Category Archives: Celebrity

Jul 26 2012

The one about Kim Dotcom


Kim Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz is a colourful larger than life character. He even lives local to me. But he is a rogue, and has done knowing and wilful things.

Putting aside the rights and wrongs of his arrest and the actions or inactions of the NZ Police / FBI et al which is a whole other story, there is the nagging thing about Megaupload that to me sticks out as knowing and wilful.

He’s even constructed a website www.kim.com, and is has a handy FAQ page http://kim.com/scandal

On on that page you can find an indication of one of the cornerstones of the case against him. Contained in Questions/Answers/Facts #2 and #6

 2. How did Megaupload use technology to maximise Storage Efficiency?

Megaupload, similar to other large cloud storage providers that rely on efficient data storage like Dropbox, was designed to store a single useable copy of each unique file uploaded to its servers. If multiple users uploaded identical files, Megaupload would retain one instance of the file, and generate a unique link for each individual user, called a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”). One user might choose to keep his unique link private; another user might wish to share his link with others via email or by embedding it in a webpage such as a blog post.

So, if two people uploaded the same file Megaupload would keep only one version of the file but generate two unique url links to that file, one for each user. If 10, 100 or 1000 people uploaded the same file there would be one instance of the file stored and 10, 100 or 1000 unique URL links to it.

6. Did Megaupload honor takedown notices?

Megaupload processed takedown notices swiftly and efficiently. Megaupload went beyond the ordinary and used technology to speed up the take down process. For example trusted parties including major Hollywood entities received access to an innovative real-time direct takedown web tool.

Megaupload negotiated with major copyright holders or their agents—including the Recording Industry Association of America, Disney, Warner Brothers, NBC, and Microsoft—to allow them access to take down directly, in an automated manner, an active link to material they believed infringed their copyrights. Megaupload was commended by Hollywood organizations for its take down processes.

So if the unique URL was being shared as a link to a copyright holder item then Megaupload allowed that URL link to be deleted, or taken down.

Not the file deleted, just the link to the file. So perhaps 10,100 or 1000 unique URL still remained pointing to that file.

There then seems to be a conflict between knowing what files are duplicates of other files, since clearly they boast that technology, but then to somehow with a straight face say well we’ve deleted the link therefore no infringement.

Reading the indictment documentation it seems apparent that various people at Megaupload were aware of the nature of the files being stored and were sharing them internally for use, and not removing the offending files, rather just the public links to them.  Sure not having a URL does not allow me to download a file that has copyright claim against it, but that there might have been 10, 100 or 1,000 unique URL’s available to that file kind of negates the holier-than-thou thing going on.

Good on Kim for engaging a public relations exercise, he’s setting himself up to be a people’s person, a mans man, a wronged individual.

Sadly I don’t buy it.  I have sympathy for his plight, and I’m not exactly engaged with the ethics of the arrest/seizure, but I am sure that there was knowing and there was wilful.

Related articles
Jul 6 2012

The facination of the media for Redemption


re·demp·tion:

  • An act of redeeming or the state of being redeemed.
  • Deliverance; rescue.
  • Theology. deliverance from sin; salvation.
  • Atonement for guilt.
  • Repurchase, as of something sold

One of the online media sites in New Zealand,  Stuff.co.nz, uses “redemption” at the drop of a hat.

A quick search returns About 2,590 results on their website which is a little on high side don’t ya think?

Redemption and Sport return 2,090 results !! which is a little on the high side don’t ya think ?

The other online site The New Zealand Herald returns only about 1,000 results. Redemption and sports gets a paltry 70 results.

So either the Journalists at Stuff are a Pious bunch who have some intimate knowledge of the religiosity of the people they are writing about,  or someone at these media outlets doesn’t think “Redemption” means what they think it means.

In the context that the media use it, mostly, it’s for sport. And what they don’t divulge is what it is that they are seeking or  receiving or asking redemption for?

