The requirements actually don’t serve any purpose. It’s nothing to do with safety, at all. For example, handle bar height. Ape hangers are illegal, but sure maybe some of them are too silly high and dangerous, right? Well no, my stock cruisers handle bars are too high, they came that way from the factory, as are almost all Harley Davidson’s, Yamaha’s, and Honda’s in the cruiser division.

Mud flaps are super important to your safety, aren’t they? No? Of course they’re fucking not. Even rock protection isn’t needed given the fact physics and aerodynamics are on your side, but those standards make all choppers and bobbers illegal, and even most cafe racers.

The standards in S28 outlaw pretty much every classic design of bike you think of when you think of a bad ass bike. Beyond a sewing machine sound from your exhaust, dinky handlebars, and Tron light cycle style fenders and mud guards your bike is probably illegal.

So, I wrote to them, albeit I didn’t convey my point too well as I wrote it in the middle of the night while nerd raging at their idiocy. But here it is below, I’ll update this post with any reply I get.

Hello. I’m writing to you in relation to the inconsistency of law held by the RTA towards motorcycle riders. VSI28 outlaws choppers, bobbers, cafe racers, and most other classic designed motorcycles beyond contemporary cruisers and sports bikes, etc. for transportation. It outlaws ape hangers, outlaws modified exhausts beyond that of the sewing machine sound of a stock 8 baffled exhaust (which, if you value fuel economy, is one of the first things you open up) and other generic things that one thinks of when they think of motorcycles, classic or roadster types.

I was wondering whether this is some round about way to punitively harass outlaw motorcycle gangs and by proxy is causing grief to legitimate riders in NSW? The laws of this new standard serve no engineering benefit, no safety benefit, and no logical benefit besides outlawing things for the sake of outlawing them.

Having a mud flap has absolutely no purpose on the rear, for example, and most classic bikes like choppers and bobbers lack them, or have small duck tails. You cannot be struck by a rock from the rear due to, well, physics and the way the wheel moves. You cannot even be struck by mud at the rear given the aerodynamics of the wheel. In all probability, at a speed above a fast walking pace, you cannot even be spritzed with water.

Thus, what is the purpose of outlawing tens of thousands of motorcycles and making more criminals on the road (as the RTA oft. seem to do) beyond allowing a whole new surprise tax threshold of ‘customers’? By that I mean, is the RTA making these absurd pointless standards requirements so that they can then send out the police tyre biters to raise more state revenue? Because that is all it is doing.

Another issue, ape hangers. 38cm is the maximum height you can have the highest point of the handlebar above the steering yolk. Now I ride a cruiser, it’s little. Very little. In fact, most people would call me a punce for riding it. It’s completely stock, mind you. And yet the handlebars are 45 cm risen above the yolk at the highest point, 65 if you include the mirrors which are affixed thus part of the assembly. So basically I bought an illegal bike, and yet, every Yamaha cruiser manufactured in the last forty years is also illegal according to these standards.

That brings me to my final point. Most of the modifications listed in the Standard I am referring to are things most bikes have breached from manufacture. In fact, you can walk into ANY bike shop in NSW and find multiple bikes for sale all of which breach multiple entries of this standard. There’s six bobbers for sale and one chopper down at Penrith Yamaha right now. Four bobbers and one chopper at Campbelltown. These are all registered motorcycles, that have roadworthy ceritifcation.

So I put it to you that either the RTA’s farcical standards which have no impetus beyond making more riders criminals and potential tax collection points of state revenue are not only inconsistent but seem to turn a blind eye to the tens of thousands of motorcycles imported every week you can buy from a shop front perfectly registered and in stock condition that already breach these laws, leaving the rider open to harassment and fines by police.

Why would the RTA want to do this to the road users who obviously are the entire purpose the RTA have the pleasure of existing? These standards affect nothing, beyond making more criminals, and more fines, and more revenue for the state.

It’s spent very little on the people it’s claiming to protect, as the San Diego hipsters are found in various photos floating around weilding RPG’s and looking smug–albeit as fragile as Bambi in a bull pen–amongst a bunch of Ugandan soldiers. The irony lies in the fact that those who helped put the message out, are those most critical, and those firing afforementioned broadsides at these craptivists.

To add insult to injury the fuck knuckle admitted that the vast majority of missing funds on ‘transport’ also contributed to flights all over the world to help 3,000 people view his shitty videographical piece. 3,000 people got flown. To see. His shitty movie. If you’re not outraged by that more than by Kony baby-fucking his way through Africa and conveniently not being anywhere to seen when a bunch of ad hoc film makers who profess that ‘daddy catches bad guys for a living’ to their children and other vacuous lumps with the IQ on par with their retarded hipster babies, then you really need to unplug and gtfo the internet, as you really shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery.

And yes, if you’re that doltish, a computer is totally heavy machinery for your brain.

So, what can you do about this? Not much. RT articles pointing out what charlatans they are. I’ll look into possibly contacting a few people stateside to get their charity audited, yet beyond that even I’m pretty much powerless to stop shysters conning people for sympathy (and sadly money).

Although this has been a good lesson in why you need to think critically. You’ll notice in my propogation of the message (after watching the full video and doing a bit of internuts research thereafter) that I was cynical albeit skeptical in my approach but thought that it may be a worthy cause.

It’s just a shame the huge media giants and news companies out there aren’t as intellectually gifted and switched on as a mildly retarded gamer and tech blogger, huh?

This guy alone has been public for almost a decade. Although this isn’t the real criticism that’s damaging this campaign. I should also immediately state has little to no relevance outside of America and project organisers haven’t even factored in that there are 194 other nations besides Uganda and the US. Now, let’s begin.

For starters, the name is moronic. Making a war criminal famous is one thing, but ‘Kony 2012′ tells me fuck all. ‘Katch Kony’ straight up identifies that the person needs to be caught and conveys more in two words than the first 15 minutes of the video outlining the project.

The video itself is boring, long winded, and tries far too hard to be creative and hip, which disengages the majority of people in the world who aren’t coffee shop working or welfare hopping wankers who are usually incapable of any social change. You’re disenfranchising real people who contribute real value to a real society and can commit that real change required.

The organiser of the project is a wanky hipster, so it’s a given this will be the agenda, and we all know that wanky hipsters are the ‘dirty hippy’ of this generation and that alone costs the hunt significantly. The forced over the top near snotty feigned sincerity that these pustulous muppets instil in everything they say or do wore thin with us about a year after their sub-culture emerged from the primordial goop. Yes, about last week.

The propaganda being released to encourage his capture is again extremely ambiguous. When I see “Kony 2012″ looking like an election campaign flyer, I shut down and ignore it. When I see a picture of a black dude in stencil format with his name on it I assume he’s some leader of a humanitarian push against oppression. I think he’s a good guy or something. I don’t think “OH WOW THIS IS REALLY NOVEL AND UNIQUE IT MAY NOT JUST BE A STICKER AND MAY BE WORTH FURTHER INVESTIGATION!” and then waste my time and effort looking up some silly cunts name I found on the wall in the dunny at the local cinemas.

These are common sense things, things that any halfwit would be aware of if they want to lobby effectively, and things that clearly these guys would have faced as criticism repeaetdly in the past and thus that lends us to believe that they ignored this criticism.

That tells me they want to be emotively creative and come across as ‘hip’ and edgy rather than embracing mainstream and leading psychological consensus on lobbying and promotion of materials to enter the human psyche.

So how have they done anything at all? Their whiney little hipster child army have harassed people like me. Why? Because we can reach a bigger audience and deliver a better message than they can and get shit done. So why don’t they do that themselves? Because it’s too fucking hard.

Call me a cynic, call me an arsehole. Re-read this, look at the facts, and there’s one thing you’ll find evident.

I’m right.

Addendum 07/03/2012: Before you have a sook at me; I’m not saying don’t support this objective. Do so. Just don’t get caught up in irrationality. If these guys wanted to get the job done, they’d have done it properly. They instead are milking it like cause whores, probably to cash in on the snivelling hipster chicks who make up 90% of the crowd photos for easy sex. I mean the guy who made the video has convinced his son that he ‘catches bad men’ for a living. He’s a fucking jobless amateur journo with a camera, not Superman. The amount of public pressure that could be brought to bare on this subject if handled correctly would be intense enough to see to it that the fuckjob kiddy-killer would be dangling from a noose before sun down, but instead the project coordinators run the project as best suits them, their egos, and their hidden agendas. That, when children are the victims, is a crime against humanity in itself.

Addendum 08/03/2012: I feel vindicated. Per News Ltd.

But not everyone has fallen in love with KONY 2012. Some are raising doubts as to whether social media is an appropriate forum for advocacy and fund-raising.

