Randomrants

“This is a draconian new police force chasing an invisible, odourless, weightless, tasteless substance” well, so said Tony Abbott on the Today show (29/7/11) . Now, of course we know this was an off the cuff comment, so can’t be trusted. Then so was his comment that off the cuff comments can’t be trusted, so really who knows.

This comment though shows not only a lack of understanding of the basic laws of the chemistry and even biology but a complete disrespect for science. One could make comments about his belief in “things that are invisible, odourless, weightless” like say God, but I won’t.….

It has been clearly detailed how he flip flops from I believe to I don’t depending on the audience he is talking to.  This throw away line however shows that he doesn’t believe in climate change in the slightest.  If Tony did believe in climate change even slightly he would not have said this comment because it is so fundamentally flawed.

If “invisible, odourless, weightless, tasteless substance[s]” are ok, that means that radiation is just fine in Tony’s book, even natural gas is o.k  ( the smell in natural gas is added so people can tell it is leaking ). Tony obviously has trouble believing that these substances can have any effect, because he can’t see them.

A few simple tests would help.  Say put a tonne of C02 in a container and drop it on his toe. But how much is a tonne of CO2?.  It is 505 m³ at room temperature (gas), or 0.625 m³ as a solid. Perhaps Tony failed the what is heavier a tonne of feathers or a tonne of bricks question at school.

I’m sure that Malcolm Turnbull did a facepalm when he heard what Tony had said.  Turnbull’s ability to speak to this subject in a clear and concise way without ever dumbing down the science is a credit to him.  Tony on the other hand is on the race to the bottom. The problem for the Labor party is that they don’t have Turnbull, or even his equal in this debate. Despite policies such as the price on carbon and the NBN, they are in an uphill battle with “but CO2 is invisible” and even on the NBN, “But devices are wireless”

Tony’s comment about the “Carbon Cops” is also wrong.  If the government did nothing to ensure that people weren’t being ripped off by dodgy business the Libs would be claiming “Pink Batts” all over again. You know that program, the one that reduced house fires. This from an opposition that is worried about the “jobs”.  Yet are on the record for saying the will sack 12,000+ Public Servants when they get into power.

The old adage of don’t argue with an idiot, no one can tell the difference have never been truer.

Labor shouldn’t have gone with the “but Tony is negative and has no policy” line.  They should have dragged him to the front of the class and put a dunce hat on him.  Or, more PC these days.. chipped in and got him a tutor so he can brush up on his chemistry.

I’d always hoped that the next potential PM of Australia would actually be smart enough for the job. Tony with this comment shows he isn’t.

Tags: Annoyances by Wolf
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The biggest grip I have is that all those that are opposed to the carbon tax are self interested groups. The groups that the Libs are playing a stuck record for. “Big Fat Tax”, “Toxic Tax” etc.

Yes, in the future Coal will go the way of the dinosaur… ironic really. And yes during that transition there will be some pain. Do I feel for those that may lose their jobs, yes I do. But then do we shed a tear for those that worked in the Asbestos mines, the mine that for what at one time was seen as a great product until we work out it was killing people. Of course we don’t. We shed a tear for those that are still paying the price of working with the material. Sure it is not as easy to launch a class action against carbon, but that day still may come.

Australia has a chance to push into green tech. Then by exporting that tech and not just our expensive dirt we could even make a lot of money. Creating new jobs and new opportunities that can value add, delivering benefits not just for a few, but for all of us.

If people could stop thinking about just themselves and start thinking about future generations we could get somewhere. If the rise of the interest group and lobby group that is focused only on a small set of people that will gain from something, things could improve for all of us. What if politicians didn’t drive a wedge “a few are going to be worse off”, yes a few will be, but how many of them can afford a $10 a week increase in something, 99.99% of them I’d say.