A Redemption from what wrong or misdeed that they’ve done, aside from being an abject failure at their earlier attempt at something. They are mostly professional sportspeople, they’ve been paid, or are getting paid to do what they do. It’s not like they have to give the money back for their failure.

Are they seeking to apologise and show they are worthy of adulation and adoration, and the cash that they comes with it, and to prove that we should throw more money their way?

Worst cases are they don’t get paid as much next time, or they don’t get another opportunity. Either way it’s not a redemptive situation is it?

Sure as an individual it could be that they are trying to redeem their good name then, regain their cachet with their adoring public, from who they crave admiration, seek redress to the bad publicity that comes with some act or other on or off the sporting field. But that does not excuse the media for running over 2000 stories of redemption under any circumstance that I can think of.

If I’m wrong however I’ll seek redemption at the earliest opportunity

Related articles

13th July : Today the NZ Stuff website ran another story about redemption and sports 

 

Mar 30 2012

Murder Most Foul #3 in a series – David Wayne TAMIHERE- Murderer / Rapist / Robber


Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen

Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just after I arrived in NZ there was quite a sensational murder mystery that unfolded. The “Swedish Backpacker Murders” And the Starring role was taken by one David Wayne Tamihere. Today I was reading an “exclusive” article in Metro Magazine, adn so it’s time I got my thoughts together on this. For me.

David TAMIHERE was convicted of the 1972 Murder/Manslaughter  of Mary Barcham, 23 (stripper),  by Hitting her on the head with a rifle.

Also assaulted a 62 year old woman in her home in 1985.
Also has some other sexual assault and assault convictions on record,  including a conviction for assaulting another woman in her home in the 1980s

And so to the 1989 conviction of Murder of Sven Urban Höglin, 23, and his fiancée Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen, 21, both from, Sweden, travelling in NZ as  tourists. For which he was  sentenced to life imprisonment with a 10-year non-parole period in December 1990.

The body of Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen remains missing at this time.

Some of the background;

On 8 April 1989, backpacking tourists Höglin and Paakkonen from Storfors, Sweden went into the bush near Thames. They vanished and were reported missing in May.

The disappearance led to an intense police investigation under the name Operation Stockholm, and attracted substantial media interest. Police, local residents, search and rescue and military personnel carried out the largest land-based search undertaken in New Zealand, performing grid-searches centred on Crosbie’s Clearing, 12 km from Thames.

Tamihere, a fugitive for skipping bail for a 1986 rape, admitted stealing the Subaru car belonging to the couple. There was only one known key to the car that was found in the possession of David Tamihere, and he claims to have broken into the car with a bit of #8 wire and found the key in the glovebox.  It would seem that there are 3 “experts” who were unable to replicate the feat of getting into the car with the same method.

He was arrested, and tried for their murder starting in October 1990. At the trial three witnesses (fellow inmates of Tamihere’s, granted name suppression by the court) gave evidence that Tamihere had confessed the murder to them.

Two trampers also identified Tamihere as a man they saw with a woman believed to be Paakkonen in a remote clearing. The court also heard Tamihere tied Höglin to a tree and sexually abused him before raping Paakkonen.

Contention:

In October 1991, ten months after the conviction, pig hunters discovered the body of Höglin near Whangamata; Paakkonen’s body has never been found. Höglin’s body was recovered 73 km from where police alleged the murders took place.

With the body was a watch which police claimed at his trial Tamihere had given to his son following the murders. Discovery of the body also contradicted the testimony of a (Secret) prosecution witness who said Tamihere had confessed to cutting up the bodies and throwing them into the ocean.

I understand from reading an article in Metro Magazine  that in prison David Tamihere told various stories and variations on a theme to various people in an effort to cath outr anyone who “ratted on him”.

In the book Hard Cases, the theory Tamihere did not act alone is forwarded, on the basis that as there were no defensive cuts to the bones of his hands, Höglin may have been held from behind while being stabbed from the front.

