Women have long sought equal pay for equal work. Which is fair. But actually the work can fall well short of equal.

My experience with female executives has been a consistent trend of working shorter hours than their male counterparts and rushing off home to be mum while their subordinates are left to do the hard graft, meet the tight deadline and make them look good. During the day, too, plenty of family crises involving leaving early, taking an extra hour at lunchtime or every other call being a personal one of an afternoon. And the impact of the boss not giving 110% (or maybe even 80) can be profound. Because it’s just ‘the way things are’ you might not notice that much. But consider the male executive who, say, has an affair. And everyone in the office knows his mind isn’t properly on his work, and is directly impacted by that. Well that level of performance degradation can be the norm for a female exec struggling to balance work and home life.

For men, it’s the elephant in the room, but for women, such observations are often seen as sexist. Well positive discrimination is still discrimination – in this case against men. While seldom stated so categorically, this reality isn’t lost on the business world, which tends not to pay the eighty percenters as much.

On the tennis court, women now get equal prize money to the men. But they play a maximum of 3 sets instead of 5! Do women run half marathons instead of full ones? No. There’s no earthly reason I can see that a professional female player couldn’t manage a 5-setter if they needed to. In fact, to assume they can’t seems insulting – a relic attitude of the Victorian era.

Grand slam champions of different eras: Suzanne Lenglen won Wimbledon 5 times from 1919-25, but lets face it wouldn’t get a look-in against Serena Williams

The conclusion of the Australian Open last weekend nicely illustrates the disparity for the spectator. The results were greatly affected by the amount of court time each player had had. In the men’s draw, Roger Federer got to the final by beating Tsonga, who’d just got through two 5-setters back-to-back, while Andy Murray had fended off Cilic in a 4-setter. (Federer had narrowly averted a 5-setter in the quarter finals against Davydenko.) These epic battles colour the men’s game and lend significance to the final victory. Be honest – how many unforgettable women’s finals have there been?

In the women’s draw, both Serena Williams and Justine Henin picked up places in the final from 2-set matches. Williams had played one 3-setter in the 6 previous rounds and Henin 2. Their other matches were all just two sets. Williams struggles in long matches. Under men’s singles scoring, as she and Henin had one set apiece, the third set wouldn’t have been enough to get her the silverware and things would have started getting interesting.

In total, Williams played 15 sets during the tournament and Henin 16. Federer and Murray each played 22. So the girls played just 70% as many sets as the boys. Yet Williams and Federer each walk away with $2.1m. Doesn’t sound very fair to me.

*ducks for cover*

Image, right: AP

Dear Brain-dead Network Ten executives,

When a valued [hah!] viewer decides to watch episode one of a new series, lets say Stargate: Universe, they generally look it up in the latest TV guide. This means it’s a really bad idea to change the schedule at the last minute. If you do, they’ll probably miss the first hour and are likely to give up on the series altogether.

If, thanks to a helpful website, they’ve established that you don’t understand that basic concept and have indeed changed the screening times, they’re probably going to want to persevere to the second ep. So obviously you’re not going to screw around with your viewing public two weeks in a row, right?! Without – again – giving the printed guides enough notice to publish the correct times?

I mean, even the most diligent viewer would then face the possibility that the helpful website’s RSS feed would go squiffy and they wouldn’t find out about the last minute change until it was too late. So they’d miss the second ep and be really pissed off.

What would be the point of that? What could be the mega-urgent reason for changing round SGU and Supernatural? Something you didn’t know about five days before, and couldn’t wait another week? Oh, but of course: it just makes you feel like a proper TV executive! “Right, look, we need to change these round right away? Got it?!”

Well, when the ratings for your expensive new fresh-from-pay-TV series come back as ‘disappointing’ it will have nothing to do with the quality of the show. And virtually nothing to do with whether it was on at 8.30 or 9.30 pm. It will be because you fuckwits have made it unwatchable!

So make your next executive decision the only good one possible: sack yourselves.

Yours sincerely,

Irate Ex-viewer

Update: SGU pulled after just 3 eps! That’s even worse than Channel 9’s treatment of Fringe fans, who were furious when it was pulled after just a few weeks. (They eventually brought it back, messed around with the episode order, then pulled it again!)

Surprise, surprise, SGU rated poorly on Monday with just 487,000 viewers. Yeah, Ten execs, you succeeded in driving away your audience!

