Month: February 2007

The aforementioned OneTwenty Video Game Trivia Night is going ahead! Check out the announcement post on OneTwenty Events.

Here’s a copy of the flyer:

There are some thanks extended to our supporters on the events blog, but I also want to thank the events team here. Thanks to Minh, Jason, Jim, and Phil for helping make this happen. 🙂

Update: Turns out k4 were full of crap. Their recent articles are ripped from other sites and still posted under the name Kuljeet M Singh.

Update: k4 Technology have removed the article and banned the “author”.

Update: Removed whois details; those who know how can check for themselves if interested.

As some of you may remember, I won a Welland MediaBank ME-747AP at an IGDA social night last October. I wrote a moderately detailed review with heaps of pictures. It rates very well in Google searches for the device.

This morning I decided to have a quick look online to see if Welland have released a new firmware (to fix some text rendering issues) and I came across this site with an eerily familar image:

That’s exactly the photo I took of the MediaBank box for my review. I kept reading… this is my review! These bastards ripped off my review! I figured that it was probably a splog, created by ripping RSS feed from various sites and presenting them as their own. However, I don’t expose full-content RSS feeds, only summaries.

Their entire article is a blatant copy of my original text and photos. Further reading revealed some slight, but obvious changes. They claim it was written by Kuljeet M Singh on 6 January 2007. They removed the opening paragraph mentioning that I won this at the IGDA social night. Finally, they replaced:

I picked up a 250GB Western Ditigal HDD for AU$92 from NetPlus in Osborne Park

with:

I picked up a 250GB Western Ditigal HDD for AU$92 from FluidTek in Carlingform

Well, that made it pretty obvious this was a deliberate case of copyright infringement. I mean, they ripped and modified the entire article and didn’t even give me credit. That’s not just illegal, it goes against the internet’s own ethical code.

But what can you do right? Especially if they are a foreign company. Oh wait, they pretended to have bought stuff from Carlingform… that’s in Australia… that gives me some recourse. Who are these people again? Checking the top banner of their website:

and checking out whois their website is registered to reveals:

Domain Name………. k4technology.com
Creation Date…….. 2000-11-02
Registration Date…. 2000-11-02
Expiry Date………. 2009-11-02
Organisation Name…. k4technology
Organisation Address. 2 O’neill street
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. Seven hills
Organisation Address. 2147
Organisation Address. NSW
Organisation Address. AUSTRALIA

…

They are in Australia. Excellent. There are a number of information sheets on the Australian Copyright Council website that give pretty clear instructions on what I can do. The first step is to contact the infringer:

Often people don’t mean to infringe copyright—they may do so through ignorance, or carelessness.

Yeah… this obviously wasn’t careless or ignorant. Next! Ah, a letter of demand:

If this approach doesn’t work, or is not suitable, the next step is usually to send a letter of demand.

That sounds better. I need to make clear demands… I’m thinking: take it down immediately and replace webpage with an apology and link to my review. Actually, forget that. With any webpage there they will still get hits. Maybe just take it down immediately.

If that doesn’t happen, it’s nice to know that there is a fallback option:

Another possibility is to contact the internet service provider (ISP). As a result of the Australia–US Free Trade Agreement, it is in the ISP’s interests to remove or disable access to copyright material on its system if it becomes aware that copyright is being infringed or “becomes aware of facts and circumstances that make it apparent that the material is likely to be infringing”

I don’t really agree with the AUSFTA, but I’ll use it if I need to.

I’m not linking to their website, but you can find “their review” pretty easily via Google. Keep reading for my letter of demand.

Continue reading “k4 Technology blatantly copied and modified my Welland MediaBank ME-747AP review!”

Thanks to the efforts of Jim and Mash and the combined financial support of OneTwenty members, we now have a new server. Behold it’s magnificence:

… or it’s beige-box-ed-ness; you decide. I’ve been setting it up as a mail server and will be migrating services to it over the next week or so.

Online communication is becoming increasing integral in day-to-day life and, unlike other forms of technology (such as mobile phones), it is plausible to operate your own services (using a standard computer with a broadband internet connection). A benefit of operating your own services is that you aren’t dependent on external entities that could misuse or delete your information, or capitalise on their unique position. I’d like for everyone to be able to control their own online information and communication. Currently, it takes a fair amount of expert knowledge, but I hope that people see enough value in it to ensure that changes.

New OneTwenty services after the migration will include email (using RoundCube for webmail), and individual feed readers (using TinyTinyRSS) for OneTwenty members. Existing services that will be migrated include instant messaging (Jabber), blogs (WordPress), and a blog aggregator (Planet). I’ll also be adding photo galleries (ZenPhoto with ZenPress) to any blogs that want it, and I’m considering an iCal aggregator (maybe using PHPiCalendar).

We’ve been planning on running a video game quiz night for quite a while, and Minh recently posted a call for people interested in attending to let us know.

I sent a general email to the PIGMI mailing list and have already been contacted by WALAN (who may be interested in partnering on this event) and GO3 have promised us a few Expo passes to use as prizes (these won’t be the the only prizes mind you!).

