Good Buy Happy snaps

The issues are contentious. Should anyone with a camera have to get authorisation - consent - of the person they are photographing? What would that mean for a free and open society, and freedom of expression, artistic expression, and the media?

Australian law gives no absolute right to privacy. But the discussion paper canvasses whether the publication of unauthorised pictures taken in public places should be regulated. With children, it asks whether the simple act of taking an unauthorised picture in public should be restricted. And how to manage the jurisdictional issues of a worldwide web, with local content uploaded on overseas hosts?

The internet advocacy group Electronic Frontiers Australia suggested that existing laws covered most situations the paper is canvassing. And the discussion paper agrees that the rowers incident, and the more recent example of "upskirting" - where phone cameras are used to peer up a woman's skirt - may be covered by a new, as yet untested offence in the Commonwealth Criminal Code.

From March this year it became an offence to intentionally use the internet in circumstances which a reasonable person would regard as menacing, harassing or offensive.

EFA's executive director, Irene Graham, says the discussion paper raised challenging issues about privacy and liberty. "We are fundamentally a free speech organisation and consider photos fall into that category," she says, but the internet had attacked people's privacy by potentially creating a "surveillance society".

"This is not just about children. It's about the individual's privacy, and the extent to which all and sundry should be able to take photos and make them available for eternity on the internet."

The group is considering whether there should be a legal right for people to have their images removed from the internet, but the seriousness should be determined by the courts. Would an identifiable photo of a topless beach-goer be serious enough?

"My personal opinion is you should be able to lie on the beach topless without it being put on the internet. People should have some freedom to behave in public without fear. But there's an argument if you don't want naked photos on the internet, don't be naked in public, and that's fair comment as well."

A populated beach has become almost a no-go zone for even professional photographers, who experience first-hand the community's digital age backlash.

"It is almost impossible to operate on the beach now," says Mike Bowers, the photographic managing editor with Herald Publications. "People tend to look at someone with a camera as some sort of pervert. If you are taking photos it is seen to be for some terrorist reason, or for something inappropriate.

"I think people are more focused on their privacy now. I fear that someone's going to get hurt because we have had some quite violent reactions from people thinking you don't have a right to wield a camera in a public place.

"As far as I can see the restrictions will impact on the media, and not have the desired effect on those highly revolting sites people set up."

The Internet Industry Association believes government response should be proportionate to the problem.

"The discussion is good, but we would be very cautious urging regulation, particularly where it can't be established that this is a widespread problem," says its CEO, Peter Coroneos.

"How do we balance the rights and responsibilities of individuals in the digital age where barriers to publications are almost nonexistent, and where there are individual liberties at stake? The last thing we want to be doing is criminalising conduct where there is no improper intent.

"If the Government is seeking to determine what is appropriate context, and the test of publication becomes contextual, it becomes really difficult policy to administer. ISPs are not in a position where they'd either feel competent or resourced to have to determine the appropriateness or otherwise of photos on the internet."

The Australian Privacy Foundation's David Vaile says there is a lot of moral hysteria surrounding the internet, and the discussion paper is "well thought through, an antidote to some of the more hysterical responses".

"It's important not to blunder into this area because it is in fact very complicated, and potentially very sensitive," he says. "It represents, in some ways, a new development in the capacity of individuals now to abuse privacy on a mass scale that traditionally has been the province of government and big business, and it raises the question about the appropriateness of more restrictive protection."

He says the paper's tacit acceptance that it is unviable to ban photography in public places is common sense.

"It would drive people nuts. The vast majority of those photographs would be innocuous. There might be one pedophile taking photos at any particular moment, and 100,000 people taking pictures of their kids at the beach."

[ Click for scarmongoring ]

p.s. Laws will only apply if you can afford a cammera

Oh and you can write someone a letter. Maybe even include a picture of your neighbour for good measure...

Submissions on the discussion paper should be forwarded by October 14 to Director, Civil Law Policy, Department of Justice, Level 4, 55 St Andrews Place, Melbourne, VIC 3002.

Custom Premium Beer

Looking for the most unique, head turning way of branding your Company, Event or just looking for a gift to impress the 'man/butch lady who has everything'?

For around the price of a premium beer like Cascade, we will deliver to you our award winning premium lager, professionally and custom branded with your Company, Customer or name, message or logo.

[ Special Beer just for you ]

3rd world poverty hits first world

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez saidthe South American country plans to offer 66,000 barrels of heating oil a day to the U.S. poor, helping them cope with soaring energy costs as winter approaches. Chavez said at a press conference today in Caracas that the heating oil would be sold directly to cities and communities, cutting out traditional middlemen who speculate and profit on price fluctuations.

"Without intermediaries, we could offer a cost reduction of up to 30 percent,'' Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters after the conference.

Chavez, 51, said yesterday during his weekly television address that 140 communities or groups have requested energy aid from the South American country since he offered last week to help poor families in the U.S. "The energy crisis is a crisis, especially for the poor,'' Chavez said.The 66,000-barrels-a-day figure is about 10 percent of the refining capacity of Houston-based Citgo Petroleum Corp., the U.S. refining unit of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, Chavez said.

Citgo has eight refineries in the U.S., as well as 14,000 affiliated gasoline stations. Chavez, who became president in 1999 after winning the presidency in a landslide, has repeatedly attacked multinational oil companies as one of the causes of rising energy prices. Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, sends more than 60 percent of its 2 million barrels a day of oil exports to the U.S.