This shows just how crap a concept the Australian ‘non-ratings season’ is. Officially, the networks don’t poll ratings over the summer. But in reality they obviously watch them like a hawk – they just don’t let the advertisers in on the results! On Boxing Day 2003, Ten got a shock from viewing figures of 2.4m for World Idol – as the SMH succinctly put it “viewers don't disappear in summer; they wait for a program they can give a damn about.”

So advertisers get treated as badly by the commercial networks as the viewers. Free market not really working out for us in TV Land, I think it’s safe to say!

Well, in the words of John Safran, I’ve been thinkin’!

John Safran’s Race Relations uncovers some lurking racism

There was certainly racism in the already controversial second ep of John Safran’s Race Relations, but it didn’t emanate from white-turned-black Safran.

Discrimination engenders discrimination by those discriminated against. (You might need a moment to get your head round that sentence – I know I did! ) The Jews in Israel, for instance, were badly discriminated against, and now go out of their way to persecute the Palestinians. So it is with racism. An era of whites-only cliques in the US has given way to blacks-only cliques. The word ‘nigger’ was once used by whites in order to offend blacks, but is now used extensively by blacks but considered offensive if spoken by a white. That is racism! It’s just reverse racism.

We are one race – the human race – and we should all be able to speak the same words.

The term ‘black brother’ is another divisive term. As ‘mate’ traditionally refers to a white Australian male the white speaker could imagine being close to, ‘black brother’ of course is the same dodgy tribalism with a different skin colour. Shortened to ‘brother’ or ‘bro’, it can sometimes mean someone non-black, but the predominant (non-sibling) usage is coloured by racism.

‘Mate’ carries some historical baggage – which generations of Australians have never even considered – but is used by many young Australians without bias. Hungry Beast did an interesting piece last week about us now being ‘post race’. (Look out for the clever ending.) Although playing for laughs, they were making a serious point about subtleties of context. In short they were saying that something is offensive if it offends! They played around with the idea of white people using words like ‘nigger’ and ‘wog’ and it being fine sometimes. Trouble is (and this wasn’t mentioned in the clip) it’s only fine if it offends nobody at all. Not the black guy, not the white guy, and not the other guy who happens to be getting a refill at the water cooler.

I was chatting with a (drunk) bar owner in Wangaratta recently, and he called himself ‘wog’ over and over with relish. I didn’t like it. It offended me. It said to me “I don’t feel I’m like you” and that doesn’t fit with my view of a single human race. So the best thing is to just let all the pejorative words fall out of use. That’s true post race.

Image: ABC

Yes, well despite their obvious journalistic inexperience, *chortle* The Sydney Morning Herald and journo and 350.org founder Bill McKibben have had their words put alongside mine in a post at Peak Energy. (You could almost call this a trend, ausculture having so recently been picked up by TV Tonight. Then again, I might post nothing more than lame 7 News screen-grabs for the next 6 months!)

Gav at Peak Energy does a great job of pulling together interesting pieces from all over the web, including science and technology sites and those focussed on energy sustainability for the future. The site’s name is based around the concept of ‘peak oil’ – the point at which oil production goes into decline, which has apparently already been reached in the US, the third largest oil producer. Unfortunately, there are still vast amounts of coal underground. And because Australia doesn’t value add enough, we’re as touchy as a developing world country about the idea of leaving ours there.

Lighting the way to 350 ppm – lantern-holders at Clovelly, just south of Sydney

The arguments from the ‘deniosaurs’ are inane and spurious – a crock. The likes of Andrew Bolt spew them out endlessly, and many Australians seize on them triumphantly, comforting themselves like a five-year-old who’s been told their dead bunny is going to pet heaven. If the consequences of inaction weren’t so serious, it’d be almost funny. Like those who say 350 ppm CO2 represents 0.000035% and is inconsequential. This is both out by several decimal places and just plain ridiculous. Plant and animal life on this planet actually depends on a moderate greenhouse effect, and this is extremely well understood to be caused by the water vapour, CO2, methane and other gasses in the atmosphere. Without a natural greenhouse effect, the world would be about 33°C colder – a very large snowball!

