Tickle V Giggle: Australia Is Officially Nuts

The media outlets that claim to counter misinformation are busily spreading it, presenting a man called Roxanne Tickle as a woman scorned who rightfully won justice against an evil bigot.

Just look at the state of them! I'm furious. According to that eejit Judge Robert Bromwich, any man who puts on a skirt and claims a feminine gender identity (which, let me remind you, is merely a personal belief or feelings about oneself) is an actual woman like me. No. That's not how it works. 

Women are human beings in our own right and men have no right to arrogate to themselves the right to define us in their own terms. Let us define ourselves.

I've been lectured over and over again by the vilest of men about how Ts have feelings, etc., but basically, if we express fear or discomfort around male people in our spaces, we are somehow defective. So only they have feelings of fear or discomfort. Only they are vulnerable. Only they are worthy of consideration. 

This is my contention: any man who denies us the right to exclusivity on the basis of our biological sex discriminates against us on the basis of sex. Moreover, he paternalistically arrogates to himself the right to define us and to make choices on our behalf, even when they are against our interests. He basically relegates us to slave status, demanding complete subservience at all times without question in every area of our lives. No. Hell, no.

Sall Grover needs your help to appeal this case. Give what you can, however meagre the amount. Every penny put towards this case asserts that women are a discrete sex class with demands, needs, and rights of our own. To let that man Tickle win lets every woman and girl down. It tells every man that we are nothing, that we're nobody and that only men have the right to make choices for us. 

Sall Grover must prevail!

Oracle V Google: When Does Something That's Free To Use Have to Be Paid For?

Parker Higgins and Sarah Jeong have been live-tweeting from the courtroom and Ars Technica's own Joe Mullin has a seat in the press gallery. Hats off to these fine people for providing a running commentary of the case. Judge William Alsup and the jury will decide whether or not APIs are copyrightable and if they are, was Google's use of Java in Android fair use?

It's Official — I'm Not A Criminal Mastermind On The Internet, Or Anything

Well I've had a tweet, an email, and I've confirmed it with a nice chap via 101 from from Greater Manchester Police over the phone: I'm not under investigation for stampeding cattle through the Vatican extortion, theft, and crimes against nature, etc.

How To Resurrect Your Reputation: Five Steps To Success

So you've made a huge fool of yourself and the evidence is on the first page of the search results on your name. You can't show your face anywhere without running into jeering, pointing, and laughing. Now what? I have a few ideas.

Do People Who Do Dodgy Things Have A Right To Get Them Forgotten?

We all do things at some point in time that, on reflection, we wish we hadn't. And there are times when someone's opinion of our conduct differs from our own perceptions thereof.  Let's be honest here, it's funny when people go all King Canute and order the tide to stop coming in* only to end up with wet feet, particularly when they do it on the internet. The attempts of one Dr. Janice Duffy of Adelaide, Australia, are a case in point.

Plagiarism: A Pirate Response

I'm not a big lover of copyright and think the laws we have are extreme and unfair. That said, it's not right when some random toerag, who does not deserve the honour of being linked here on my blog, wholesale copies my posts and reposts them on his own blog to populate it with content that he hasn't produced himself, that's not on.

The Newspeak Agenda: How To Push Back

The Charleston shooting is being co-opted by a range of special interest groups, each of which is out to score political points. What annoys me is that people I know are being sucked into the game. The only reason I know better is that I'm aware of the tricks they use to balkanise their audience and play them off each other in a bid to increase their influence. This is what they're up to.

How Pirate Thinking Makes All The Difference

Yesterday's post was all about how thinking like a Pirate is a good, good thing in general. I realise it may sound a bit pie in the sky when you read it out loud but would you believe that Pirate influence is spreading throughout our society, making a difference NOW? Allow me to explain.

Make Today "Think Like A Pirate" Day

I've seen some things come up in my Twitter stream that underscored my belief that the Pirate way of doing things is the future not just because it's about distributed decentralised systems and routing around obstacles, but because it's about not relying on top-down authoritarian ways of doing things. In theory, at least. In practice, some of us have forgotten to forget left and right. Today I want to focus on the importance of thinking like a Pirate and to encourage other people to do the same.

Yeah, But No, But Yeah, Labour Loves Fracking, Per Hazel Blears MP

If you're a carping malcontent like me, you will occasionally speak your mind, and possibly even  work towards getting what you want in some way. I'm serious about my dissent; I start petitions (here's one I made earlier) and take part in campaigns on those issues I deem serious enough to fight about.