Oh the lovely irony. The US spends so much money invading other countries for oil that it can't even afford to heat their own houses. So now the 3rd world is giving them aid.

[ Blamed on hurricane windyelchepo ]

geoblogging

Get blogs from your area (or an area you specify). Which is just awsome. Its especialy usefull for audio or video as these files cant contain their own 'geo' tags. So it has to be in the XML/RSS thingy

[ Closer than you think ]

Open Office 2.0

Open office 2.0 is now out. I downloaded the 1.__ but found that it was crap ugly and slow and since I have office 03 I didnt really give a shit. But this is freeware, so you have to touch it. Apparently its better than even Office 03. And if internet says its good, it must be true.

[ Openly free ]

It's unavoidable... It is your destiny!...

Massivly Online Game Playing Thingy Where People Play On The Internet With Other People (MOGPTWPPOTIWOTIP)

[ Star Wars Combine ]

p.s. Oh and by the way this ones free

bender case

[ Bender becomes a Computer case ]

You know the next thing that needs to be done.... (turn it into an actuall robot)

Super $500 Myth Project

[ el chepo computer project ]

ph34r 7hy ch34pn355

Guess what they are selling

If you can guess what these ads are for you will win a prize to the click below.

[ Play the Guessing game ]


Men like to look at women.
Men like to look at naked women.
The advertising campaign makes it possible to look at beautiful (almost) naked women in public.
Men appreciate that.
Because a man’s brain can’t do too much at the same time, appreciating looking at beautiful women will lead to appreciating women.
The advertising campaign will eventualy result in more appreciation for women in general and a drop in domestic violence.

wblandbob

[ Big Pie ]

Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com

WAQ - We answer Questions

[ Peace ]

Google Talk

[ Hours later, its here ]

iArm

Anyone ever question all of this robotic technology? I know its cool, but what about in the future.

[ Or has the future come back.... ]

Google Talk

[ Hours later, its here ]

Unified DVD dead

For three years, the two groups, headed by Toshiba and Sony, have pushed to have their respective technology standards adopted to gain dominance in the multibillion-dollar markets for DVD players, PC drives and optical discs.

Toshiba, along with NEC and Sanyo, has been promoting HD DVD, while Sony and Matsushita, the maker of Panasonic brand products, have been developing a technology known as Blu-ray.

The two groups have held negotiations on unifying their formats to persuade consumers to shift to advanced discs and to promote growth in the industry.

But negotiations fell through as neither side yielded, and time ran out to develop a format before the launch of new products from both groups, Japan's Yomiuri newspaper has reported.

[ Funny if sony looses again... ]

'Einstein of music' dies

Robert A Moog, whose self-named synthesizers turned electric currents into sound and opened the musical wave that became electronica, has died at age 71.

[ Music God ]

Top 100 Comics

A list of the top  100 English Language comics of the centuary


[ Lists ]

weebl and bob

Yep. The new Weebl and Bob rides into town like sexual conquistadors looking for action. Finding none they turn to leave but something catches their eye.

[ Prepare for loving.  ]

Crowds good you crap

Sometimes, it's while doing nothing where the best ideas are created. Last week, I read a very interesting book called The Wisdom of Crowds—Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki . Besides having a really long and boring title, I think it's an important book. The premise is that while conventional wisdom says that a crowd is stupid, actually, if it's properly populated, it's quite a bit smarter than any one individual.

Consistent with this thesis, our fascination with blogs is driven by the opportunity to harness the collective wisdom of the World Wide Web. Open source and Wikis are a direct example of how group participations can dramatically enhance product and accelerate development.

Other books we recently read and recommend for the beach include:

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Blink is the sequel to Gladwell's enormously influential book The Tipping Point, and the gist of it is that you can often make better decisions from first impressions rather than prolonged analysis. In other words, trust your gut.

1776 by David McCullough. I think McCullough's biography on John Adams was better but the coverage and leadership exhibited by George Washington is breathtaking.

The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. Certainly one of the best books I've read in a while—Tom Freidman is remarkable in his ability to articulate complex issues in a very simple manner. "There is no room for vanilla in a flat world…" and "Bangalore is a suburb of Boston..." are two of the more memorable quotes.

The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar. Komisar who recently was brought in as a partner at Kleiner Perkins blends fact and fiction to provide a highly readable tale about following your passion. The story of how to put the "fun" back into funerals with funeral.com is a must-read—you'll die laughing.

Winning by Jack and Suzy Welch. The much better-written follow up to Straight from the Gut is a classic "do as I say, not as I do" business manifesto. Still, 29 lessons from the "Master of Business" makes it worth reading.

And after the sun goes down, I must recommend the love story of the summer—The March of the Penguins. This masterful documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman tracks the emperor penguins for one year, from going back to the places of their birth, to finding a mate, to having a baby and back again. It's truly one of the most amazing and inspirational films I've seen—ever.

What does this have to do with anything? I'm not sure. But I am bullish and ready for a very interesting fall.

[ Always On ]

beedogs

[ Dogs in Bee Costumes ]

Mark Chamberlain

[ The Rest of the water colour batman pictures ]

Google to sell 14m more shares

[ Feed the borg ]

The Dark Jedi is revealed

Turns out Tom Cruise is the next dark Jedi.

[ Ophra ]

Socks and Sandals

I dont know why people make such a big deal about other people who like to wear socks with their sandles. I wear socks with my sandles. So possibly in a protest against ignorant folk here is a page full of people showing off their soxers.

