occasion when I used a grossly explicity word (babe). The reply was:
MailMarshal Rule: Inbound Messages : CE Block Unacceptable Language Script CE Profanity, Porn and Racism Triggered
Expression: babe NEAR (hot OR sex).
I'm lucky to still have my job don't you think?
Jono
---
Each week, myself and another staff member have the publicaddress email held on the server due to the word 'cracker' appearing in the title of Damien's blog... I mean cracker for god's sake!
Our director has reviewed the word list and it remains the same.. thank god we get notification of it being there so we can at least check the blogs.
Cheers,
Phil
---
And finally, read this excellent column from the Washington Post, which raises the issue too often forgotten in the clamour for action in Iraq (and in particular in the musings of pro-war lefties): what about international law? As it points out, a powerful nation that aspires to real leadership accepts some constraint its own power as the price of moral authority:
"The test of a country's commitment to international law -- and the measure of its credibility when it accuses other countries of flouting international law -- is whether that country obeys laws even when it has good reasons to prefer not to.
"Just like specific instances such as the rule against using human shields, the general regime of international law depends on a willingness to sacrifice short-term goals that may even be admirable for the long-term goal of establishing some civilized norms of global behavior. It sounds naive, and maybe it is. But you're either in the game or you're not. You can't pick and choose which rules to take seriously."
Dirty tricks and blood money | Mar 03, 2003 10:09
It is not entirely unexpected that the US government should be conducting an aggressive and secretive dirty tricks campaign against other UN Security Council delegations. It's still depressing.
The startling thing is that according to the memo obtained by The Observer, even Spain - whose Prime Minister has explicitly aligned himself with US intentions, rather than those of his citizens - is subject to telephone and email interceptions and other forms of spookery.
So low has the Bush administration brought international affairs in the past year.
Having failed - utterly - to win any war of ideas, the US government has embarked on a course of bribery and threat. Six of the countries currently on the Security Council are regarded as being "up for grabs" – Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan. The US and Britain need to persuade five of those six to back their second resolution. The pressure appears to be going on in every way imaginable.
Extensive palm-greasing is also going on in the Middle East. Jordan wants an extra $1 billion in "aid" and Egypt wants money and a free-trade deal. Israel is after $4 billion in new grants and $8 billion to $10 billion in US-government guaranteed loans - in return it will consider refraining from retaliation if it is attacked by Iraq.
Whatever those countries do for their dollar had best be kept well clear of any democratic mandate. The Turkish Parliament's failure to approve the stationing of more than 60,000 US troops in Turkey was inconvenient. And after they'd been promised not just billions of dollars in "aid" and loan guarantees, and the right to keep on persecuting Iraqi Kurds and everything. Some nations just aren't grateful enough.
The blood-money deals are, of course, going on all over the place. The Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies says most of the 34 countries counted by Bush as part of "coalition of the willing" might better be considered a coalition of the coerced: "Almost all, by our count, join only through coercion, bullying, bribery, or the implied threat of US action that would directly damage the interests of the country," says its 13-page report. "This 'coalition of the coerced' stands in direct conflict with democracy."
Meanwhile - like it actually matters - Iraq appears to be co-operating with the requests of UN inspectors.
And - surprise! - Oracle founder Larry Ellison's proposal to start a development centre in New Zealand is, er, on hold.
Oh yes, we lost the America's Cup. Two words: move on.
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