Lets pause and reflect on the Telegraph operators, Switchboard operators, Cotton pickers, textile makers, the poor paddle boat operator or the coal foot men on a steam train. Perhaps a moment of reflection for, candle makers, wagon makers and also the related industries like wagon wheel repair men and horse shoe folk. Newspaper print setters ( and possible even Newspaper barons ), the poor Milkman, the Iceman, but lucky for him the Dunny man. A pause for the Flint knapper, the whaler. Or even a pause for all those that have lost jobs in the coal industry from automation, machinery and cost cutting.

Tags: Annoyances by Wolf
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So, once again I can get my rant on….

Today the Herald Sun picked up the perennial favourite of all newspapers and politicians (well politicians around election time), law and order and public transport.

After an exhaustive FOI request, headline numbers and the shocking statistics of assaults at train stations has come out.

Now, firstly, I must say, for anyone that has been attacked in this way for you I am sure it was a horrific crime and certainly I don’t mean to denigrate what you have experienced.  I am just trying to put it into perspective for the rest of us.

So we will start with the headline.

“Suburban assaults are on track with Flinders St station”

WTF does this even mean.  I think they are trying to have a clever play on words, but it got lost in sub-editing land, and we thought it was bad for The Age…

But moving on as it were… to the first in bold par.

FLINDERS St may be the most dangerous station in Melbourne, but a suburban transport hub isn’t far behind.

OMG you are saying, but that is the busiest station in Melbourne, chances are if you live in Melbourne you’ll get off there at some point.  Better watch your back when you get of the train….

There were more assaults (31) at Flinders St than any other station last year, but close behind the city’s busiest station was Dandenong (28).

OMG again… 31 assaults at Flinders St.  But wait there is something that is missing from the rest of articles text that is only in the image header.  “Stations with most assaults last year”

Now I am sure that the Herald Sun is familiar with the laws around accessibility as well, so I wouldn’t need to tell them that having a vital part of the story only has a graphic which only has a alt tag that says alt=”rail assault” would be a really bad thing.  Also any one that looked at the story say on a mobile phone with out images would get a very very different story.

The Herald Sun obviously forget to put in an FOI request for the number of people that visit these stations each year.  Instead of wasting money on an FOI request a quick Google search tells me that..  and wait for it…

“Over 100,000 people use Flinders Street Station each day.”

So, we are looking at a total of 31 Assaults each YEAR, yes year, not day, week, or month.. but year.  Now compare that to the 36,500,000 people that pass through Flinders St Station per year you will see the scale of the problem. You will notice that that number is MORE than the total population of Australia.  Yes, those 31 assaults are moving into the realms of complete improbability.

That is to say that the chances of assault at Flinders St station are beyond insignificant are in the .000000 kind of range. Or for the mathematically lazy, 1:1 177 419.  The chance of lightning strike is 1:1,603,250, dying from a venomous bite/bee sting 1:1,159,364.  Even more scary, the chance of dying from falling out out of your bed or chair — 1 in 513,142.  So you are 2 times more likely to die from getting out of bed that get assaulted at Flinders St Station. (*These stats from here )

You can run an Improbability Drive on these kind of odds.

Perhaps if the Herald Sun stopped and thought before creating a fear campaign we would realise just how safe and wonderful our country really is.

— Update–

Turns out the Herald Sun did an article on the dangers of falling out of bed.( 28/6/11 )

More than 1600 were admitted to hospital in the year to June 2010 after tumbling out of bed, Monash University Accident Research Centre data shows.

Falls accounted for 43,772 hospital admissions, with people more likely to hurt themselves falling out of bed or slipping off chairs than falling from ladders or trees.

While more than three-quarters of patients went home within a week, nearly 900 died in hospital.

When will the Victorian Government put armed guards at our bedsides to stop this outrage of death and serious injury!

Tags: Annoyances by Wolf
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As Posted on the ABC Tech Site: June 22, 2011

They say a day is a long time on the internet.  Watch a meme unfold and you’ll see what I mean. Image taking your blog, website and business offline for 9 days.  Not just 9 days where you know what is happening, but 9 days where there is scant information and most of the information that comes isn’t from the source.