Bolt shoots his bolt

In May this year, Andrew Bolt posted a rant entitled ‘World still cooling’ on his News Ltd blog. Now if you’ve read my article on fluctuations in solar output, you’ll know there are many factors that affect Earth’s median temperature – like varying solar output – and even if that claim were true it would be merely a restbite. But what was interesting – well, horrifying – was the way he totally misrepresented the scientific data.

The Alfred Wegener Institute had posted a press release on a recent data-gathering flight over the arctic. This was not an announcement of results, as can easily be told by the title – ‘Research aircraft Polar 5 finishes Arctic expedition – Unique measurement flights in the central Arctic completed’. It made a passing reference to ice measurements: “Multiple flights northwards from various stations showed an ice thickness between 2.5 (two years old ice in the vicinity of the North Pole) and 4 metres (perennial ice in Canadian offshore regions).” Somehow, the Canada Free Press managed to morph this into ‘North Pole Sea Ice twice as thick as expected’, which wasn’t what they were saying at all. In fact, the 2.5m at the north pole was only just thick enough to land on. Bolt had seized on a headline that supported his bizarre viewpoint that the icecaps are in great shape and run with it without checking back to the source document. That’s bad journalism. It’s appalling journalism.

Six weeks later, the Institute released a second press release – ‘New record Arctic sea ice cover minimum? Climate researchers from Bremerhaven and Hamburg present new prognoses.’ Quote: “We have computed in this year’s first prognosis that the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean will lie at the end of the summer with at least 28 % probability under that of 2007 – the year with the lowest-ever measured ice extension.” Something tells me you will never hear mention of that in any Bolt blog or column. Buyer beware!

Image: solness.com.au for 350.org

Well globally Blog Action Day 2009 was a big success. There were 27,000 posts from 155 countries, including one from UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and another from The White House. And Kevin Rudd, the man who wants to jet around the planet (leaving a massive carbon footprint) ‘taking a lead on climate change’? Nada.

What then of the major Aussie news sites that run such vital stories as ‘Whole turtle found inside groper’ and ‘Grab a slice of the Big Pineapple’? Zilch.

But at least the vibrant aussosphere is showing the world how much we care about the issue of climate change? Um, not really. Just 301 of the 13,200 sites that registered at www.blogactionday.org are Australian.

In fact, few Australians seem to have even heard of the annual Blog Action Day, which was started in 2007 in Sydney!

Environmentally, we arguably have the most to be embarrassed about of any country in the world, having the highest annual release of CO2 per capita, even above that of the US. 25 tonnes per year. It ought to be 2.

We also have more to lose than most other countries, our precious rainfall being governed by some very fragile, temperature-dependent oceanic systems.

Not only will inaction now cost more financially in the future, there will be a high price in human lives, too. We need to stop faffing about and get with the programme. If we resign ourselves to being a nation of Steve Fieldings we consign ourselves to a future living hell.

They can be a pretty vindictive lot over at Sunrise, Seven’s breakfast offering. If the weather girl has a nice, relaxing time in Hawaii for a week the price down the line is bound to be a high one – her life, perhaps. Today, they decided it would be highly amusing to position Fifi Box’s head in the vicinity of a stunt bike landing after doing a loop-the-loop. (No crash helmet, naturally. Well, those things are pricey, you know.) Looks like it got even closer than they were expecting – just half a wheel-length. “Ooh – sugar!” exclaimed Mel, as she watched the live coverage with the nation, “That was a little close!” It sure was.

The BBC once tried a show segment where members of the public were trained to do dangerous stunts. After several accidents, it was eventually axed after a bungee rope failed and a contestant fell 36 metres to his death. The stunt hadn’t been staged safely, and massive pressure had been brought to bear on him to go through with it – a combination I’ve always found deeply disturbing.

Fifi Box today found herself in a similar situation. When she signed up for the job of Sunrise weather presenter she didn’t agree to risk her life. And when, under pressure – Box’s slot formerly contained Denyer's Dare* – she agreed to participate in today’s stunt, she assumed it would be safe. Hmmm.

Desperate for ratings, Seven has been pushing the envelope recently. Blind Gerrard Gosens dropped his dance partner on her head recently on Dancing With The Stars. In fact, it was a kind of flipping back movement, so there were a lot more forces at work than just gravity – itself enough to do permanent damage. Not much was made of it – perhaps the result of a nation trying not to seem ‘blindist’. Had partner Jessica Raffa become a paraplegic, though, there’d have been an outcry.

