Recently in humor Category

Never let it be said that Finkelstein J lacks a sense of humour: from Direct Share Purchasing Corporation Pty Ltd v AXA Asia Pacific Holdings Ltd [2008] FCA 935:

Companies have always been required to keep registers of their members. The register is a public document which is open for inspection by a member without charge and by any other person upon payment of a fee. When copies are requested they must be provided in exchange for a fee. The provisions dealing with the maintenance of and access to registers are currently found in Chapter 2C of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). According to the Attorney-General these provisions were intended to facilitate "rapid and easy access" by the public to a company's register and to do so "at reasonable cost": Second Reading Speech, First Corporate Law Simplification Bill 1994 (Cth) (House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (1995) vol HR 199), pp 709, 712. The issue in this case is about the quantum of the fee that can be charged for a copy of the register. Each side engaged senior counsel to put its case. Experts have been called to give their views. Witnesses have been examined and cross-examined. The cost to each party is in the tens of thousands of dollars. So much for easy access at a reasonable cost.

You read some strange and funny things in court judgments.  Following on from my previous posting involving sheep sabotage, we have another judgment involving Islamic dietary laws.

In Tugcu v Mars Australia Pty Ltd [2008] NSWSC 377, the plaintiffs are a family who have for some time purchased Dolmio brand food products (made by Mars Australia) which bear a halal logo on their label, signifying that the ingredients and recipies for those products were certified by the Halal Certification Authority Australia.

The plaintiffs recently discovered that a certain Dolmio product which bore the halal logo contained white wine as an ingredient and was therefore not halal.

Mars Australia appear to have done a collective mea maxima culpa, blaming an error during the development of the label for a relatively new product.  They stopped distributing the affected product, arranged for it to be recalled from stores, informed the Halal Certification Authority Australia, and placed a notice on their website.

The plaintiffs brought an action for contravention of s 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) and sought an injunction preventing the distribution of the affected product in reliance on s 80 of the TPA.

The Court declined to grant an injunction, holding that the balance of convenience did not favour the granting of an injunction, because of the steps already taken by Mars to address the problem.  Gzell J went on to say (at [10]) that:

in light of those steps, damages are an entirely suitable remedy.

I'm not suggesting that an injunction should have been granted.  Given that Mars was already dealing with the problem in a fairly comprehensive manner, an injunction would have been of little or no utility.  But I think it's somewhat strange that Gzell J would say that damages were an appropriate remedy for contravention of a religious law?

The irony of this is palpable..  Labor have adopted the term 'clean feed' to describe their half-baked plan to force ISP-based Internet filtering upon us all.  And yet the company peddling Internet filtering software from the website cleanfeed.com has banned the website for registered Australian political party One Nation for containing 'hate speech'.  Screenshot:

You can verify this yourself on the cleanfeed.com website, using their 'test a site' facility on the front page.

But, there's a very serious side to this very funny example:

• Filtering products are inaccurate.  There will always be overblocking and underblocking.
• Blacklists and categorisations of websites are subjective.  Whether One Nation in fact engages in 'hate speech' is dependant on your point of view and there are arguments for and against.
• Government mandated filtering that has effects such as this may run into constitutional problems.  We have an implied freedom of speech on political matters in Australia.  If a government-mandated filtering system is going to block access to political websites -- especially websites of actual Australian political parties -- it would seem to be succeptable to a constitutional challenge.

Slashdot tells us that a company associated with Jon Lech Johansen (a/k/a 'DVD Jon') has released a beta version of software called 'doubleTwist', which will 'free your media', and does various semi-useful things, including circumventing the DRM on Apple iTunes files and converting them to MP3 format.

Of course, use of the doubleTwist software is subject to an End User Licence Agreement, Terms of Service agreement, and Privacy Policy.  If/when you read them, a stench of rank hypocrisy lingers in the air, as does a suspicion that DVD Jon has sold out, and taken on many characteristics of the evil corporations he's waged war against.  Amongst other things, the agreements allow the use and collection of personal information for delivering targeted advertising (despite their website describing doubleTwist as having 'no adware'), and prohibits users from circumventing DRM used by doubleTwist -- even though doubleTwist circumvents DRM used by other companies.

Relatively non-controversial parts of these agreements are not excerpted for copyright reasons.  Not that DVD Jon seems to give a damn about copyright...

