Get ready to wave bye-bye to Google ... and frankly, good riddance. Speaking personally, I've had a very rough deal from the Big G, and will be extremely glad when it's bumped off the stage, and something newer, better ... stronger and more sentient comes along -- which is due later in the year. Like this:
An invention that could change the internet for ever
Revolutionary new web software could put giants such as Google in the shade when it comes out later this month. Andrew Johnson reports...
Sunday, 3 May 2009
The biggest internet revolution for a generation will be unveiled this month with the launch of software that will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before.
The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.
Although the system is still new, it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers.
Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet. Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, said that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as important as Google. "It is really impressive and significant," he wrote. "In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.
Tom Simpson, of the blog Convergenceofeverything.com, said: "What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organising internet? Possibly... I think this could be big."
Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.
The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out "on the fly", according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in "10 flips for four heads" and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.
...read the full feature here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/an-invention-that-could-change-the-internet-for-ever-1678109.html
...It's brilliant. Admittedly, Wolfram Alpha still an uneducated genius at this point (read the article!) but ... how long does it take a genius with a mind the size of the WWW to soak up, cross-reference and comprehend the entirety of human culture?
Give them six months. And then, Google will have to compete with the OTHER thousand pound gorilla in its forest. And at that point, the question will be, "Who's in charge?"
The rot didn't set in at Google till after the original business was sold off, and a bunch of dollar-greedy morality police got hold of it. All the money grubbing, the cheating of publishing partners in the Adsense program, the filtering-out of content the high-mucky-mucks in the Boardroom don't like (anything gay, or gay-friendly, for a start). All this is the result of human intervention in the search engine's protocols...
And the same thing could happen to the Wolfram Alpha model. If money-grubbing morality police get hold of it, it'll just do a faster, smarter, better job of cooking the books and skewing the internet off kilter --
In fact, in a worst case scenario, Google will buy it, or controlling shares of it, and promptly reshape it in the Big G's image, so that more money sluices home to The Goog, advertising continues to stuff the web like a Christmas turkey, some people get ripped off royally, and others vanish off the face of the internet because they've been filtered out of existence.
But maybe, just maybe, the owners and developers of the new search engine will have a leeetle bit more integrity, and won't sell out. Settle for twenty billion dollars instead of shooting for the cool half trillion. Maybe the "self organizing internet" is something that can actually come to pass. Maybe the self-styled morality police won't be able to get in there and organize the internet from the standpoint of Creationism, Republicanism, or some brand of 'ism which seeks to shape the thinking patterns of the whole globe in its own image.
We can hope. I, for one, am hoping! You know me ... the eternal; optimist.
Ciao for now,
MK
Showing posts with label Save the Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Save the Internet. Show all posts
Monday, May 4, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Save the Internet ... somebody!
----- Original Message -----
From: 'GetUp'
Sent: Fri Mar 20 12:22
Subject: Your ideas could save the net
Dear Mel,
Yesterday Senator Conroy confirmed1 that websites on the Government's closely guarded 'blacklist' of censored sites had been leaked. News outlets are reporting that if the Government's censorship plan went ahead, a dentist and a tour operator are just two of the many legitimate Australian businesses whose websites would be blocked.
We've reached hundreds of thousands of Australians through our petition and online advertising campaign. Now we're after your creative ideas so that together we reach millions.We're producing a TV ad to turn up the heat, and we want your ideas. Script ideas, images, music, video content or just a good pun - your brainwave could end up on national TV! We'll turn the best ideas into a TV advertising campaign ready to hit the airwaves in April.
Click here to find out more:www.getup.org.au/campaign/CensorThis
The internet isn't about control, censorship and government interference. It's about collaboration. Working together we can create and broadcast a message the whole nation will see. This is our opportunity to drive a nail into the coffin of internet censorship. Send in your ideas for a hard-hitting TV ad, and we'll use the best ones to create a unique TV ad:
www.getup.org.au/campaign/CensorThis
Our online ads, running all over the internet since December, have been seen over 3.5 million times. Internet users are firing up the bloggersphere against the proposed censorship. Now it's time to take our message to TV screens around the nation.
A hard-hitting TV ad delivered now can protect that most important of freedoms - the freedom of the community to stand up and defend rights we perceive to be under threat. Let's harness the power of the internet to create the best ad to defend our rights.
Thanks for being a part of the solution,The GetUp teamPS - If you're in Canberra, come join the 'March in March' against the internet filter: 1pm tomorrow, Saturday March 21, Federation Mall outside Parliament House. Organised by the Digital Liberty Coalition and supported by GetUp!
1'There are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist' stated Senator Conroy, Minister for Communications: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/website-blacklist-leaked-on-internet-20090319-931c.html
From: 'GetUp'
Sent: Fri Mar 20 12:22
Subject: Your ideas could save the net
Dear Mel,
Yesterday Senator Conroy confirmed1 that websites on the Government's closely guarded 'blacklist' of censored sites had been leaked. News outlets are reporting that if the Government's censorship plan went ahead, a dentist and a tour operator are just two of the many legitimate Australian businesses whose websites would be blocked.
We've reached hundreds of thousands of Australians through our petition and online advertising campaign. Now we're after your creative ideas so that together we reach millions.We're producing a TV ad to turn up the heat, and we want your ideas. Script ideas, images, music, video content or just a good pun - your brainwave could end up on national TV! We'll turn the best ideas into a TV advertising campaign ready to hit the airwaves in April.
Click here to find out more:www.getup.org.au/campaign/CensorThis
The internet isn't about control, censorship and government interference. It's about collaboration. Working together we can create and broadcast a message the whole nation will see. This is our opportunity to drive a nail into the coffin of internet censorship. Send in your ideas for a hard-hitting TV ad, and we'll use the best ones to create a unique TV ad:
www.getup.org.au/campaign/CensorThis
Our online ads, running all over the internet since December, have been seen over 3.5 million times. Internet users are firing up the bloggersphere against the proposed censorship. Now it's time to take our message to TV screens around the nation.
A hard-hitting TV ad delivered now can protect that most important of freedoms - the freedom of the community to stand up and defend rights we perceive to be under threat. Let's harness the power of the internet to create the best ad to defend our rights.
Thanks for being a part of the solution,The GetUp teamPS - If you're in Canberra, come join the 'March in March' against the internet filter: 1pm tomorrow, Saturday March 21, Federation Mall outside Parliament House. Organised by the Digital Liberty Coalition and supported by GetUp!
1'There are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist' stated Senator Conroy, Minister for Communications: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/website-blacklist-leaked-on-internet-20090319-931c.html
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Save the planet? According to Kevin Rudd, why bother?!
Just a quickie this morning -- I'll be back later with something significant to say, but right now I have something rather significant to show! It's been a long time since I supported Kevin Rudd and the Australian labor government, even though [sounds of retching] I actually voted for them, because at the time it seemed that any change from "Jackboot John" Howard would have to be an improvement. A lot of people thought that way, which is why KRudd rode into office so easily. But time (and it didn't take much of it) proved us dead wrong. Like so:
Obviously, click the pic for the lare, readable version -- it's the ad which is circulating down here right now ...
