Sadly this article wasn't picked up by the mainstream media, like a number of Onion articles have over time. I always love to see something ridiculous from The Onion appearing in some newspaper or 'current affairs' show.
But to your point - no Australian would believe this was from the PM. We know this because he would not apologise. To us (and I've canvassed a few opinions in the last day) it's immediately and clearly a parody. We don't need an actor to come out and pretend he's the PM while saying it, and we don't need "Parody!" stickers on the page. It's as clear as the nose on our faces.
Only to non-Australians (or at least, those who don't follow the exciting and riveting pastime of Australian Federal politics) could there be confusion. But then, a parody is targeted at a specific audience, and it hit that mark.
To use your example of an actor portraying Tony Blair. That could easily be confused with the real Tony Blair by someone outside England who doesn't know what the British PM looks and sounds like. There would be enough visual cues, and a banner with "Tony Blair" on it for someone unfamiliar with British politicians to assume it's the real Tony Blair. Your example is targeted at a specific audience (people who know what Tony Blair looks and sounds like) and it'd go down a treat with that audience.
The page is clearly parody, but for Australian readers. Anyone else probably wouldn't get the joke anyway.
I love phrases like that. I read it and immediately translated using my CorpTruthSpeak device to "I'm an excess headcount," although if it was said with slightly different intonation it might be "I cannot manage, and need to be trained or replaced."
I've seen video footage of the machines in Xerox PARC, and while some concepts made it to Apple, there's little similarity between the two systems. Apple extended the GUI far beyond what Xerox created, actually making it usable.
You stretch things too far by saying Apple completely ripped of Xerox' work.
parody P Pronunciation Key (pr-d) n. pl. parodies 1a. A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule. See Synonyms at caricature. 1b. The genre of literature comprising such works. 2. Something so bad as to be equivalent to intentional mockery; a travesty: The trial was a parody of justice. 3. Music. The practice of reworking an already established composition, especially the incorporation into the Mass of material borrowed from other works, such as motets or madrigals.
It imitates the characteristic style of John Howard in order to subject him to ridicule (because he's not at all sorry for all the things he's done).
It is parody, according to the very definition of parody. We don't need cartoons with figures in sashes that are labelled "Economy" these days.
I think you're being short-sighted in your initial point about helping non-citizens.
The flipside here is that Americans are widely loathed around the world these days, thanks largely to the efforts of the current administration. People have begun to equate the US with injustice, deception and torture.
I have known people here in Australia (one of your few staunch allies) that would happily beat US tourist up over nothing more than their country of origin. It's horrifying, but xenophobia is always an issue to some degree and it's far worse now.
This leads to all sorts of anti-US activities becoming more acceptable, the worst of which are seen almost daily in Iraq. The US are no longer seen as liberators by many of the people, but profiteers.
Frankly, you need the good PR. You need people to like the US and to turn the public image around. You need friends to trade with, not people who'd rather hurt you.
The fact that non-Windows operating systems and software services exist proves that Microsoft are not a monopoly.
It's a shame that this line of reasoning never occurred to Microsoft themselves, when they were convicted under US anti-trust laws. They spent tens of millions on the trial, and could have had it aborted for this one, simple reason.
Perhaps it did, but that line of reasoning isn't valid.
A monopoly doesn't have to be 100% of a market, but it does have to control the market. Even then, there's nothing illegal or unusual about a monopoly. It's only when a monopoly position is used to damage competitors that US anti-trust laws swing into action.
Given that the parody provides factual data, where's the lie?
And what law would the author be sued under? The Australian government will absolutely not take this to court, as their case would rest on proviing that they would not, in fact, apologise in light of the facts presented. It'd be political self-character-assassination.
The site is clearly a parody in every sense. If you disagree with that, agitate for the government to exercise its legal options. See how far it goes.
I've voted against the Liberals (ironically named conservative party) year in and year out, and it doesn't make any bloody difference.