Somebody has setup a hilarious parody of Conroy's Internet censorship plans at www.netalarmed.com.  My hat is off to the creators of that site, it's well worth a look.

A very merry cat-mess to all my friends and readers, from me, Arbie, Jinx and Poppy...

News.com.au reports that Chuck Norris has sued publisher Penguin and others over a book compiling some of the non-sensical purported facts about him that circulate on the Internet, such as 'Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried' and 'Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.'

The lawsuit alleges that 'some of the 'facts' in the book are racist, lewd or portray Mr Norris as engaged in illegal activities' and that the 'defendants have misappropriated and exploited Mr Norris's name and likeness without authorisation for their own commercial profit.'

This bizarre coincidence has brightened my Friday...

Yesterday, I was writing (for my supervisor) some tutorial questions for the 'e-commerce' tute in a Masters subject on consumer protection laws.  One of the questions involved a software program known as 'Microstuff Office'.

One of the questions, as sent to my supervisor (upsub antefiling), read in part:

John returns home and tries to install Microstuff Office ... Because of an inherent design flaw in Microstuff Office, it becomes deranged and erases all the information stored on his computer ...

I wasn't really expecting the 'deranged' part to make it into the final form of the question, and the language was in fact moderated by higher authority, but was good for a laugh.

Today brings news that a recent software update to the Mac the Intuit QuickBooks Pro has, in fact, become deranged and erased the accounting data files of its users.  In my question, Microstuff relied on the disclaimer and limitation of liability clauses in the EULA -- I wonder whether Intuit will?

Some of the meanings that dictionary.com gives for 'deranged' (or 'derange') include 'to upset the normal condition or functioning of' and 'to throw into disorder; disarrange'.  On that basis, I maintain that 'deranged' was an appropriate word in the context :)

Courtesy of The Notorious Ross Wheeler and the forwarded-emails-o'-humor department, I present for your viewing pleasure this (slightly customised) Notice of Seasonal Greeting:

From Dale Clapperton and The Voices In His Head ("the wishor") to you ("the wishee")

Please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low stress, nonaddictive, gender neutral, celebration of the summer solstice holiday, practised within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

We wish you a financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, and having regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting you are bound by these terms that:

• This greeting is subject to further clarification or withdrawal.
• This greeting is freely transferable provided that no alteration shall be made to the original greeting and that the proprietary rights of the wishor are acknowledged.  This greeting implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of the wishes.
• This greeting may not be enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or the restrictions herein may not be binding upon certain wishees in certain jurisdictions and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.
• This greeting is warranted to perform as reasonably may be expected within the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first.

The wishor warrants this greeting only for the limited replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor.  All other conditions, warranties, karmic influences or warm fuzzy feelings, express or implied, are disclaimed, including conditions or warranties that may be implied by Pt V of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth), if the wishor was in trade or commerce, which the wishor is not.

Any references in this greeting to "the Lord", "Father Christmas", "Our Saviour", "Rudolph the red nosed reindeer" or any other festive figures, whether actual or fictitious, dead or alive, shall not imply any endorsement by or from them in respect of this greeting, and all proprietary rights in any referenced third party names and images are hereby acknowledged.

It seems that Qantas maintenance people haven't quite figured out the difference between oxygen and nitrogen.  The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Qantas ground crew at Melbourne airport accidentally filled the oxygen tanks of a Boeing 747 with nitrogen instead of oxygen:

The aviation source said: "Qantas took delivery of the new nitrogen cart 10 months ago.

"It looked exactly like the old oxygen cart. When the attachments did not fit they went and took them off the old oxygen cart and started using it."

Of course the attachments didn't fit.  They're designed not to fit, so that you can't accidentally put nitrogen in an oxygen tank (potentially deadly if oxygen is required), or fill an aircraft's tyres with oxygen instead of nitrogen (would probably explode, either immediately or on the next flight).

Qantas passengers will no doubt be relieved to know that the passenger oxygen masks are (AFAIK) supplied by chemical oxygen generators, and so in the event of depressurisation, the passengers would have oxygen, and remain conscious all the way to the ground, while the cockpit crew would be unconscious and therefore spared the fate of seeing the ground come up and smack them in the face. (to use the words of Gerry Carrol)