Blogs, such as Visiblechildren.tumblr, implore people to research the facts before putting their names to the cause.

“Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.”

Charity monitor Charity Navigator gives Invisible Children 2/4 stars for accountability and transparency, prompting concerns over how the not-for-profit organisation spends its money.

Invisible Children reports that in an official account of the $13.7 million raised in the 2010/11 financial year, $8.8 million was allocated for expenses – including filming costs, transportation and production.

I just got done watching a video of a guy getting in grief on a plane for having his mobile phone on during take-off. As a private pilot I’ve always found this myth amusing, it’s up there with mobile phones at petrol stations ‘needing’ to be switched off for safety reasons. Pilots carry mobile phones with them at all times in case their radios drop out, at about 3,000 feet you’ll get a signal strong enough to call the tower rather than relying on a 7700 call on your transponder to alert the tower your radio is out then a blind descent.

There are many rubbish ‘safety’ myths out there, and many become law. In Australia laser pointers are banned, at various levels, to various strengths. The reason was, airline pilots had been ‘blinded’ by them, and the media made a storm in a tea cup out of it. As a pilot I was very unimpressed with the Australian Pilots Association director being all over the radio sanctioning this nonsense, so I rang their office up. After a bit of bullshitting and passing myself off as his 10:30AM appointment who’s hit a hurdle I tricked his secretary into putting me onto him directly.

I told him as a pilot I felt he was making us all look like a bunch of pussies, because anyone with a scrap of intelligence would know that laser pointers are safe, and that it is impossible to look into a laser pointer long enough (4+ seconds) to cause harm because your body forcibly defends itself by closing your eyes or looking away. It’s worth noting at this point the complaints weren’t that they were distracting pilots, but that they were blinding them and causing them to take time off work. Further, without a tripod, you cannot successfully aim a laser pointer at the cockpit of a plane intentionally that isn’t literally a few hundred feet away due to the minor motor tremors in the human hand and body.

He didn’t hang up, and actually tried to argue the toss with me. I asked him how many people have legally been disabled or lost work over this issue, he told me that ‘a few dozen’ pilots had taken sick days after a ‘laser attack’, and that ‘one pilot in South Australia is now legally blind because of it’. He fell into my trap, I’d read about the SA pilot, he had a degenerative eye condition prior, and arguably the blindness (although it was 6/12, which is the minimum level for ‘legal’ blindness for pilots yet is still perfectly usable for non-pilots) was caused by this and not the laser.

Aside from anecdotes, and “I know someone who …” stories, there is only ONE case in the world of surgical proof of damage from a laser, and it was that of a teen in Manchester, England who bought a laser pointed, forcibly held his eye lid open, and shone it into his eye to see how long he could stand it. After a month without treatment his surgeon noticed a marked increase, aside from a ‘minor dark spot’ where the laser burn affected his retina.

Now so what, I don’t use laser pointers, maybe you don’t too. What’s the big deal if they’re banned, right? The big deal is, an urban legend posing as a ‘laser attack’ has led to millions of wasted tax payer funds on investigating, millions on legislating, millions on passing bills, and many millions on policing something that is innocuous and innocent beyond that of minor ass hattery. Further, people have been arrested, locked up and deprived of liberty pending trials, and fined equal millions for ‘laser attacks’ on planes and helicopters, including one man who served a month in gaol over here for a ‘laser attack’ of PolAir, a police helicopter.

The law is meant to represent the views and moral/ethical beliefs of the people. The law is meant to be rational, clinical, scientific, and logical. The law is meant to be right. So a law that is based on bullshit figures, pussy pilots wanting sickies, and draconian authoratarian angry politicians and law enforcement soap boxing on every news channel and every talk back radio show about these horrible ‘attacks’ is an abhorrent blight on our rights and our legal system. If THIS can happen, with something so trivial as a kids toy, what other laws have slipped by unnoticed and cost billions of dollars and deprived people of their freedom in the name of public safety?

There’s even been allegations made that ‘terrorists’ (see: this era’s ‘communist’, or last centuries ‘witch’) intentionally using laser pointers to attack and incite terror and try and kill, maim, rape and destroy western civilisation … with a fucking $2 laser pointer. A brief google search and you’ll realise just how insane and over the top this issue got in Australia and many other countries. Things like these MUST be investigated by rational minded people, and evidence must be more than sooky muppets wanting sickies from their commercial piloting jobs.

Any bullshit trumped up law like this needs to be challenged and defeated. It’s as ridiculous as Australian gun laws, those have gotten so bad that if you buy a childs cap gun (all of which have to be fluro colored, and have a different colored fluro plug in the end of the barrel (y’know, just in case you somehow convert a plastic gun into a real one, or just in case you scare an old lady when your kid is running around the streets playing cops and robbers)) then paint it black, you face 15 years in prison for possession of a prohibited handgun. Even replicas, some nerf guns, a Transformer toy, and airsoft guns are illegal here.

I don’t want to dwell on that topic or digress too much, but (cool story bro story time) I decided to take the cunts to bat on this one, I rang up the local police, told them I bought a cap gun and painted it black. They asked why, I told them my mates and I were filming a lolvideo for YouTube and we wanted to make sure things were legally kosher. After being told that it’s a criminal offence which could bring 15 years gaol, and escalating to the duty officer, I confirmed beyond doubt that for $2 and a lick of paint you can lose the better part of your life in prison for it. So, being a horrible troll, I kept my deadpan tone of serious concern, and asked how I can deal with this situation.

They explained I had to get a theatrical armorers license, and register it as a handgun, and also get a category H firearms license. I told them I have a handgun license at present (but naturally wasn’t keen on giving any details away that could identify me) and they told me in that case I could hire a theatrical armorer (those guys cost a few grand for a day) and just have to register the pistol (a few hundred bucks and a 30-90 day wait) so that I can complete my 3 minute lolvideo with my mates. So, again, I persisted.

I contacted the firearms registry and explained my situation. They were more than happy to help me register my new $2 handgun, and sent me to their website where we got the right forms in PDF, she also suggested I take the cap gun to the police so they may store it in their armory where it will be kept safe. I pointed out that I’d very happily do that, because I’m still quite shell shocked that I accidentally made an illegal firearm, and I don’t want anyone to go on a killing spree with it because then I’d be as guilty for letting them get their hands on such a weapon. Ironically that flew under her radar and she agreed with me.

When looking at the form I found a problem; my cap gun didn’t have a serial number. She had to talk to her supervisor about that, and about half an hour later she rang back and told me that if it doesn’t have a serial number on the frame we can’t register it. I pointed out that no cap guns in the world have serial numbers, and asked if I could just write one on it. She explained it has to be engraved in a metal portion of the gun. Unfortunately aside from a spring, there were no metal parts, thus per the legislation I could not register it and was forced to remain a criminal at large.

Whilst this is just an ironic documentation of a conference call where my mates and I wanted to be dicks, we did illustrate a clear point that most governmental parties involved refused to concur with; Australian laws can be insanely daft, irrational, and purely to win votes. The anti-gun lobby also jumped on the ‘laser attack’ issue when it was out. Given that it takes about $5-10 grand and a few years to get your hands on a gun in this country, not to mention the hundreds of hoops, training, background checks, psychological evaluations by unqualified pistol club captains with mullets in a classroom atmosphere asked to comment professionally evaluating your mental competence, and other rather inane and psychopathic elements to the gun laws, the gun lobby are still looking at American crime statistics, watching American films, and convinced everyone, not just gun owners, are batshit insane serial killers who need to be locked up; all except them and people they agree are sane of course.

So while you’ve got psychotic lobby groups and vocal minorities squeeling about the dangers outside their living room, on the flipside your rational population are gutless, or apathetic, or both. These bullshit laws permeate our culture, and other cultures, and go unchallenged. They set dangerous precedents for other psychopathy posing as jurisprudence, and the societal costs of all such things probably run into a sizable chunk of our GDP in wasted spending, not to mention the impact on people charged by these bullshit laws.

How deranged must law makers be to err on the side of restriction of freedom? Could it be linked to the fact that this law also outlawed the trade in black market light-storage medium devices and game console hacking involving the replacement of lasers and drives? Could it be linked to the psychotic anti-gun lobby thinking laser pointers are weapons? After all, they’re now listed as prohibited WEAPONS (ironically so is body armor, because you could totally kill someone with a ceramic tile in a vest!) so maybe they do?

Article at the bottom stolen (fair use) from News Ltd. about the arrest of 25 anons. Rant up the top provided by an unknown party who types remarkably like I do.