What I see is a nation of people who couldn't care less about Iraq, wheat scandals, foreign policies and all that. They just want to be able to keep paying credit for all the things they want, and watch the footy on weekends.
Buy a big house. No - bigger! Fill it with furniture. Now get a plasma TV. No - bigger than that! Now get your home theatre up. And maybe put in a pool. Better get a car - no, two cars! Make them four-wheel drives. Sure, they're death-traps on the road, but put in bull-bars and you'll only kill *other* people.
Now - hope like buggery that interest rates don't move, because you've mortgaged yourself up to the hilt and even a percentage shift will send you to the wall.
That's Australia.
We've got suburbs full of people just like that. They vote in Howard because he promises economic stability and he'll keep those dirty reffos out.
This is a complete non-issue. So what if some website taking the piss gets shutdown? Who cares! The Commonwealth games are on, and we're winning gold medals! The rest of the world can go screw itself - we're all right, Jack!... it gets a bit depressing sometimes, especially when the opposition has been in a decade-long death spiral.
It's clearly satire - you don't need to read far to discover that.
The Australian PM *never* apologises for anything. Not the war on Iraq, not the death of 328 people seeking asylum here by boat (and about whom our navy knew full well), not the egregious 'children overboard' mis-truths, not the Tampa incident, not the forceful deportation of inconvenient citizens, not the disgraceful conditions of our Aboriginal population (W.H.O. notes they live in sub-third world conditions), not the kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein's government with full approval of the Australian government, not the demolition of Native Title legislation, not the demolition of minimum working standards, not the use of attack dogs on striking waterfront workers, not the massive use of tax dollars spent promoting government policies before the election campaign, not the trade deficit which has blown out from 2B in the 70s to 140B in the late 90s to 400B now, not for playing the race card again and again, not for misleading the public on who actually controls interest rates (and winning an entire Federal election based on that issue), not the introduction of the 'never ever' GST which shifts tax collection paperwork to business, not the watering down of ministerial codes of conduct to the point that ministers are never responsible for problems in their own departments, not...
I could go on, and many points are debatable (opinions and biases vary) but the one thing we all know here in Australia - John Howard never apologises for anything.
Even a show of contrition has to be forcefully wrung from him.
It's clearly a parody. You don't need to flash the word "Satire" on the screen to know that. Any linking to official websites is just fluff around the parody itself.
No, of course it didn't. Intel never says anything. It can't - it's got no mouth.
A person employed by Intel said something to you.
That distinction can be followed by considering that the management changed company direction.
You disagree with the change. Fair enough. I suspect the person who made the statement about Linux didn't want to be made to look foolish when the company changed direction under them, but that's the way it goes.
Intel cannot lie. It doesn't exist in that way. The person who told you about Linux probably didn't lie - it was all they knew at the time.
I'd be surprised if the company sent out information it knew to be incorrect. If you've got something that proves the case, great. Otherwise you have to accept that a change in direction doesn't mean everything before that point was a lie.
A lie is something very different, but it's a great emotive term to throw out there.
Games are fun. They're diverting and enjoyable pastimes. Sometimes they can provoke thought, other times they can be pure adrenaline-fests.
What they're generally not, though, is art.
At least, not at the level of Shakespeare. One person's art is another person's garbage, but you'll find the proportion of people prepared to state that Shakespeare and other works of literature are Art with a capital 'A' than you'll find people who actually play pretty much any single game on Earth. You think ten million people is a lot of gamers? Try a few hundred million readers.
When books have gone the way of clay tablets, works of literature will still exist. Shakespeare builds upon earlier works, which themselves build upon earlier works. New authors take existing themes and expand them in some area, or re-tell them for a new generation. The result is that books we now consider great works of literature are books that mean something, that capture some piece of Humanity or show us who we are.
