Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
by Chris
The other day I had the misfortune of stumbling across Conservapedia, obviously the conservative and religious answer to Wikipedia. Since then, I’ve become more and more drawn in by it. Browsing Conservapedia during my lunch hour with a mouth full of food, occasionally stopping mid-chew to reflect on the brazen ridiculousnes of it all, is a common sight at my desk.
So I decided to share the choice cuts of awesomeness with thou, gentle reader, so you can save yourself browsing the toxic mess and go straight to the gold. So without further fuss, “Top 10 reasons to blame Democrats for soaring gasoline prices”: Continue reading »
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
by Chris
Today is Download Day for Mozilla’s new release of Firefox, the big 3.0. Mozilla touts over 15,000 improvements with this new version over Firefox 2 and label this the fastest, most secure browser yet and absolute gold for power users
And having used the beta and release candidate versions for a while now, they might just be right…
With this release, Mozilla hope to reach a new world record of software downloaded in a 24 hour period. We’re almost 8 hours into it so far and have almost 2.5 million downloads, about half of the 5 million they hope to achieve. You can track the progress here although their counter is not quite up to date. Also, their site is taking an absolute hammering at the moment so you might need to be patient.
I have to say that Mozilla has done an excellent job marketing Firefox, from sponsoring events to a full grassroots campaign named SpreadFireFox they are actually taking back the web and showing how things can be done in the nu-media. With valuable partnerships with companies such as Google, it goes to show that even free software can make great money!
If you want to give it a shot, and you should especially if you’re still using Internet Exploder, you can grab it here. If you like Firefox, You might also be interested in their mail application Thunderbird.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
by Chris
Keith Ng has been running a series of posts disputing and correcting facts spurted by our beloved politicians. The basic premise being is that our ministers and spokespeople have research units to deliver them the facts which they frequently ignore and “pull the figures out of their compost heap”.
This morning, Keith delivers a severe fisking to the Greens and other cheese-mongers with the morning milk.
Trumping the Herald’s “28% price rise”, Jeanette Fitzsimons has taken whinge-mongering to new heights with her claim that there has been 60% rise in the price of milk (and that Fonterra and the supermarkets are to blame).
It’s not true. It’s really, really not true.
According to StatsNZ’s Food Price Index, the average price of 2 litres of milk in April 2008 was $3.22. The price in April 07 was $2.62. That gets us to 28% — let’s chalk that other 32% up to rounding error, eh? But how about we look over the slightly longer term?
2008: $3.22
2007: $2.62
2006: $3.15
2005: $3.12
2004: $2.96
Even ignoring the fact that Fitzsimons pulled the 60% figure out of her compost heap, her claim is still fundamentally bullshit. If we choose *any* point of comparison other than 2007, the current price of milk is completely and utterly un-goddamn-remarkable.
There needs to be more of this kind of fact checking to keep our politicians honest. Unfortunately, this kind of analysis frequently gets swept under the rug and doesn’t get to the people that were influenced, further adding to the axiom “A lie can run around the world before the truth gets it’s boots on”.
This is the work the mainstream media should be doing. This is the job of a journalist or a reporter to fact check information before they regurgitate party press releases to the people in extenso, not the job of a blogger with the reach of a small-town rag.