I am talking about what happened to not just my domain, but 4800 others that have gone and a huge number that disappeared for quite some time.  I was until recently a very happy customer of Distribute IT.  Up until the start of this year anyway.  Sure there had been the odd outage here and there, but nothing too long and too extreme.  In the last few months things had gone seemingly downhill.  A visit to Whirlpool will show the increasing dissatisfaction that people had been experiencing.

Yet all of this was nothing compared to what happened at 5:50pm on Saturday June 11. Whilst the clients of Distribute knew something was up within seconds of this outage quickly updating Whirlpools thread from the previous weekends outage, it wasn’t until Sunday, 12 June 2011 2:35:12 AM that Distribute were to say anything.

“Engineers are at DC working on restoring services asap. Very deliberate, coordinated & malicious attack on DIT network the cause. No ETA yet “ Via their Twitter account.

It felt early on that Distribute had taken the “Sony” approach to corporate communications telling as little as possible and certainly not highlighting what possibly could have gone wrong.

So I lost my email, my little personal blog and really not a great deal.  On Whirlpool I would watch as people told stories of massive advertising campaigns locked in for the long weekend which were vaporised by this outage. I watched as people talked about the fact all Distributes phones were IP based and where taken out as well.  I swore and cursed that I’d lost my personal email, grateful I wasn’t running a business off my website.

After a number of emails and 9 days my worst fears were confirmed, it was all gone.  Everything that I had on that website was lost.  Every email from what will be nearly 2 weeks gone into the ether.

Sure, everyone says, have a backup.  Guess what, I do.  But a backup wouldn’t have helped those businesses that had advertising tied to their website over the long weekend.  A backup wouldn’t ensure that you could find a new host over a long weekend in Australia, and a backup wouldn’t ensure that your settings were in place.

Finally now that Distribute have finally said that the data is gone and that mine and 4800 other websites are gone, I am putting into play my backup plans.

Still I wait 2 days or so for my domain to move to a new host, upload all the FTP content, setup a new version of WordPress, upload my old blog XML document, put in a couple of posts manually that weren’t in my last backup.  I’ll then have to find all the email lists that I have dropped off and resign to them.  Hope like hell I didn’t receive a really important email on an email account I have had for 12 years now.

Yes I have a backup, and yes I have a plan in play to get things backup by weeks end.  But there are a lot of business that may not have, and a lot of business that wouldn’t think to watch Twitter for the only updates for days.

Early on, people said they would leave Distribute not for the “hack” which may well have been out of their control, but simply for their lack of communication.  I was at that point last week.  Ready to leave, just hoping I’d get something back.  Instead the money I paid them two months ago to renew my site has gone much like my site and email… into the ether.

Having backups helps, it will help me, but think about your hosting what would you do on a long weekend with an advertising campaign hooked into a website that just got deleted.

– Update: 26/6/2011

Finally back up and online.  Turns out a few things took a lot longer than I thought.  I had all but 20 posts, but those missing 20, of which I had the content were a pain.  Having them as emails, meant I had to strip HTML, fix errors in the HTML etc.  Surprisingly tedious as task as well.  I did get the domain back by Thursday, but was another 24 hours for the name servers to catch up as well, so really have only had email for the last day or so.

That means two weeks downtime in total.  Yikes….  Well I have automated some more of the backups, but it was all the little tweaks to WordPress that I am still sorting out, but all seems good now.

Those last twenty posts are also broken to Google.  All the Post ID’s were out on the new posts.  Bugger, so inbound links on those 20 posts ( inc a couple of most my popular posts ) are going to be confusing to some folk.  So a few annoyances, but as I said in the orignal post, mine is just a little blog.  If this was a companies website I’d be in deep poo as it were :-).