Games don't do that. That's not a criticism - they generally don't set out to do that. A good game entertains first and foremost (like a good book) but the appeal wanes over time. The games I loved twenty years ago on the ZX Spectrum don't seem quite so thrilling now, but the same books my great grandfather read are every bit as relevant today.
Well, the literature at any rate.
I love video games as much as anyone. My hobby is writing RPGs, so a lot of my spare time is spent on that side of them. I'll play Halo-x and enjoy the plot (although not as much as Marathon, but sometimes you have to let things go), or Unreal 200x and enjoy the visuals. I'll look at boxes for Doom-n and wonder when they'll release the game instead of the tech demo. I'll get Oblivion soon-ish, and probably a few others before the year ends. I look for enjoyment in these games, and I generally get it.
I don't look for meaning, and they don't offer any.
You need to make more friends then. I don't go on and on about my Mac without being prompted, and all the Mac users I've ever known are the same.
Most PC users I've known are like that as well, but I've had more than my fair share of bozos who (when they find out I've got a Mac) crap on and on endlessly about how much better PCs are than Macs. I tend to back away, maintaining eye contact until I get to a doorway to escape through.
Forums are not representative of Mac or PC users. Only a small proportion of enthusiasts spend time around these sites.
What are Apple doing? You say they're being stupid, but they're just making use of a new standard in the expectation of the industry moving to that standard.
You're calling Apple stupid for going out ahead of the PC industry?
Apple aren't doing anything here. They just don't provide legacy crap that they don't need for OS X. Why should they spend money to add layers of support OS X doesn't need?
USB is meant for keyboards and mice. USB2 is meant for larger data transfers that are not sustained. Firewire is meant for sustained bulk data transfers.
USB2 is a crap way to boot your OS. Firewire will show much better performance. All Macs shipped in the last five or six years can boot from an external Firewire disk. Why should anyone want to boot from USB2?
Although some people might enjoy running their system like a piece of crap.
Who ever uses the Forth interpreter in Open Transport? Exactly the people it's meant for - device driver writers and system engineers. Do you think it's there for you?
And yes, I certainly believe some anonymous guy on the Internet when he spins out stories of old PCs running pirated OS X booted off USB devices. Maybe it was booting off a USB 1.0 pen drive, you know, a 32MB one. And maybe the PC ran it faster than any Mac. Maybe he found that at his freelance gig the Mac took 20 minutes to copy a 17MB file.
Lastly, if all the BIOS had to do was point the OS to the hard drive's boot sector, no PC on Earth would boot. It contains a lot of garbage that was useful 10-20 years ago but is irrelevant now. Why go EFI? Why go 64-bit? Why get more RAM? Why get a bigger hard drive? Why move forward in technology in any way at all?
I'm so glad that people like you don't make decisions. You'll be relegated to the sort of jobs where you don't get that choice, hopefully. When you actually look at issues, and understand the pros and cons, your opinion may carry some weight. Right now it's just hot air and fluff.
You'd be right, except that to dual-boot you have to buy a copy of Windows Vista. Microsoft get the sale either way, and they don't care about the PC hardware. They don't make any.
This is Microsoft not planning for the future, not Microsoft trying to avoid competition.
Slashdot Mirror
... the Doom comic?
http://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/
That one sets a pretty high bar. I can only hope a Halo is half as good.
Sadly this article wasn't picked up by the mainstream media, like a number of Onion articles have over time. I always love to see something ridiculous from The Onion appearing in some newspaper or 'current affairs' show.
But to your point - no Australian would believe this was from the PM. We know this because he would not apologise. To us (and I've canvassed a few opinions in the last day) it's immediately and clearly a parody. We don't need an actor to come out and pretend he's the PM while saying it, and we don't need "Parody!" stickers on the page. It's as clear as the nose on our faces.
Only to non-Australians (or at least, those who don't follow the exciting and riveting pastime of Australian Federal politics) could there be confusion. But then, a parody is targeted at a specific audience, and it hit that mark.