Right now, you've got a rampaging Christian in the Responsibility Seat, who takes a dim view of gay marriage rights, is ambivalent about foreign policy, wants all of Australia to drop off the Internet to save a handful of parentally neglected children from the faint possibility of blundering into disgusting websites ... and frankly he doesn't give the proverbial stuff about the environment.
And I voted for this guy. Gee-Zeus. I swear it, I'm going back to voting for Daffy Duck, even though Brendan Fraser said he was (and I quote), an a$$hole to work with...
TTFN,
MK
Obviously, click the pic for the lare, readable version -- it's the ad which is circulating down here right now ...Right now, you've got a rampaging Christian in the Responsibility Seat, who takes a dim view of gay marriage rights, is ambivalent about foreign policy, wants all of Australia to drop off the Internet to save a handful of parentally neglected children from the faint possibility of blundering into disgusting websites ... and frankly he doesn't give the proverbial stuff about the environment.
And I voted for this guy. Gee-Zeus. I swear it, I'm going back to voting for Daffy Duck, even though Brendan Fraser said he was (and I quote), an a$$hole to work with...
TTFN,
MK
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Aussie internet filtering: score one for the good guys!
Don't start celebrating just yet -- it's far from over, but Reason and Logic have scored a major point for Australian Internet users:
Xenophon opposes mandatory ISP filtering, but fight not over yet
That's Senator Nick Xenophon using his vote to effectively -- though temporarily -- block the impending Internet filtering package which has been bearing down on Australians like Darth Vader and his TIE fighters closing in.
However -- Sen. Xenophon's motives could be somewhat less than pure: he's playing the power politics game, where you support the government in something it desperately wants to do, if they offer you what you desperately want/need in return.
However, the block, however temporary it may be, remains good news because it's a time-buyer ... and time is what has been needed to prove that the whole Internet filtering concept is ludicrous and patently unnecessary.
We don't have the infrastructure to carry the system -- bandwidth is thin on the ground downunder. Too thin. The web is already slow as a tired snail; slow it down yet again by imposing upon everyone the measures needed to protect the children of a few, and the www will do a face plant. With broadband running at the speed of the old dial-ups, most of the web will vanish between the time-outs; and as for dial-up accounts (on which rural areas rely), those users won't be able to "get on" at all. The web would be reduced to the simplest email accounts; and I've heard rumblings about the Aussie government wanting to filter email content too -- as if they think that having robots spy on people is acceptable, while the human spying preferred in countries like China is dreadful. I put this to you: what are the robots looking for, and to whom do the little cyber-buggers report?! And what happens next??!!
Also ... is it just me saying this? PARENTS ought to be the ones responsible for protecting their offspring. They were given the opportunity, over the space of years, to get a free Net Nanny. Few bothered; of those, only a handful are still using the thing. What's going on here? Don't they care if their little ones are exposed to adult content? The numbers say -- they don't.
Therefore, the government must ride to the rescue ... but why don't they just make it an offence worth a fine of up to $25,000 to have an unprotected computer in a home, school, office, church or whatever, where kids are likely to be present? This should light a fire under the brainless, careless individuals who were ready to a) make babies and b) buy computers, but don't have the intelligence or decency to protect A from B. Said individuals would then hurry out and buy a bloody Net Nanny license and run the damned software -- out of fear of getting caught red-handed and fined within an inch of their mortgaged homes. There: problem solved.
But I must be the only one saying this. Maybe I'm not saying it loudly enough or to the right people?! And of course it doesn't help that Google zeroed out my page ranking, so the only people reading this column are the Regulars (yourself!) ... and you'll all be saying, "Find a different song, Keegan, we've heard this one so often, we could sing it for you!"
And you're absolutely right, of course.
I'll find something fresh to ramble on about tomorrow.
Cheers,
MK
Xenophon opposes mandatory ISP filtering, but fight not over yet
That's Senator Nick Xenophon using his vote to effectively -- though temporarily -- block the impending Internet filtering package which has been bearing down on Australians like Darth Vader and his TIE fighters closing in.
However -- Sen. Xenophon's motives could be somewhat less than pure: he's playing the power politics game, where you support the government in something it desperately wants to do, if they offer you what you desperately want/need in return.
However, the block, however temporary it may be, remains good news because it's a time-buyer ... and time is what has been needed to prove that the whole Internet filtering concept is ludicrous and patently unnecessary.
We don't have the infrastructure to carry the system -- bandwidth is thin on the ground downunder. Too thin. The web is already slow as a tired snail; slow it down yet again by imposing upon everyone the measures needed to protect the children of a few, and the www will do a face plant. With broadband running at the speed of the old dial-ups, most of the web will vanish between the time-outs; and as for dial-up accounts (on which rural areas rely), those users won't be able to "get on" at all. The web would be reduced to the simplest email accounts; and I've heard rumblings about the Aussie government wanting to filter email content too -- as if they think that having robots spy on people is acceptable, while the human spying preferred in countries like China is dreadful. I put this to you: what are the robots looking for, and to whom do the little cyber-buggers report?! And what happens next??!!
Also ... is it just me saying this? PARENTS ought to be the ones responsible for protecting their offspring. They were given the opportunity, over the space of years, to get a free Net Nanny. Few bothered; of those, only a handful are still using the thing. What's going on here? Don't they care if their little ones are exposed to adult content? The numbers say -- they don't.
Therefore, the government must ride to the rescue ... but why don't they just make it an offence worth a fine of up to $25,000 to have an unprotected computer in a home, school, office, church or whatever, where kids are likely to be present? This should light a fire under the brainless, careless individuals who were ready to a) make babies and b) buy computers, but don't have the intelligence or decency to protect A from B. Said individuals would then hurry out and buy a bloody Net Nanny license and run the damned software -- out of fear of getting caught red-handed and fined within an inch of their mortgaged homes. There: problem solved.
But I must be the only one saying this. Maybe I'm not saying it loudly enough or to the right people?! And of course it doesn't help that Google zeroed out my page ranking, so the only people reading this column are the Regulars (yourself!) ... and you'll all be saying, "Find a different song, Keegan, we've heard this one so often, we could sing it for you!"
And you're absolutely right, of course.
I'll find something fresh to ramble on about tomorrow.
Cheers,
MK
Friday, January 30, 2009
Australian Internet Filtering ... almost upon us
Internet filtering is about to descend upon us ... and Keegan might be in limbo very soon. What to do about this is a good question. We'd originally thought that only the X-rated sites would vanish. Then it was the R-rated sites too. Then...
Well, here's the news on All News Web:
Australia: North Korea style internet censorship plan moves ahead.
Australians can’t deal with free access to the internet as far as Australia’s Minister of Communications Stephen Conroy is concerned. This month his office announced that live trials of a far reaching internet filter will begin.
Australians will have to get used to an internet devoid of X-rated, R-rated and even M-rated websites and ultimately possibly have to get used to no internet at all, according to some observers. The plan is supposedly about protecting Australians from the ‘evils of the net’ and cracking down on child pornography but evidence suggests that the censorship program will go much further than that according to many observers.