In the last few weeks we’ve had fucknut’s at the NSA starting to spread propaganda about anon saying that ‘in a few years they will be able to take down the US power grid’ through to this nonsense. The power grid was lol, I mean, no anon would bother, and PLENTY anons could drop a power grid already. Fuck, all you’d need are a few dozen $5 pagers and some magnesium and aluminium filings from a hardware store along with some sparklers and you could systematically physically drop a power network at infrastructure level; but the kicker is, why the fuck would you?

Lots of anons live in the US, we all need our internet access and computers, EVERYONE does these days, so no one would touch a power grid. We all also know that people are on life support, people are operating machinery which if interrupted may do horrible things, and that in general a DOS of a primary infrastructure like that wouldn’t earn you cool points, isn’t justified, and just makes you an epic boner.

BUT! No one is going to do that. No one will target innocent people for no reason. Every attack by anonymous has been justified, righteous and to punish a corrupt or otherwise evil tosser. The people have no power these days. Protests do nothing, and police don’t even obey their own laws when dealing with them and wrongfully arrest and inhumanely treat protestors, and worse, you’ve got cockless wonder nearly-retired baby boomer conservative fucks who instantly assume ANYONE protesting ANYTHING is a dirty filthy hippie and the police should shoot them and save the justice system money.

Without an outlet, people’s rage and anger at evil and corruption hits boiling point. 100 years ago people would be storming the places that were hacked heavily armed and violently overthrowing governments or burning down offices and lynching people. That ironically is not kosher with the above mentioned cowardly baby boomers who think 40 years gaol for a possession charge is acceptable, and that the death penalty is rad.

So, what can angry, angry people do?

Vote?

Like that’ll make a difference when cunts with one foot in the grave who serve no purpose in this world anymore and are anachronisms that we’re just waiting to pass away outnumber us significantly. Voting only works if the average person is intelligent enough to make the right, moral, and ethical choices. Democracy only works when you can say that most people aren’t brainless fucking uneducated morons living in fantasy land of AM radio and Fox news channels.

(Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anarchist, or a … well, anything. I’m a centrist libertarian in it’s dictionary definition not the trendy hipster alternate that seems to be around these days who believes in common sense prevailing.)

People want to lash out. You have disenfranchised masses of reasonably intelligent mostly middle class mostly white mostly men mostly between the ages of 15-30 who have everything in the world going against them, yes that’s a lot of mostly’s but it really is the touchstone demographic in Australia at least for the average anon, and based on all of those mostly’s each one compounds their lack of a voice and the public right to victimise and otherwise destroy and dead agent until the cows come home and they can’t do or say a thing about it.

So, where do these demographics go? Online! Now there are many other demographics in anon besides the silenced majority, which are also silenced and otherwise the worlds bitch. But together, they can make a difference. Together they can kick a bully’s ass in the global playground that is the game of life. And you blame them for taking this action? You blame them for lashing out at paedophiles, animal torturers, corrupt politicians, corporations, governments, you name it?

For every anon arrested a hundred more will take their place. This has been the agreed maxim since it began, and this will be the truth until the end.

Anons are a game of pokemon you cannot win. Contemporary society owe anon more than it will ever realise, and in a hundred years time think about how society will look back at those who targetted and demonized them, trying to pretend they’re terrorists and communists and anarchists who are hell bent on destroying the world.

With the NSA’s bullshit feeding and lies, now with this Interpol attack, I can honestly say I see within the next 2-5 years that the American government will somehow claim anon is a terrorist organisation and start blanket arresting them where they can.

It’ll be McArthyism all over again. Just like the nazi’s came up with bullshit made up excuses to victimise Jews and use a few rare examples of corrupt Jewish bankers (even in some cases citing Shylock himself as cause) to tar an entire peoples with the same brush, Anonymous will be engaged on that same level. It’s only a matter of time.

The only difference is, they don’t know who or where to look to catch them all, and they don’t know how or when the revenge will come.

From puppy killers being fucked over by /b/rothers, through to /i/nsurgency taking down corrupt governments during the recent grab for democracy in the middle east (then counter attacks when the dictators deposed were replaced with a council of dictators like the muslim brotherhood) even down to the Quran burnings of 1 Quran per person killed in the psychopathic mass riots and massacres in the middle east because a prison burnt Quran’s filled with hate propaganda and terrorist instructions and directions to be smuggled out to the pbulic, EVERY action that makes the headlines even under basic scrutiny appears just and fair.

Yes, you will get trolls. Yes, people will attack organisations that attack piracy or obtaining entertainment in a timely and affordable manner because the industry needs a paradigm shift to bring it into this century. YES you will get fuckwits operating outside of the scope and morals of the collective.

But ultimately, at the end of the day, Anonymous is a force of good, and unlike most others, it keeps FORCE in the forefront of that statement, and cannot be stopped.

All hail Epic Beard Man, Ubiquitous Ruler and Overlord of ANONYMOOSE! *does secret salute*

Police from Interpol arrest 25 suspected members of the Anonymous hackers group in a swoop covering more than a dozen cities in Europe and Latin America, the global police body said yesterday.

“Operation Unmask was launched in mid-February following a series of coordinated cyber-attacks originating from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain,” said the world police body based in the French city of Lyon.

The statement cited attacks on the websites of the Colombian Ministry of Defence and the presidency, as well as on Chile’s Endesa electricity company and its National Library, among others.

The operation was carried out by police from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain, the statement said, with 250 items of computer equipment and mobile phones seized in raids on 40 premises in 15 cities.

Police also seized credit cards and cash from the suspects, aged 17 to 40.

“This operation shows that crime in the virtual world does have real consequences for those involved, and that the Internet cannot be seen as a safe haven for criminal activity,” said Interpol’s acting director of police services.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s made the news almost globally, that women of a certain town in Italy have b& their boys from visiting a specific cafe. The barista, Laura Maggi. works in a little cafe in Bagnolo Mella, near Brescia, and decided to spruce up business by wearing slutty outfits.

From PVC (ew, thrush factory!) to lacey underwear and even down to tassle-tittied pasties, she has a keen business acumen of how stupid desperate men will do anything for a bit of T&A. But aside from her slutty photos (which can be found all over the internets) the translation of her website had me in tears.

First and foremost, here are some links to her more provocative photos. (NSFW obviously)

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Laura+Maggi&hl=en&safe=off&prmd=imvnsuo&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=1y9IT_uVOpCuiQeyw8SADg&ved=0CEIQsAQ&biw=1680&bih=949

And more raunchy ones at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105339/Sexpresso-Wives-ban-husbands-visiting-Italian-cafe-busty-barmaid-serves-drinks-skimpy-outfits.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

But seriously, this part had me cacking myself. I love bad translations, it really is brilliant how batshit insane things can seem if translated, or worse, translate something from English to, say, Chinese and then back again. Go on, do it, I dare you. Either way you’ll probably get something more coherent than this (translated by Google Chrome on the fly):

PHOTOS – And Laura knows to be fair. Even more. Post all your photos on Facebook, before I hang them in his restaurant. And business is booming more than they say they are even tripled in the last year. Business is business? Do not you agree the mayoress of Bagnolo Mella. Indeed, ironically: “Here the high-waisted trousers no longer know what they are,” accuses the Mayoress Christine Almici. “Now the country is only known from the sexy bar. Here the towns furious, have even turned to the police. ” Really? “Sure. Ms. Maggi has been summoned to headquarters. It warned verbally. ” Someone has even given permission to work until late at night. “Permission has it, but I knew that would serve cocktails dressed like that? Give me time, I’m thinking of a measure. Here the public has gone to hell. “

Basically the tech was a no show, I sat around like a dick until 6, then spent the rest of the night trying to find out why.

After several hours on hold with intermittent conversations with the off shore call centre, I got absolutely no answer, and waited / spoke to them until my home phone went too flat to make it through another long hold period.

One tech was so terribad that I had to spell my username 8 times, 3 of those were phonetics (bravo alpha sierra hotel papa romeo zero mike papa tango!) to the point that I had to give her my old Telstra account details so she could copy paste my username and replace the o with a zero.

That call was the furthest I got, and once she began to realize it was a hard work call, she did what I’ve had two Telstra outsourced staff do so far, hung up on me. A well documented feature of whatever the call centre Telstra outsources to in the Phillipines.

(Check Whirlpool for hundreds of examples, although there’s no point filing official complaints because they can simply say the line died or the user hung up or some such, along with stupidly fake names, this outsourced call centre is a glorified answering service, if your problem is beyond year 7 computer science trouble shooting they’ll have an actual tech support worker from Australia (or Egypt, those guys are really good!) call you back ‘within 2-3 business days’) to address the problem!)

I was chasing it up by 8:30 this morning and pretty much spent the entire day waiting again. Thankfully a bloke named Russ chased the issue up, and after a run around himself told me that the technician ‘rang the customer on their mobile’ but ‘couldn’t get through’.