So I’m off to make a backup now I have put it all back together…. have you backed up?

Tags: Annoyances by Wolf
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Yes the blog is back….. no thanks to Distribute IT nuking the site from orbit.

but it will be next week before I get the missing 20 posts back in…

and I still need to finish tweaking the layout of the blog… at least I had most of the content backed up.. but the not the custom wordpress layout stuff, which is annoying…

the really annoying thing is that I can’t force new posts in WordPress to have a specific PostID which means that all old inbound links are now rooted…

so.. beer with me ( yes I spelt it that way on purpose…. )

Tags: Annoyances by Wolf
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Yes Fairfax I am looking squarely at you.

And also media commentators and IT journo’s I’m looking at you as well.  Today saw Fairfax launch a new Ipad App.  Now I must say firstly I haven’t seen the App..  Why because I don’t have an ipad nor an iphone nor any Apple computer. I am a very happy Win7 and Android user.

So, of course I can’t comment on the actual app, but I’m not going to.  Sure, they say an Android version is coming, but if the ABC pull their finger out and finally get a decent Android app, I will most probably end up just using that.

Why, because I care about content, not if something has nice page transitions or ads that are not that obtrusive when you scroll between stories.

Sure, I expect that Fairfax will write many stories about how apps are the future and their app is the best. However, and this is the big point that people haven’t commented on, what about the content.

With lots of criticism about Fairfax, and even as I have also blogged about News ltd about the lack of quality journalism, nay even churnalism what is in it for the reader.  Look at the front page of The Age or SMH on any given day and tell me that is quality journalism.

This is the fail for me.  Sure it is shiny, sure it uses the shiny platform, but what changed.  The content is sourced from what is a company, like the old man in Holy Grail saying ” But I’m not dead yet”.

And all this before the mysterious “freemium” model comes into play.  Without new engaging content, pulling a website that sources much of its content wire services where is the content.

When I see people fawning over the new App, saying “wow, it has really nice video over the paper”, well of course it does.  But when that video is for example just content from the ABC’s Four Corners why do I care about Fairfax.

Sorry, but whilst shiny maybe important to some, I prefer my content to have a touch of substance.

Tags: Annoyances, apple, Mobile by Wolf
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As sent to Simon Crean, my local member.

Dear Mr Crean

My wife and I are writing to you, as our local member, to express our outrage at the live export trade and slaughter practices in Indonesia, as aired on 4Corners on ABC1, 30/5/2011

We feel that Australia should not be condoning, either passively or actively the treatment of animals in this way.

It should be a priority of the Australian Government, not only to stop the live trade immediately, but to ensure that all live exports are banned.  Further steps need to be taken immediately to ensure that all animals in Indonesia are killed in a humane way.

The standard government response of “we are looking into this issue”, will only ensure that thousands more cattle are continuing to be slaughtered in horrific conditions. It has become obvious from the show that this activity will continue until the Government takes a stand and calls a halt to this trade. We do not stand for this treatment in our country, so why is it valid for us to export and tacitly condone this treatment overseas.

Australia has an opportunity to be a leader in pushing forward for humane treatment of animals.  Falling back on excuses of “the industry is slowly changing”, or “it is religious beliefs” only shows Australia to be paying more attention to trade and profit than to taking the moral high ground.

It is time for the Australian Government to take a stand, not to grandstand.

Yours deeply concerned

( Please feel free to copy this letter and send it to your local member )

(Note if you missed the show you can see it here on the 4Corners website )

— Update Reply Recieved 6/6/2011 —

Thank you for your email of 30th May 2011 regarding the live animal export trade.

I have sought advice from my colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator the Hon Joe Ludwig, about the issues you have raised.

I have been assured that the Minister and the Government have undertaken the following actions:

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry have been asked to conduct an investigation into the footage shown on the ABC Four Corners program.