‘Sadly the kids will end up suffering for this….and vulnerable women’ noted one psychologist we spoke to.’ Borderline abusers are currently fulfilling their fantasies vicariously through the kind of porn legal in most countries (not Australia). Once this stops the action will shift to shady file-sharing groups and go offline altogether. They will get of the net and hit the streets’
IT experts fear that the plan will interfere with the internet so much that it will effectively take Australia out of the information age. ‘Yep Australia will be going offline’ one IT professional active on the online group ‘No internet censorship’ told us. ‘The filter will slow down speeds to the point that the net will be rendered completely useless’
On the other side of the coin many Christian activists are applauding the move. ‘The net is a receptacle of filth and it’s going to get a good scrubbing behind the ear’ commented Dorothy, a middle aged Mum affiliated with the Australia's Evangelical community.
Australia's few free speech activists are horrified by the plans ‘This is the end of free speech in Australia if it ever existed at all. In the end the filter will be used to cut out any websites that don’t conform to the likings of any lobby group that is seen as having voting power. When this plan comes to its logical conclusion you will be lucky if you can get on and read the daily news.’ Commented one well known free speech activist.’ Australians will lose on all fronts, abuse will be up and the net will be down’ she concluded.
http://www.allnewsweb.com/page1881881.php
Is this a far-fetched, extreme case scenario? We don't think so. This appeared on Crikey!:
So Conroy's Internet filter won't block political speech, eh?
"Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there has never been any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content," intoned Senator Stephen Conroy on Tuesday.
Yet the very next day, ACMA added a page from what's arguably a political website to its secret blacklist of Internet nasties.
The page is part of an anti-abortion website which claims to include "everything schools, government, and abortion clinics are afraid to tell or show you". Yes, photos of dismembered fetuses designed to scare women out of having an abortion. Before you click through, be warned: it is confronting. Here's the blacklisted page.
Mandatory Internet filtering, says Senator Conroy, is only about blocking the ACMA blacklist. The blacklist, he repeatedly insists, is "mainly" child-abuse and ultra-violent material. He's protecting us from ped-philes, stopping terrorists, that sort of thing. It's like the regulation we have for TV, films and books. Except it's not. It's not even close.
As always, Irene Graham's meticulously-researched Libertus.net explains how Internet censorship actually works now and what the Rudd government has been planning.
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090123-So-Conroys-internet-filter-wont-block-political-speech-eh-.html
It's not the blockage/filtering/censorship of the x-rated stuff and the r-rated stuff that bothers most ordinary folks (like self). It's the blockage of everything down to the M-rated material ... because after that, all that's left is G and PG. This is kiddie stuff. Even Lord of the Rings is rated M and MA15+. There's not a lot of the big movies out there that are PG. The Dark Knight is MA15+, for example ... Batman is about to vanish from Australia's web; Wolverine will never even appear upon computer screens here. The filtering will be in before it's released.
We can expect to lose YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Photobucket, MySpace, FaceBook, Amazon, and a whole lot more; because you can see M-rated stuff on all of these sites; and you can buy it from Amazon in the form of DVDs and --
Books. Which is where Keegan stands to turn into the invisible gay novelist very soon. When the government's blacklist is completed, rounded out to include everything except G and PG material, well ... this blog will still be there at Blogger -- you'll be able to see it! -- but I won't -- meaning, I can't update it, post to it, edit it, or even check back to see what I wrote a few months ago! It'll have vanished because I'm a political and gay rights activist, and I cover topics which are in the M rated bracket. I run artwork that's as "revealing as underwear commercials --
You realize that Victoria's Secret and so forth will be vanishing? The automatic, robotized photo filters are fine-tuned to detect skin. Any skin, anywhere. Not genitalia: they're not that smart. SKIN. (How do you think Google Safe Search works?) The text filters are set to detect four letter words ... but it gets worse: "damn" and "blast" and "hell" and "bugger" and "death" and "kill" will get you rated R. This blog IS rated R, because I keep saying heinous things like, "This heat wave will be the death of me yet," and "Somebody kill the power before this computer melts down," and "There was a blast of cold air from the a/c," and ... so on.
So, given that the only things left on the Internet will be Disney oriented, kiddie entertainment and shopping at stores that do NOT sell books and DVDs, who in the he...ck is in favor of the Internet filtering?
This is also running on Crikey!:
Who supports compulsory Internet filtering, exactly?
Senator Conroy tries to portray the filter-fighters as "extreme libertarians". But with GetUp!'s "Save The Net" campaign having already gathered 95,000 signatures and $50,000, it's starting to look pretty mainstream. That, plus a new survey by middle-rank ISP Netspace, starts to paint the supporters of compulsory filtering as the minority.
Netspace isn't taking part in the trials because the Expression of Interest contained "insufficient detail, unrealistic timeframes and unclear funding arrangements".
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20090128-Who-supports-compulsory-Internet-filtering-exactly.html
Uh...huh. Well, Senator Conroy would probably contest that less than 100,000 Internet users are not a big enough group to compromise the security of the legions of children whose parents are allowed by law to practise criminal negligence.
Put it like this: you have a stash of porn magazines, tapes and books in the house. The kids know where the stash is. Do you leave them alone with it? The answer is -- no, you don't. The same applies to the computer and Internet connection ... no more, no less. The responsibility is on the shoulders of the PARENTS to filter their own damned Internet and protect their own damned children.
Meanwhile, some ISPs are so disgusted, they won't even be involved in the trials. I'm with Telstra-Big Pond, and this is fortunate, because this is one of the disgusted ISPs. Another is the giant Netspace.
In fact, Netspace officially has this to say:
Netspace customers rail against ISP filtering
Netspace has released the results of its customer survey on ISP level filtering, which shows strong opposition to the federal government's plan.
The survey found that 78.9% of the "almost 10,000" respondents disagreed with the federal government's plan to mandate ISP level filtering for all Australians, with 61.8% of those "strongly" disagreeing.
Over 70% of Netspace customers also showed strong opposition to the potential for increased broadband prices and a reduction in Internet performance as a result of filtering.
Netspace also asked customers if they would "opt-in" to a clean-feed service if it were made available. 64.9% of respondents said they would not sign up, while 26.1% said "maybe". It's worth noting however that some comments by the government have suggested the clean-feed service would be opt-out rather than opt-in.
In related news, iiNet says it is "unsure" when the filtering trials may start, and is not yet sure if it will be asked to participate. iiNet told customers in its newsletter that its "belief is that these trials will only highlight filtering as ineffective in addressing the issue".
"We're also more than a little concerned with the Government's failure to clearly outline the level and types of censorship that will apply to subjects other than child pornography, in addition to the impact this filtering could have on internet performance", it said.
http://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1831
O...kay. As you can see, at this moment's it's chaos, with only one thing being certain: a minority of people (like the Aussie Christian Evangelical Mum above) are in agreement with making the web a G and PG environment. But --
When you lose Amazon, and Wiki, YouTube and Flickr, sites that sell swimwear and lingerie, sites giving information about AIDS prevention, safe sex and the right way to use condoms; sites that argue the political environment, and contend with matters of human rights...