Now I don’t know about you, but if you book me as a plumber to install a hot water heater, and I know you don’t have one and have taken 1.5-2 months of fuck ups to finally book me that on the day when you lose a day of work sitting there, if I can’t get you on your mobile, it doesn’t mean you suddenly changed your mind and don’t want a hot water heated installed.

Fuck, calling is a courtesy, but I would rock up and do the fucking job, because that’s what the customer and every sane person would expect.

What’s more, the idiot didn’t even ring THE PRIMARY CONTACT NUMBER FOR THE ACCOUNT, he rang a secondary / emergency / technical contact not the primary.

WHO DOES THAT?

Either way, I pointed out yesterday that if the wait is another month, or even a week, it may be more prudent not to go ahead with the service transfer of all things to Telstra.

I pointed out to Russ that on completion I’ll be publishing my Optus logs, revealing how terribad they are, and giving a solid well documented consumer point of view like lots of bloggers do these days (hell, half the way I decide on purchases of goods and services is based on contemporaneous consumer notations of customer experience.

However at present my Telstra logs are now bigger than my Optus log and I’m not even officially a customer of theirs yet at the new house! So if this is what goes on when they haven’t got you yet and should be doing anything they can to court your business, what happens when I’m locked in a contract for two years?

This afternoon Russ emailed me and told me that I’m rebooked in for the 27th, which is one week after its due date and thus falls into my ‘if it’s another two months or hell even if it’s another week’ deal breaker term. I pointed out the time is a bit much and asked if there’s anything sooner. So we’ll see if Telstra can redeem itself.

I have, however, also tweeted @ InterNode and iiNet letting them know I’m open to courting if their VIP management teams want to grab another high profile gamer and blogger. I’ve since received contact from iiNet yet nothing from InterNode, yet.

I’ll wait for Telstra’s next response before getting into too much conversation. But while I’m theoretically locked in contract, I have at all times stressed expediency is the most integral element of this deal, and have had provision made to me that they understand and will act accordingly.

This is enough, in a consumer situation where you’re being fucked around, to be able to exit from the contract with no breaking fees, even AFTER installations take place, etc. So thanks to the fact Australia has good consumer protection, unlike our poor chaps over in the US who pretty much have no rights, there is still course for resolution.

Anyway, there you have it, now stop asking! :)

After a day trying to talk to their social media team to no avail, I rang their outsourced answering machine and spoke with ‘Snita’ (pronounced saneetsa), explained the problem and was told that it’s the $300 NetGear 3000 they sold me three weeks ago after claiming it was the NetGear 2000 they’d sold me several months prior. I wasn’t going to humor another modem purchase and politely called bullshit and explained that the waveform of speed tests run indicate a fluctuation in line quality dB and nothing to do with the modem (all diagnostics showed it was fine) but she didn’t understand.

She told me that ‘NetGear and Optus are aware of this problem and are working together to fix it as soon as possible, so if the problem is still happening in a few weeks’ I should call back. Again, politely called her out on it. She ran through a bunch of pointless diagnostics, which I humored (I actually did, to my chagrin, I even rebooted my modem and PC and hard wired up) only to have her say ‘I’ll connect you to a NetGear technician.’ and I was like no no no dude, I don’t want NetGear, I want a linesman. Again I broke another Optus outsourcer by asking them to think outside the square, she fell into circular reasoning and speech and again went on about ‘I asked earlier if you had another modem (she didn’t actually) because we could get you to use that for a few weeks until the problem is fixed, but if you don’t we will have to call NetGear’.

I again stated that the modem is absolutely fine, the line quality is so terrible and slipping out of band from the infrastructure outside that even the cable television is affected (both use the ‘black sausage’ coax that SingTel Optus services run through in Australia) and there was dead silence for about ten seconds, maybe more, then a click and the busy signal.

Yes. An Optus tech supporter did what the Whirlpool forum is full of statements of Optus tech supporters doing. Fucker hung up because the problem was too hard and she couldn’t be fucked dealing with it.

I called back and escalated to a L3 TL or floor manager and explained everything again in painful detail, he ordered a lines man to come around on Friday, and wanted to chase Snita up, but I pointed out all she has to say is ‘The line died.’ or ‘The user hung up.’ and there’s no way to prove the contrary so it’s pointless.

I asked if there’s a feedback email for Optus I could have, nope. I asked if there’s a complaints department, sadly it’s only open 9-5 because it’s like the only department Optus haven’t outsourced yet. I’ll give them a call tomorrow and link to this.

But in the meantime, I want to stress as much as I can, if you use Optus, Optus anything, don’t. Just @Telstra and link to this article and they’ll do you a good deal to swap over to them. Replacing two Optus TV hook ups, an Optus phone and OptusNet cable has me saving about $30 per month AND I’m getting full proper HD (no laggy fucking press a button and six seconds later the channel changes too!) along with a 100 mbit down 1 mbit up (I’ll admit the 1 mbit up is utterly moronic and restrictive, bringing the 100 mbit down to around 70 mbit down usable) along with a ping that is realistic, Optus the best I got was just under 100 ms. I got that on an ISDN in 1996.

Another problem you’ll find with OptusNet internet is that they cache all big sites like YouTube, etc. So you’ll be pulling 10mbit+ on a speed test, yet you can’t stream a 240p YouTube video without letting it butter for three times the duration of the video. One way to prove they cache YouTube specifically is, download the same video or movie you’re watching on YouTube from a torrent site, if you’re getting 25 k/s down on BitTorrent or higher, that’s about 1 second of footage every 0.75 seconds of download, thus enough to stream. Then go to YouTube and grab the same content, at the same resolution, and watch it have to buffer over and over again.

Mind you if you ask them about this they plead ignorant, or if you call them out on it they duck and run.

Worst part is, they always insist you use some shitty in house speed test (speedtest.syd.optusnet.com.au) which is a total scam. If you don’t believe me, disconnect your modem completely after loading the page, then run a speed test. You’ll get a 10ms – 20ms ping from the Optus server. A server that it cannot possibly communicate with because the coax is removed. You’ll also find it’s speed measures usually 10mbit down higher than ANY other industry standard speed testing medium and 2-3mbit up higher than the same.

Anyway, I’m fucking done. I tried to be patient, I tried to work with them. I’m going to demand a refund for the past months we’ve been having problems, demand a refund for this stupid fucking useless modem they forced us to buy, and if they don’t pay the fuck up I’m going to go to the TIO and Department of Fair Trading and make them hurt. Just filing with those two companies forces the investigated party to have to pay a high administration fee for the pleasure of having their arses investigated for being douchebags.

After waiting ten minutes to connect to a Battlefield 3 server only to get maybe 20 seconds game time before a drop out hit, all fucking day, wasting my only real me-day this week, I’m fuming.

Anyway, enough ranting for one post. Don’t use Optus. They’re ALMOST as bad as TPG. Almost.

I for one spent one night a week since 2004 eagerly waiting for a torrent to be available to download it. The series Caprica bombed, as have … well, every science fiction show produced in the last decade almost, few last one or two seasons. The reason is NOT a lack of success, Caprica was a smash hit. Star Gate Universe, another example, was another huge hit. The problem is the delivery system.

Syfy and producers like Universal don’t get the paradigm shift that occured a few decades ago with Napster and MP3 sharing. They still struggle to understand simple things like supply and demand and in their vacuous 80′s power suit toting marketing addled minds don’t understand their target demographic.

We will not wait a year for hand me downs packed so full of ads they’re redundant. We will not wait for ‘off season’ breaks just because ratings are down doesn’t mean we don’t want entertainment. We won’t take that bullshit.

And we have a plan.

We torrent things. So, hard wired small unobtrusive adverts would be one easy way along with product placement; you KNOW that producers will fuck this up and you’ll get half your screen as a strobing disruptive banner ad the entire show along with fucking huge time outs mid conversation to talk about HTC, or Jeep, or any other right-up-in-your-fucking-grill offensive advertisers like that.

That said, I really fucking hope distributors catch the fuck up with the new reality they’re dealing with, and even more so hope that Singer doesn’t fuck things up and understands he has some BIG shoes to fill and if he plans to go back to the 70′s roots he sure as fuck is going to hump the bunk on this one and should hold true to his promise, that he ‘will rather hand the project to someone else than frak it up’ (his words, precisely) and hand it to someone else.

Blood and Chrome seem to be a pipe dream now. If they do happen, they’ll be a webisodal non event like Woke Up Dead or some shit.

But the bottom line is, there’s been a BSG project green lit, we, the fans, need to publicize this and put pressure on Singer, Universal, and SyFy to do it right, to bring it back as it was, and to give us more of that sweet metaphysical mumbo jumbo to pulsing Bear Grylls–oh wait, McCreary, the non-urine drinking Bear–primal beats and funk.