Most bizarrely is this contention:

Documents obtained from the estate of a deceased Investigate reader have thrown new light on a 23 year old cold case – the disappearance of Swedish tourists Urban Hoglin and Heidi Paakkonen.

The couple disappeared in April 1989 on the Coromandel peninsula, and David Wayne Tamihere was arrested soon after on suspicion of their murders. The body of Urban Hoglin was subsequently found by pig-hunters at the foot of a bluff in the Coromandel ranges in 1991, but Heidi’s body has never been found.

For years it has been presumed Heidi Paakkonen is also buried somewhere in the Coromandel bush, but the documents passed to Investigate suggest that is not the case – she was last seen alive north of Auckland.

The story begins on Kawau Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf, and a Christian couple’s suspicions in the mid 1980s that a local criminal with drug and organised crime connections had constructed a house complete with a large underground facility. The couple, who’d accidentally discovered the facility while visiting the property on business, felt the complex could have been used to hold people against their will, and because of its remote position primary access to the outside world was via the sea and a private jetty.

Well yes of course, secret underground lair.  Having said that undoubtedly the Police did botch up parts of the case. But I would be very surprised if David Tamihere was not responsible for the killings or has other knowledge that for reasons unknown he hasn’t or will not share.

David Wayne TAMIHERE Released on parole on November 15, 2010, currently denies involvement in these murders. Current a cause célèbre with Metro Magazine and some other media outlets.

Mar 11 2012

Why George Best’s death is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.


“When I heard the terrible news that George Best had passed away I cried and cried and cried. I cried and cried more than I have ever cried in my whole life.

I cried and cried and cried because more than anyone else I have never met George Best represented something important. Important to me.

As a schoolboy huddled on the grainy, black and white football terraces of the past, his dazzling football skills opened my says to a Technicolor world that was limitless and free and beautiful.  A world that was limitless. A world that was free. And, yes, a world that was beautiful.

George Best was all those things and more. He was limitless. He was free. And, yes, he was beautiful. Before George the Saturday afternoon football match was a dismal, grey experience. Drab grey men would pass a lumpy grey leather ball to each other on a cold, churned up, muddy, grey bomb site whilst the crowd of  black and white, grey men in dull, flat, lumpy, grey caps smoked Woodbines, yawned and looked at their feet.

When George appeared on the scene it was like being struck by  lightning, sticking your fingers in a socket and being struck by some more lightning all rolled into one. It felt like seeing Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and Elvis Presley all rolled into one. Every time he touched the ball he literally defied the laws of gravity. I can still recall the trill of seeing him on the news yesterday doing things with a football that no-on else on earth would ever have attempted, let alone tried.

With every effortless kick, he taught us more about wisdom than ten Confuciusses. With every graceful swerve around a defender he taught us more about freedom than a hundred Mandellas. With every sublime header, he taught us more about artistry than a thousand Michelangelos. With every picturesque indirect free kick, he taught us more about beauty than a million Marilyn Monroes.

By any measure you care to choose George Best was the most perfect and flawless human being who ever lived.

And yet, he wasn’t perfect. Far from it. Like all of us he had his flaws”

… and so it goes on.  I found this in a comic book that I have. Viz, and it’s written under a byline of Tony Parsehole.

I found it humorous and I wonder if it’s a template for any near future obituaries that we’re about too see, and if it had been used as and previous ones.

I’m not big on forced faux grief. On forced empathy and sympathy, of forced and faux mourning, If you’re affected be affected, don’t try to get me to join in with that, it’s not going to happen.

Related articles
Jan 26 2012

Frowning week: Farms / Dotcom / Unions / Breakfast TV


I can’t get along with the media this week, or the bits of it that have caught my eye and attention, It might be the back to work blues, it might be that I’m sitting in an office and the sun and blue sky are outside being annoying. However these are the things that this week, in particular, made me frown, for either reason of Faux Outrage or otherwise.

