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January 23, 2007

Free speech, flights and idiots.

Allen Jasson, 55, an Australian, was stopped from boarding a Qantas flight from Melbourne to London.

Airline staff argued the T-shirt, which bears an image of the US president with the slogan 'World's number 1 terrorist', was a security risk or an item likely to upset passengers.

The airline earlier had prevented him from flying to Melbourne for Christmas with relatives on December 2 until he removed the shirt.

Domestic carrier Virgin Blue took the same action when Mr Jasson tried to catch a connecting flight to Adelaide...

But the Adelaide-born former Melbourne resident said he was seeking legal advice to challenge the airline's policy and recover costs.

"To be fair to Qantas, they have said I can take another flight if I don't wear the t-shirt but I am not prepared to go without the t-shirt," he said.

"I might forfeit the ($2,500) fare but I have made up my mind that I would rather stand up for the principle of free speech."

Source

So, we have someone making a bold stand for free speech in Australia, a notoriously totalitarian country. In an international airport.

I have several issues with this:

You're in an airport. People are touchy about terrorism in places like that.

The plane would have been delayed for this asshat gentleman, whilst his checked luggage was removed from the hold.

A shirt change is not difficult.

All they need to refuse to allow him to board is a suspicion that he's going to cause trouble in a confined space with a captive audience

I have a suspicion that "Bush is an Idiot" on a shirt would have been fine, but he wanted to grandstand on his fourth attempt to board a plane wearing the shirt.

But the most droll aspect is:

He's not an American. He's not in America. The Australian Constitution does not contain provisions for the freedom of speech - even though Australia is a signatory to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which does include the right to freedom of speech.

So why doesn't Australia have it? Because for treaties and conventions to be accepted as law, they must pass a special act of Parliament. Article 19 of the UDHR has never been ratified in such a way, though there have been several attempts. There has been a series of very interesting discussions about how such a bill would actually limit rights in Australia rather than provide protections.

And even if he were in America, the first amendment is rather specific about Governments. Not private entities.

Even if it were in America, Qantas is a private corporation and as such is not subject to such laws.

Certainly, the man has every right to wear the shirt. And Qantas (or the Captain of the flight) has the right to deny service to anyone who seems likely to cause a disturbance which might interfere with a safe flight.

Personally, I would have handed him to security for a cavity search.

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 09:38 AM

January 20, 2007

You have twenty seconds to comply.

Not content with making consumer electronics, Samsung has teamed up with the University of South Korea to produce a sentry gun.

Completely autonomous. No human required (except as targets). Apparently the system will interrogate the target, who must provide the passphrase. The system will then determine the response from 4 options: No action, Alarm, Fire rubber bullets or fire the 5.56mm machine gun.

ED-209, welcome to the world.

Robot: HALT STATE PASS: YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS TO COMPLY.
Human: NoKos are teh suX0r.
Robot: PASS INCORRECT STATE PASS: YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY.
Human: Err... All NoKo base are belong to us?
Robot: YOU ARE IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF CODE SECTION 5 A 12. I AM NOW AUTHORIZED TO USE PHYSICAL FORCE

Or it could have a bridge keeper personality...

Robot: STOP. WHO WOULD CROSS THE DMZ MUST ANSWER ME THESE QUESTIONS THREE, ERE THE OTHER SIDE HE SEE. WHAT IS NAME?
Human: Blue!
Robot: WHAT IS QUEST?
Human: To patrol the DMZ!
Robot: WHAT IS AIRSPEED VELOCITY OF SWALLOW?

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 12:23 PM

January 17, 2007

Things I have learnt today

Yes, robots.

Of course, I'm starting small. Blinking lights. Little electric beasts that scurry towards the light, things like that.

I briefly considered making them scurry from the light, but that would mean they would be active only when its dark, and that probably isn't a good thing.

On to the short list:

Ordering the wrong parts can be frustrating.

Noticing they're the wrong parts after you've finished soldering can be more so.

I need a lot more practice soldering before I can be called merely incompetent.

I'm sure as soon as the lights start blinking, I'll be a lot happier.

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 08:55 PM

January 04, 2007

Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno. How could it be bad?

'The Da Vinci Code' was a fun, light read - a throw-away airport novel that became unexplainably successful.

The movie has a great cast and director. Unfortunately, it proved far less than the sum of its parts.

The puzzles throughout (all in English, of course), are largely codes of the scrambled-anagram variety, ones most often solved by ten year olds on long car trips. Howard, somewhat heavy handedly, recycles an element from 'A Beautiful Mind' (which he also directed) and has the letters glow as Langdon (Hanks) rapidly deciphers them.

Hanks and Tautou lack any form of chemistry, whilst the script writer omitted character development. Reno and McKellen supply charisma and accents in equal measure, though it feels as though McKellen is the only one to recognize the innate absurdity of the screenplay, and camps it up accordingly. Happily for him, he has all the best lines.

The most memorable line of the film is also the worst:
Langdon: "You’re the last living descendant of Jesus Christ"

In all, it appears to be an abridged version of a book that was decidedly simple to begin with.

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 10:20 AM

January 03, 2007

Comment spam and MT

Movable Type does not deal with comment spam terribly well.

It has, in a twisted way, an unbeatable spam prevention system. Once spam gets beyond a certain threshold, it consumes all server resources, which prevents further abuse by spammers by bringing all server activity to a halt.

In truth, it is not the most elegant system.

mt-comments.cgi and trackback have been disabled to prevent such abuses in future.

Webkittyn has, rather brilliantly, suggested that all MT users move to the haloscan comment system, by signing up there, and modifying their individual entry archive templates as suggested by haloscan (instructions here).

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 04:26 PM