So, SyFy, Universal, Singer, Orloff … PLEASE don’t fuck this up. This is possibly the franchises last chance, if you do, you’ll have Gen X and Y hating your guts for the next forty years.

I was wrong.

The real credit for the portable tape player is to Andreas Pavel, a Brazillian national, making his first portable personal stereo player in the late 1960′s.

With irony, he was unable to enthral people with the device. He recounts the confusion he raised in Milan in 1976 with massive earmuff headphones (the kind scumbag hipsters wear today, but larger, affectionately called ‘cans’), “people would look at me sometimes on a bus, and you could see they were asking themselves, ‘Why is this crazy man running around with headphones?”‘

Pavel filed patents in five countries, and Sony agreed to license his technology in 1986 — although they refused to acknowledge him as the technology’s inventor. He fought long and hard, and it wasn’t until 2003 that he reached an agreement with Sony that saw him credited for his idea, along with a sizable cash settlement rumored to be over $10 million. To his credit, he never let his legal battle consume him or define his life, even when faced with financial ruin.

Below is the earliest article I can find on the subject, from 2005.

Portable Stereo’s Creator got his Due, Eventually
By: Larry Rohter
Published: New York Times, Friday, December 16, 2005

In the late 1960s, Andreas Pavel and his friends gathered regularly at his house here to listen to records, from Bach to Janis Joplin, and talk politics and philosophy. In their flights of fancy, they wondered why it should not be possible to take their music with them wherever they went.

Inspired by those discussions, Pavel invented the device known today as the Walkman. But it took more than 25 years of battling the Sony Corporation and others in courts and patent offices around the world before he finally won the right to say it: Andreas Pavel invented the portable personal stereo player.

“I filed my first patent a complete innocent, thinking it would be a simple matter, 12 months or so, to establish my ownership and begin production,” he said at the house where he first conceived of the device. “I never imagined that it would end up consuming so much time and taking me away from my real interests in life.”

In person, Pavel seems an unlikely protagonist in such an epic struggle. He is an intellectual with a gentle, enthusiastic, earnest demeanor, more interested in ideas and the arts than in commerce, cosmopolitan by nature and upbringing.

Born in Germany, Pavel came to Brazil at the age of 6, when his father was recruited to work for the Matarazzo industrial group, at the time the most important one here. His mother, an artist named Ninca Bordano, had a home built for the family that included a studio for her and an open-air salon with high-end audio equipment, meant for literary and musical gatherings.

Except for a period in the mid-1960s when he studied philosophy at a German university, Pavel, now 59, spent the remainder of his childhood and early adulthood here in South America’s largest city, “to my great advantage,” he said. São Paulo was experiencing a period of unusual creative and intellectual ferment then, culminating in the Tropicalist movement, and he was delighted to be a part of it.

When a station called TV Cultura was licensed to go on the air, Pavel was hired to be its director of educational programming. After he was forced to leave because of what he thinks was political pressure, he edited a “Great Thinkers” book series for Brazil’s leading publishing house in another effort to “counterbalance the censorship and lack of information” then prevailing.

In the end, what drove Pavel back to Europe was his discontent with the military dictatorship then in power in Brazil. By that time, though, he had already invented the device he initially called the “stereobelt,” which he saw more as a means to “add a sound track to real life” than an item to be mass marketed.

“Oh, it was purely aesthetic,” he said when asked his motivation in creating a portable personal stereo player. “It took years to discover that I had made a discovery and that I could file a patent.”

Pavel still remembers when and where he was the first time he tested his invention and which piece of music he chose for his experiment. It was February 1972, he was in Switzerland with his girlfriend and the cassette they heard playing on their headphones was “Push Push,” a collaboration between the jazz flutist Herbie Mann and the blues-rock guitarist Duane Allman.

“I was in the woods in St. Moritz, in the mountains, the snow was falling down, I pressed the button and suddenly we were floating,” he recalled. “It was an incredible feeling, to realize that I now had the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation.”

Over the next few years, he took his invention to one audio company after another – Grundig, Philips, Yamaha and ITT among them – to see if there was interest in manufacturing his device. But everywhere he went, he said, he met with rejection or ridicule.

“They all said they didn’t think people would be so crazy as to run around with headphones, that this is just a gadget, a useless gadget of a crazy nut,” he said. In New York, where he moved in 1974, and then in Milan, where he relocated in 1976, “people would look at me sometimes on a bus, and you could see they were asking themselves, ‘Why is this crazy man running around with headphones?”‘

Ignoring the doors slammed in his face, Pavel filed a patent in March of 1977 in Milan. Over the next year and a half, he took the same step in the United States, Germany, England and Japan.

Sony started selling the Walkman in 1979, and in 1980 began negotiating with Pavel, who was seeking a royalty fee. The company agreed to that in 1986, he said, but would not acknowledge him as the Walkman’s inventor, so in 1989 he began new proceedings, this time in British courts, that dragged on and on and ate up his limited financial resources.

At one point, Pavel said, he owed his lawyer hundreds of thousands of dollars and was being followed by private detectives and countersued by Sony. “They had frozen all my assets, I couldn’t use checks or credit cards,” and the outlook for him was looking grim.

In 1996, the case was dismissed, leaving Pavel with more than $3 million in court costs to pay. But he persisted, warning Sony that he would file new suits in every country where he had patented his invention, and in 2003, after another round of negotiations, the company agreed to settle out of court.

Pavel declined to say how much Sony was obliged to pay him, citing a confidentiality clause. But European press accounts said that Pavel received a cash settlement for damages in the low eight figures and is now also receiving royalties on some Walkman sales.

These days, Pavel divides his time between Italy and Brazil, and once again considers himself primarily a philosopher. But he is also using some of his money to develop an invention he calls a “dreamkit,” a personal, multimedia sense-extension device, and to indulge his unflagging interest in music.

Recently, he has been promoting the career of a somewhat overlooked flutist named Altamiro Carrilho, whom he regards as “the greatest living Brazilian musician.”

He is also financing a project that he describes as “the complete discography of every record ever released in Brazil, so that we will know every track and who is playing on it.”

In addition, some of his friends have suggested he might have a case against the manufacturers of MP3 players, reasoning that those devices are a direct descendant of the Walkman. Pavel said that while he sees a kinship, he is not eager to take on another long legal battle.

“I have known other inventors in similar predicaments and most of them become that story, which is the most tragic, sad and melancholic thing that can happen,” he said.

“Somebody becomes a lawsuit, he loses all interest in other things and deals only with the lawsuit. Nobody ever said I was obsessed. I kept my other interests alive, in philosophy and music and literature.

“I didn’t have time to pursue them, but now I have reconquered my time,” he continued.

“So no, I’m not interested anymore in patents or legal fights or anything like that. I don’t want to be reduced to the label of being the inventor of the Walkman.”

I’ve noticed how easy it would be if I use bit.ly as my main shortening site, and then anyone who gets a random combination of six or so random letters and numbers can just add in the rest in their browser, especially given how much content I put out in peak periods.

I realised however that the more I did that, the more I’s and l’s, or O’s and 0′s, and other such things can become confusing with various fonts of various phone operating systems through SMS (text messaging, for my mentally handicapped friends) and that if they were removed, and say, a seventh slot added, it would expand the variability of URL’s to allow more traffic from their end, along with eliminating you sending your mother to a lolcat only for her to accidentally be URL hijacked to goatse.

So, I have blogged, and I shall email this blog post to them, and update you all with the reply I get.

This shit was all spread on Facebook mind you, and has subsequently ended up all over the Hawkesbury Gazette.

So, being the fearless internet tough guy blogger that I am, I decided to apply my complete lack of media training (unlike the Hawkesbury Gazette) and … fucking ask?

A brief chat with the duty officer of the LAC in question, and I was informed it’s bullshit, although they’d just received a call prior notifying them that it was all over the Hawkesbury Gazette. The entire thing is the product of an overactive imagination, and inbred hicks posting things all over face book without thinking to check the news, or call their local police station, who would have confirmed that it did not happen, and is not true.