  • Crafar Farms, a NZ$200 million bid to buy them by a Chinese Company that sees them lease them back to Landcorp. It’s not that big of a deal. The amount of land is paltry in comparison to similar overseas land investments in New Zealand sanctioned by both the Labour and National governments, past and present.
New Zealand 2007
Image by Szymon Stoma via Flickr

Dont get me wrong on this, Allowing the sale to any foreign entity based on “well they did it, we’re going to do it” isn’t exactly a way to run a country. Their bid however, and we’re an open country, is the highest bid and apparently a good price.  Jingoism and Xenophobia are two words that come to mind.  This is an emotional play by the opposition parties to gather doom clouds over the recently elected and current government, it’s not about ownership of farms. The current government by not engaging in any words on this is not making itself any friends, and it’s position looks stubborn and appears contrary to “the will of the people” who are the people that are the opposition party, not the real people. OF course asked a question like “Should a chinese person buy our land” is always going to be a NO!, and this is what joe public has in their mind now, it’s not going to end well.

  • Kim Dotcom. A foreign national resident in New Zealand (as am I, I’d like to point out). Founder/Owner of a hosting site Megaupload.com he’s had charges of  alleged piracy and allowing piracy of material to the tune of some US$500million.

He’s a bit of a wide-boy and would, in my opinion, do a runner, or make it as hard as possible to be found if he chose. Not sure what the ongoing faux outrage is with this. I am impressed with the media’s use of close cropped head shots that appear to highlight mr.Dotcom’s chubbyness. But this is a side-show to an underlying problem where law has not kept up with technology, sharing the latest TV show, or Film from the US that may not get to NZ for 3 months or more – what outcome does the producer hope to get, people want it now, the same producers have avalanched us with reality tv shows in real-time for ages, and suddenly they’re not in control.

  • Ports of Auckland. An Employer who want to drag’s it’s work ethic into the modern era.
English: View northeastwards from one of the c...
Image via Wikipedia

My understanding is that an employed worker has a shift/roster, and  is available to work. My understanding also is that should a ship dock half way though that time slot the worker can continue to work through untill the ship is unloaded and that counts as overtime, even if for the first portion of that roster there is no work available – so time for free. What it seems the ports want to do is normalise a working schedule, based on modern technology that says “A bot will arrive at this time and you are required to work for x hours as part of your roster. It’s not decided the day before, shipping companies know pretty much to the hour where their fleets are. The unions are against this for many reasons, mostly to do with self empowerment and grandiose self importance.

  • BreakfastTV, we’ve rebelled against the machine and have taken flight to TV3, where there appears to be News being covered in a newsy kind of way, and not 30 second segments of recycled quick cut clips of tabloid headlines and pet stories. TVOne has really shot itself int he foot with a new set, atrocious front people and a format that really is brain-dead.
Related articles
Sep 18 2011

Not a good day to be a minor league tall poppy. #1 in a series.


Today we bring you  Rabon Khan  and  Rachel Smalley

(1) Raybon Khan. Who seems to set himself as Mr.People, some brainpower gifted individual who urbane toss-offs speak to and for the people.

Well he is a comedian, makes his money with humor, or a sort. The tweet is an inference, and that is all. It’s implied that it’s Germanic, therefore Nazi, therefore Jewish. And frankly that is indeed what it is. Doesn’t make it less humorous. Gallows  humor is important.
(2) Rachel Smalley
Rachel got confused about what she is, and what her tweeting account is. You can’t be both a corporate tweet and a person. You’re either for your or you are you. It’s no good having 999 tweets about good a talking head you are on TV if then in some kind of faux outrage pick a fight with someone, about something you know nothing of, but have formed an opinion on based on your privileged position of being “in” the media. Rachel Smalley is a talking head. She reads an autocue device for a living. That is all.
So what will happen?
Well Raybon will throw himself at the public mercy, “Don’t read it” he’ll cry, which makes him seem like he’s 11 years old.
Rachel Smalley. Well TV3 needs a talking head, she has broad appeal which equals money, and will bring out the same “It was me talking” line that isn’t really an excuse when 99.99% of everything else she tweets is for her not about her.
So two rather minor poppies who’ve brought a collective passing eye-roll towards them that has kept a small part of the nation occupied in the colonies. Nothing in their somewhat small and limited appeal career with change, they’re not people you get favors from or rely on to do you favors. They have passing and fleeting influence as a talking head, but that glitter fades quickly.
#FauxOutrage at it’s best then
Aug 31 2011