To use your example of an actor portraying Tony Blair. That could easily be confused with the real Tony Blair by someone outside England who doesn't know what the British PM looks and sounds like. There would be enough visual cues, and a banner with "Tony Blair" on it for someone unfamiliar with British politicians to assume it's the real Tony Blair. Your example is targeted at a specific audience (people who know what Tony Blair looks and sounds like) and it'd go down a treat with that audience.
The page is clearly parody, but for Australian readers. Anyone else probably wouldn't get the joke anyway.
"I'm in charge, but I'm not responsible."
I love phrases like that. I read it and immediately translated using my CorpTruthSpeak device to "I'm an excess headcount," although if it was said with slightly different intonation it might be "I cannot manage, and need to be trained or replaced."
I've seen video footage of the machines in Xerox PARC, and while some concepts made it to Apple, there's little similarity between the two systems. Apple extended the GUI far beyond what Xerox created, actually making it usable.
You stretch things too far by saying Apple completely ripped of Xerox' work.
Shouldn't the parent post be modded as funny?
In Wikipedia-land, who edits last wins regardless of factual accuracy. Why bother to edit, when it'll be changed by someone else?
It's not libel, it's parody.
(from dictionary.com)
parody P Pronunciation Key (pr-d)
n. pl. parodies
1a. A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule. See Synonyms at caricature.
1b. The genre of literature comprising such works.
2. Something so bad as to be equivalent to intentional mockery; a travesty: The trial was a parody of justice.
3. Music. The practice of reworking an already established composition, especially the incorporation into the Mass of material borrowed from other works, such as motets or madrigals.
It imitates the characteristic style of John Howard in order to subject him to ridicule (because he's not at all sorry for all the things he's done).
It is parody, according to the very definition of parody. We don't need cartoons with figures in sashes that are labelled "Economy" these days.
I think you're being short-sighted in your initial point about helping non-citizens.
The flipside here is that Americans are widely loathed around the world these days, thanks largely to the efforts of the current administration. People have begun to equate the US with injustice, deception and torture.
I have known people here in Australia (one of your few staunch allies) that would happily beat US tourist up over nothing more than their country of origin. It's horrifying, but xenophobia is always an issue to some degree and it's far worse now.
This leads to all sorts of anti-US activities becoming more acceptable, the worst of which are seen almost daily in Iraq. The US are no longer seen as liberators by many of the people, but profiteers.
Frankly, you need the good PR. You need people to like the US and to turn the public image around. You need friends to trade with, not people who'd rather hurt you.
Well, I'm sure that this time they've learnt from the past, and implemented interoperability properly to avoid all sorts of security issues.
Surely?
What happened to that whole Trusted Computing thing anyway? Seemed like good concepts at the time...
The fact that non-Windows operating systems and software services exist proves that Microsoft are not a monopoly.
It's a shame that this line of reasoning never occurred to Microsoft themselves, when they were convicted under US anti-trust laws. They spent tens of millions on the trial, and could have had it aborted for this one, simple reason.
Perhaps it did, but that line of reasoning isn't valid.
A monopoly doesn't have to be 100% of a market, but it does have to control the market. Even then, there's nothing illegal or unusual about a monopoly. It's only when a monopoly position is used to damage competitors that US anti-trust laws swing into action.
Given that the parody provides factual data, where's the lie?
And what law would the author be sued under? The Australian government will absolutely not take this to court, as their case would rest on proviing that they would not, in fact, apologise in light of the facts presented. It'd be political self-character-assassination.
The site is clearly a parody in every sense. If you disagree with that, agitate for the government to exercise its legal options. See how far it goes.
It'll be those bloody galahs from down the road.
Stone the flamin' crows. It's enough to drive a man to drink.
Strewth.
You're kidding right?
... it gets a bit depressing sometimes, especially when the opposition has been in a decade-long death spiral.
I've voted against the Liberals (ironically named conservative party) year in and year out, and it doesn't make any bloody difference.
