Advertising

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says that "Google’s dominance in ad tech supply chain harms businesses and consumers."

Good grief. This arrived today. It's a straight copy, errors included but with the links redacted. And if there really is someone called "Blythe Masters," if I were you I'd sue your parents for giving you such a stupid name.

Oh, ACCC, ACCC, ACCC. Have the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission not learned that success is expected and we are remembered by our failures?

And this failure is the result of one bad decision after another.

STA Travel, which readers of a certain age will remember as a student-only bucket shop in the 1970s, has mutated but still focuses on the younger (that is those who have yet to reach a certain age) traveller. But, the authorities in Australia say that STA Travel began, in 2011, to market a product that has earned the company some AUD12m but mislead consumers who have paid more than STA Travel said they would. Proceedings have been issued in civil court.

In the trials (there were two) of Peter Hall, et al, for fraud, a company, TAD Services Limited was named.

There's a interesting back-story - and Google makes a guest appearance as a company that was paid to participate in the scam.

There's a lot of dispute over exactly what constitutes "spam" with legislation influenced by the advertising and marketing industry often defining the term far more narrowly than the public at large. Whether it's legally spam or not, one thing happens far more than it should in unsolicited advertising. That thing is where the e-mail is dishonest in some respect ranging from fake senders through misleading content to out and out lies. The basic rule for recipients is simple: if a mail fails a simple test - "is it true?" - the only safe option is to bin it and block the sender.

Part 2 of the article about the use of the internet for the broadcast of a gang rape of a Brazilian teenager and suggestions to reduce the incidence of such behaviour by Nigel Morris-Cotterill, author, Cleaning up the 'Net
www.countermoneylaundering.com/public/llz

A storm has been unleashed as the 16 year old victim of a gang rape filmed and broadcast, along with other photographs, via Twitter has given an interview to Brazillian newspaper O Globo in which it is clear: the rape and its subsequent broadcast are only a part of the problems she faces.
It's time to clean up the 'net, says Nigel Morris-Cotterill

Continuing the story of the world's first Rolls Royce powered bus running on natural gas.

For part 1 see How it began
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.... The bus was taken out onto the road: the test driver brought it back after a short trip. He was shaking. "It's terrifying," he said.

In the mid 1970s, bus engineer Roy Cotterill and his brother-in-law Rolls-Royce marketing man Lionel Gibbs sat around Roy's dining room table in Stockton on Tees, Teesside, with the plans of a secret Rolls-Royce engine project and the engineering diagrams of a Daimler Fleetline bus. Could they mate the advanced engine with a passenger transit vehicle and if so what would be the cost implications and benefits / disadvantages. And what happened to the project?