[ Warning: May scare some people ]

Be proud my bothers

Super Maul

This was the first advanced gun and was constructed by Geir. It is made by assembling several Mauly clips and a thick rubberband and has tremendous firepower. With a regular pencil as projectile it can penetrate thick cardboard and empty soda cans. Never point this gun at anyone!

This gun is not practical for random battles, but more of a gun for the determined assassin. This gun IS dangerous!

[ This actually looks dangerous. Therefore try not to kill anyone ]

Theres always the paper hornet or the paperclip hornet...

Hobo Porn

[ Porn for Hobo's by Hobo's ]

Museum of Condiments

We have museums for everything from sex to cheese to football, so it's not very surprising that someone created an online museum of condiment packets. What is suprising isn't just that this fella has nearly 900 different packets online, it's how fascinating it is to see how many variants there are on something you chuck out with your lunch almost every single day.

[ Hot Sauce ]

EWW! HERE'S WHAT LADIES THINK IS GROSSER THAN GROSS

Tact is overrated. We employ it much too often in our lives and most of us become miserable because of it. Sometimes it's so much better to just tell people how you really feel even if it is cruel, cutting and would completely hurt people's feelings, or in one case, an entire neighborhood's feelings.

And the Waxing Off ladies have been tactful for too long about these things that jostle their emotional well-beings. There is something to be said for honesty. If we do not have honesty what else do we have? For one, we have a pack of ladies with rankled nerves just waiting to explode. Thank God they did it here and not any place where people can get hurt.

[ The Black Table ]

Note: you have to click the link to read the actual article...

Jewelboxing

[ Get some pretty nice CD/DVD cases ]

I like the idea of Jewlboxed DVD's. Why was this not the case in the firstplace. I know they may have wanted to differentiate DVD's from CD's and wanted to make it the same size as VHS, but what about big jewlboxes...

Word Blogger

Now you can use Blogger right within Microsoft® Word. Just download and install the Blogger for Word add-in and a Blogger toolbar will be added to Word.

Does this mean that the 'war' between google and microsoft on how much free crap they can give away on the internet is over. Maybe they should just merge and get it over with...

[ you know its inevitable ]

But I am hoping that does not happen, as the pages would take far too long to load... and the fact that you have more than one 'group' working on technology means that they only have time to make good stuff, rather than crap stuff. eg MS Publisher...

iPod Doomed

Nerds.
Nerds like Doom.
Nerds like iPod.
Nerds like Linux.
Nerds port Doom to iPod with Linux.

[ iPodLinux ]

Emotional Blindness

Researchers have proved what mothers have been telling their sons all along - erotic images can make you go blind.

A new study by US psychologists found people shown erotic or gory images could not process what they were seeing immediately afterwards.

Researchers believe emotion-induced blindness could mean drivers simply do not see another car or pedestrian if they have just witnessed an "emotionally charged" scene.

The work, published in the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, helps shed light on how motorists are affected by the use of sexy billboards.

It also found that some people were more prone to be affected by the phenomenon known as emotion-induced blindness.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville and Yale University in Connecticut showed hundreds of images to volunteers.

Most of them were "neutral" scenes but a few showing violent or sexually provocative scenes were also included.

"We observed that people failed to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images," researcher David Zald told New Scientist magazine.

"We think there is essentially a bottleneck for information processing and if a certain type of stimulus captures attention, it can jam up the bottleneck so subsequent information can't get through."

This appeared to happen involuntarily, Mr Zald said.

[ Emotion makes you blind. That might explain road rage... ]

WWII Japanese propaganda

"Don't eat your own excrement or drink your own urine in the presence of others. If you do, you are sure to be branded as a lunatic."

[ Readings will give you lunacy ]

One Word Movie

«One Word Movie» is an on-line platform which organizes, based on user-supplied terms, the flood of images on the Internet into an animated film. A word turns into images, images turn into a movie.

Seems to be confused between retarded and artistic

[ The internet has pictures ]

megaGAMERZ 3133T

[ The best and worst comic all at the same time ]

Ask David

David Hasselhoffs spirit has been extracted and placed on the internet. Now you can ask David anything. He esspecialy likes intimate health problems.

[ The Imortal ]

Jon Lovitz

I have no idea what this is but its sure is damn funny

[ funny ads? ]

The Escapist

"In recent years, development budgets have increased, freezing out hobbyists, and the new age of corporate gaming has emerged. This was never more apparent than at E3 2005, where big gaming companies erected quasi-corporate mini-cities, teeming with projection screens and publicists, and had the audacity to call them booths. The neon-green themed Microsoft booth had overhead traffic and felt more like a mall than a temporary trade show structure. While the fine folks at EA treated media, fans and developers to the image of various sports stars spouting company slogans on a three-hundred-and-sixty degree screen. Atari even chose to erect a full-on "exclusive" club/lounge that could rival the best nightspots in my hometown. Gaming has never been more lucrative and corporate. These days, games do not enter production unless guaranteed to sell hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of units. How do you know if a game will be that successful? One way is to look at history. This kind of logic has led to a slew of sequels, movie tie-ins and remakes. Admittedly, many of them were fun, but where does this leave those of us who seek something new?"

They have pretty decent articles about gaming and its kinda nice to read something good.

[ Escape from stuff that aint so good (crap) ]

Christoper Walken for President - 2008

maybe its too early to call, but since he is so awsome and cool I think he'll win.