Funding and Self-Sustaining organizations – the 2011 Edition


I’ve already written on this:

http://pdubyah.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/funding-and-self-sustaining-organizations/

 

From the NZ Herald today : Fashion Week’s opening night was swimming along in champagne until managing director Pieter Stewart burst the bubble with a stark warning that the event could not continue without more support.

Minutes after Auckland Mayor Len Brown and Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully lauded its contribution to branding Auckland and New Zealand as a creative country, Stewart stepped up to the podium to say that a 12th year showcasing the industry could not be guaranteed.

Sponsorship had been tough this year, she said.

“Rugby World Cup has taken a huge amount out of the economy.”

More sponsors were needed and local and central government also needed to look at backing the event.

ITs a commercial event, you are charging a door price to enter. So I say again, as I have about Early Child Education centers, Sports events, Music Concerts, Plays, Opera, Ballet it’s a user pays thing. If you have something worth seeing then the people will come. The Rugby Sevens, The Big Day Out, U2, none of them made a loss.

If you have a business idea that is sound then it should also be profitable or break-even if you’re feeling altruistic.

Are we to pour a bottomless cup of money into “nice to have” events to assuage the ego of some minor person in a minor industry to make them feel good. New Zealand Fashion Week – what for? who for? why? You’re not even going to begin to tell me that it’s important because world buyers are totally won over and will hand over cash at such events. If the fashion industry felt it was that important, or they were that good, they would fund it themselves.

Aug 12 2011

Inconceivable! Why I should avoid the newspapers.


I shouldn’t read the newspaper, it annoys me.

Prisons. “Auckland’s Mt Eden prison operator Serco has been accused of bribing inmates with bigger helpings of food and televisions in their cells to encourage them to behave” ….. And? Well the comments page is enlightening. People have issues that being in prison equals additional punishment. That being in prison isn’t punishment enough, being segregated from the general population isn’t a punishment, they should of course be fed gruel and water, and only if they complete their 20 hours of manual labour. It’s a wonder. Sure there are bad people in prisons, they are in he maximum security ones, the ones that allow you a couple of hours outside your cell a day, every day for the next however many years. Sure there are career crims in prison, wherein it becomes some kind of badge of honour, I’m sure they’re not happy. No I don’t have an alternate, a method to rehab people or think they should be loose and running around. By popular thinking they’re in the right place, away from the population to plot and scheme and get no further ahead in life.

Captain Obvious comes to visit with this headline comment “Macsyna King is laying blame for her twin babies’ deaths with their father” No shit Sherlock, this is her book, her story, it’s hardly going to be a confession is it. What were you expecting? I’m sure the book is a wonderful collection of colourful anecdotes, half truths, omission and fabrication, ably conducted by the Mr. Ian Wishart, who is doing it for altruistic reasons only, hardly covering his costs of course.

 It annoys me that today, for instance, the NZHerald didn’t print the #gotakeashit hashtag that NIcola Grigg, the bint who is shagging Ritchie McCaw used in her tweet. So half a story. The other annoying thing is that they gave her column inches. What’s with that? Seems though that she disappeared herself from twitter quick smart, too much adulation I should think.

that is all.

Aug 7 2011

Conspiracy Theory #1 in a series


I make no secret of the fact that I’m really not sure that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon as advertised.