Do the evangelists have the right to dictate terms to the community as a whole? Isn't this the gateway to the Sharya system of law?? Why can't these religious enthusiasts just protect their own children, and leave the rest of us be? Take a leaf out of the Gospel According to Ned Flanders, and look after your own damned kids, don't wait for the country to do it for you! And then --
Why do these religious bods assume that their kids WANT to see porn on the web? If they've raised them in their own pure and holy image, wouldn't the kids turn off, switch channels, run back to something nice and safe?
Here is where it gets interesting, because --
Children's groups Save the Children, and the National Children's and Youth Law Centre, said they were yet to be convinced of the effectiveness of a mandatory filter but would wait until children were properly consulted before making a judgement.
"We're agnostic about the mandatory filtering trials," Save the Children Australia child rights adviser Holly Doel-Mackaway said.
"If it's an opt-in filter we would agree," she said.
She also called on the Government to take children's input seriously when forming policy.
The Government has established a youth advisory group based on 15 schools to guide it on cyber-safety matters.
"We've been advised by the department that the consultation process with the children will start in March," Ms Doel-Mackaway said.
"We want the children's comments to be documented and made public."
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24967191-15306,00.html
This is where it starts to get a leeeetle bit idiotic. In March, they're going to start talking to "children" to get their take on the situation. In context, "children" means anything under 18. They'll be talking to a six foot, hungover, beard-shadowed guy who lost his virginity five years ago, and whose girlfriend is expecting his baby while he finishes out his matriculation, ready to go to TAFE or whatever. Question: are you frightened, troubled or offended by nudity and sex education pages on the Internet? We couldn't think of a sillier bloody question if we held a national competition. Or, they could be talking to the girlfriend, same age, same situation, except that she's at home, six months pregnant. And oh, does she wish she'd looked at the condom advisory service page seven months ago!
Except that page won't be there if she behaves like a Good Little Girl, and tells the bastar--nice people from the government, "Oh yes, I think the Internet should be "scrubbed behind its ears."
Or will they talk the the 13 year olds whose piles of Playboy and Hustler magazines are in the old breadmaker box behind the bike, under the dripsheets, in the back of the garage? Which kid in his or her right mind will admit to having a stash of porn at home? They KNOW what to say, to make the adults happy -- "adults" being a collective term which includes their parents, who don't know about the stash under the dripsheets, and who do control the purse-strings!
The situation is getting to the point of utter absurdity, and there is not one thing the ordinary voting Australian can do to stop it happening.
There's a lot more to this story, but I'll have to leave it there for today ... it's too hot to think much less write, and we're expecting rolling power outages in the afternoon, hitting random locations, as the local power station practises "load sharing" to meet demand. The forecast is for 109F today ... the problem is, it's already that hot in the yard here, and it's only lunch time!
If you found this post interesting or useful, PLEASE EMAIL THE URL to your friends! Remember that Google still has my page rankings set to zero, for no good reason. It is impossible for people to find this page with any kind of Google search. Help Keegan be heard -- especially because this is an important subject! Thanks in advance for emailing this url, and perhaps bookmarking it on your favorite sites.
Cheers,
MK
Well, here's the news on All News Web:
Australia: North Korea style internet censorship plan moves ahead.
Australians can’t deal with free access to the internet as far as Australia’s Minister of Communications Stephen Conroy is concerned. This month his office announced that live trials of a far reaching internet filter will begin.
Australians will have to get used to an internet devoid of X-rated, R-rated and even M-rated websites and ultimately possibly have to get used to no internet at all, according to some observers. The plan is supposedly about protecting Australians from the ‘evils of the net’ and cracking down on child pornography but evidence suggests that the censorship program will go much further than that according to many observers.
‘Sadly the kids will end up suffering for this….and vulnerable women’ noted one psychologist we spoke to.’ Borderline abusers are currently fulfilling their fantasies vicariously through the kind of porn legal in most countries (not Australia). Once this stops the action will shift to shady file-sharing groups and go offline altogether. They will get of the net and hit the streets’
IT experts fear that the plan will interfere with the internet so much that it will effectively take Australia out of the information age. ‘Yep Australia will be going offline’ one IT professional active on the online group ‘No internet censorship’ told us. ‘The filter will slow down speeds to the point that the net will be rendered completely useless’
On the other side of the coin many Christian activists are applauding the move. ‘The net is a receptacle of filth and it’s going to get a good scrubbing behind the ear’ commented Dorothy, a middle aged Mum affiliated with the Australia's Evangelical community.
Australia's few free speech activists are horrified by the plans ‘This is the end of free speech in Australia if it ever existed at all. In the end the filter will be used to cut out any websites that don’t conform to the likings of any lobby group that is seen as having voting power. When this plan comes to its logical conclusion you will be lucky if you can get on and read the daily news.’ Commented one well known free speech activist.’ Australians will lose on all fronts, abuse will be up and the net will be down’ she concluded.
http://www.allnewsweb.com/page1881881.php
Is this a far-fetched, extreme case scenario? We don't think so. This appeared on Crikey!:
So Conroy's Internet filter won't block political speech, eh?
"Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there has never been any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content," intoned Senator Stephen Conroy on Tuesday.
Yet the very next day, ACMA added a page from what's arguably a political website to its secret blacklist of Internet nasties.
The page is part of an anti-abortion website which claims to include "everything schools, government, and abortion clinics are afraid to tell or show you". Yes, photos of dismembered fetuses designed to scare women out of having an abortion. Before you click through, be warned: it is confronting. Here's the blacklisted page.
Mandatory Internet filtering, says Senator Conroy, is only about blocking the ACMA blacklist. The blacklist, he repeatedly insists, is "mainly" child-abuse and ultra-violent material. He's protecting us from ped-philes, stopping terrorists, that sort of thing. It's like the regulation we have for TV, films and books. Except it's not. It's not even close.
As always, Irene Graham's meticulously-researched Libertus.net explains how Internet censorship actually works now and what the Rudd government has been planning.
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090123-So-Conroys-internet-filter-wont-block-political-speech-eh-.html
It's not the blockage/filtering/censorship of the x-rated stuff and the r-rated stuff that bothers most ordinary folks (like self). It's the blockage of everything down to the M-rated material ... because after that, all that's left is G and PG. This is kiddie stuff. Even Lord of the Rings is rated M and MA15+. There's not a lot of the big movies out there that are PG. The Dark Knight is MA15+, for example ... Batman is about to vanish from Australia's web; Wolverine will never even appear upon computer screens here. The filtering will be in before it's released.
We can expect to lose YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Photobucket, MySpace, FaceBook, Amazon, and a whole lot more; because you can see M-rated stuff on all of these sites; and you can buy it from Amazon in the form of DVDs and --
Books. Which is where Keegan stands to turn into the invisible gay novelist very soon. When the government's blacklist is completed, rounded out to include everything except G and PG material, well ... this blog will still be there at Blogger -- you'll be able to see it! -- but I won't -- meaning, I can't update it, post to it, edit it, or even check back to see what I wrote a few months ago! It'll have vanished because I'm a political and gay rights activist, and I cover topics which are in the M rated bracket. I run artwork that's as "revealing as underwear commercials --
You realize that Victoria's Secret and so forth will be vanishing? The automatic, robotized photo filters are fine-tuned to detect skin. Any skin, anywhere. Not genitalia: they're not that smart. SKIN. (How do you think Google Safe Search works?) The text filters are set to detect four letter words ... but it gets worse: "damn" and "blast" and "hell" and "bugger" and "death" and "kill" will get you rated R. This blog IS rated R, because I keep saying heinous things like, "This heat wave will be the death of me yet," and "Somebody kill the power before this computer melts down," and "There was a blast of cold air from the a/c," and ... so on.