[ http://www.enigmasystems.net/walken/ ]

Ethics in Blogging (2005)

Andy Koh
Phone: (65) 9769 5600
Email: S8015106C@ntu.edu.sg

Alvin Lim

Ng Ee Soon

Benjamin H. Detenber
Phone: (65) 6790 5809
Email: tdetenber@ntu.edu.sg

Mark A. Cenite
Phone: (65) 6790 4572
Email: tmark@ntu.edu.sg

School of Communication and Information
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Report Summary:

As the prevalence and social influence of weblogs continue to increase, the issue of the ethics of bloggers is relevant not only to the blogging community, but also to people outside it.

This study explored ethical beliefs and practices of two distinct groups of bloggers--personal and non-personal--through a worldwide web survey. Over a period of three weeks, 1,224 responses were collected and analysed.

Our findings show that these two groups are distinctively different in demographics, blogging experiences, and habits. We also found that there are significant differences between personal and non-personal bloggers in terms of the ethical beliefs they value and the ethical practices to which they adhere.

Key Findings:

Our findings indicate that 73% of the bloggers surveyed said that their weblogs are personal while the remaining 27% said that their weblogs are non-personal. Further investigation of, these two groups revealed many significant differences between personal and non-personal bloggers.

Demographics

Non-personal bloggers are typically older males, with more formal years of education than personal bloggers.

Blogging Experiences and Habits

Non-personal bloggers tend to have more readers, update their weblogs more frequently, and spend more time on their weblogs.

Non-personal bloggers’ reasons for blogging, the people whom they write about, and their primary intended audience are also different from those of personal bloggers.

Ethical Beliefs and Practices

Personal and non-personal bloggers value and adhere to four ethical principles differently. For instance, personal bloggers believe that minimizing harm is more important than non-personal bloggers.

For both groups of bloggers, they believe attribution is the most important and accountability the least important.

The degree of association between ethical beliefs and practices is different for personal and non-personal bloggers: in general, the level of correspondence between what people believe and what they do is higher for non-personal bloggers than personal bloggers.

Both types of bloggers are quite ambivalent about whether any kind of a code is necessary.

The findings in our study indicated that personal and non-personal bloggers are indeed distinct groups of bloggers. Their demographics, blogging experiences and habits, as well as ethical beliefs and practices are different.

In addition, bloggers currently do not see a strong need for a blogging code of ethics. A code of ethics may be more valued and adhered to when bloggers’ themselves see a stronger need for it.

Also, the four ethical principles have different relevance to personal and non-personal bloggers and researchers should take that into consideration if they attempt to devise new codes of ethics for blogging.

Introduction

Weblogs are defined as “frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence” (Herring, Scheidt, Bonus et al., 2004, p. 1).

A weblog typically consists of posts that are usually time-stamped, vary in length and frequency of updates, and are organised in reverse chronology so that readers always see the most recent post first (Bausch et al., 2002; Blood, 2002; Mortensen & Walker, 2002; Trammel & Gasser, 2004).

Since 1999, weblogs have proliferated following the development of user-friendly weblog publishing services such as Live Journal, Blogger.com and Pitas. Weblogs are still growing, and growing even larger.

A study conducted in June 2002 found 2% of Internet users in the United States had created a weblog (Pew, 2005). Since then, the percentage soared to 7% in late 2004, corresponding to approximately 8 million weblogs. In the same year, the number of weblog readers rocketed by 58% to 32 million Americans or 27% of Internet users in the country. And all these had not taken into account weblogs from other parts of the world.

Blogging has become an influential phenomenon that is gaining recognition and acknowledgement by the media, scholars, and government officials throughout the world. Recent events that have highlighted the importance of weblogs include the Asian tsunami disaster, the Iraq war, and September 11 attack.

Various research studies have been done on weblogs, from the classification of weblogs (Herring, Scheidt, Bonus, & Wright, 2004; Trammel & Gasser, 2004) to the purpose of blogging (Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, and Swartz, 2004). Yet few studies have touched on the attitudinal and behavioural aspects of ethics behind this activity. This is an important area for us to understand as how bloggers think and act may have tremendous impacts on others and themselves.

From the literature on blogging, we identified two distinct groups of bloggers: personal and non-personal. Personal weblogs are those that resemble an online diary or personal journal. Non-personal weblogs are those that focus on specific topics and content, usually intended for larger audiences. In addition to different types of content and intended audiences, these two types of bloggers are likely to have different perspectives on the functions and impact their blogs have which may in turn influence their ethics in blogging.

From the literature on Internet ethics (e.g., netiquette and nethics), blogging ethical codes, and journalism ethics, four underlying ethical principles that are relevant to blogging were identified. They are truth telling, accountability, minimizing harm, and attribution (ACM, 1992; Blood, 2002; Dube, 2003; Herrscher, 2002; Rinaldi, 1998; Scheuermann and Taylor, 1997; Shea, 1994; Strentz, 2002).

Truth telling includes underlying concepts such as honesty, fairness, equality and completeness in reporting.

Accountability involves being answerable to the public, honesty in one’s work, revealing conflicts of interest, and bearing consequences of one’s actions.

The third principle is minimizing harm (done to others) by blogging. It includes issues of privacy, confidentiality, flaming, consideration of other people’s feelings, and respecting diverse cultures and underprivileged groups.

Attribution involves issues such as plagiarism, honouring intellectual property rights, and giving proper credit to sources. These four principles form the structural framework in the design of our survey questions relating to bloggers’ ethical beliefs and practices.

