Am I addicted to driving my car?

I like driving my car. I need to drive my car to get to places. Are people lining up to create an addiction to cars? Not being over 100 years old I wasn’t around when cars were first delivered to the mass market. However back when cars were first delivered to the mass market, life was tougher. People had jobs that actually produced things and kept them occupied. They slaved away in factories, created things, grew things, sold things. There weren’t anywhere near the number of experts or people with jobs whose main function seems to be poking their nose into other people’s business.

Dear Ninemsn

Your Bulletin feed is total rubbish.

You are attempting to set up your Election Blogs to be some sort of on the spot commentary.  When your feeds don’t work the bloggers will get tired of you.  Who the hell has time to actually visit a web page when you have over 500 web pages in your reader?

Make it easy for people to read you, and if the content is good enough they will read you.  If you want the blog to engage people, make the content good enough or stirring enough for them to want to comment – if you make it good enough they will click.

Don’t bloody expect me to click on your goddamn web page every freaking day to see substandard writing.  Sigh, lucky for you, you employed Jack Marx.  Damn you, now I have to click to see what he said and how many people he pissed off.

Jack’s back.

Turns out The Bulletin is smarter than the SMH. Although online readers of The Bulletin would appear to take themselves waaaay too seriously.

Beautifully written Jack, although apparently you need to include <irony> tags to get the-ever-so-self-important-bulletin readers to understand your points.

I am disappointed that I have to put the whole Bulletin election (bolloxy) coverage into my reader, rather than just have Jack’s articles appear in my reader.  Sigh.

Dear Sydney Morning Herald.

Fuck you, you morons.

Seriously are you insane?

One of the best writers around.

Jack Marx, thank you, for your beautiful writing.  Don’t stay away for too long.

WoW as a terrorist training tool

Apparently the Australian had a story up about terrorists using games such as WoW as a tool. The direct link to the story now gives a 404 error (those pesky terrorists!), but enough folks out there have quoted the story for the gist of the story to be available:

Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.

Very Modern Flint-stone.

In today’s Crikey they let that ridiculously irrelevant David Flint offer his opinion of why bias in the media is good. Although it seems that the bias is only good as long as it is not (gasp) left bias. He can’t resist having any dig at the left that he possibly can :

And radio offers a wide diversity of views. True, presenters from the left (eg Mike Carlton) tend to rate poorly compared with their direct competition, but that is listener choice.

Push to ban ‘offensive’ TV shows – TV & Radio – Entertainment – theage.com.au

Ms Draper said that once the minister had a reserve power to pull programs from the air, it would encourage broadcasters to better observe the code of practice.

“We don’t have that power now, but once we do have that ability, the self-regulators on commercial free-to-air will certainly be examining the code a lot more closely so that they don’t end up getting their programs yanked from the air.

“I am concerned about children in Australia, quite frankly, and in my electorate, and there are at least 20 of us in the parliamentary party who will be pushing for this.”

Uh? Who the hell voted for Helen Coonan’s morality view of the world? Australia you got the government you deserve.

Telstra boss runs foul of Howard on criticism – Business – Business – smh.com.au

Oh the irony.

Telstra would not be allowed to play “regulatory roulette” with future services to the bush, Senator Coonan said as the Federal Government’s battle with the company intensified.

Hang on a minute, the government is battling an entity of which it owns 51%? Are we to assume that the final sell off of Telstra will be a good thing? They can’t have it both ways – enforcing regulations on a private entity to ensure that the rural area is taken care of. This is exactly why these services need to be public. Infrastructure 101 morons!

Guardian Unlimited Sport | American sports | Holy Red Sox! Boston’s Babe curse is exorcised after 86 years of hurt

The fact that there are over 6,000 references to this in google news leaves me feeling empty….

Coonan argues against fourth network – National – …

Coonan argues against fourth network - National - www.theage.com.au

Is this woman a total moron? “I don’t mind signalling now that I can’t see a great need for a fourth network and, indeed, I think the sort of niche markets being talked about are largely being fulfilled through the Foxtel (pay TV) network,” Senator Coonan told The Age. Uh, okay, so how about all those people who don’t want pay TV, can’t get pay TV, or can’t afford pay TV.

Okay this statement stuns me:

“Telstra will not be able to rely on its legacy telephone business forever and I suppose at some stage, if not now, will need to look for new partners. To me that . . . does not seem something which should have caused such a fuss,” she said. The fact that they would own such a huge chunk of communication methodology and the content of the communications doesn’t bother her? Is she in the right portfolio? Sigh.