So, given that the only things left on the Internet will be Disney oriented, kiddie entertainment and shopping at stores that do NOT sell books and DVDs, who in the he...ck is in favor of the Internet filtering?
This is also running on Crikey!:
Who supports compulsory Internet filtering, exactly?
Senator Conroy tries to portray the filter-fighters as "extreme libertarians". But with GetUp!'s "Save The Net" campaign having already gathered 95,000 signatures and $50,000, it's starting to look pretty mainstream. That, plus a new survey by middle-rank ISP Netspace, starts to paint the supporters of compulsory filtering as the minority.
Netspace isn't taking part in the trials because the Expression of Interest contained "insufficient detail, unrealistic timeframes and unclear funding arrangements".
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20090128-Who-supports-compulsory-Internet-filtering-exactly.html
Uh...huh. Well, Senator Conroy would probably contest that less than 100,000 Internet users are not a big enough group to compromise the security of the legions of children whose parents are allowed by law to practise criminal negligence.
Put it like this: you have a stash of porn magazines, tapes and books in the house. The kids know where the stash is. Do you leave them alone with it? The answer is -- no, you don't. The same applies to the computer and Internet connection ... no more, no less. The responsibility is on the shoulders of the PARENTS to filter their own damned Internet and protect their own damned children.
Meanwhile, some ISPs are so disgusted, they won't even be involved in the trials. I'm with Telstra-Big Pond, and this is fortunate, because this is one of the disgusted ISPs. Another is the giant Netspace.
In fact, Netspace officially has this to say:
Netspace customers rail against ISP filtering
Netspace has released the results of its customer survey on ISP level filtering, which shows strong opposition to the federal government's plan.
The survey found that 78.9% of the "almost 10,000" respondents disagreed with the federal government's plan to mandate ISP level filtering for all Australians, with 61.8% of those "strongly" disagreeing.
Over 70% of Netspace customers also showed strong opposition to the potential for increased broadband prices and a reduction in Internet performance as a result of filtering.
Netspace also asked customers if they would "opt-in" to a clean-feed service if it were made available. 64.9% of respondents said they would not sign up, while 26.1% said "maybe". It's worth noting however that some comments by the government have suggested the clean-feed service would be opt-out rather than opt-in.
In related news, iiNet says it is "unsure" when the filtering trials may start, and is not yet sure if it will be asked to participate. iiNet told customers in its newsletter that its "belief is that these trials will only highlight filtering as ineffective in addressing the issue".
"We're also more than a little concerned with the Government's failure to clearly outline the level and types of censorship that will apply to subjects other than child pornography, in addition to the impact this filtering could have on internet performance", it said.
http://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1831
O...kay. As you can see, at this moment's it's chaos, with only one thing being certain: a minority of people (like the Aussie Christian Evangelical Mum above) are in agreement with making the web a G and PG environment. But --
When you lose Amazon, and Wiki, YouTube and Flickr, sites that sell swimwear and lingerie, sites giving information about AIDS prevention, safe sex and the right way to use condoms; sites that argue the political environment, and contend with matters of human rights...
Do the evangelists have the right to dictate terms to the community as a whole? Isn't this the gateway to the Sharya system of law?? Why can't these religious enthusiasts just protect their own children, and leave the rest of us be? Take a leaf out of the Gospel According to Ned Flanders, and look after your own damned kids, don't wait for the country to do it for you! And then --
Why do these religious bods assume that their kids WANT to see porn on the web? If they've raised them in their own pure and holy image, wouldn't the kids turn off, switch channels, run back to something nice and safe?
Here is where it gets interesting, because --
Children's groups Save the Children, and the National Children's and Youth Law Centre, said they were yet to be convinced of the effectiveness of a mandatory filter but would wait until children were properly consulted before making a judgement.
"We're agnostic about the mandatory filtering trials," Save the Children Australia child rights adviser Holly Doel-Mackaway said.
"If it's an opt-in filter we would agree," she said.
She also called on the Government to take children's input seriously when forming policy.
The Government has established a youth advisory group based on 15 schools to guide it on cyber-safety matters.
"We've been advised by the department that the consultation process with the children will start in March," Ms Doel-Mackaway said.
"We want the children's comments to be documented and made public."
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24967191-15306,00.html
This is where it starts to get a leeeetle bit idiotic. In March, they're going to start talking to "children" to get their take on the situation. In context, "children" means anything under 18. They'll be talking to a six foot, hungover, beard-shadowed guy who lost his virginity five years ago, and whose girlfriend is expecting his baby while he finishes out his matriculation, ready to go to TAFE or whatever. Question: are you frightened, troubled or offended by nudity and sex education pages on the Internet? We couldn't think of a sillier bloody question if we held a national competition. Or, they could be talking to the girlfriend, same age, same situation, except that she's at home, six months pregnant. And oh, does she wish she'd looked at the condom advisory service page seven months ago!
Except that page won't be there if she behaves like a Good Little Girl, and tells the bastar--nice people from the government, "Oh yes, I think the Internet should be "scrubbed behind its ears."
Or will they talk the the 13 year olds whose piles of Playboy and Hustler magazines are in the old breadmaker box behind the bike, under the dripsheets, in the back of the garage? Which kid in his or her right mind will admit to having a stash of porn at home? They KNOW what to say, to make the adults happy -- "adults" being a collective term which includes their parents, who don't know about the stash under the dripsheets, and who do control the purse-strings!
The situation is getting to the point of utter absurdity, and there is not one thing the ordinary voting Australian can do to stop it happening.
There's a lot more to this story, but I'll have to leave it there for today ... it's too hot to think much less write, and we're expecting rolling power outages in the afternoon, hitting random locations, as the local power station practises "load sharing" to meet demand. The forecast is for 109F today ... the problem is, it's already that hot in the yard here, and it's only lunch time!
If you found this post interesting or useful, PLEASE EMAIL THE URL to your friends! Remember that Google still has my page rankings set to zero, for no good reason. It is impossible for people to find this page with any kind of Google search. Help Keegan be heard -- especially because this is an important subject! Thanks in advance for emailing this url, and perhaps bookmarking it on your favorite sites.
Cheers,
MK
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Time Dilation Zones ... or, Gravity Sucks
We must be living and doing business on the lip of the gravity well of a massive black hole. It's the only thing that would even halfway explain what's happening with virtually everything we're trying to do at this time --
LORDS OF HARBENDANE, right? Keegan's earth-shattering new work that was supposed to be out and at Amazon in time for Christmas 2008 ... and it's now January 14th on this side of the dateline, and the proof copy still hasn't shown up here.
And as of this morning, we know why.
It was shipped by USPS priority on Dec 29th. Some bright spark in the packing department forgot to slap an international shipping label on it. USPS took FIFTEEN DAYS to figure this out and return it to CreateSpace...
