Blag

Wow. 2 months without a post.

I stumbled across this little gem a few days ago:

Australia Post TELeGRAM

The TELeGRAM combines new age demands with
old world charm to offer you a quick, convenient
way to send a message that matters.

Create your messages on-line, select from a range
of images, and we print and post a hard copy of
your special message to any delivery point within Australia*.

*Terms and conditions apply.
See terms and conditions or call 13 13 18.

When it’s special, send a TELeGRAM.

Ordered on-line, delivered by mail.

Check it out at: http://www.auspost.com.au/telegram/

So, apparently you can choose from 12 templated TELeGRAM card thingies (the usual stock images – candles, bottle of champagne, rose with 2 hands, balloons, artistic spirals, love heart shaped cloud, baby hands, lush green tress, flower, roses, sparkler and plain white.) Not even an option to upload your own image.

You type in your message, agree to some legal waffle, press send and you can send that special message to that special person from the laziness of your chair.

All for the charming price of $4.50.

On the website, one of the images reads:

“Some messages are too important for a phone call, and too special for e-mail.”

THEN GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASS, PICK A CARD YOURSELF AND DELIVER IT IN PERSON.

What can I say? Microsoft managed to turn around their Vista reputation and create a product that everyone was interested in, then they blundered and hired the most clueless ad agency in the world.

*cringes*

*ears bleed and eyes shrivel up like prunes*

Really? OK, so Windows 7 Launch Parties is a kinda lame idea, but there’s enough geeky people around to pull it off, and there will be enough media coverage when Windows 7 is officially launched on October 22nd.

Quotes from Twitter include:

“What would compel someone to have a Windows 7 Launch/House Party?…seriously!”

“Got my life size cut out of a nude Bill Gates ready. Oh, I thought you said Windows 7 Raunch Party. Sorry.”

And joy of joys, there is also a dedicated Windows 7 Launch/House party website, so you can upload snaps of you and your friends nerding out over an install of Windows 7. Hosts also get a signature copy of Windows 7, and a party kit including branded napkins, streamers, posters and balloons.

If it makes you feel better, here is an alternate version of the Launch Party video…

$20 says that the 4 actors in the video have no fucking clue what they’re selling.

Do these look the same to you?

Well, that’s the only conclusion I can draw after Apple’s latest round of lawsuits in Australia.

Apparently Apple doesn’t want Woolworths to use their new fresh food logo any more, as it infringes upon the Apple trademark. So that means re-branding all their stores, staff uniforms, trucks, advertisements, product labels and so on. Apple is pissed as Woolworths filed for a blanket trademark, which could in theory allows it to use its stylised ‘w’ on electrical goods and computers, putting them in competition with each other. Given that Woolworths has already followed their US and UK counterparts in offering mobile phone plans, MP3 download credit and phones, I guess Apple might be worried.

But really – is that what Apple’s legal department comes up with, after 14 months of deliberation? “Uh, your logo is a ripoff of ours.”

*snort*

In other news, Apple is also suing Poison Apple, a music festival promoter who’s trademark is a bitten apple atop crossed bones, and Foxtel, as their new pornography channel’s “Adults Only” logo is an apple with an arrow and devil’s tail.

What else will they come up with next? Banning the Granny Smith Festival? Commission on any fresh produce store that sells apples? The local fruit market manager is quaking in fear…

Some moron with a jackhammer managed to cut through 400mm of concrete, straight through fibre optics and copper cables, knocking out internet, telephones, and mobile connectivity for thousands in the CBD. The repair bill is estimated to be $1,000,000 + probable compensation for homeowners and businesses. It will take over a week to pull and re-splice new fibre, and then longer to re-patch 10, 000 copper pairs.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/318725/thousands_lose_phone_internet_services_sydney_cbd

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/cables-cut-cbd-phone-and-internet-services-lost-20090916-fq4h.html

But that got me thinking – all the western countries are all hyped up over the threat of terrorism. We have extra tight security at airports (or none, in some cases -.- ), anti-terrorism laws, warning speakers installed in the city, ASIO/FBI/M1X bla bla bla.

But what’s to stop a terrorist wreaking havoc just by taking an axe to a few telecommunications and power cables? Last time I checked, the telecomms ducts could be accessed relatively easily by a single person with a screw driver, nor are any of the vital cables physically shielded or hardened in any way.

I could cut internet and phone access to the (North Ryde) Business Park down the road from my house, just from being over-enthusiastic with a backhoe and digging a 50cm hole in my front yard.