For my international readers, who aren’t Aussie’s or locals: In Australia, rape is infrequent, fuck violent crime itself is pretty infrequent, gang rape is almost unheard of. Almost all gang rape over here occurs in Sydney’s south-southwest, or three public instances in the Parramatta area.
A brief overview of the justice systems PDF mail outs of crimes and punishments shows the above to be true, and almost all gang rape exclusively involves ‘persons of middle eastern appearance’ and ‘muslim’ identified as their religious beliefs when (if) they are processed into the prison system post-sentencing.
In the past there have been huge public outcries in relation to the constant affiliation of Islam and rape, along with batshit insane mullah’s promoting vile sexist beliefs, blaming women for being raped, and defending gang rapists such as Bilal Skaff, who got thirty years prison sentence while most of his mates got off because they were young (including tax payer funded renames, and relocations, so they don’t get lynched) for a spate of gang rapes.
As an anti-theist, I’m unsurprised by this, although I couldn’t particularly see any religion aside from Islam being responsible for … well, most vile disgusting racist, sexist, and immoral acts because, of all the religions, they tend to have the most vapid vitriolic fuckwits of the less than 23% of the population who consider religion to be important to them here.
As an aside, I find it ironic that for a nation where religious types are a significantly dwindling minority (google the correlation between lifespan, education, and quality of life and the lack of religion if you want your mind blown, we’re the seventh most atheistic nation and the seventh highest in quality of life), they sure are vocal, obnoxious, and make up a disproportionate amount of gun crime, sexual crimes, etc.
So from an Australian point of view, the Hawkesbury region is the polar opposite, as it’s a very quiet little region, where at most you get stories of drunken yobs punching on on a Friday night, and that’s about it. A crime spree for those kinds of areas would probably be a bunch of graffiti occurring, or a junkie breaking into a couple of houses in one night.

Note to Blacktown City Council’s PR department reading this: There is a note at the end of this so you understand just how horrible a mess you’ve got yourselves in.

My cat disappeared for a night a couple of days ago, but reappeared in the middle of the night. The next morning, she vanished again. Turns out she was abducted by some moron who thought she was a stray, from our front yard, and taken to their home where she caused a fuss until they let her go the first night, assumedly, and the next time they took her to the pound. Now, I’m not saying they’re dickheads, they probably thought they were doing the right thing in some twisted bunny boiler bizarre way, but .. well, they’re dickheads.

But the biggest dickhead of this entire encounter is Blacktown City Council. The Companion Animals Act 1998 has provisions for animals born before the date it came in, which includes my cat, however on arriving at the pound they insisted I fork out $350 or there abouts, for ‘Lifetime Registration’, microchipping, and her stay. Now these are things I didn’t ask for, and if it weren’t for the negligence of the idiot who catnapped her in the first place, and these are things I wouldn’t have to do per the act. However, I was directed to the usual scabby print outs on walls of misquoted legislation you get at places that deal with people who might not be too impressed getting surprise blackmailed for their pets. It cited a subclause of a clause of a regulation of an act,[1] whereas the ACT itself said she is exempt. The parenthetical terms that they based their entire ransom on was ‘including a council pound’.

Now statutory interpretation is a very fickle fiend. That’s sarcasm, it’s written in plain English and is pretty simple to understand, especially if you apply a purposive evaluation of the legislation or look to extrinsic materials that were used in the framing period such as reading speeches. Either way, unless an act states that it is retroactive it isn’t. So my argument that the act didn’t apply to her was valid. The regulation on the wall was also invalid, even if it were valid it would be a stretch.

The problem with this situation is, you’ve lost your pet, you’re in a tizz, you heard from a neighbor that some dickhead took it, then suddenly you’re at a front desk desperate to get your pet out and they’re telling you all these things and costs you have to do and pay which always include extortionate fees from the state government in the way of the constant ‘surprise taxation’ I keep telling my international viewers about. To resolve this situation I would have to had gone and gotten an injunction from the local courthouse, which would take a week, or I have to pay the ransom and let them hurt my elderly cat who’s just recovering from a very, very serious operation which was extremely touch and go, most of you might remember that.

I had booked in to visit my vet, he asked to bring her to him if she had to be chipped, so he could do it under anaesthetic to lessen the trauma and injury. This wasn’t accepted. I understand the people there were doing there job, and they were very empathic to the situation, but the bottom line is this is a disgusting and inappropriate act. We are the only state in the country, and one of two countries in the world where it’s mandatory to chip or register, and I understand the purpose of it, however it could be resolved with an ear tattoo, or a collar and tag, registerable online by the owner, bringing the entire administrative costs to $0 and the physical cost incurred to a few bucks. If the PURPOSE of this rubbish is to ensure animals are registered and reduce lost animals / increase returns, this would be the approach, as I guarantee you every owner would do it, breeders, stores, and adoption agencies could foot the $2 bill and give them away, hell I’d even throw a few grand into a public fund to launch such a scheme.

But I truly and utterly don’t believe the purpose of this is so Blacktown City Council, or the NSW Government, can look after the well being of companion animals, and believe beyond any doubt it is just another underhanded little fee that adds to the entire most-taxed-nation-on-earth along with compounded surprise taxes along the way.

Microchipping is a cool idea, but it’s cruel, painful, and uneccessary (the latter as I outlined above), it uses a 12-14 guage needle, and is done without anaesthetic, even when I asked if anaesthetic could be used, and offered to pay extra, I was told they can’t and aren’t taught to do it that way. I discussed it with a staff member there, who assured me it’s not very painful to the animal and they don’t show pain. I countered that that’s because the animals are all shitting themselves because they just got shanked by a stranger in a strange place so they’ll just go limp and take whatever is done to them or flip out, the latter often being put down to circumstance.

He was reassuring and very professional, I must say, although I did challenge him and ask if he’d microchip himself. He explained that it’d hurt him, and if he got stabbed in the neck with it he’d be hospitalized and probably need stitches. I pointed out that whilst I believe he believes they don’t feel pain, 80+ years ago we believed animals don’t feel pain at all because they have ‘no soul,’ and pointed out that common sense would say a giant piece of steel piercing your flesh will hurt like a bitch. I also pointed out that while he’d be scared of getting stabbed with it, it’s 20 times larger for a cat who’s 20 times smaller than a human, so it’d be like getting shanked with a bayonette.

The reason I’m making a big deal out of this is because I have been ambushed by the system, had my cat ransomed to me, and it was all done in a way that assured I did not have access to legal remedy in a way that I could take my cat and we could settle the matter civilly at a later point, the fact their rules and regulations force you to have to either do as they say to get your pet then chase it up later, or abandon your pet for a week to a month (by which point it may probably be up for adoption or destroyed) is utterly ridiculous in a civilised nation in 2012.

Blacktown City Council, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, as should the NSW Government or any body supporting this nonsense. I spent the car ride home covered in blood, trying to settle an injured animal down that was bleeding profusely (I’ve only just finally stopped the bleeding, an hour later, and she’s in serious discomfort and pain from it) all because some dickhead decided to try and steal my pet. You’ve made a victim of crime a victim of the system, without reason, rationality, or common sense applied anywhere therein. You’ve taken away my constitutional right to legal remedy by holding my animal ransom. And you’ve pissed off the wrong nerd.

Note: The people at the animal holding facility were fantastic, professional, and did Blacktown Council more justice than they should have, so I don’t want this in any way to reflect badly on them. They were obeying idiotic internal rules and regulations enforced on them by some desk jockey twenty miles away who has no idea of the internal running of the facility, and clearly has no common sense. It just makes me disgusted even more that such fantastic employees have to also suffer this idiocy. The entire costs came to approx. $200 as she was desexed, etc, etc, but could have exceeded $350 as I was first appraised on the phone including holding and sustenance.

[1] Companion Animals Regulation 2008 (3) 23, which also is not retroactive and thus still not valid to the animal in question if it was born prior to 2008. Meaning they don’t need to be registered or chipped if they were born before 1998, and the ‘once they turn up here they have to be’ part doesn’t apply if they were born prior to 2008. This doesn’t mean that the regulation itself isn’t completely moronic and just good old New South Wales revenue raising.

Email sent to Blacktown City Council on the issue, to see what kind of escalation I can get about their horribly moronic practices:

Dear Sir / Madam,

Just touching base further to our conversation today when I picked up Mang (now known as Prisoner 00546) relating to the Companion Animals Act 1998. I wish to have this issue looked into and escalated, and hope to at least provide some form of systemic change to allow staff members, who are clearly experienced in animal management, to have the right to discretion in these matters.

I investigated what I had said about the Act not being retroactive, nor the Regulations, and on returning home and examining the regulations in full on AustLII I found that it isn’t retroactive. Meaning any animal born before the end of 1998 need not be forcibly microchipped and registered, and the parenthetical of the subclause of the clause of the Regulation of the Act on the wall is spurious at best but could only be applied to animals born after 2008.

The purpose of the legislation is obvious, and the reasoning for it not including animals born before X date is to prevent having to register an animal that is probably on it’s last legs anyway. With statutory interpretation, common sense rules. Our laws are written so the average person can understand them, and if it were meant to apply to animals before a date, it will say so. In a situation like this, I was left with the alternative of seeking my constitutionally afforded access to legal remedy but at a cost of not having my animal released into my custody for the duration of the matter, which could be weeks to months. Or to agree to what I am told and do as I am told to get my pet back.

