Raven Paradox

What the bloody hell is going on?

Is nothing sacred?

Why is everything becoming Americanised?

The latest disgrace in the Americanisation of Australia is the importation of that damned acronym “SUV”.

The only time that I tend to watch commercial television is during the cricket season and this year it seems that we have stopped referring to 4WDs as 4WDs.. possibly due to the bad connotations that the word conjures up in the mind of the environmentally aware/pedestrian and smaller vehicle safety conscious Australian.

This…

… is a 4WD. It is not an SUV.

Harold Scruby – sit the fuck up and take some notice of this deceitful attempt to get more of these annoying mechanical hulks onto our roads.

Technorati Tags: 4wd, suv, harold scruby, americanisation, australia, car

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Excellent news, Uncle Rupert – someone to whom this government seems to listen to – has spoken up about the shambles that is broadband internet access in this country.

Murdoch slams slow broadband

RUPERT Murdoch yesterday condemned the quality of Australia’s broadband services as a disgrace, warning the nation would be left behind unless the federal Government and Telstra spent billions to increase download speeds.

The News Corporation chairman and chief executive told shareholders of his Australian arm in Adelaide that high speed access to the internet needed to be increased to levels seen throughout Asia and the US.

“When you have broadband – real broadband, not the type they’re talking about here – where you get, say, 20Mbps of data into your home, it changes everything,” he said.

“People then spend a lot of time with their laptops and computers. In Australia we only have a couple of million (people on broadband) and they don’t even get 1Mb(ps).”

“I think it’s a disgrace.”

Between 50 and 70 per cent of homes in the US had access to broadband, Mr Murdoch said.

He said the Government and Telstra should be spending “$10 billion or $12 billion on it (to reach) every town in Australia; they do it in Japan, they do it in South Korea, we should be able to do it here. We are being left behind and we will pay for it.”

The Minister for Megabytes, Helen Coonan is quoted by the ABC as saying:

“About 80 per cent of households who can access fast broadband can access speeds up to eight megabytes from 19 different providers.

Fourteen providers are currently providing speeds up to 24 megabytes to about four million premises and Telstra of course is now rolling out its 3G network, which it claims could offer speeds of up to 40 megabytes.”

Even if the ABC was being naughty and misquoting her and she really didn’t mean speeds of 64Mbits, 192Mbits and 320Mbits, she is still way off the mark.

Has she ever heard of RIMs, pair gained lines or exchanges with no ports left in them?

Personally, I am one of the lucky ones – I do have access to a 24Mbit connection – which in reality, runs at about 4-8mbit due to a dodgy “last mile” of copper but is much better than many people have access to.

Good work Uncle Rupert – perhaps this government will sit up and take notice now… heh.

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John Howard has been consistent.

He has consistently been a master at playing upon the fear of the electorate.

Most of the time, the fears and prejudices he has evoked from within the dark recesses of the minds of the populace have been ill conceived – but they have worked – they have kept him in power.

The sad thing is that it hasn’t just been the ignorant or uneducated who have fallen for the seductive speeches of the master of wedge politics – at some point, almost everyone has fallen for it, I know that I have, sadly it seems that the educated and affluent have fallen for it regularly. Some examples of the fears that he has played upon regularly are:

• Interest rates
• Refugees
• National security
• Economic prosperity
• Industrial relations/Unions

Look at the above five items, they are all issues that might be used emotively, that might be used to cause fear because they are all related to our sense of personal security.

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The Internet has been responsible for a number of good things – and a number of things best not mentioned… Probably the greatest crime that it has committed though has been the utter bastardisation of the English language.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines “log” as:

log ¹ – n.

1. a part of the trunk or a large branch of a tree that has fallen or been cut off.
2. (also logbook) an official record of events during the voyage of a shop or an aircraft.
3. an apparatus for determining the speed of a ship, originally one consisting of a float attached to a knotted line.

v. (logged, logging)

1. enter in a log > achieve (a certain distance, speed or time).
2. (log in/on or off/out) go through the procedures to begin (or conclude) use of a computer system.
3. cut down (an area of forest) to exploit the wood commercially.

- DERIVATIVES logger n. logging n.

The word “blog” apparently has its origins in the words “web log” or “weblog”. Calling either “blog” or “weblog” a word grates on me a little, but let us assume for the purposes of this exercise that a word is defined as a jumbled up mash of letters that forms a somewhat pronounceable utterance.

As such, let us presume that:

• a “blog” is a log that has been placed on the web.
• a “blogger” is someone who places that log on the web.
• “blogging” is the act or placing these logs on the web.

As yet, despite my searching, I am yet to find any site that claims to be a “blog” that falls within the correct definitions of a log that is on the web.

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