Poof! There goes the 10G metro fibre rings. Goodbye, thousands of copper pairs. *Throws rope across street* Sayonara Telstra, Optus and Foxtel HFC networks. There’s so much fibre/hfc/copper running through my street it’s not funny.

If I remember correctly a similar case happened in the US to AT&Ts network. A disgruntled employee came along one night, lifted the hatch to a fibre duct, and went snippety-snip. Half the city lost internet access, phones stopped working and 911 calls disappeared into a black hole.

Sure, I’d get screwed by the AFP because willfully tampering with telecommunications is a federal offense but hey, I get my share of the limelight in the media! Now what was the number for Kennard’s Hire again…

GG to these asstards for making everyone’s lives better: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/155993,parking-rangers-add-to-telstra-outage-woes.aspx

Everyone whinges about it, but I feel like I’m missing out.

SPAM!

I have 13 e-mail accounts, and I get on average a grand total of 1 spam e-mail a month across all of them. So like, what’s up with this??? I want my fair share of penis enlarger, Viagra and Nigerian 419 scam e-mails!

This blog used to get spam comments – 552 of them, gained over a period of 10 months – but even they have dried up.

Perhaps my digital identity paranoia is keeping me from the oh-so-desired offers for $20, 000, 000 USD dollars from Mrs. Doraty Sithole from Zimbabwe, whose husband was brutally murdered Robert Mugabe’s lackeys for supporting white farmers.

*scans passport and e-mails to xxxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com*

Somehow or other, this blog (blag) has somehow made it into the indexes of over 15 search engines including Google, Yahoo, Live/Bing, Ask, Alexa & Netcraft. Amazing, considering there weren’t any inbound links to theparanoidtroll.com in the beginning yet somehow Google caught on within days of the domain being registered, and all the other followed suit.

Stats make for interesting reading -

• Average of 6-7 unique visitors per day (excludes RSS feeds, and returning visitors)
• 72.8% of visitors use Internet Explorer, 15.2% use Safari, 8% use Firefox, 0.9% use Chrome and the remainder are all random browsers/feed readers
• 95.9% of visitors are Windows users, Macintosh accoutns for 1.2% and <0.1% use Linux. I have no idea what the remainder is.
• Top 5 keywords were  – “cheap”, “discount”, “billion”, “KFC” and ”pointless”
• Top 10 countries are – Australia, US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Russia and Germany

I actually received 3 offers via e-mail from various dodgy SEO companies offering to ‘promote’ my site to make it to the front page of Google. It already does, thank you very much -.- No thanks to you, J. Walker, H. Ellis, and K. Lampton. All you succeeded in doing is wasting 15 kilobytes of space in my inbox.

In other news, more server changes to come

I’ll wait until I’ve moved all my websites and domains away from host “X”, before I tear into them, lambast their shitty service and name them publicly. The server load of 70.34 and memory usage of 88.20% is atrocious, let alone the support staff who ignore support tickets, or take 4-5 days before replying to those marked as ‘crtical’, or the high packet loss and latency. And that’s before I start complaining about corrupted SSL data, terrible PHP/SQL performance and the intermittent FTP service. -.- *rage*

For those not in the know, a typical server packed with hundreds of websites only has a load of 1 to 4, and memory usage around the 40-60% usage mark under normal conditions.

So, time to shift all my domain names to Layered Networks, and move my other sites to IGXHosting. (Free plug for Layered Networks here actually, they have very cheap domain names which come with free WHOIS privacy, which still beat Australian registrars for price, despite the AUD to USD exchange rate and conversion). This blog shouldn’t be affected as it’s already hosted by Layered Networks and the domain is already pointed towards their nameservers. Still, if something does bugger up, max downtime should be 24-48 hours, while your ISP re-caches DNS lookups.

And now, put your hands together for everyone’s favourite ISP!

Dodo, Dodo, Internet that flies,

For nine-ninety cheap a month,

Connect yourself with Dodo!

And they’re back! Not content with being one of the most complained about ISPs in Australia, or offering the most ridiculous plans and outrageous terms & conditions, comes Dodo Electricity & Gas!

Dodo Electricity & Gas

For when your electricity and gas supplies just ‘aint unreliable enough. Do you want:

• Minimum 4 outages per fortnight?
• Brownouts if you consume excessive electricity?
• Low gas pressure?
• Restrictive on-peak and off-peak hours?
• Patented FairConsumption* policy?
• Blackouts when your grandma on life support comes over to visit?

Well you’re in luck, as here comes Dodo to the rescue.

