I bought my copy today, with reward money from Gleebooks. Now I just need to find a big Australian flag to wear as a cape and a fake tattoo that says “love it or leave it” to wear as I watch. Oh – and a case of VB.
A cute Stephen Conroy comic.
The Mad Monk is now opposition leader. A worse outcome for Australian politics, I can’t imagine at the moment. The dark horse (fifth member of the riders of the apocalypse?) actually even beat Hockey in a three-way contest (Abbott 35, Turnbull 26, Hockey 23). I guess the Liberal Party doesn’t believe in conscience votes (as Hockey was advocating), let alone… Read more →
Hey Hetty and Bernadette? Can I get a panic button too? When my boss asks me in email to do something stupid and to do it now, that’s online bullying and harassment, isn’t it? What can I do in that situation? How about we teach the children to tell their parents, if they feel threatened by something they’ve read or… Read more →
And he gives substance to my decision to avoid the film Australia. Not that David and Margaret’s review on At The Movies endeared me to it, although it ended with the hope that people embrace it. Anyway, Peter makes the point that a movie with such a grandiose title sets itself up as being more than a love story –… Read more →
It was a stock “don’t worry – we’re politicians” letter. Download it here. However it takes the reader for a fool and depends on an uncritical eye being cast over it. Here’s my response. Conroy, you’re a liar. Your propaganda PDF states that the UK, Finland, Sweden and Norway have adopted filtering technology without any impact on performance. This is… Read more →
Jon Seymour, in a guest post on the blog Somebody think of the Children, talks about what he feels is the real purpose for the proposal of a mandatory internet filter: it’s to impose a middle-class sensibility on society; to take us back to an era when Lady Chatterley’s Lover was banned, where certain things were not said and done… Read more →
The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the NSW Education Dept. has released the desired specs for the laptops that are supposed to be rolled out to all school students: Less than 1.75 kg, with battery – that’s almost netbook territory, but around $2000 for a business notebook should get you close to that from what I can see. That’s… Read more →
Mark Newton, who works for Internode, is one of the main spokesmen (in an unofficial capacity) against the Federal government’s proposal to setup up ISP-level filtering on the Australian internet. The title of this post is a quote from an opinion piece on the ABC’s website, where he rightly takes Senator Conroy and the Australian Families Association to task for… Read more →
The Australian has published an article based on the press release from SAGE-AU: Over-blocking access to Internet sites even three percent of the time will impose “significant†costs on service providers, the System Administrators Guild of Australia”(SAGE-AU) has warned. Unfortunately they don’t publish a link to the actual release, which mentions more issues like deployment costs, and security concerns. It’s… Read more →
According to the Australian, Stephen Conroy has been presented with, and endorsed, a report into the feasibility of internet filtering, which claims success. So now we’re a go for real world trials. The actual report is here (PDF), and it makes interesting reading in a sad way. It’s being pulled apart on the SAGE mailing lists at the moment, and… Read more →
This appears to be a case of someone in love with hammers. Sure, it’s important to make sure that we’re monitoring water usage properly and to target investment in better infrastructure in such a way that the critical areas get addressed first, but to claim that such is The First Step to Water Security is over the top. It looks… Read more →