This study seeks to explore the differences between personal and non-personal bloggers through their demographics, blogging experience and habits, as well as their ethical beliefs and practices in blogging. Additionally, we looked into whether bloggers see a need for a blogging ethics code.

Method

A purposive stratified sampling method that selected weblogs according to the distribution sizes of various weblog service providers was used, augmented by snowball sampling. Bloggers’ e-mail addresses were retrieved from their weblogs where each weblog was randomly selected using freely available weblog generating services such as Blo.gs, Xanga, etc.

Participation was voluntary and all information was kept confidential. A total of 6,000 e-mails were sent by the researchers over a period of three weeks from 6 February to 1 March, 2005. After culling multiple surveys from the same individual 1,224 completed surveys were used for analysis.

Findings and Discussion

Of the 1,224 bloggers who completed the survey, personal bloggers made up 73% while non-personal bloggers were the remaining 27%.

The results of our survey indicate that personal and non-personal bloggers are indeed different in their blogging experiences, habits, and demographics. The graphs below reflect some of the more distinctive differences between the two groups.

Blogging Habits, Experiences and Demographics

(click on graphs to enlarge)

In terms of demographics, our findings show that non-personal bloggers are more likely to be male, significantly older and have more formal years of education compared with personal bloggers. The data also indicate that non-personal bloggers have more readers daily than personal bloggers, and this could be due to the wide variety of content they write about.

Unlike personal bloggers who write mainly about events in their lives, non-personal bloggers write a variety of content that is useful and appealing to a larger audience. Non-personal bloggers more frequently check how many readers access their weblogs than personal bloggers. A likely reason for this is that a primary purpose of non-personal weblogs is to provide commentaries or viewpoints for others to read and appreciate, and a large audience is one indication that a non-personal weblog is successful.

Most importantly, our findings show that while personal and non-personal bloggers have some things in common in terms of their ethical beliefs and practices, there are also some distinctive differences (see Table 1). For example, non-personal bloggers valued attribution and truth telling the most, but for personal bloggers truth telling was less important than attribution and minimizing harm.

The type of ethics most practiced by the personal bloggers was minimizing harm, while the non-personal bloggers practiced truth telling, attribution, and minimizing harm equally. The personal bloggers were also less consistent in practicing the ethics they said they valued than the non-personal bloggers.

Table 1: Ethical Principles

(click on table to enlarge)

For both groups of bloggers, their belief in the importance of attribution was paramount. This could be due to the nature of blogging, in which bloggers show readers links to other pages to illustrate a point or to share information. Attribution in blogging is quite different from that in traditional journalism in that, other than giving proper credit, it also serves a community-building function (Blood, 2002).

This may explain why non-personal bloggers and personal bloggers value it most. After all, weblogs started off as web pages where people shared hyperlinks to other sites that they thought were useful (Blood, 2002). This is evident from the high number of hyperlink-centered filter weblogs reported in earlier studies on blogging (Herring, Scheidt, Bonus et al., 2004).

In contrast, belief in accountability was regarded as least important by both groups of bloggers, and this could be due to a perception that in cyberspace, people can express their opinions without inhibition or consequences. This may be explained by two reasons commonly given why people make use of computer-mediated-communication.

First, there is less perceived social risk (i.e., diminished personal cost if interactions or relationships fail) and second, there is less social responsibility toward others than traditional face-to-face communication (Morahan-Martin & Schumacher, 2000; Turkle, 1995; Wallace, 1999; Walther, 1996). In a concrete example of this, Viégas (2004) found that most bloggers do not believe people can sue them for their weblog content.

Need for Blogging Code of Ethics

Although a few blogging ethics codes for have been proposed by scholars (Blood, 2002; Dube, 2003; Kuhn, 2005), this is the first study to examine whether bloggers themselves see a need for a blogging ethics code. A code is only as useful as the number of people who would adhere to it. Our findings show that both personal and non-personal bloggers are quite ambivalent as to whether a blogging code of ethics is needed.

As most non-personal bloggers take a journalistic approach in their writing (Kuhn, 2005), it seems reasonable to expect them to see a need for a blogging ethics code (akin to that of journalism ethics code) when compared with personal bloggers.

However, our findings revealed no significant difference between personal and non-personal bloggers’ agreement on the need for a blogging ethics code. A plausible reason is that blogging is an activity that is “almost exclusively a part-time voluntary solipsistic enterprise” with virtually no income generated from blogging for the vast majority of people (Drezner and Farrell, 2004, p. 4).

In fact, it is estimated that no more than two dozen individuals in the US earn their living from blogging (Drezner and Farrell, 2004). For everyone else, blogging is just a hobby, so it seems unlikely that many people will have developed a sense of responsibility and a system of ethics comparable to journalists and other communication professionals.

Limitations

One limitation of this study is that the survey was in English, and only English weblogs were sampled. Although English still dominates the Internet and blogging, efforts should be made in the future to assess the views of those with non-English blogs.

Another problem for this study and others investigating on-line populations is that true random sampling is extremely difficult, if not impossible, due to the lack of a complete sampling frame available for weblogs. Therefore, strictly speaking, one cannot generalize to the entire population of bloggers.

However, given the efforts made to ensure a diverse and proportional sample of respondents and the relatively large sample size, we feel fairly confident that the data are generally indicative of bloggers.

Conclusion

Overall, our findings show that personal and non-personal bloggers are distinctively different in their demographics, blogging experiences, and habits. Our findings also show that there are significant differences between personal and non-personal bloggers in the ethical beliefs they value and in the ethical practices they adhere to.