It has also been announced that the Government will appoint an independent reviewer to investigate the complete supply chain for live exports up to and including the point of slaughter.

The Minister has asked for a briefing on the range of legislative and regulatory options available to respond to issues concerned with animal welfare.

The Minister asked for orders to enforce the suspension of live animal exports to the facilities identified by the evidence provided by RSPCA and Animals Australia and will add further facilities to the list of banned facilities in future, if required.

Also a moratorium has been implemented on the installation of the restraint boxes, seen being used in the footage. This will apply to the instalment of any new boxes with Commonwealth funds across all global markets and the Minister has also asked the Chief Veterinary Officer to co-ordinate an independent, scientific assessment of the restraint boxes used in Indonesia.

Following the completion of these investigations, the Government will consider what further actions may be necessary.

The Government shares the legitimate concerns of the Australian community about animal welfare abuses and is taking the necessary actions to investigate this footage.

Thank you for taking the time to write to me on this important issue.

Yours sincerely

SIMON CREAN

Tags: Annoyances by Wolf
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My alternative title for this post was going to be… Leadership is needed to reclaim Australians National Paper

So the Australian writes an editorial. Of course, we don’t know who wrote it, cause The Australian attributes things to itself as an entity… but still it is worth looking at.

“In an age when spin doctors, lobbyists, publicists and political activists outnumber journalists by at least a dozen to one, reporters need thejudgment to pick through the spin and report the facts.”

Yes, now pick yourself up from the floor from laughing, I think they are trying to be serious here. A paper that has on more than one occasion said that its aim is to destroy the greens, cancel the NBN and ensure that the rightful govt (aka the guys that lost the election (also known as the libs)) is installed in power. A paper that currently threatens people with defamation cases over a tweet which was just reporting, or spends countless column inches defending its right to out a blogger for what turned out to be no gain what so ever… and yet…

The failure to observe these basic editorial principles is at the heart of the malaise in ABC news and current affairs.

Ah, see, it isn’t the Australian that it being biased, one eyed and focused on one goal, it is the ABC. See the ABC and News Limited are “competing” in the same space. By competing I mean, that the ABC produces balanced journalism, which is accountable through the Govt, has detailed reporting of balance. An organization that has on countless numbers of times been proven to be balanced, to the point they are giving more creditably to for example non scientists with climate change.

Next the article goes on to name three ABC “personalities”, but wait, why isn’t the author of this article placing his (a presumption I know) name to this article. Oh wait, turns out.. “we also know that all three share this newspaper’s distaste for middle-class welfare.” So what, you are upset they agree with you…..

But moving on…

Under Mark Scott’s leadership, the ABC no longer aspires to be“Your ABC”, the slogan it adopted on Australia Day 1997 to launch its now familiar wave-form logo.

Couple of facts, sure it is the Australian and facts should never get in the way of a good rant, but firstly, the “your abc” was a campaign for branding the ABC, try looking it up. Yes it was very popular, and certainly I prefer it to the current “think entertainment etc” branding. But that aside, if the Australian bothered to say for example look up the wikipedia entry, or even the ABC website they would find out that funny “wave-form logo” dates from 1965. But moving on…

A sly coup by a coterie of like-minded, inner-city staff has commandeered the ABC’s transmitters and stipend to broadcast almost exclusively to the vocal minority who share their prejudices.

What…. sorry, a broad statement, that contains no fact, oh wait, it is the Australian, facts are not required, sorry my bad.

Next we have a whole par about a history lesson

The ABC was established 79 years ago on the democratic, liberal principles of Lord John Reith, the BBC’s first managing director, who believed that a government-funded wireless service should be a companion atthe hearth of both rich and poor.

Yes, which also seems to say, hey ABC, stick to radio cause that is all you were founded to do, and don’t dare innovate or move with the times. Certainly don’t do things like move into Social Media, offer on demand streaming of your tv stations, a catch up service like Iview and encourage open discussion around topics with The Drum.