It has just been re-shipped.
What can you say? Time dilation works in mysterious ways -- and it's hit us again, same day: we just had notification from iPower that the DreamCraft domain can't be moved away from the old InterNic dinosaur setup, into the Tucows zone, where the guys at DC can properly control things ... not for 60 days starting on January 8. The old registrar (the one that took 48 hours to bring the renewed domain back online) won't let go of it for -- you guessed -- two months.
Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better. So ... we wait for the proof of HARBENDANE, and for DreamCraft to be released from its strange bondage.
Right now, we're waiting for a/c to be installed. The plant was purchased about a month ago and has been sitting under a tarp. The installation company FORGOT to schedule the installation. It was 110.6 F in the SHADE, in this neck of the woods yesterday. Time dilation strikes again!
It's also a month since I wrote a very nice letter to Google, to make nice and get my Google page rankings restored, since I'd swear to god(s) I haven't done anything to get myself on their $hit list. I'm (yes!) still waiting. They warned of a wait of "several weeks," and they weren't kidding. It's been two months, now, since anyone in the US found MK via a Google blog or web search. The Googlebot stopping indexing this blog about six weeks ago. (The fences are rusting, the weeds are feet higher, the rafters are full of cobwebs and vultures...)
What are my plans?! Fire up the engines, turn the stern to the event horizon, see if we can pull our way out of the gravity well!
Seriously ... the a/c ought to be on and working by evening today ... HARBENDANE ought to be delivered some time next week ... DC can shift its domain in March, and as for this blog --
If Google won't redress the problem, I'll delete the whole thing, strike a new blog and upload the majority of these posts, maybe two or three at a time. Of course, the time-sensitive posts will be lost (Prop 8 before 11/1/08 ... Christmas ... New Year), but I'll salvage what I can.
At that point, I'll also be asking regular readers for a bit of help: the more people who link to you, the more The Goog notices you. If maybe a dozen readers would link direct to the new blog, we'd be back up and running in no time.
Still -- it hasn't happened yet. Maybe someone nice at Goog HQ is, even as I type this, looking at this blog and saying, "What a great blog! Which nong shuffled this onto the $hit list? Let's just fix this problem, right now."
Time dilation is a curious thing. I know intellectually that most of the delays have only been in the order of 2 or 3 weeks, but to my frazzled brain cells it's been several years -- hence the rusting fences and gathering vultures!
And of course the final thing we're waiting for is to see the impact of the Internet filtering, which was SUPPOSED to be starting in a few days -- this being mid-January.
As per the impending filtering, the Rudd government is starting to revolve in shrinking circles are contradict itself. There's a feature running on iTWire right now: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22623/127/ ...Conroy Cans Coonan's Free Net Filtering Scheme.
The title there references this: "The Australian Labor Government has closed the programme established by the previous Coalition Government which gave all Australian families access to a free PC-based Internet content filter under its NetAlert initiative. The filters were available through the NetAlert web site either by download or delivery on CD-Rom. The site now says simply that "The free availability of internet content filters from this website under the National Filter Scheme ended on 31 December 2008." However, free technical support for filters previously obtained under the scheme is available until 30 June 2010. Shadow minister, Nick Minchin claimed that the Rudd Government had "quietly closed the programme...under the cover of the festive season on 31 December." However, a spokesman for communications minister, Stephen Conroy, told iTWire that plans to close the scheme had been revealed in the May 2008 budget. He said that free filters were now widely available from ISPs so provision by the Government was unnecessary."
And the rub is in the last sentence. Read it again!!! Free filters are available from ISPs, so the government's meddling is not necessary!
And yet blanket, nation-wide filtering is? Hunh? Say what?
There's more. This is the next paragraph from the same feature in iTWire: "The spokesman also claimed that the scheme had been a huge waste of money. "The previous government spent $15.5 million on promoting PC filters. 163,000 filter licences were issued, and as at end of November 2008 only approximately 26,000 of these were still in use. Extrapolated, that means that only about two percent of households with dependent age children and an internet connection are using the filter."
Bottom line: parents don't care. If they cared, they would protect their kids. The means of protection are not just cheap, they're free. But 98% of kids have parents who don't give the proverbial stuff what their ofspring are seeing on the WWW --
Which leaves Stephen Conroy out there watchdogging the web on behalf of these "Couldn't care less" parents, and crippling the Internet for the whole country with mandatory filters that are largely ineffective. Woah.
In the current feature running in iTWire, there is also a throwaway remark that "Conroy's preferred option - mandatory ISP level filtering - is months away from being implemented."
It was supposed to all be in place and running before Christmas. Well, now we're looking at mid-2009 or so, are we?? I've said it so often before, I'm sheepish about saying it again: make the parents responsible. Make it illegal to expose kids to porn. Put a $5,000 fine on the crime of running unfiltered Internet connections in houses where there are kids. Then enforce the law, and use the revenues to pay for free filters supplied to every parent. Problem solved.
Turns out, time dilation seems to be affecting Stephen Conroy's neck of the woods too! All by itself, December '08 turns into mid-09. Which is a neat trick.
For Keegan, most of the things that should have been happening four and six weeks ago are going to be happening in the next 1 - 3 weeks, and it's weird. Seriously weird. I'll give you odds, Conroy would say the same.
Anyway ... the other side to time dilation (the point which physicists never remember to make) is, better late than never.
Want to know a bit more about how nutso Oz has become since Kevin Rudd took the reins? Go here: http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/australia-signs-onto-free-net-forgets-filtering-plan/
...that little lot was racked up in one single year! Ouch!
Back to work, guys!
Cheers,
MK
LORDS OF HARBENDANE, right? Keegan's earth-shattering new work that was supposed to be out and at Amazon in time for Christmas 2008 ... and it's now January 14th on this side of the dateline, and the proof copy still hasn't shown up here.
And as of this morning, we know why.
It was shipped by USPS priority on Dec 29th. Some bright spark in the packing department forgot to slap an international shipping label on it. USPS took FIFTEEN DAYS to figure this out and return it to CreateSpace...
It has just been re-shipped.
What can you say? Time dilation works in mysterious ways -- and it's hit us again, same day: we just had notification from iPower that the DreamCraft domain can't be moved away from the old InterNic dinosaur setup, into the Tucows zone, where the guys at DC can properly control things ... not for 60 days starting on January 8. The old registrar (the one that took 48 hours to bring the renewed domain back online) won't let go of it for -- you guessed -- two months.
Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better. So ... we wait for the proof of HARBENDANE, and for DreamCraft to be released from its strange bondage.
Right now, we're waiting for a/c to be installed. The plant was purchased about a month ago and has been sitting under a tarp. The installation company FORGOT to schedule the installation. It was 110.6 F in the SHADE, in this neck of the woods yesterday. Time dilation strikes again!
It's also a month since I wrote a very nice letter to Google, to make nice and get my Google page rankings restored, since I'd swear to god(s) I haven't done anything to get myself on their $hit list. I'm (yes!) still waiting. They warned of a wait of "several weeks," and they weren't kidding. It's been two months, now, since anyone in the US found MK via a Google blog or web search. The Googlebot stopping indexing this blog about six weeks ago. (The fences are rusting, the weeds are feet higher, the rafters are full of cobwebs and vultures...)
