Friday, February 25, 2005

Unsuspecting Tourists are Easy Prey in Bali

Good article illustrating just how easy it is to buy all manner of drugs on the streets of Bali, and, more than that, just how closely intertwined with the drug dealers Bali's corrupt "police force" are.

An undercover reporter from Channel Seven's Today Tonight program was offered "more illegal drugs than most Aussies could see in a lifetime" within minutes of starting the camera.
Criminologist Dr Paul Wilson studied Indonesia's drug scene and said evidence suggested police and dealers did target unsuspecting tourists.

"There's no doubt that the Indonesian criminal justice system is pretty corrupt."
He goes on to explain how Indonesian police pounce on tourists silly enough to buy drugs from the streets, demanding money to save themselves from being charged with a very serious drug-related offence.

I must admit, I thought this was common knowledge. I have heard umpteen reports of similar incidents and bullying tactics. Not just for drugs either; other black market products are watched, and purchasers are easy targets for the Balinese police. In their eyes, it is not the local dealers and peddlers that are the problem, it is the foreign tourists looking to score. Demand leads to supply, not the other way around in their corrupt world.

Money and greed drives them. Justice went out the door there years ago.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

More on Corby's Legal Backup

Ron Bakir's expert legal team have left for Bali.

Criminal lawyer Robin Tampoe, who accompanied Mr Bakir, said there were serious anomalies in statements made about Corby's travel movements before she arrived in Bali.

"Some of the key evidence relates to what happened prior to her arriving in Indonesia," he told the Gold Coast Bulletin newspaper before he left for Bali.

"At the moment, because of a ridiculous lack of co-operation from the Australian government, we haven't had those questions answered."

Schapelle Is Finally Thrown a Lifeline

Ron Bakir, Australia's infamous Mad Ron (nee Crazy Ron, sued by Crazy John's for trademark infringement not overly long ago) has offered an "open chequebook" to Schapelle Corby, sending three lawyers to Bali to ensure she gets a fair trial, something that didn't seem likely until now.

A spokeswoman for Bakir has said:
"He just thinks it's an outrageous situation. He just can't believe that there is somebody sitting in a jail over there that nobody from the Australian Government is willing to assist."
I cannot praise this incredibly generous man and his actions enough right now. Thank you Ron Bakir. Let's hope, now, Schapelle can see light at the end of this dark tunnel.

Thunderbird is Editor's Choice at ZDNet Australia

The respected RMIT IT Test Labs have conducted a review of nine email clients currently available, including Microsoft's Outlook, and their results have led ZDNet Australia to give Mozilla Thunderbird their Editor's Choice stamp of approval.

Another excellent Mozilla product on the rise. Watch out, also, for Sunbird, Mozilla's calendar offering, currently at version 0.2, and Minimo -- Firefox for Pocket PC -- to start turning heads soon too.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

More Google Domain Suggestions

Following on from my own theories about Google's intentions with their newly acquired Domain Registrar status, I found this interesting article today, that outlines another ten possibilities.

Google should borrow from Australian TV's Channel Nine... "Google - the One to Watch."

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Office of the UN High Commisioner for Human Rights

Answering my own question re whether Indonesia is part of the UN: YES. Therefore, Schapelle's trial comes under their jurisdiction, and she can apply there for more help. I gather it must be proven that a treaty (an agreement) between the UN and the country in question is being broken... but surely the glaring oversights in Schapelle's case and the shocking neglect of her basic right to defend herself must be relevant!

So -- documents and links to various Human Rights commitees are presented on the Contact page of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

There are guidelines for complaints, sample forms, and other relevant pieces of information here, much to go through, make sure you also visit the page for Indonesia on the site, but I will be researching these over the next week & urge anyone else concerned about Schapelle's plight to do the same.

Unfair - Packer's Case vs. Schapelle's Case

A small amount of marijuana was also found, however police said they decided against pressing charges because the drug was improperly handled by the investigating officers.
Packer is let off, but Schapelle is fighting for her life??

Obviously the quantity found is different, however the "treatment" by the officers -- both customs and police -- is the same. In both cases, officials were appalling lax in their approach, and in following set procedures. What's more, in Schapelle's case, the the bag of marijuana had already been opened.

I wonder if she has a sufficient case to take to the United Nations, for an unfair trial?

