They're at it again! Pollies editing Wikipedia

No wonder Aussie politicians have reputations lower than a snake's belly.
Certain pollies, their staff and advisers have again been sprung editing Wikipedia, to change or remove parts of entries with which they disagree.
Being ably assisted in this by staff at the Australian Parliamentary Library, who should have known better than to advise such a risky course of action censorship.

What was left of Wikipedia's rep has, along with the previously considerable reputation of the Parliamentary Library, flown out the window with this latest news.

Clocking up hours at taxpayer expense to edit a charitable organisation's website will not win any points with voters either.

It seems that a change of government did not in fact alter the habits of those scurrying about Roaches Castle on Capital Hill, Canberra.

If you didn't keep a record last time, here is the Wikiscanner website which will allow you to back track suspicious entries and edits to their source.

We all need to get out more...

It seems that we all might need to get out more (and that includes advertising whiz kids).

At http://www.howdoyoulikeyourvegemite.com.au/ we are logging on to tell the world just how we like to spread our Vegemite.

There must be something about this humble yeast spread that taps into our lyrical selves.

Here is an Ode to Vegemite, A Tribute to Keats [1] courtesy of Sydney Poetry Blog and Becca Callaway.

O! Vegemite.

That molten onyx,

Oozing over the rough

Crumbling toast.

As my stainèd teeth

Rip into your skin,

As my blackened tongue

Pierces your sticky centre.O! Vegemite.

Oh, oh Vegemite.

As peristalsis

Takes its tangy toll.

As you slither down my oesophagus,

Whole.

O! Vegemite.

O! Sweet choking Vegemite.

Soothe the acids of my gut.

Writhe inside my big fat pot.

O! Vegemite

O! Vegemite.

Ode to Vegemite [2] here

Natural artists of the Clarence Valley

Clarence Valley sisters

Doris and Gladys O'Grady
who lived between
1894 and 1994.

Images from Grafton Regional Gallery

Aunty ABC presents iView with teething problems for consumers

So Aunty is giving Australia free internet streaming on six channels with iView.

Five of the channels are showing 'catch up' programmes, which is the spin for repeat programmes and the sixth appears to be an 'ad' channel for the ABC Shop.

iTWire tells us that
"iView uses a Flash-based player which may not be everyone's ideal, but at least it's available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The main menu page is a fairly hefty 2.3M (the bulk of that being the various XML files), and the episodes burn around 5M per minute. Clearly, this is not for people on 400M/month Internet plans. Oh, and the ABC recommends available bandwidth of at least 1.1Mbps for smooth playback. "

However, there is little to celebrate yet as so far only iiNet has reportedly agreed to place these ABC channels on the 'unmetered' download list.
Can anyone really see the Telstra board and CEO coming to the party?
Telstra has to be close to the biggest ISP based on broadband market share, so pigs might fly sooner.

As PC Authority puts it
"Telstra would rather you buy content from Bigpond Movies than watch iView for free, which is why it gives its customers such measly download limits but doesn't count data used downloading content from Bigpond. It's a de facto walled garden - you don't need walls when you cut people off at the knees so they don't have a high enough data allowance to go anywhere else. "