JFK was shot by a lone gunman, there is no bigfoot, we are not ruled by Aliens, 9/11 wasn’t an inside job. Rosewell wasn’t aliens, Area 51 does not house spacecraft or aliens, vaccinations are good. Princess Diana had a car crash.

I don’t believe it’s man-mad climate change, and I’m against fluoridation of water. And as for the nonsense that was folic acid in bread!

For a conspiracy to be attractive you have to be at the point where you believe in a counter position, or to be sufficiently disbelieving of the stated facts, that your own belief  carries more weigh and your conviction.

Like going to the moon. I’m not convinced that the Saturn V rocket worked first time, and every time afterwards. I’m just not. There are a billion websites and a billion counter websites that go over the arguments for and against, from the dodgy photographs to the physics, I’m just not going to repeat them here. Of course it could be that you just believe that we did, and that the records are correct without question. in no time in history has there ever been falsehood in any account.

The thing is that you don’t have to have that many people “in” on the conspiracy, it wouldn’t be difficult to stage. It appeals because it’s an elegant alternative to someone who has incredulity about the ‘actual’ event.

Sure many conspiracies unravel over time, but many endure. Is it the grand scale of the moon landings that means I’m wrong, I didn’t say I had proofs either way. Besides which I don’t know if asked “What would lead you to believe that it was true” that I could give any answer except fly me up there to show me the footprints.

Enduring conspiracies include, of course, religion, and the whole myth and dogma surrounding jesus. But that’s not a conspiracy in the sense that a government is trying to fool all of the people all of the time.

Aug 1 2011

Murder Most Foul #1 in a series


There are many murders that get your attention and pique your interest. Fortunately there aren’t that many that go unsolved. And even the solved ones can twist like a snake when you take what is mostly a superficial look at them. But we have to have an opinion and we have to have questions, it’s the human condition, and you can believe one way or the other that justice was served, or that by your own view it hasn’t.  I can think immediately of two that I have a view on.

Away: Peter Falconio.  (20 September 1972 – c. 14 July 2001)  disappeared in the Australian outback in July 2001, while travelling with girlfriend Joanne Lees and is now presumed dead. It’s rather contentious and tonight (1st August) it was again alleged on TV that Peter Falconio did a runner and is still alive, and has been seen by 4 people no less, since he was allegedly killed. There was a bit of twitterage about this and seems that there is more than a little doubt that he was killed and that he chose to be disappeared. The whole story seems a little improbable, and they did convict someone of a murder.

It’s not possible to put your own reasonings on this, you probably wouldn’t stage your own murder/disappearance. Can you imagine living ‘on the lam’ as it were for what is now a decade? I’m not an expert on this, but how would you survive with a foreign accent in a foreign country, It is possible, people have done it, and will do it again, but I don’t recall any background that would indicate Peter F had a bag of cash and the means to get away with it. Improbable but not impossible.

Home: David Bain. Convicted in May 1995 of the murders of his parents and siblings in Dunedin on 20 June 1994. He was acquitted when retried on the same charges 14 years later.

Never has an event really split people so widely. It is my opinion only that the truth hasn’t been told in this. The police really stuffed it up from the get go. But after a re-trial where the only possible witness, David Bain, didn’t testify what can you conclude?

My two favorite things that are wrong so wrong are; Problems with “index time” that is a central time piece against which everything is timed. What should happen is the lead detective declares the time, and everything you do should be based on the time of that watch/clock/device despite what your watch says. Your watch, my watch, the computer time, the oven, the microwave, the dvd player they all have different times on them, you therefore need a central time clock where you reference too. The police didn’t. Big mistake.

And some really weird way in which you can tell when a computer was turned on. Even if you could, and I still don’t know how you can, particularly if you turn the computer off and then back on again, what use is forensically diagnosing the time, if the time you arbitrarily decide does not match any reference time, it’s just the time you decide on your watch, and not the reference watch. So the forensic test of time will return a time, which is completely arbitrary since there is no way of knowing what time that really is, it could be 10 minutes fast or slow, who knows? Big mistake.