Recently, the European Court of Human Rights declared that the case of two British civilian campaigners versus McDonalds had been in breach of the right to a fair trial and right to freedom of expression, for various reasons, including that they were not allowed adequate representation.

Can Schapelle take the same route? Is Indonesia part of the UN?

PDA Addiction

It's James Kendrick talking here, but it could be me...
"I carry my Pocket PC everywhere. I mean, everywhere. It is always with me as I am what you might call a heavy user. There, I've said it. I am addicted to my Pocket PC. The only place you will see me without it is in a swimming pool. It will be with me AT the swimming pool but I draw the line at taking it IN the pool with me. I may be addicted to it but I'm not crazy."

Friday, February 18, 2005

Where is the Australian Government??

I cannot believe the situation with Schapelle Corby, still fighting for her life in Bali, having received NO HELP from the Australian Government. It has gone from terrible to horrific, with everything looking blacker and blacker.

What on earth is going on over there?? And why has Howard not helped at all yet? It just doesn't make sense.
"I really can't understand why the Australian Government is not doing more," said her uncle from Denpasar. "If a politician's daughter had been arrested in similar circumstances, much more would have been done."
So true.

The Indonesian Government want a scapegoat, want someone to blame, want to look tough. But to take the life of an obviously innocent girl for that? It's like a mediaval witch-hunt, except their "witch" is no witch at all.

More articles from the last week:

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/...storyid=2681023

http://www.abc.net.au/...s1305239.htm

http://www.news.com.au/...html

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/...0.html

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/...0.html

http://www.theage.com.au/...1108609339021.html

http://www.abc.net.au/...s1301191.htm

Someone needs to organise a rally to the Aus. Government. Storm Parliament House, demand action.

And Australians should stop visiting Bali. It's an evil, corrupt country, run by a crooked government and archaic laws.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Microsoft Announce IE 7

Well, it's official. At the RSA Security Conference happening in San Francisco at the moment, Bill Gates has announced a new version of Internet Explorer 7 will be released.

By that, it can be reasonably inferred, he means by itself, and before Longhorn ships, as has been the expected plan until now. Of course, with Longhorn not due for another who-knows-how-many years, it was in Microsoft's best interests to get cracking, as Firefox usage is still rapidly gaining favour, and stealing back the net users MS deviously sought from Netscape a-way back.

According to Reuters, testing of IE 7 will happen over summer in the US, which makes me believe they have, in fact, been working on this one for some time.

The important questions now, of course, is just how long it will take them to actually ship it out the door, and whether it will merely be a patched up IE 6, full of the same security holes, or a completely new version, from ground up.

And so the browser wars heat up. Watch this space for more.

CSIRO's Firefox Plugin for Video Search

Australia's CSIRO has built a video search tool that betters Google's current beta attempt in that it actually searches through videos, as opposed to just searching a program's closed captioning text (aka subtitles) as Google does.

Annodex(tm), as the team at CSIRO have named their tool, provides a searcher with a detailed summary of the video content, an interactive list of video clips, and hyperlinks to additional material. Good stuff, by the sounds of it.

Unfortunately the official CSIRO website for their new tool is not working right this second, but keep watching it at www.annodex.net for more Annodex info, and look out for the Firefox plugin at the Mozilla Update site, which seems to be back in action now after a couple of month's hiatus.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Browser Wars, Browser Sores

Clickz has drawn up some pretty graphs of Firefox's upward climb over the past year, and a graphical summary of Browser Trends for the last four years.

Interestingly, the latter gives Mozilla approximately 18% for the first quarter of 2001. I was using Mozilla then, before switching to Phoenix just before it became Firefox, but I had no idea so many others were too. In retrospect though, like many other ex-Netscape users I was rather jaded. Browser stats was something I actively avoided back then, as seeing my beloved Netscape tumbling down from its regal throne was devasting, to say the least.

But now -- well. All hail the new king!!

IE Sucks

I happened to look at this page in IE the other day, and discovered (with not a heckuva lot of surprise) that IE is making a right royal mess of it.

When it comes to CSS Positioning, IE just doesn't get it, never has. It is full of bugs, obviously a result of Microsoft's programmers not understanding "Standards"... or, possibly more accurately, not giving a toss.