What are my plans?! Fire up the engines, turn the stern to the event horizon, see if we can pull our way out of the gravity well!
Seriously ... the a/c ought to be on and working by evening today ... HARBENDANE ought to be delivered some time next week ... DC can shift its domain in March, and as for this blog --
If Google won't redress the problem, I'll delete the whole thing, strike a new blog and upload the majority of these posts, maybe two or three at a time. Of course, the time-sensitive posts will be lost (Prop 8 before 11/1/08 ... Christmas ... New Year), but I'll salvage what I can.
At that point, I'll also be asking regular readers for a bit of help: the more people who link to you, the more The Goog notices you. If maybe a dozen readers would link direct to the new blog, we'd be back up and running in no time.
Still -- it hasn't happened yet. Maybe someone nice at Goog HQ is, even as I type this, looking at this blog and saying, "What a great blog! Which nong shuffled this onto the $hit list? Let's just fix this problem, right now."
Time dilation is a curious thing. I know intellectually that most of the delays have only been in the order of 2 or 3 weeks, but to my frazzled brain cells it's been several years -- hence the rusting fences and gathering vultures!
And of course the final thing we're waiting for is to see the impact of the Internet filtering, which was SUPPOSED to be starting in a few days -- this being mid-January.
As per the impending filtering, the Rudd government is starting to revolve in shrinking circles are contradict itself. There's a feature running on iTWire right now: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22623/127/ ...Conroy Cans Coonan's Free Net Filtering Scheme.
The title there references this: "The Australian Labor Government has closed the programme established by the previous Coalition Government which gave all Australian families access to a free PC-based Internet content filter under its NetAlert initiative. The filters were available through the NetAlert web site either by download or delivery on CD-Rom. The site now says simply that "The free availability of internet content filters from this website under the National Filter Scheme ended on 31 December 2008." However, free technical support for filters previously obtained under the scheme is available until 30 June 2010. Shadow minister, Nick Minchin claimed that the Rudd Government had "quietly closed the programme...under the cover of the festive season on 31 December." However, a spokesman for communications minister, Stephen Conroy, told iTWire that plans to close the scheme had been revealed in the May 2008 budget. He said that free filters were now widely available from ISPs so provision by the Government was unnecessary."
And the rub is in the last sentence. Read it again!!! Free filters are available from ISPs, so the government's meddling is not necessary!
And yet blanket, nation-wide filtering is? Hunh? Say what?
There's more. This is the next paragraph from the same feature in iTWire: "The spokesman also claimed that the scheme had been a huge waste of money. "The previous government spent $15.5 million on promoting PC filters. 163,000 filter licences were issued, and as at end of November 2008 only approximately 26,000 of these were still in use. Extrapolated, that means that only about two percent of households with dependent age children and an internet connection are using the filter."
Bottom line: parents don't care. If they cared, they would protect their kids. The means of protection are not just cheap, they're free. But 98% of kids have parents who don't give the proverbial stuff what their ofspring are seeing on the WWW --
Which leaves Stephen Conroy out there watchdogging the web on behalf of these "Couldn't care less" parents, and crippling the Internet for the whole country with mandatory filters that are largely ineffective. Woah.
In the current feature running in iTWire, there is also a throwaway remark that "Conroy's preferred option - mandatory ISP level filtering - is months away from being implemented."
It was supposed to all be in place and running before Christmas. Well, now we're looking at mid-2009 or so, are we?? I've said it so often before, I'm sheepish about saying it again: make the parents responsible. Make it illegal to expose kids to porn. Put a $5,000 fine on the crime of running unfiltered Internet connections in houses where there are kids. Then enforce the law, and use the revenues to pay for free filters supplied to every parent. Problem solved.
Turns out, time dilation seems to be affecting Stephen Conroy's neck of the woods too! All by itself, December '08 turns into mid-09. Which is a neat trick.
For Keegan, most of the things that should have been happening four and six weeks ago are going to be happening in the next 1 - 3 weeks, and it's weird. Seriously weird. I'll give you odds, Conroy would say the same.
Anyway ... the other side to time dilation (the point which physicists never remember to make) is, better late than never.
Want to know a bit more about how nutso Oz has become since Kevin Rudd took the reins? Go here: http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/australia-signs-onto-free-net-forgets-filtering-plan/
...that little lot was racked up in one single year! Ouch!
Back to work, guys!
Cheers,
MK
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The website reappears!
The big news this morning is: we're back up. The domain came back online in bits and pieces -- some functions appeared twelve hours before others -- and various proxy servers around the world took their sweet time updating, but ...
If you were to click on this right now, you'll get ...
If you were to click on this right now, you'll get ...
...and a great sigh of relief is being heaved by all. Oars are back in the water. We were down for about three days, or less, and I'll tell you, it felt like months. Shows you how web dependent we've become -- and how much it's going to smart when the Internet filtering starts, "the Great Aussie Firewall," and the www is suddenly close to inaccessible due to its grinding slowness and the probability of everything, everywhere, timing out before it can be loaded. It's scheduled to begin in a few days now.
There's a story running on Crikey!-dot-com today:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090109-Brooklyn-Law-School-study-highlights-net-censorship-problems.html
The world smirks at Conroy's censorship plan
The rest of the world has been smirking at Stephen Conroy's ill-conceived plan to censor Australia's Internet for a while now, but a new study published by Brooklyn Law School entitled "Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray Into Internet Censorship" is a serious embarrassment.
This report is important. Not only is it authored by a reputable and neutral foreign observer but it also focuses more on the legitimacy of the scheme than the technical concerns, and it finds some serious problems. Despite the sober language, phrases like "troubling", "worrisome", "politically motivated" and "unaccountable" are common.
Contrary to persistent claims by the Minister, the study finds that Australia "will likely become the first Western democracy to block access to on-line material through legislative mandate."
The world smirks at Conroy's censorship plan
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090109-Brooklyn-Law-School-study-highlights-net-censorship-problems.html
Here's the abstract of a report published just before Christmas:
Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray into Internet Censorship
Derek E. Bambauer Brooklyn Law School
December 22, 2008
Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 125
Abstract:
Australia's decision to implement Internet censorship using technological means creates a natural experiment: the first Western democracy to mandate filtering legislatively, and to retrofit it to a decentralized network architecture. But are the proposed restrictions legitimate? The new restraints derive from the Labor Party's pro-filtering electoral campaign, though coalition government gives minority politicians considerable influence over policy. The country has a well-defined statutory censorship system for on-line and off-line material that may, however, be undercut by relying on foreign and third-party lists of sites to be blocked. While Australia is open about its filtering goals, the government's transparency about what content is to be blocked is poor. Initial tests show that how effective censorship is at filtering prohibited content - and only that content - will vary based on what method the country's ISPs use. Though Australia's decisionmakers are formally accountable to citizens, efforts to silence dissenters, outsourcing of blocking decisions, and filtering's inevitable transfer of power to technicians undercut accountability. The paper argues Australia represents a shift by Western democracies towards legitimating Internet filtering and away from robust consideration of the alternatives available to combat undesirable information.