Do you? While some people attempt to fight the power and end up in prison over it, I prefer the more gentle route of writing to my MP. It's actually a lot more effective and, in an election year, it's a great way to get things done. 

Old Web Designers Never Die, They Just Volunteer

Web design never paid very well for me so I quit it and took a normal admin job. The thing is, I can't quit it. Not web design, not social media, not the great and groovy graphic design. I'm hooked, I tell you, and I don't want to give it up. Needless to say, when the opportunity to design the promotional literature for our church's women's discussion event came up, I simply couldn't resist the opportunity to stretch  my creative muscles in a professional capacity.

Let's Link Up!

It makes good SEO sense to link to each others' businesses online. I'm happy to post links to other peoples' businesses as long as they satisfy the following criteria:

• They link back to me


• They're not directly competing with me


• They're family-friendly


• They're genuine businesses, not link farms

Ten Ways Web Designers Can Fail

As a member of Linked In and other social networking websites, I often get emails that point to other websites, particularly those that offer web design and development services. Rivals. Well you'd think that in such a competitive business environment, they would make an effort to present themselves in the best way possible. Here are ten ways they get it wrong.

How To Share Content Fairly: Four Ways To Stay Out Of Trouble

Internet content is NOT public domain. How can we share content fairly without bringing the wrath of the internet down on ourselves?

In an event that became known as the "But honestly, Monica" scandal, Judith Griggs, editor of Cooks Source magazine, lifted an article written by Monica Gaudio and posted it without notifying Monica or asking for permission. When Monica found out about it and complained, Judith wrote a high-handed and patronizing response that ignited an internet firestorm, according to Dylan Stableford in an article on thewrap.com.

Posting someone's work in full, even if you credit them, can get you into a world of trouble IF you do so without their permission. I use other people's content all the time in my own blog posts, particularly when reporting internet news.

Writing news reports

Reporting internet news can be problematic because you have to check and double-check your sources to make sure they're correct. For example, a recent report on a blog about Google forcing people who sign up for new accounts turned out to be a load of anti-Google tripe. I read the article, checked the comments, then created a brand new account to see if I was going to be forced into using Google +. I wasn't. My personal Gmail account is not and never will be used for Google +, and although there is a + icon at the top I have the option not to use it. Google + accounts, for the record, need to be upgraded to Google +, they don't force it on you.

Of course you can elect not to bother with checking the facts, as a Twitter buddy did* only to be caught out and called on it by yours truly. I've got a bee in my bonnet where accuracy is concerned. I don't mind the odd polemic, but at least get your facts straight before you skew them! Where you get them from matters; any blog post that catches my eye is immediately investigated and checked against the tech blogs, where possible. If I can't check it, I don't believe it. Period.

Polemics and opinion pieces

I've been doing a lot of that lately, too. I try to just report the news but there are times when I stop being objective and raise merry Hell because I'm annoyed by something I have seen online. The SOPA/PIPA/ACTA stories infuriate me and so I've been getting involved in the protest movements. The legal ones, that is. DDoS attacks are illegal and although I may report on Anonymous and what they get up to I don't condone illegal activity. Speaking of which, the nebulous nature of their organization means that anyone can claim to be with them and do things in their name, which can make them look bad, e.g. tricking people into taking part in DDos attacks. When reporting on them I'm careful to get my facts as straight as I can not merely because I don't want to offend them; we can't understand them if we can't be honest about them.

Sharing content provided by other websites

All of my articles are based on items other people have written. The principles below are the ones I use and adhere to in order to report what I've read and be fair to the original author and website:

1. use brief snippets


2. link to the article or website I got it from


3. add the name of the source, usually as the anchor text and ALWAYS in the title of the link


4. add some content of your own, usually an opinion or question about the quoted material

You won't be subject to the online equivalent of an angry mob with torches and pitchforks if you do that. The key is not to just lift content or quote other people, it's to add to whatever point is being made with some points of your own in order to enhance the whole. Judith Griggs could have saved herself a lot of grief if she'd taken that approach. See this article by Linda Dessau for a deeper insight into sharing content without getting into trouble over copyright.

*Inadvertently; he just repeated the assertion and posted a link to the blog post in question.

The North West Business Show, Day 1

I'm reporting back from Day One of the North West Business Show at Manchester Central (formerly G-Mex), where a host of business owners, support services and speakers got together to network, educate and inspire. Although there were scheduled events such as speed networking and lectures from leading lights, I went with one thing on my mind: to find out what an event like that could do for a sole trader HTML web designer and developer.