Part of me wants to say: "Ha Ha!" and not do a thing, small personal revenge on MS for ousting Netscape in such a nasty, sly way, however many (most?) users simply don't care as much about this sort of thing as others, and just want to see the content. So for you guys'n'gals, at some point in the future, when I can be arsed, I'll fix this. ;-)

Then again, I may just switch blogging tools. I'm getting annoyed more and more frequently these days with Blogger's inadequacies, lack of categories being a big one. I would like to know when I last did a site review (um, ages ago) and see just how lopsided my scales actually are now, with Firefox rants on one side far outweighing everything else on the other. Heh.

I'm thinking about giving WordPress another go, a serious go this time, but I guess that'd mean moving from this address. Hmm. Kinda like not having this on my site, empty as that site is anyway! Also feel very drawn to the idea of building my own, but I don't have a heap of time up my sleeve at the moment. Or ever.

Dunno. Don't care quite enough yet. We'll see.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

New Schapelle Section

Due to the overwhelming number of hits I'm getting from people looking for info on Schapelle, I've added direct links at the side to anything I've written on her plight, and will update that whenever there's new stuff.

And there are a few new pieces I haven't mentioned yet, will do an update again shortly.

Thanks to everyone following the case. Get on Johnny Howard's back about it -- he's recently asked for leniency for an [Asian/] Australian smack dealer in Singapore who's facing execution, yet did not even bother to visit Schapelle while in Indonesia recently touring Aceh.

Shocking, Howard. Get off your arse, use those "ties" we have with this disgustingly corrupt country to help poor Schapelle. I beg you.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Google Domains

Mega-web-giant Google expands its business further still, now moving into the almost-impossible-to-make-a-profit area of domain names. As suggested by this article, it wouldn't surprise me if they planned on combining this with one or more of their other popular services, such as this here blogging thang.

Also interesting will be the development of their domain rego interface. Google have a tradition of producing exceptionally simple and user-friendly front-ends to each of their many products. To that end, there ain't a whole lotta scope for great change in the traditional domain selling process -- you search, you select, you enter your details, you wait -- but as we don't know yet how they're planning to package and market their latest offering, it will be interesting to see what they do with their UI.
"Thank you, sir. And would you like a blog with that?"
One thing I hear domain resellers and customers alike complaining about more and more these days is the up-selling of "related" products during the domain rego process: hosting, email services, secure listings. Add to this, "Standard Google listings for only $10, Froogle $20" and "Get your own blog for only $5 a month more!", to name but a few possibilities, and the level of confusion already felt by the not so net-savvy may well turn into a highly tangled spaghetti of web-sites-as-blogs-as-web-sites.

In fact, there seems to be rather a lot of that about already. During each of my many PDA software and tips hunting jaunts lately, I have come across a number of companies using blogs as the basis for their entire site.

Now, whilst I can understand (if I have to) the financial benefits and, perhaps, the time-saving advantages in using an "out-of-the-box" product, (not that blogs would normally fall into this category where business is concerned anyway) I absolutely cringe at the sight of "Company News" pages with just three entries, one for each year of existence, alongside a "Previous Entries" list containing "About Us", "Our Products" and "Contact Us". Pass me that bucket, please.

Another problem that arises from non-developers building web sites with blogs, is that all links open in new windows. I loathe this. Fair enough if the link in question leads to an external site (in fact there's good reason to incorporate such functionality), however, when even the "Contact Us" link leads to a templated page exactly the same as the one you came from but in a brand-spanking, unrequested new window -- it's horrificly un-user-friendly in the extreme. Case in point: the big blog company. Ok, so blogging is their biz. But this link thing... almost every single one on the page... it's ugly, and it gets uglier in many more windows if you look around. Avoid both that site and that practice at all costs, dear friends. I beg you.

Firefox can help here. (But where can't it, when we are talking web!) Add the following lines to your usercontent.css file (found in your Firefox Profile directory, see the FF Help pages for more on that) and when you mouse over links your cursor will change to a cross-hair for external ones, and a "move" cursor for javascript ones:
/* Change cursor for links that open in new window */
:link[target="_blank"], :visited[target="_blank"], :link[target="_new"], :visited[target="_new"] {
cursor: crosshair;
}

/* Change cursor for JavaScript links */
a[href^="javascript:"] {
cursor: move;
}
Firefox rocks, incidentally. (In case you hadn't heard.) ;-)

Get Firefox