The logical way of handling this in the best interest of the animal, the owner, and most definitely the pound itself–given that my address, and contact details, and registered state identification were surrendered in the retrieval process and that chipping and registration were to occur at my private vet at a 2PM appointment–would be to release the animal into the custody of the owner pending resolution of the matter.

Most people will not follow these situations up because they’re just thankful and relieved to have their animal back, but that is how horrible and unjust issues fly under the radar and go so long without being repealed or remedied.

I do strongly wish to stress however that your staff were extremely professional, courteous, and patient in handling this matter and I commend this thoroughly. You have done Blacktown City Council more justice than they deserve on this issue. But the whole matter becomes even more disgusting when staff members’ hands are tied by desk jockeys who have only a pen and paper understanding of the running of the facility.

On leaving this morning, my cat has yet to cease showing signs of extreme discomfort from the implant, and is walking crouched (as they do when they have something stuck to their fur) and growling if touched or approached, all extremely out of character for a super friendly, loving, affectionate animal that behaves more like a loyal dog than a cat, inclusive of obedience to commands or even hand signals. It took me half an hour to stop the bleeding.

On a brief review of chipping practice, local anaesthetic appears to be (and rightly so, it’s illogical not to) the norm for everywhere but Australia, with most private vets seeming to opt for it also, given that it would be the equivalent of a human being stuck with a bayonet on a size based ratio with a pager being shoved under their skin between their shoulder blades.

This practice could be averted with a collar and tag, or ear tattoo, costing a few dollars, with owners filling out the registration on line at a central database. I’d even hazard a guess that adoption agencies, animal welfare groups, and animal rights organisations would give collars and tags with e-registration methods away free of charge. If the purpose of registration and chipping is in the interest of animals and owners, then the current system is not the way as people will only do it when forced to. I honestly believe the purpose of registration is revenue raising by the state government, as from my reading on the matter none of the funding goes into the hands of the pound or to companion animal care.

The practice itself is something that cannot be resolved at this level, and I am aware of this, but the manner in which the practice is meted out while animals are held ransom is inappropriate in a civilised society. The fact that staff are not given the discretion to waive this issue, or handle it within their professional judgment being persons who are on the front lines and dealing with the reprocussions of silly policies is even worse than the practice itself.

Note to Blacktown City Council: My blog has a demographic reach of in excess of 40 times your cities population. It provides more exposure than a prime time television advertising campaign operated for in excess of a month on Australian television. The demographic includes many celebrities, influential people, and people you really don’t want to look like a complete dick in front of. Congratulations.

Ummm, what’s that thing I do again? It’ll come to me in a minute… Oh yeah, play football! Yeah, that’s it!

Welcome to contemporary America, where the fad of “Tebowing” is both sweeping and dividing the nation. Tee-what? Tebowing, named after hyper-religious Denver Broncos quarterback, Tim Tebow, is the act of taking a knee in prayer, usually while you’re actually doing something else. Like playing footy.

Tebow has been doing it for months in Broncos games, although he won’t be doing it any more this season, or not onfield anyway, after his team was thumped by the New England Patriots on the weekend. Apparently God prefers a patriot to a believer.

You know, watching the above video I’m quite surprised that not a single hand has headed in for a grope. What is wrong with those people? Ok, crudeness aside, well, no, not aside, I’m going straight into the land of crude and setting off fireworks.

So, Katy Perry has a great rack, I think we can all agree on that (except maybe socially awkward mildly retarded introverts who get angry at other females who have sex appeal above that of a toad), she always wears low cut tiny tops, and always seems to like draping her fans faces in her giant jugs while singing and leaning forward.

Thus, I present to you my ultimate challenge for 2012.

If you ever get a front row seat to one of her concerts, and are within boob groping range, ensure your friends all have their mobile phones out, bring a printed A4 sign saying something corny like “KATY, I has teh cancer n amb dying, pls to be kissing me!” and when she leans in to give you a smooch, or does her usual drape the audience faces in her norks, that is the moment!

The moment you cease to be a useless waste of skin and become an internet god.

I want you to reach up with both hands, as though you are about to embrace her tenderly, then take a firm hold of the top of her shirt and rip her fucking top off.

If you succeed, I needn’t explain the level of awesome rewards life will offer you, but the mere fact you’d have a face full of K-titty should be reward enough. Now pass this on to all your friends to increase the odds of this operation being successful.

This is a good example, a bunch of kids hold a party, it gets ‘out of control’, the cops rock up and no one wants to talk to them, so the police try and force entry, the kids lock themselves indoors, then the cops call in the entire Tactical Response Group in the middle of the night for a ‘tense six hour stand off’, fuck knows what was tense about it, you’ve got body armor wearing goons with MP5′s versus unarmed 16 year olds who’re terrified and don’t want to move let alone talk to the cops.

This entire operation would have probably cost us tax paying fools tens of thousands of dollars of misappropriated police funding, aside from the fact we’re the only country in the world that, for an extremely low crime rate, arm our police with assault weaponry, handguns, chemical weapons, electrical weapons, melee weapons, body armor, the most expensive encrypted radio network in the world and heavily modified luxury sports cars that break in at $120 a pop which they then proceed to use to hoon around for no reason or do doughnuts in up near the old drive-in theatre in Blacktown.

Anyway, read the article, you’ll be QQing at how the media even tried to pretend this was legitimate news and not a shocking and disgusting example of police over-reaction and typical thuggery of a law enforcement culture that thinks it’s NYPD versus crips when our crims are so low key and laughable … well, the UK has 8 times our crime rate, 40 times our population, and their cops aren’t even armed!

A TENSE five and a half hour siege in Melbourne’s west has been ended peacefully by police today.
Heavily armed police surrounded a Deer Park property, in Melbourne’s west, after a group of teens locked themselves inside and refused to come out.

Police were called to the scene about 3.30am when neighbours complained that a party had got out of control with windows broken and damage caused to neighboring cars and houses.

Police had been told a gun had been brandished at the party and were today still investigating the claim despite not finding one at the property this morning.

When occupants of the house – aged between 16 and 20 – refused to leave the house to speak to police Special Operations Group officers, uniformed police and the dog squad blocked off the suburban street and ordered about 11 people out of the house.

Using megaphones, police coerced several people out of the house and took them away one by one in hand cuffs for questioning.

But it was not until just before 9am that the end finally ended when the final person surrendered to police as officers threatened to storm the house at gunpoint.

Several charges are expected to be laid in relation to the siege which came a day after a 23-year-old man was charged in relation to a siege at Werribee.

On September 30, 2011, the Japanese government announced that they would increase the whaling program budget by almost 600 percent, drawing that money from funds intended to rebuild the country after the earthquake and tsunami. This drew the ire of civil groups in Japan along with an official protest by over sixty international organizations.

The following article was published on December 16th by Centro de Conservación Cetacea and outlines their abuse of worldwide funds for rebuilding and charity after their earth quakes and tsunamis.
(reprinted with permission)

Japan’s “Scientific Whaling,” Much More than Whales

On December 7th, three ships of the Japanese whaling fleet, led by the Yushin Maru, sailed from the port of Shimonoseki towards the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary to capture 900 Antarctic minke whales and 50 Endangered fin whales under the alleged purpose of conducting “scientific research.”

The characteristics of the fleet, sailing dates and operational plans remain a mystery. The Japanese government justifies this secrecy citing security reasons. However, this type of information should be public since whales are a natural patrimony that does not belong to the government of Japan.

Whaling Industry Receives Recovery Funds Despite Crisis

On September 30th Japanese press reported that its government would increase by almost 600 percent the annual budget given to the whaling program in Antarctica to strengthen the security of the whaling fleet. In 2010 the fleet returned home with less than 20 percent of the self-granted catch quota after it ended the season earlier arguing that Sea Shepherd threatened the safety of its operations. In order to make this substantial budget increase, the government announced it would use public money from Japanese taxpayers that were originally intended to rebuild the country.

The announcement produced the immediate opposition of Japanese civil society. More than a dozen organizations, including Japan’s Environmental Lawyers Federation, the Association for Protection of Marine Communities and the Whale Action Network, sent a strong message to the Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, denouncing the use public funds originally intended for rebuilding of the country to “to conduct scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean according to the original plan.” The letter, which was later joined by a dozen Latin American organizations, including the Cetacean Conservation Center and the Ecoceanos Center of Chile, also states that the use of these funds creates inevitable questions about the vested interests of the government of Japan in prolonging “the dying whaling program with taxpayer money.”