Therefore, an important point to note is that when studying the blogging population, distinctions must be made regarding the type of bloggers who are being examined to prevent any misperceptions.

In addition, the limited support from bloggers for a blogging code of ethics poses a serious problem for advocates of on-line social responsibility. If any inroads are to be made in terms of bloggers regulating themselves, consensus in the community must be developed.

Eugene Mirman

Eugene Mirman is a comedian, writer, and film maker based in New York Cit

[ Eugene's been making videos... ]

slightly ghey but not gay

PM will consider Telstra plan

THE Prime Minister has agreed to consider Telstra's calls for the Government to help fund a $5 billion hi-tech telecommunications network in the bush.

Mr Trujillo and Telstra chairman Donald McGauchie flew to Canberra for the meeting after unveiling the telco's record full-year net profit of $4.45 billion in Melbourne.

[ Even the CEO thinks Telstra sucks ]

Creative Control

The new controler for the upcoming Nintendo Revolution is still unknown. So what not design your own.

[ DIY Comes to the rescue ]

Sex Sells: Coffins

They were even kind enough to create a calander which you can purchase. Grandad would approve, but so sure about Grandma...

[ Made of wood ]

And now for Some Tentecle porn

I never thought this stuff was real. As in it was just people (guys I'm assuming) drawing the tenticle porn. But no. There is real women with real tenticles...

[ tenticle porn ]

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

SPOILER ->

A. According to the book The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans With Answers, translated by Yoel Hoffman, the answer is an action, thrusting out one's hand, followed by a dialogue with the teacher. According to the book, the dialogue might go something like this:

Master: In clapping both hands a sound is heard: what is the sound of the one hand?
Student: The pupil faces his master, takes a correct posture, and without a word, thrusts one hand forward.
Master: If you've heard the sound of the one hand, prove it.
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
<>
Master: It's said that if one hears the sound of the one hand, one becomes a Buddha. Well then, how will you do it?
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
<>
Master: After you've become ashes, how will you hear it?
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
Master: What if the one hand is cut by the Suimo Sword (the sharpest of all swords)?
Student: It can't be.
or
Student: If it can, let me see you do it.
or
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
<>
Master: Why can't it cut the one hand?
Student: Because the one hand pervades the universe.
Master: Then show me something that contains the universe.
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
Master: The before-birth-one hand, what is it like?
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
<>
Master: The Mt. Fuji-summit-one-hand, what is it like?
Student: The pupil shading his eyes with one hand, takes the pose of looking down from the summit of Mt. Fuji and says, "What a splendid view."
Master: Attach a quote to the Mt. Fuji-summit-one-hand.
Student: (quote) Floating clouds connected the sea and the mountain, And white flat plains spread into the states of Sei and Jo.
<>
Master: Did you hear the sound of the one hand from the back or from the front?
Student: Extending one hand, the pupil repeatedly says, "Whether it's from the front or from the back, you can hear it as you please"
<>
Master: Now that you've heard the sound of the one hand, what are you going to do?
Student: I'll pull weeds, scrub the floor, and if you're tired, give you a massage.
<>
Master: If it's a convenient thing, let me hear it too!
Student: Without a word, the pupil slaps his master's face.
<>
Master: The one hand--how far will it reach?
Student: The pupil places his hand on the floor and says, "This is how far it goes."
<>
Master: The before-the-fifteenth-day-one-hand, the after-the-fifteenth-day-one-hand, what's it like?
Student: The pupil extends his right hand and says, "This is the before-the-fifteenth-day-one-hand." Extending his left hand he says, "This is the after-the fifteenth-day-one-hand." Bringing his hands together he says, "This is the fifteenth-day-one-hand."
Master: The sublime-sound-of-the-one-hand, what is it like?
Student: The pupil immediately imitates the sound he happens to hear when sitting in front of his master. That is, if it happens to be raining outside, he imitates the sound of rain, if at that moment a bird happens to call, he imitates a bird's call.
Master: The soundless-voice-of-the-one-hand, what is it like?
Student: Without a word, the pupil abruptly stands up, then sits down again, bowing in front of his master.
Master: The true sphere of the one hand, what's it like?
Student: "I take it to be as fleeting as a dream or phantom, or as something like an illusory flower. That's how I think of it."
Master: The source of the one hand, what is it?
Student: "On the plain there is not the slightest breeze that stirs the smallest grain of sand.
(quote)
All communication with places north of the
White Wolf River is disconnected,
And south to the Red Phoenix City,
autumn nights have grown so long."

According to Hoffmann, this Koan was composed by a Master Hakuin in the 18th century. It is the first Koan that a student is given when he enters a temple. The Koan cannot be explained by logic and can take up to three years to solve.
This is a bizarre book, giving rise to the question, why would anyone buy a book giving answers to questions that cannot be solved by logic? The phrase, "You're only cheating yourself" somehow springs to mind.