Seems like it’ll take something like that – or a fatality – for Seven to rein itself in.

* I could possibly have worded that differently!

Update: Here’s a YouTube clip of the hairy stunt.

ETA: As picked up on at TV Tonight, Mel says ‘sugar’, not ‘shit’ - amended.

Images: Network Seven

At the risk of having the site renamed Yankculture, I’m going to take the ball from the last post and run with it. As one of the two countries that was roped into the second war in Iraq on false pretences, increasing the risk of terrorist attacks on our own soil, what happened in New York on the 11th of September 2001 is of great significance to us.

Conspiracy theorists have a nasty habit of undermining conspiracies. There’s often a total lack of objectivity, and a desire to ‘believe’. Four Corners’ screening of the BBC doco was significant because the ABC series is a current affairs heavyweight, and the screening seemed to strongly imply there was a case to answer.

The veracity of the footage of Tower Seven collapsing neatly in 6.5 seconds is not in question. And it seems blatantly obvious that no steel-reinforced tower block could fall in this way due to fire (let alone one that utilised fire-protected steel girders), and, indeed, none ever had.

It appears to be a controlled detonation, one so carefully prepared that the roofline remained perfectly level as WTC 7 went down. And the only time such an event could be expected not to raise suspicion would be in the aftermath of a much bigger incident – in other words, if Government agents were responsible for it being wired that demonstrates they had prior knowledge of the attacks on the Twin Towers.

The perfectly vertical collapse of the 110-storey Twin Towers (WTC 1 & 2) seemed odd even at the time. Given that the planes impacted, and the resulting fires happened in, the upper third of each tower, how could the massive steel supporting structure completely fail – simultaneously – over the entire height of the buildings? You would expect to see at least the lower two-thirds of the central supports still partially standing.

A hundred and ten storeys is incredibly tall. Such a building requires great strength, and in the case of the Twin Towers most of this strength was in the central columns. Even an intense fire in the upper storeys wouldn’t negate the strength of the central columns lower down.

Again, what we saw looked like a controlled demolition. And carefully timed detonations on the central columns, upper to lower floors in succession, would explain the collapse, which neatly raised the buildings to the ground in seconds.

I’m mindful of the human cost of that day. It’s not an event that should be exploited for trivial conjecture. But the ramifications should claims of Federal wrongdoing be accurate really make Watergate seem like a parking violation. And the Bush Administration is still in office...

Today marks the seven year anniversary of the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. “9/11”, as it soon became known, has since been used to justify war, heavy-handed foreign policy and an attack on US civil liberty. In fact, according to a source on documentary Bush’s War, Donald Rumsfeld put war in Iraq on the table the very same day. (Rumsfeld was formally part of the Nixon administration, and praised by Nixon as being “a ruthless little bastard”.)

Conspiracy theories have abounded since, with reportedly over a million web pages devoted to the subject. But for many, it’s simply inconceivable that US Government personnel could have had a hand in the events of that day.

However, there is clear evidence that, 60 years earlier, the US Government not only had advance warning of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but had been goading the Japanese into carrying out an attack. It resulted in over 2,300 military and civilian fatalities.

Conspiracy theories can be pretty out there – far fetched and lacking in evidence. But when you see, say, video clips of a 47-storey office building, not hit by a plane, collapse neatly in 6.5 seconds, it’s time to sit up and pay attention. This is the case with Tower Seven of the WTC. And you can view the footage in this three minute trailer for the BBC doco the ABC’s Four Corners screened on Monday.

It reveals that thermite could have been used to simultaneously cut through Tower Seven’s steel supporting pillars, without leaving easily detectable explosive traces. And it’s certainly hard to see how anything other than a controlled explosion could have caused what’s seen in the footage. The images here both show the building mid-collapse – a textbook demolition.

Of course, if Tower Seven was wired for take-down, this raises the very strong possibility that key figures in the US Government knew of and at least partially orchestrated the events of 9/11 well ahead of time. Three thousand civilian fatalities. It’s a chilling thought.

We have a close affinity with the United States. We’re both former colonies of Great Britain – vast, unexplored lands far from what was once home, rising to great challenges. But the US became insular, and more so following 9/11. We can learn from their mistakes.

Images: BBC

Hey, did anybody check out the list of the best 100 Australian web 2.0 apps?