Ok, well not really. They haven’t started offering those plans yet, but it’s a scary thought. And yes I am aware they have a PDF available listing the supplies and rates in Victoria. But it IS fun to pile shit on Dodo – not like it’s undeserved anyway.

*Excessive use of Dodo gas and electricity resources is a breach of the FairConsumption policy. Dodo is a reseller of AGL (natural gas) and Energy Australia (electricity). Excessive use is defined as 1. Electricity or Gas consumption of more than 5kWh or 150kJ per day 2. Use of more than 750W of electricity between the hours of 1 am and 6:30am 3. Using Dodo gas for barbecues or hot water boilers. Dodo Electricity & Gas is for residential use only. Customers who use Dodo Electricity & Gas for business purposes may be asked to purchase a private generator and LPG tank at the customers expense. Dodo will try to meet a 65% availability for electricity and natural gas services, but blackouts and supply loss are not guaranteed.

And now, my favourite celebrity of all time:

Lady GaGa Kermit Jacket

What can I say?

*pukes*

Bruno. (The 2009 film). Went and saw that today, and it got me thinking.

Not going to go into a full blown review or rant – there’s enough reviews in the paper, coverage on TV, advertising and internet blogs about it without me adding to the chorus of “me-too’s”, but it did get me thinking.

LGBT right’s campaigners.

What a bunch of hypocrites. Take this case in point:

“Sacha Baron Cohen’s well-meaning attempt at satire is problematic in many places and outright offensive in others,” Rashad Robinson, senior director of media programs for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation told the New York Times. “Some gay advocates are worried that Cohen could reinforce negative stereotypes about homosexuals.”

Or even Troy Thompson and Gary Burns, self appointed “guardians of the homosexual flame” in Sydney.

Every year, the LGBT community gets together and holds a massive parade/celebration, whatever you want to call it; a.k.a the Mardi Gras. It seems to come across as some kind of symbol of unison, a way for gay and lesbians to be proud of their orientation, to be out there, and often offensively so. It’s the largest display of outlandish behaviour  in the world (even bigger than the Folsom street fairs, I think). The NSW government and City of Sydney council pour millions into it, all the locals hotels and bars support it and it gets a buttload of media coverage, pardon the pun. All of the LGBT right’s activists support it, and proudly proclaim the Mardi Gras as one of a kind.

LGBT campaginers hate the stereotyping and misinformation that floats around in society – cigarette rolling butch lesbians, guys with high pitched voices, rainbow socks, crew cuts etc, yet they seem to support the stereotypical yearly bashing of Christians, drag queens, semi-nude exotic dancers strutting around the city and so on.

Double standards much?

How can people take you seriously, when the majority of the exposure to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders is a parade of drunken, wild, stereotypically clothed morons every year?

LGBT’s have every right to be recognized as an oft discriminated against minority group, and can dress as outlandishly as they wish, but I can’t take the activists seriously.

The majority of the LGBT community lead perfectly normal happy lives, and blend in with the rest of us heterosexuals, but before their so called “right’s activists” speak out, perhaps they should re-examine their own behaviour.

Edit: Updated for clarity. Also, no I don’t think that Bruno is representative of the majority of LGBT’s; it simply served as a springboard for a train of thought.

Bleurgh. As you may or may not know, I hate social networking with a passion.

(I think I posted on this a while ago. Did I? Yes I did. I did so here!)

It eats into people’s lives, cutting them off from reality, breaking up relationships, running up huge phone and Internet bills and so on, not to mention the fact that once it’s posted, it’s out there for the world to see. Now throw in online predators, e-mail harvesting by SPAM bots, the 101 trojans and phishing scams that seem to plague Facebook and MySpace and you might begin to understand why people might be better off without it.

Actually, as a side note, I read in a user survey that there is actually a demographic rift between MySpace and Facebook users. (Damnit, lost that URL ) Apparently, all the educated White people are moving to Facebook, whereas MySpace has now become a trashy ghetto. Where that leaves the Asian, European and Middle Eastern people, I’m not quite sure. Well, I do have SOME idea – Asians have their own non-English forums and Web 2.0 SN websites, Europeans have their own ripoffs of Facebook written in gobbledygook, and the Internet is the tool of the devil used to disseminate vile pornography (according to the crackpot clerics anyway) so that leaves out most of the Middle East. And yes, I hate political correctness. And no, I will not make any attempt to censor myself, not for the sake of sheltered children nor radical far left Christians nutters either.

Side Note #2 – I hate you Fred Nile. You too, Stephen Conroy. May you rot in hell for eternity Fred Phelps.