If you are interested in attending and haven’t yet commented on the post on OneTwenty Events (linked above), please do so. We need a good estimate of how many people will be attending so that we can organise a venue.

I watched Order in the House late last night on the ABC. This is a show that every Australian should watch at least once. If only to see how juvenile our politicians can be.

The major topics of debate were water and climate change. I was particularly interested by the climate change debate. It’s an argument that is increasingly visible and the debate pitted Rudd (Leader of the Opposition) against Howard (Prime Minister) and Garret (Shadow Environment Minister) against Turnbull (Environment Minister).

The Opposition detailed the dire ramifications of climate change and asserted that Australia should do everything possible to combat it. The Government asserted that whatever actions we take would have negligible effect because we make an insignificant impact compared to larger countries such as China (oddly enough, they didn’t mention the United States).

Both parties arguments contain merit. The Opposition argues that we should lead by example and do whatever we can. If most countries did this, it would have a significant effect on climate change. The Government argues that whatever we do won’t make a difference to climate change, but it will affect the economy. Why should we unnecessarily sacrifice the economy?

I liken the Government’s approach to just mouthing the words (instead of singing) in a choir, or not bothering to vote in an election (because just one missing vote won’t count). Let’s just hope that other world governments don’t all feel the same…

This post has been a long time coming. Some of you may remember that late last year, we made some OneTwenty shirts so that we could all match at the Perth Massive.

I wrote about our initial failure and then our eventual success in screen printing our own shirts. A big part of our success was getting the right equipment. It was fairly easy to buy a silk screen and fabric paint, but the real key was finding somewhere in Perth that stocked photo emulsion.

Now for some quick pictures and details. We picked up most of our supplies from Jacksons Drawing Supplies in Shafto Lane. Here’s a shot of the store front in case you go looking for it:

There is a photo of their fabric printing supplies shelf in this previous post. Their paint and screens were reasonably price, but they didn’t stock photo emulsion so we had to look elsewhere.

After much driving around and talking to various print suppliers, we ended up at Sericol at 209 Railway Road in Subiaco. They’re are more of a sell-to-business store than a sell-to-the-public store, so they only have a small display shelf and all items are kept out the back somewhere. Here’s a photo of the display shelf:

I circled the photo emulsion in yellow. It’s good stuff; pre-sensitized so there is no need to mix in sensitizer before using it. The container also contains quite a lot; I don’t see us buying any more for a long, long time.

Here’s a screenshot of the building so you know what to look for while driving down Railway Road:

Note: This post probably looks like an advertisement, but we really could not find anywhere else to buy photo emulsion. There may be places online, but we didn’t have time to wait for an order to arrive!

Nationalism isn’t about unity; it’s about division. It’s about impressing a stereotyped view of the majority onto the entire population as an ideal for who they should be. Here in Australia, those that don’t fit this caricature (nearly everyone when it comes down to it) are criticised as un-Australian.

There’s only one thing that makes you an Australian:Australian citizenship. You don’t have to drink beer. You don’t have to watch cricket. You don’t have wear double pluggers. You just have to have been either born here, born to Australian parents, or naturalised after immigration. As an Australian your only obligations are to observe the law, vote in elections, and pay your taxes. You don’t need to speak with an Australian accent or share the same views as everyone else.

The concept that there are some things that are Australian and that these must be preserved reeks of prescriptive cultural superiority. Isn’t a good Australian simply a model citizen? Surely a naturalised Iraqi-born immigrant who strictly obeys all laws is a better citizen than an ocker fifth-generation larrakin who routinely commits minor crimes. Which one is more Australian? Some would argue that the larrikin is exhibiting Australian cultural characteristics, but not adhering to Australian Values.

Aspiring to possess Australian Values is misguided. We should be considering how to be good people, rather than good Aussies (with a strong monocultural bias). A “fair go” and “mateship” are qualities to aspire to, but they are better described as “justice” and “solidarity”. Unnecessarily Australianising fundamental moral concepts gives the false impression that they are unique to Australians (when they are actually universal).

I was compelled to write this post after yet another distressing Australia Day. Aside from the awfully hot weather (over 40 degrees celcius here in Perth) and my being sick at the time, I was again confronted by the abhorrent racism and xenophobia I’ve learnt to associate with Australia Day.

At Australia Day a few years ago I was on a train and saw a bunch of young men (wearing Australian flags as capes) lean over an Asian lady with two young children. One of them yelled to her face:

This is Australia Day, not fucking… China Day!

and was greated with cheering from his mates (while most other people on the train did their best to try to look away).

This year, I was walking through Perth with Heidi and a young woman prodded her boyfriend when she saw some Asian Australians celebrating Australia Day:

Haha, look at the Asians! With their Australian flags.

Many people say that this sort of behaviour is racism or xenophobia under the guise of nationalism. I assert that nationalism is necessary divisive and gives creedance to such attitudes and behaviour. What the difference really? Isn’t it really just saying we are better than others rather than saying others are not as good as us?

Pride in something you have no control over (eg. the achievement of other Australians, or the natural beauty of a country) is absurb. Linking morality and personal value to a cultural stereotype is absurd. Promoting “being Australian” as anything more than simply being a good citizen is divisive and grossly irresponsible.