Interesting to see Gnoos on there. I’m surprised the site was up long enough for Ross to rate it. Also, I’m not going to name names but some of the other sites on the list have already closed down. Go click through and have a look at some… be mindful of the ones that probably wouldn’t call themselves Australian unless you were buying a round.

Anyway… I think that’s a sufficient dose of abrasiveness for the moment. After all, the many people who put hours of hard work into ausculture.com every day are undoubtedly just insanely jealous.

Still, I was looking at the list and noticed a few other sites that had simpy whacked a crappy theme on top of Pligg. I say “other sites” because that’s exactly what ausculture.com did. As I was looking at these sites though, I noticed that 95% of the links were straight into the websites for major Australian newspapers. Honestly, I think that is kinda missing the point. Part of the reason people liked Digg in the first place was in the charm of sending truckloads of users to small and obscure sites to look at really interesting content. That the Digg effect usually brought those sames sites to their knees was part of the fun.

It’s not so much fun when your social news aggregator is just giving you an alternative top ten articles on the major online newspapers. Those sites already have most popular lists.

Of course, this causes me to ask the question “Is there any room for an Australia social news aggregator?” - particularly one that is aggregating more that four sources and concentrating on Australian content?

I’d have to say that so far, it’s looking like a no from where I’m sitting. Anyone have a different opinion?

Maybe there is, but that such a site would have to do more than reskin pligg (or reddit.) I notice, however, that perthnorg isn’t just a reskin and their traffic looks less-than-stellar.

Possibly related stuff elsewhere

• Nielsen: Digg Traffic Sucks. Mashable: That’s What She Said
• The 30 Top Social Bookmarking Web Sites on ebizma.com.

A young P-plater hits a man on a pedestrian crossing and drives off. He justifies his actions by telling himself that the man shouldn’t have suddenly stepped out, and that he barely clipped him. However, the man is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Years later, the driver, now a wealthy, middle-aged man, motivated by a nagging guilt that won’t go away, tracks down the man he disabled and says “Sorry about what I did to you all those years ago, but I’m not giving you a cent of compensation.”

This morning, Kevin Rudd, on behalf of the Federal Government of Australia, finally delivers the long-awaited apology to the Stolen Generations. But he’s already stated that there are no plans for compensation. And it gets worse...

This quote, from the Cathy Freeman episode of ancestry program Who Do You Think You Are? on SBS, paints a picture of life for indigenous Australians in 1918:

“Under The Act [of 1897], all Aboriginal wages, including military pay, was controlled by the Protector of Aborigines, who, at his discretion, would then pass it on to those who had worked for it. The reasoning was that Aborigines couldn't be trusted to spend their own money wisely.”

Fast-forward 90 years and the current Intervention sees compulsory ‘quarantining’ of welfare payments, a Government officer with powers to seize Aboriginal community assets at his sole discretion and plans to seize land. The reasoning is much the same, and the application as indiscriminate and heavy-handed as ever.

Emotive arguments were used to justify the Intervention, Howard suddenly announcing that it was a national emergency shortly before the Federal election in 2007 – this despite the NT’s Little Children Are Sacred report following four similar major State Government reports dating back to 2002. An in-depth report by the ABC’s Four Corners in November 2007 stated that not a single arrest had been made during the Intervention’s first four months for child sexual abuse. Which is not to say the problem doesn’t exist, but nor is it confined to Indigenous Australians. And I haven’t heard of any plans to strip assets, remove employment opportunities and ban alcohol and porn in any of our Capital Cities.

Today’s apology states “...the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.” But the injustices continue.

Richard Branson, the entrepreneur with the Midas touch, was once asked how he decided what sector the Virgin brand should take on in a new country. That’s easy, he said, we just look at the names on the tallest buildings – they’re the companies making the biggest profits.

Polluting the Melbourne skyline: Telstra and the Big Banks

No surprise, then, that the Melbourne skyline is dotted with the logos that make us see red.

Commonwealth Bank

The yellow diamond with the cancerous black wedge in the corner represents the Commonwealth Bank (or the Collectingwealth Bank, according to one eye-catching satirical bumper sticker, with the tag line “A guaranteed fee with every transaction”!) If you open one of their Streamline current accounts, you’re likely to be stung with a $4 fee every month – or $6 if you want the luxury of speaking to a real person on the phone without incurring a separate charge. But those generous folks at ConBank, er, I mean CommBank will waive that fee if you have $50,000 or more in their accounts. If you have less than that with them, do not fear, you’ll at least earn a massive 0.01% interest on the account balance! (At that rate, it would take a balance of $480,000 to recoup the year’s bank fees!)