Officers of the Japan Fisheries Agency (JFA) came out quickly to defend the government’s decision saying that the money will go to support the whaling industry and some communities that were affected by the earthquake and tsunami of last March. They added that by returning with a “full load” [of whales] they would be able to revive the community of Ayukawa, the only whaling vicinity in the east coast of Ojika peninsula which was destroyed in March that used to have only one whaling station. However, the funds requested by the JFA clearly specify that the final destination of the money is to “increase the safety of the whaling fleet and allow stable operation of the season in Antarctica.” Similarly, the statements of JFA officials evidence the true commercial nature of the so-called “scientific whaling” and confirm once more the illegality of these operations.

Following these disconcerting statements the response of the Japanese civil society was immediate. On December 2nd several organizations urged their authorities to review the use of public funds in the maintenance of the whaling industry, in a strong and compelling public sign of opposition to the Japanese government’s whaling policy.

For those who have not heard of this Christmas day tragedy, there is an article below related to it. It’s possibly one of the worst fucking things I’ve heard of someone going through in my life, so I feel it only right to use my social network presence to attempt to provide some relief financially to Matt Golinski or those who are currently trying to make sure this tragedy doesn’t take a turn for the worse.

THEY were childhood sweethearts and best friends.
By all accounts, Matt Golinski and his wife Rachael always put their marriage and children first – never compromising on the importance of family.
“I’ve known Matt for a decade (and) he’s the embodiment of a family man,” friend and fellow chef Alastair McLeod said.
“It was an extraordinary and profound relationship that they (Rachael and Matt) had . . . it really struck me just how loving they were and what a lovely husband and father he was.”
A blaze, which erupted at the couple’s Sunshine Coast home about 3.30am yesterday, claimed the lives of Rachael and daughters Starlia, Sage and Willow.
Mr Golinski was left in a critical condition with burns to 40 per cent of his body.
McLeod, who works with Matt on TV show Ready Steady Cook and is executive chef at Brisbane restaurant Brett’s Wharf, said to put your family first and cook for a living was like “an oxymoron” but that Matt had made it work.
“He’s proudly parochial, a real staunch advocate for the Sunshine Coast and all the produce of the Sunshine Coast, but he does put his family first,” he said. “He’s a lovely man and my heart goes out to him.
“There was no bombast with Matt, no ego with him, (he’s) a real gentleman.
“I’ve had other chefs from around the country call me today just (to say) ‘anything we can do to help’. There’s a lovely fraternity that exists, but it also just shows the regard in which Matt is held.
“It’s just an absolute tragedy, an absolute tragic end, real harrowing stuff.”
Residents of Jacaranda Place – a normally peaceful cul-de-sac brimming with palm trees and kids having fun on trampolines and in pools – were struggling with the enormity of the tragedy.
Neighbours such as Gary Saljic rushed to help when they heard an explosion in the early hours of yesterday.
They grabbed hoses, moved cars and warned those who lived closest to evacuate.
Others tried to help the badly burnt Mr Golinski as he lay screaming in pain waiting for paramedics to arrive.
Unfortunately, with the three-bedroom timber and Colorbond home an inferno, there was nothing that could be done to save Mrs Golinski and the girls.
Mr Saljic, among the first on the scene, said not being able to do anything to save the family would haunt him: “There was nothing anyone could do.”

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/chef-matt-golinski-lived-for-the-love-of-his-family-rachael-starlia-sage-and-willow/story-e6frfkvr-1226230880085#ixzz1hf5qNAxk

I found it whilst reading over reddit, he submitted it to Wikimedia Foundations ‘share your wikipedian story’, naturally it will never get shared, however his story is the story of tens of thousands of people who have extremely grand academic qualifications yet have fallen foul of over zealous administrators (my life ban is unappealable, I tried, but was banned from editing my own page (which you have to do to be able to appeal a ban), I edited it from my IP instead and got my IP banned and told I can’t appeal another persons ban (even though it was my ban), I tried again at a later point, the same resulted, etc ad nauseum).

I was shocked at how common this is, but here is the guys post in full, please give it a read, and definitely reproduce it if you can, and let’s hope Jimmy Wales pays attention.

I started editing wikipedia literally the week it launched. I spent many years, and many, many hours per day contributing and assisting with the development of many projects. I never really got involved in the politics behind the scene, and I gradually watched as it became a prominant part of the Wikipedia community, to the point where more often than not edits that weren’t pushing the appropriate admins agenda would literally get people banned.

One day, after reverting what I thought was a NPOV breach, I woke up to find my account banned, for good, with no reason other than ‘vandalism’, which was absurd. I couldn’t even appeal my ban as I was unable to post on my talk page to do so. I logged out and appealed on my talk page, my IP was banned and I was told I cannot appeal a ban for a user from a random IP as they cannot tell if I’m that user. Again, I couldn’t appeal the ban, and it was a forever and ever ban.

So, I cycled my IP, and posted an appeal in regards to the matter, I dealt with it as diplomatically as possible as I thought it was clearly an oversight or mistake. I was banned again. In frustration, and with no way to appeal without just getting banned and told I cannot appeal the ban of ‘another user’, I googled to see if this was a common thing.

I soon discovered that there are tens of thousands of wikipedia editors who fell foul to politics and ego tripping admins, people who, like me, contributed large portions of their life to establishing and getting Wikipedia off the ground.

People who, like me, were level headed normal individuals, with exemplary service contributing 2,500+ hours, like me, including many people who went out into the world to procure documents, photos, and other elements we needed for articles for our encyclopedia, and, like me, felt they were participating in something great.

As time has progressed, you find less and less editors sticking around, the few that do tend to fall foul of such politics. An academic friend of mine recently edited their dormatory IP links Talk page, he said “These users can’t be fucked registering accounts, but please don’t mind them, they’re academics contributing through our dorm’s secure gateway, if you need to contact us, *email*”

His page was reverted for ‘vandalism’ by a wikipedian. He reverted that, removed ‘fuck’, and told the editor through the edit note to go away because it’s a talk page and not srs bsns. This got him banned for ‘harassing a user’. He couldn’t appeal it as he was disabled from editing his own talk page. He used his mobile phone to appeal it, it was banned, the gateway was banned for life as an ‘open proxy’, and he was told he cannot appeal another users ban. He cycled his IP, and petitioned for an admin, who life banned that IP also, along with his phone network.

These are experiences and rewards you too can expect as a wikipedian, contributing to our great encyclopedia, for the few hours to maybe weeks that you may be able to do so without rubbing some over officious ban-zealous crazy. How wikipedia survives is purely by exploiting the ignorance of it’s other members who are unaware that there are tens of thousands of highly qualified individuals out there who have fallen foul of politics.

I have several hundred thousand dollars of education under my belt, I am a doctor of philosophy with three bachelors and two masters degrees. My associate is a professor of law, and his dorm consisted of doctoral candidates (academics completing their doctorates), so right there was a think tank of millions of dollars of the worlds finest education. All written off because there is no policy to deal with over officious persons and people offended by ‘sod off’, or worse, you enforcing NPOV on articles they disagree with.

You will also encounter:

* Obsessive list makers who wish to document members of any ethnic group, religious group, political group, or what not.
* Obsessive image adders who will get into huge flame wars with people because they want photographs of peoples anuses, or genitalia, on various pages, in various manners. They actually get into heated debates on which anus is better.
* Psychologically disturbed administrators like one girl SlimVirgin who claimed to be a member of MI5, the Mossad, and other pathological things that one would assume an organisation would distance themselves from but is still an untouchable administrator.
* The list really goes on, so; I leave you with this parting advice.

Educate yourself, google ‘wiki watch’, ‘wikipedia corruption’, ‘arbitrary banning on wikipedia’, ‘slimvirgin’, ‘wikipedia working for government agendas’, ‘government departments having sole editing rights to public articles on events’, ‘wikipedia 911 cover ups’ (be careful with that one though, there’s a lot of crazy conspiracy nuts out there, but any rational minded person can weed this out), among many others.

Don’t waste your life helping Wikipedia until they take out the trash. Ignore their director’s appeals for money, give to the red cross, give to your local homeless shelters, hell, give to the local pound, do something that matters in your community and in your world.

Leave encyclopedian pursuits to encyclopedians, real ones, ones who spend their life learning and conducting the documentation of such things. Buy a membership to Encyclopedia Britannica, it’s cheap and supports real academics not crackpot internet users with hidden agendas.

Most of all, I ask all of you reading this, to please, PLEASE replicate this appeal and place it anywhere it can gain attention and maybe get some traction amongst existing wikipedians who could push for justice for the tens of thousands of us arbitrarily life banned for no good reason.

Regards,

Dr. A. Swadling
Director of CIRO Project
University of Sydney