But moving on from that ranty para…..

Public broadcasters should not be discouraged from specialised programming. Ah but if they ABC dares offer something to a limited audience, the Australian will talk about a waste of tax payers money on some small minority group. So which is it you want?

Of course here is where they go into a long and detail explanation abou thow the ABC didn’t cover the death of bin Laden live. It is ofno surprise that in over looking a few facts which don’t fit their narrative they get the strong wrong. Facts that get in way like say, it was carried live on the 24 hour new service. Carried live on local radio around the country. You know in the middle of the day when people are at work, not in front of a tv. Sure ABC 1 didn’t jump on the ball, but to say the ABC didn’t cover it live is an out and out lie. Via local radio, news radio, and ABC 24, streaming on the web and constant updates on the website, the coverage reach more of the population of Australia in real time than a newspaper ever would or could. But no, the Australian says “If someone in the ABC’s control room decided to flick the switch, albeit belatedly, to the Qatar-based al-Jazeera for the news of Osama bin Laden’s death, something would be going very badly wrong. Yet that is precisely what occurred earlier this month..” I was watching ABC 24 on the day, at 12:30 they pulled normal programming waiting for the press conf to start. A press conference which still at 12:30pm was conjecture to what it contained. The ABC jumped to al-Jazeera to fill time waiting for Obama to talk, that was all. But hey, lets rewrite history to suit our own ends the Australian is.

And a few more ranting paras go here, well that is what the Australian has done, no need for logic for facts, just rant a while and throw in the odd personal attack. Remember in journalism you have to play the man, not the ball as it were.

Instead of sustaining civil society it sustains itself as a permanent, moral-political oppositional force, with its journalists at the mercy of favoured lobby groups and activists.

I’m fairly sure the Australian is talking about themselves again. This behavior is commonly referred to as projection, where you blame someone else for your own ills.

I’ll finish with this… via the Australian

If Chris Mitchell, cannot pull his staff into line, the national paper will wither on the vine. If journalists at the Australian are to lift their standards by learning to ask themselves where the real facts fall and how the mainstream will be effected, they need to know that, when the phone rings, it could well be the managing director or another senior editor on the line asking: “Why?”

You may have guess that the bits not in italic are mine, but the argument stands just as strong, only by changing one MD/Editors name and the name of the organisation

For those that want to read the original article go here but if you want to comment or engage in conversation, don’t go to this article, cause they wont allow it.

Tags: Annoyances by Wolf
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Now, I know I shouldn’t listen to Scott Morrison MP ( as covered here on my blog ), my doctor advised against it as it always raises my blood pressure to unhealthy levels. But yesterday I encountered another of his daft statements.

I shall elaborate as to which one in a moment, simply because most of what he says is daft.

But first I’ll deal with the headline on the ABC.

“Labor policy ‘unravelling’ as new boat arrives”

Really, I am not sure why the ABC seems to be so keen to let the Liberals write their headlines for them. Even “Labor policy ‘unravelling’ as new boat arrives: Morrison says” would have been a much better headline, and certainly one without the political bias that the ABC fights so hard against. ( Original ABC story here )

But enough ABC bashing, back to Morrison. This is in regards to the latest boat found of the Australian Coastline with 32 asylum seekers arriving on Friday 13/5/11.

“But Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says people smugglers have called the Government’s bluff.”

Now, I have a few points that perhaps people should stop and think about

1. The policy was announced the previous Sunday, so 5 days before the boatarrived.
2. What is the sailing time for the boat, as its departure point was not mentioned in the article.
3. Did Scott Morrison speak to anyone on the vessel either prior to its departure, or after its arrival.
4. Did anyone fact check and question Morrison in regards to his statement

Now the reason for this is quite simple. Morrison says that the people smugglers were calling the Governments bluff. How does he know this. I am of the opinion that he didn’t have a clue about anyone on the boat or their motives. Not having any of the first 3 points of information, makes what he said a lie.