The Commonwealth raked in a bumper $4.4 billion profit last year, up 14% on the previous year. They own Colonial First State, making them Melbourne CBD’s biggest landlord[1].

ANZ, NAB & Westpac

NAB does make a $4 a month charge for its eBanking account, but at least includes phone assistance, debit card transactions, etc. ANZ and Westpac both offer internet banking accounts with no monthly fee, the Westpac eSaver offering a generous 5.25% (or above) on balances from $5,000. It therefore wins the prestigious Ausculture Award for Rortless eBanking, 2008! (The award is a rare green and yellow striped paperclip – I’m sure they’ll be stoked!)

Profits for ANZ last year of $4 bn (up by 6%) were considered disappointing. NAB, however recorded a record $4.2 bn, up over 17%. And the last of the four big banks, the award-winning Westpac (which escaped the above ‘identity parade’) made $3.4 bn (up 12%), perhaps demonstrating that doing the right thing needn’t impact on profitability.

Telstra

It’s hard to know where to start on the litany of Telstra travesties. The Chaser found it was cheaper to call a random person in the US for the number of a business here than to use Telstra’s Directory Assistance! Their voice ‘recognition’ systems continue to drive customers up the wall. Mobile GPRS data charges, and now those for Next G data, defy belief.

‘Telstra.com’, it says in giant, illuminated letters atop their head office, emblazoned as if to advertise what a wonderful ambassador they are for the internet revolution. Far from it. Sign up for a standard home broadband plan and you’re in for some nasty surprises. On their $29.95 a month plan, you get a 200 MB data allowance per month. Their own literature notes that Windows security updates from Microsoft can be over 150 MB, but they have a simple solution – just “...turn this feature off”! (Good job this isn’t America, or hacked and hacked off users might be lining up to sue Telstra over that one!) ADSL plans range from $29.95 to $159.95 per month, but with each you get just one inclusive mailbox, limited to 20 MB.

Telstra’s profit last year was a ‘low’ $3.3 billion (up by around 5%), although this didn’t stop CEO Sol Trujillo getting a 30% pay rise to nearly $12m per year. Life on the bottom rung isn’t so rosy, as can be gleaned from a comment by Telstra Chief Operations Officer Greg Winn last year:

“We run an absolute dictatorship and that’s what’s going to drive this transformation and deliver results… If you can’t get the people to go there and you try once and you try twice… then you just shoot ’em and get them out of the way…”

The Big Rort

Greg Winn’s telling comment reveals a ‘psychotic’ culture shared by many corporate giants – there is only one thing that matters, and that’s the bottom line. The customer doesn’t matter; the employee is just a drain on earnings who should be either replaced by an automated system or controlled as if he or she was one; the wider social picture and the environment are entirely irrelevant.

This approach is morally reprehensible and ultimately counter-productive for the company.

The more enlightened big business will talk about the triple bottom line: financial success, social responsibility and environmental sustainability. The customer should want to trade with it because s/he’s impressed by what it stands for. The employee should want to work for it because s/he feels valued (is valued). Society at large should embrace its philosophy because it’s helping society move forward. And the environment should be a little less impacted by it every passing year.

So why should this utopian vision actually become a reality? Because of you. We vote with our wallets all the time; all we need do is shun the morally dysfunctional companies until they change.

There’s a reason why, for instance, so many of our neighbouring countries enjoy 100 Mbps urban broadband for $30-40 a month while we barely manage 1% of that, and it’s not just political. Something in our collective psyche makes us resigned to the corporate rort.

Grounding the Bad Teen

Corporations – even multi-nationals – are like society’s kids. They will try it on; find out what the boundaries are. That’s what Network Ten did with the subliminal advertising. It’s what Microsoft did with their OS’s built-in web browser. And it’s what many of the companies making up our city skylines do all the time.

So it’s time to say ‘enough is enough’. And if you feel trying to ‘ground’ Telstra would be like a scene from Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, just remember: there are over twenty million of us...

[1] according to The Age, 18/12/04
Figures are approximate and information not authoritative