What I see is a nation of people who couldn't care less about Iraq, wheat scandals, foreign policies and all that. They just want to be able to keep paying credit for all the things they want, and watch the footy on weekends.
Buy a big house. No - bigger! Fill it with furniture. Now get a plasma TV. No - bigger than that! Now get your home theatre up. And maybe put in a pool. Better get a car - no, two cars! Make them four-wheel drives. Sure, they're death-traps on the road, but put in bull-bars and you'll only kill *other* people.
Now - hope like buggery that interest rates don't move, because you've mortgaged yourself up to the hilt and even a percentage shift will send you to the wall.
That's Australia.
We've got suburbs full of people just like that. They vote in Howard because he promises economic stability and he'll keep those dirty reffos out.
This is a complete non-issue. So what if some website taking the piss gets shutdown? Who cares! The Commonwealth games are on, and we're winning gold medals! The rest of the world can go screw itself - we're all right, Jack!
It's clearly satire - you don't need to read far to discover that.
The Australian PM *never* apologises for anything. Not the war on Iraq, not the death of 328 people seeking asylum here by boat (and about whom our navy knew full well), not the egregious 'children overboard' mis-truths, not the Tampa incident, not the forceful deportation of inconvenient citizens, not the disgraceful conditions of our Aboriginal population (W.H.O. notes they live in sub-third world conditions), not the kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein's government with full approval of the Australian government, not the demolition of Native Title legislation, not the demolition of minimum working standards, not the use of attack dogs on striking waterfront workers, not the massive use of tax dollars spent promoting government policies before the election campaign, not the trade deficit which has blown out from 2B in the 70s to 140B in the late 90s to 400B now, not for playing the race card again and again, not for misleading the public on who actually controls interest rates (and winning an entire Federal election based on that issue), not the introduction of the 'never ever' GST which shifts tax collection paperwork to business, not the watering down of ministerial codes of conduct to the point that ministers are never responsible for problems in their own departments, not...
I could go on, and many points are debatable (opinions and biases vary) but the one thing we all know here in Australia - John Howard never apologises for anything.
Even a show of contrition has to be forcefully wrung from him.
It's clearly a parody. You don't need to flash the word "Satire" on the screen to know that. Any linking to official websites is just fluff around the parody itself.
Intel said something to your face?
No, of course it didn't. Intel never says anything. It can't - it's got no mouth.
A person employed by Intel said something to you.
That distinction can be followed by considering that the management changed company direction.
You disagree with the change. Fair enough. I suspect the person who made the statement about Linux didn't want to be made to look foolish when the company changed direction under them, but that's the way it goes.
Intel cannot lie. It doesn't exist in that way. The person who told you about Linux probably didn't lie - it was all they knew at the time.
I'd be surprised if the company sent out information it knew to be incorrect. If you've got something that proves the case, great. Otherwise you have to accept that a change in direction doesn't mean everything before that point was a lie.
A lie is something very different, but it's a great emotive term to throw out there.
Games are fun. They're diverting and enjoyable pastimes. Sometimes they can provoke thought, other times they can be pure adrenaline-fests.
What they're generally not, though, is art.
At least, not at the level of Shakespeare. One person's art is another person's garbage, but you'll find the proportion of people prepared to state that Shakespeare and other works of literature are Art with a capital 'A' than you'll find people who actually play pretty much any single game on Earth. You think ten million people is a lot of gamers? Try a few hundred million readers.
When books have gone the way of clay tablets, works of literature will still exist. Shakespeare builds upon earlier works, which themselves build upon earlier works. New authors take existing themes and expand them in some area, or re-tell them for a new generation. The result is that books we now consider great works of literature are books that mean something, that capture some piece of Humanity or show us who we are.
Games don't do that. That's not a criticism - they generally don't set out to do that. A good game entertains first and foremost (like a good book) but the appeal wanes over time. The games I loved twenty years ago on the ZX Spectrum don't seem quite so thrilling now, but the same books my great grandfather read are every bit as relevant today.