Back on topic though. The idea of social networking DOES make sense, if you ignore the ego-flapping wars of “who has more friends on Facebook” and “I have more followers than you on Twitter”.

Speaking of Twitter – ce qui donne?

What’s the point of Twitter? According to it’s home page:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Of everyone I’ve asked (about 9), no one seems to comprehend the purpose of its existence. Of all the Twitter accounts I’ve ever looked at, all but 2 were utterly boring.

“OMG woke up and it was raining”

“my dog shit the carpet againz”

“lol, gonan go eat brekky now”

“Awesome, saw a new ad for Hershey’s ice cream”

lolwut? Stream of consciousness brain feeds delivered straight to the web? Most of the tweets I’ve seen aren’t even properly formed sentences. My mind is boggled – how can people be hooked onto such mindless jibber-jabber? Twitter IS mainly used by our Yankee counterparts, so that does explain it’s popularity…

The concept of micro-blogging does seem intriguing though – handy for when you can’t be bothered writing out a full article, or when you’ve got a funny video/pic to share.

*grumble grumble* #rant# <anger> RAWR! </anger>

Sigh… I need to get a Facebook for uni…

May as well start now. (Or however long I can procrastinate it.) *accepts invitation to join the dark side*

…because none of these items are worthy of individual posts

1. Apparently Steve Jobs got a liver transplant two months ago for his “hormonal imbalance.” Perhaps it would be good for Apple if he retired from the company. New directions, innovations, marketing strategies? I will rant more about why I hate Apple as a company later…
2. http://blogs.news.com.au/bossy/index.php/news/comments/im_a_clean_freak_and_my_boyfriend_is_doing_something_dirty/ is mildly amusing.
3. And Swine Flu has claimed its 2nd victim, a man in Victoria. I have a theory that by not catching the bus for a year (and thus being cramped among 40 Year 7s busy expelling the contents of their nostrils over everyone), I shall extend my life span by 5 years. So the more free lifts I can mooch off people, the better off I will be… hmm…
4. The Greens are whinging again – by their logic, the raised dam levels and relaxed water restrictions means that we can stop construction on the desalination plant, dismantle it and sell the would be useless plant machinery off to China or something. Because a weeks worth of rain and a few percent rise in dam levels means we will never have a drought in Australia again. Right.
5. Lindsay Lohans starring in a new reality TV show, where people get given a second chance. Yeh, she’ll be the perfect host for that show, being able to relate and all, given that her entire existence is possible due to a small group of suckers that give her too much leeway.
6. They’re about to start fluoridating water in Geelong, Victoria, and people are outraged at the poison the government is injecting into their water supply. DoHS minister Lisa Neville has been receiving death threats, bottles left on her doorstep with the message “We’re going to kill you, Bitch” and anti-fluoridation propaganda websites are popping up everywhere. What’s the big deal? Fluoride is added to water supplies in many countries around the world, approved by the WHO, reduces teeth decay, it gets shoved in your mouth at the dentist and it’s in toothpaste. Down in Tasmania, they have a day dedicated to celebrating the anniversary of water Fluoridation, for the health improvements it’s brought to the population there.
7. WTF pictures of the week – Mona Lisa… porn? Click here and here.
8. From “Dating, It’s Complicated #5″:

My sophomore year of high school I was dating my boyfriend for a few months. One day I told him I had something to show him in my room upstairs. This was the first time my boyfriend was allowed into my room; we were alone together. He goes straight to my computer and tells me I need more RAM.
-No Longer Dating A Nerd, CT

Oh dear.

The animal huggers (is that the right term?) are all up in arms again because Barack Obama killed a fly that was pestering him during a TV interview.

Boo freaking hoo.

PETA went to all the trouble of mailing Obama a “Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher” humane fly catching trap and released a public statement – “We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals. We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals.”

Now hold on a sec – Obama just swatted a fly that was trying to eat his head while he was on TV. It’s not like he sprouted horns out of his head and started performing satanic fly sacrificial rituals or something. Which brings us to an interesting point. I should therefore be a sinner rotting in hell (according to PETA anyway), due to the thousands of ants, spiders, flies, cockroaches etc etc I’ve killed in my life. And pest control operators are all poltergeists, Woolworths profits from the sale of pesticides are donated to Lucifer corp, and Mortein is the mecca of evil.

Like*, GET OVER IT PETA!

There’s millions of your own species living in poverty every day under the rule of dictators, thousands fleeing war zones and all you care about are flies. For f*** sake, if you’re gonna fawn over animals, make it a decent cause at least (eg bile bears, caged chicken farming, whaling and so on…).

*adds 5c coin to the ‘like’ jar.