koan

Japanese SAQ

SAQ = Seldom Asked Questions

Q. Why is 'tentacle porn' so popular in Japanese anime? - Question submitted by Seth.
A. Tentacle sex is a bizarre genre of anime and manga in which women are attacked and penetrated by strange creatures with tentacles. Although most people think that tentacle sex is something that could only have come from the mind of a 20th century illustrator, there have been sexual images involving octopi in Japan for almost 200 years. It all goes back to the famous Ukiyo-e artist, Katsushika Hokusai, the same person who gave the world famous paintings such as “36 Views of Mt. Fuji” and “The Wave”. Hokusai, like most ukiyo-e artists, supplemented his income by painting pictures called shunga, ‘pictures of spring’ which were popular as pornography or used in instruction manuals given to newly-weds. His famous book, Kinoe no Komatsu (Young Pine Shoots) featured a print called ‘The Amorous Octopus’, which featured a giant octopus pleasuring a young pearl diver.
Hokusai’s Octopus paintings are said to be the inspiration for modern tentacle sex, but his works were not violent, and the women in the Amorous Octopus seems to be quite enjoying herself, unlike the girls in modern hentai anime. According to Toshio Maeda, the inventor of the modern genre, he did it to skirt Japan's strict censorship laws. Showing intercourse was illegal, and illustrators were always looking for ways to get around the law. Maeda claims that he was just looking for something he could use represent a penis, and came up with the idea of a young girl being attacked by a grotesque monster with tentacles. The genre became popular because it was as close to showing intercourse as anime could get.
Although it is now possible to show scenes that are a lot more graphic, tentacle sex has a strong following today and in the anime world, Maeda’s ‘pioneering’ work, Urotsuki Doji (Legend of the Overfiend) is considered a classic of sorts. This six hour gore-fest concerns an invasion of the planet Earth by demons from another dimension who have come to prevent an ancient prophecy from coming true, and have tentacle sex with as many humans as they can.
To learn everything you ever wanted to know about tentacle porn, visit: http://www.bigempire.com/sake/manga1.html. If you’d like to see the full version of Hokusai’s octopus picture that I can’t show you here, and read an interesting essay on the genre, see: http://www.the-emperor.org/wiki/tentacle_porn/.

[ SAQ ]

FREE Button Maker and Generator - Blog Flux

FREE Button Maker and Generator - Blog Flux

Grafiti

Secretive "guerrilla" artist Banksy has decorated Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. The nine paintings were created on the Palestinian side of the barrier.

[ bbsea ]

Make your own Fuel

An underground movement of motorists is making fuel in their backyards and saving up to $1 a litre to run their diesel engines.

As oil prices continue to soar to historic highs, they are following an easy recipe available on the internet for making biodiesel fuel and putting it straight into their engines without modification.

Concocted from used vegetable oil that fish and chip shops give away, the fuel is hailed as being almost smog-free, extremely cheap and almost limitless in supply because it comes from a crop rather than an oil well.

Few are willing to admit publicly that they make the brew because the Federal Government imposed a new tax and costly tests.

Small businessman Luke Williams admits he is breaking the law when he mixes a batch of biodiesel without registering with the Tax Office. He pays about 20 cents a litre for the ingredients instead of at least $1.20 for diesel from the bowser. Instead of sooty fumes, his car emits a slight odour reminiscent of the fish and chip shop from which it came.

The recipe is precise but easy, Mr Williams said. "If you can bake a cake, you can do it."

Although the chemicals can be bought in a supermarket shelf, they are highly toxic and should be mixed in a shed. "It's not a good idea for people in flats to be doing it."

Mr Williams said fellow biodiesel-makers were too concerned about Australian Tax Office checks to speak publicly but enthusiasts believe about 1000 people across the country make their own fuel.

Under the federal laws, even backyard producers must pay $1400 for a test to ensure that every batch meets Australian standards. They must also pay a fuel excise of 38 cents a litre.

Adrian Lake, head of business development at one of Australia's first commercial producers Australian Biodiesel, said: "What's driving it now is the sheer price of oil. It has been hard to justify the investment but now the price of oil has gone up, there's quite a lot of investment."

[ Something smells fishy ]

Bank Closed?

Ever had the problem with the bank closed? I think there hours are 10:30am to 4:00pm... most people are busy during these times doing stuff. Like work, or standing in line at centerlink... Anyway what a bunch of guys did over in Brazil is dig a 200 meter hole into the bank....

[ The funny part is that the robbery wasnt discovered untill Monday becuase the bank was closed... ]

Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin Tax

Taxing porn will give the industry legitimacey. Like Alcohol and Cigarates.

[ Not only will there be illegal downloading of copyrighted material, but defrauding the government... actually thats probably a dangerous idea ]

Tim Farrell uses the Internet

[ Some funny hand drawn comics ]

The new Start

Back in the day M$ got a look at what apple was doing with its gui. M$ probably did a better job anyway... But turns of M$ is trying to do the same thing. This time with Google.... Additionaly I would of thought they would pick a different name than start, as they already use this in windows. And when M$

[ start.com ]

[ dev blog ]

Multi Focal Projection

[ The start of the holodeck... ]

Your Pyhsics is weak

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Kung Fu? Meet Physics

http://www.kungfuscience.org/
http://www.iop.org/.
http://www.einsteinyear.org/

The Kegbot project

It sounds like a crazy idea, build a beer dispensing robot that tracks how much you drink, you blood alchol content, your calories and unleash it upon an unsuspecting DEFCON. The results are pure genius and something every beer drinking hacker should aspire to build.

[ Robot that dispenses beer ]

Alcohol helps you think

REGULARLY having a glass of wine or two with dinner could sharpen your dinner party conversation.
Abstain altogether, or drink too much, and you could be a dullard.

People who average two alcoholic drinks a day are better thinkers than teetotallers and very heavy drinkers, according to research.

An Australian National University study of 7000 people has found those who drink in moderation have better verbal skills, memory and speed of thinking than those at the extremes of the drinking spectrum.