But does the media pull him up on this.. of course they don’t.

Even if the boat left after the policy was announced, does Morrison and his ilk seriously expect us to believe the following.

1. Policy announced with changes to Boat People arrivals processes
2. People smugglers quickly arrange a boat, find people and crew for said boat
3. Even allowing 3 days sail, get to North Western Australia
4. Sit back and laugh at Australian Government cause they called their bluff.

The whole issue of arriving by boat, vs arriving by air is abhorrent enough, let alone with this absurd statements made by Morrison and his supporters.

Perhaps if we weren’t so busy in a race to the bottom, real questions, real policy and real answers could be found.

Tags: Annoyances by Wolf
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There are a number of things that are being credited to this thing called Twitter, but before it becomes the stuff of powerpoint presentations of #smegs around the world and snake oil sales men (note: terms are interchangeable), a few things need to be set straight.

Firstly, Twitter didn’t break the news. The news was broken, old fashioned style via a leak. A leak I am sure the Whitehouse was not uncomfortable with. Given how much they had kept everything under wraps down to the amazing poker faced Obama at the Correspondents Dinner, this leak was not without some level of purpose. The leak ensured that there was audience for the announcement. In the old days, Keith Urbahn would have phoned a reporter at a local radio station, these days he just put it on twitter.

“So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn” at 10:24EST.

Did Twitter break the story, no, Keith did. Please remember that when you are prepping those powerpoints. I’d also say that Twitter was not the first place that Keith spread the news to either.

Of course, once this happened, the “cat” was out of the bag, (or to coin a really bad turn of phrase ) the Osama was in the bag. Did CNN, NYT, ABC etc tell this, no, they did old fashioned journalism.They checked for sources, rechecked, cross checked etc.

I for example, didn’t rt that original link, why because I wanted “proof”, proof in the form of more than one source that can be verified. I know, showing my age, but hey.

Like all good stories, there was a build up. The tension, what was his “secret” press conf about that traditional media ( well in the form of websites ) had hinted about 30 minutes beforehand. Why was it taking so long for Obama to deliver the press conference, given that he is usually so punctual.

Twitter did help kill the time. The jokes were funny. Well they were the first time. Yet each joke was a variation on the iphone,foursquare, twitter, even Playstation hack location. Nothing original, all been done before. The sad thing is these jokes have lasted longer than the time it took to bury Osama, but should have been buried at sea with him.

Finally, traditional media had enough proof. Obama wasn’t on air yet, but the story had been confirmed. Did Twitter break this story,no, why because Twitter doesn’t generate content, it distributes content. NYT, ABC, CNN etc had enough evidence to pass the burden of proof.

The story was told, and then something interesting came out. Turns out the story had already been told. When Athar (@ReallyVirtual) tweeted the noise of helicopters, explosions et al near his home in Abbotabad it was unusual for the location. Very quickly though it would turn out to be a claim to “internet fame” (note: internet fame is measure in internet years, which is around 2 days ).

So of course Twitter jumps on the story, that the story was on Twitter. Funny thing was that no one talked about his tweets a few hours before hand. Why, because it wasn’t a big story then. Once traditional media and a president made an announcement it became a story. See, no Twitter, just a lot of luck.

People are now saying, that because he live tweeted the raid, the future for covert ops like this are in danger. A couple of points. Osama didn’t use twitter, remember the lack of phones in the compound attracted US interest. Secondly, possibly more importantly, by the time that the event was being “live tweeted”, the team of Navy Seals with weapons firing jumping out of low flying helicopters was most probably a bit of a give away to the bad guys as it were.

Now I am a big a fan of Twitter as everyone else, but it distributed the message, it didn’t create the message. Had I been watching ABCnews24 or even more old school listening to the radio I would have still heard the story, just 15 or so minutes later.

Tags: Annoyances, twitter by Wolf
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