Well, the literature at any rate.
I love video games as much as anyone. My hobby is writing RPGs, so a lot of my spare time is spent on that side of them. I'll play Halo-x and enjoy the plot (although not as much as Marathon, but sometimes you have to let things go), or Unreal 200x and enjoy the visuals. I'll look at boxes for Doom-n and wonder when they'll release the game instead of the tech demo. I'll get Oblivion soon-ish, and probably a few others before the year ends. I look for enjoyment in these games, and I generally get it.
I don't look for meaning, and they don't offer any.
You need to make more friends then. I don't go on and on about my Mac without being prompted, and all the Mac users I've ever known are the same.
Most PC users I've known are like that as well, but I've had more than my fair share of bozos who (when they find out I've got a Mac) crap on and on endlessly about how much better PCs are than Macs. I tend to back away, maintaining eye contact until I get to a doorway to escape through.
Forums are not representative of Mac or PC users. Only a small proportion of enthusiasts spend time around these sites.
"Like everyone except Apple" ?
Which highly successful companies are you talking about?
And why should Apple use WMA? And MS DRM?
I'm not so sure that one happened here in Australia. Noises were made, speeches made references to this, but I don't think a law has actually come up.
Sorry - I just assumed people would read up a bit before commenting.
I nterface
Start here: http://www.uefi.org/
And then try here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_
What are Apple doing? You say they're being stupid, but they're just making use of a new standard in the expectation of the industry moving to that standard.
You're calling Apple stupid for going out ahead of the PC industry?
Apple aren't doing anything here. They just don't provide legacy crap that they don't need for OS X. Why should they spend money to add layers of support OS X doesn't need?
Microsoft is failing to move forward.
Pick the right target when you go duck shooting.
Hilarious stuff.
USB is meant for keyboards and mice. USB2 is meant for larger data transfers that are not sustained. Firewire is meant for sustained bulk data transfers.
USB2 is a crap way to boot your OS. Firewire will show much better performance. All Macs shipped in the last five or six years can boot from an external Firewire disk. Why should anyone want to boot from USB2?
Although some people might enjoy running their system like a piece of crap.
Who ever uses the Forth interpreter in Open Transport? Exactly the people it's meant for - device driver writers and system engineers. Do you think it's there for you?
And yes, I certainly believe some anonymous guy on the Internet when he spins out stories of old PCs running pirated OS X booted off USB devices. Maybe it was booting off a USB 1.0 pen drive, you know, a 32MB one. And maybe the PC ran it faster than any Mac. Maybe he found that at his freelance gig the Mac took 20 minutes to copy a 17MB file.
Lastly, if all the BIOS had to do was point the OS to the hard drive's boot sector, no PC on Earth would boot. It contains a lot of garbage that was useful 10-20 years ago but is irrelevant now. Why go EFI? Why go 64-bit? Why get more RAM? Why get a bigger hard drive? Why move forward in technology in any way at all?
I'm so glad that people like you don't make decisions. You'll be relegated to the sort of jobs where you don't get that choice, hopefully. When you actually look at issues, and understand the pros and cons, your opinion may carry some weight. Right now it's just hot air and fluff.
It's been a few months now, there's a big cash prize and still nothing.
EFI hacks seem dead in the water.
Put your money on VMWare or other virtualisation.
The sad fact seems to be that hackers aren't keeping up with the technology. Faith that someone will just crack stuff is misplaced.
You'd be right, except that to dual-boot you have to buy a copy of Windows Vista. Microsoft get the sale either way, and they don't care about the PC hardware. They don't make any.
This is Microsoft not planning for the future, not Microsoft trying to avoid competition.
And so I propose the KINDNESS act be introduced.
What's that? You want to know what the acronym stands for?
Well... Killing Indigenous Natives, Defoliating Nature, Ending Social Security
But who's brave enough not to vote for KINDNESS?