Researchers say it is a mystery why. The study overturns conventional belief that alcohol kills brain cells, leaving drinkers less well off in the brains department.

Researcher Dr Bryan Rodgers said people who drink moderate amounts also seem to be healthier, physically and mentally.

"The research looked at factors including physical health, personality, social lives, social supports, friendships and enemies, and yet these did not explain it," he said. "It's a mystery."

He said there appeared to be no social factors - such as better education of one group - that could explain the phenomenon.

The survey was conducted on more than 7000 Canberra and Queanbeyan residents. They were sober at the time.

Moderate alcohol consumption was considered to be 14 to 28 standard drinks a week for men and seven to 14 drinks a week for women.

[ Scientists say stuff ]

Why Women dont Air Guitar

In America it's all about the competition, in the UK a windmill effect is favoured and in Finland the skill is judged on the precision of fingering. Now air guitar, a favourite pastime of fathers around the world, is to be the subject of a PhD.

But the student who is hoping to become the first person to conduct in-depth research into the air guitar is not your usual leather-wearing, bike-riding, child-embarassing man, but a woman, and an air guitar aficionado herself.

Amanda Griffiths, 32, a dance teacher from Wales, is going to tackle the international phenomenon of the air guitar, investigating how different cultures have different trends and why it's a male-dominated sport.

"The time seems right for a cultural study of the phenomenon because there is a very hard-cored guitar scene that has been bubbling away for years. But as a feminist I am interested in why there are so few women at events," Ms Griffiths, who is funding the research herself, told the Daily Telegraph.

Most countries with an appetite for rock have an air guitar competition and there is a World Air Guitar Championships training camp in Finland this month which Ms Griffiths is due to attend.

Her PhD at the University of Salford will be supervised by Sheila Whiteley, the country's first professor of pop, whose other PhD students have investigated moshing and the sexual politics of the Russian lesbian-branded band Tatu.

"Air guitar gets extraordinarily serious. Over here it's the windmills and dramatic gestures. In Finland they look at how accurate their fingering is. Amanda's going to look at these cultural differences and the gender politics of it.

"It comes out of heavy rock heavy metal so it's heavily gendered as masculine. One of the areas that Amanda's interested in as a woman who has competed is whether women do it ironically, become 'one of the boys' or 'queer' it."

Asked why she thought people were so keen on air guitar she said: "One thing about rock, and this goes for moshing as well, is that it is highly interactive. The relationship between the band and the audience is quite physical. It's the joining in with the main chorus in stadium rock like with Queen, but also the fact that it's a mark of respect that you're actually participating. You get the odd air drummer and bass player as well."

[ Air ]

Mighty Mouse

Global warming has slowed becuase hell has frozen over, with Apple having a more than one button mouse (read: two).

[ Its all Intels fault ]

Telstra Sales will increase Interest Rates

The trip comes amid warnings from Treasurer Peter Costello that interest rates could rise if the government sets aside billions of dollars to improve the telco's bush services.

[ Well... only if the Govt has to pander to the demands of the QLD Nationals ]

Detailed Sex Map Analysis

[ A Detailed Sex Map of 288 high school students ]

Masturbation Horror Stories

[ The horror, the pain, the fame ]

IP on everything

AlwaysOn: How does today's Internet compare to what you thought it would be?

Vint Cerf: The standard question is, "Did you have any idea that it would get this big when you started 30-some-odd years ago?" The answer is: No. We were trying to solve an engineering problem at the time and were very focused on the technical side of it. We had no inkling that this would become a commercially important functional capability or that it would have a global footprint. Inherent in the design and the ambitions for the technology are exactly the seeds of what we are seeing, but it wasn't obvious at the time. We wanted no limitation on the number of networks that could be interconnected. We wanted a nonproprietary capability for computers to communicate with each other. We wanted every new transmission and switching technology to bear Internet packets.

I was running around with a T-shirt that said, "IP on Everything," and the whole point was to try to absorb any new switching or transmission technology into the Internet architecture. I think we have done well with that because we assumed that the layers below the IP level would not be relied upon too heavily; that most of the interesting functionality would be derived from the edges of the technology. This was the inverse of the classic design of the telecoms (up to that time anyway)—which was that most of the systems had all their intelligence in the central-office switches and the conventional public-switch telephone net.

[ the full interview ]

Engine Not Required

Forget about primitive wooden contraptions driven by towheaded tykes down a homemade ramp in Your Hometown, U.S.A. The new—make that the extreme—take on the quaint old soapbox derby features sleek, futuristic projectiles riding on chassis meant to accommodate speeds of 50, 60, even 70 miles an hour.

[ read more at popular science ]

Japans Ministry of Finance: The Game

Japan is having a hard time with their national budget, as the country faces a debt of over 538,000 billion yen. The japanese ministry of finance chose an original media to inform the population about this issue (and to show them that each possible answer would bring its own share of new complications) with the early july launch of a free game on their webpage, Zaimudaijin Ninatte Yosan o Tsukurou! ~ Yosan Sakusei Game ~ (which roughly translates as "Let's pretend we're the minister of finance and work on the budget! ~ The budget making game ~"). The game, which is already the most popular section of their website, almost always ends up with a report telling you the national debt issue will go on for another generation. Saving Japan suddenly becomes slightly less sexy than in the

[ insert credit ]

New WiFi Record

Four young amateur radio operators from Ohio were again dubbed world champs of long-distance wireless networking at the annual DefCon WiFi Shootout. These guys more than doubled the 55.1 mile record they set last year.

[ boing boing ]