Bambauer, Derek E.,Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray into Internet Censorship(December 22, 2008). Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 125. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1319466
It's an incredible waste of time and money, at a moment when the climate is crashing, people are out of work and losing their homes, whole populations are starving, and disease is on the rampage worldwide. Against all this, we're going to throw better than a hundred million dollars at doing a job which parents could be compelled by law to do for themselves. Buy and install bloody Net Nanny. It's that simple. But nooooo, we have to be The Righteous Christian Nation, waddling along in the footsteps of the American religious right loonies like an arthritic little lap dog.
The fact is, we've been toadying to the White House for so long, one would have thought a change was due; but we elected ourselves a clueless, self-confessed "cradle Catholic" who is more interested in placating the religious lunatic fringe downunder than in making adults (parents!) take responsibility for the children they conceived by accident, and are now so wantonly neglecting that these kids could cruise porn sites all day long, if the little monsters wanted to ... and it turns out, the little monsters do!
All that is needed is legislation, making illegal the "wilful supply of pornography by parents to minors." If it were a motoring offence, it would be termed "driving without due care and attention," the kind of driving that leads to fender-benders, flattened gateposts and roadkill pets. This would be "operating a computer without due care and attention, in the presence of minors," the kind of surfing that leads to sex, coarse language, violence, hate, racism, sexism, drugs and underage models in compromising situations, all being freely displayed.
Make it a law. Slap a $5,000 fine on it. Hit the parents, hit them hard where it hurts -- the pocketbook. It's clobbering time. But leave the Internet alone. The business community depends on it to work and trade, and the rest of us depend on it to communicate. You know, they're looking into ways to filter chat?! What comes next, censored emails?
Still on the subject of the Internet -- I've been invited to take part in the class action against Google Book Search. Glance at this: http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/. I can't say I've been directly affected, since I write niche fiction rather than whopping great research text books. But I'm looking into it, with an eye to seeing what The Goog intends doing with ebooks and so forth. I'm still reading, without much real idea of how this involves Keegan at this point, but you have to admit, it's interesting!
But today's big news is ... Mel Keegan OnLine is back on line!
Still waiting for the proof copy of Harbendane. Still waiting for Google to explain why they zeroed out the page rankings of this blog, and maybe rectify the situation. *sigh* Patience.
Cheers,
MK
Friday, January 2, 2009
The long Trek out of homophobia ain't over yet, apparently
Welcome to 2009 ... and business as usual. The new harddrive is on and working, even as I type this: the gizmos are backing up about 100GB of stored stuff into a corner of the Tb space. Nice. Gives one the illusion of being in control (the truth being very different).
I was wandering around on the Internet a couple of days ago, following links to and from who knows where, and came upon this, at After Elton: http://www.afterelton.com/blog/michaeljensen/star-trek-fan-boys-react-set-phasers-to-whine ... after all these bloody years, you just don't believe it can still be going on ... homophobia among Trek fans. Still. Now. Forty years down the track. Incredible, isn't it?
What goes on, you ask? Well, there's a semi-pro fourth season of the original series (with Kirk, Spock, et al), in front of the cameras. Strictly non-profit, which is why Paramount turns the provebial blind eyes and deaf ears. But it's good enough that a couple of the original actors (Takei and Koenig) have been in episodes, and David Gerrold -- out gay screenwriter to whom we can credit some of the best Trek shows, including the iconic Trouble with Tribbles -- has reworked an old script into something new -- and, from where I'm sitting, terrific -- for the current show.
The story so far (in a thimble) is that Gene Roddenberry planned a spinoff show with Kirk, Spock et all, called Star Trek: Phase II. It was nothing to do with the Next Generation, and would have been shot in something like the eary 1970s. One of the episodes developed for that show was "Blood and Fire" by David Gerrold. The show was never made, but when the semi-pro crew got going with Phase II, the producer (who also plays the part of James T Kirk in the show) had the presence of mind to contact Gerrold and ask if there was any chance of the old episode being reworked and ... filmed.
Intrigued? So was I. Now, to be perfectly candid, I haven't yet see any of the Phase II shows. The last Trek I watched was about half of Voyager, before work and travel got in the way -- I still haven't seen most of it. I also missed three-fourths of DS9 for the same reason. I've seen all the movies, and liked almost all of them. I grew up on classic Trek, but have to admit that the jingoism and Hollywood-ness of some of the 1960s-style episodes make them borderline unwatchable to me, now, today. So I'm pretty darned qualified to talk about this and say --
At last! At bloody last, after 40 years, A GAY TREK EPISODE HAS BEEN MADE! It's wonderful that this has been done; it's a tribute to Gerrold, and the producers of the show, and as soon as I have my computers set up properly again, I shall be downloading all these episodes (there are three or four so far, with Gerrold's episode being the third or fourth). But --
Right on cue, at least some of the fans responded to the gay storyline with the same old homophobia we've come to expect from Trek people. The producers, writers and actors might have dragged themselves into the epoch of human rights, but the fans are still saying things like this: "I think the episode would have been better without the gay scene. In fact, I think you could have replaced the Freeman character with a woman, and very little of the drama would be removed. Having the gay scene means, as a father, I’m not sure if my eight-year-old son should watch this episode. He’s seen and enjoyed all the others. I’ve never had to worry about screening anything Star Trek before. ... I also think the gay storyline is the least interesting thing about the episode." And this: "What the hell is with the two guys dry-humping each other?? I’m sorry, but I’ve just lost a TON of respect for the Phase Two guys. Pushing blatant homosexuality in our faces is NOT the kind of Star Trek I want to watch! >:o( Completely uncalled for and not in the spirit of Star Trek. Disgusting!!"
http://www.afterelton.com/blog/michaeljensen/star-trek-fan-boys-react-set-phasers-to-whine
Well ... shucks. Why am I surprised? So long as it's females being turned into sex objects ... for example the Borg lady with the superstructure that comes through the door ten minutes ahead of the rest of her ... it's all fine and dandy; but let a gay couple express affection, and it's "disgusting," is it? Hmmm. I wonder if this qualifies as "the language of hate."
Anyway, if you're interested, go over the the show's own site and check it out. (You can also download for free; the episodes are shared around via P2P. If you don't have a "P2P client," don't even think about paying money for a service. Download Opera: it has P2P client software onboard.)
Here's the new Trek show's own page: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/, and here is the Opera page, to get the browser with the built-in P2P routine: http://www.opera.com/
A quick word to Aussie fans: if you want these shows, or at least the gay episode(s), get in fast, because when "the Great Aussie Firewall" goes up in about two weeks, P2P is probably going to be inaccessible to Australians. The government and critics are calling it a "BitTorrent" lockout, but "BitTorrent" is more than likely a generic term. I should think they mean "P2P" as a whole. In which case, loads of sites are going to go invisible and stay that way, very soon. Now, that's what I call disgusting.
More on the Aussie Internet censorship here: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-is-here-internet-filtering-is.html
and especially here:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/save-internet-get-into-petition.html
Ciao for now,
MK
I was wandering around on the Internet a couple of days ago, following links to and from who knows where, and came upon this, at After Elton: http://www.afterelton.com/blog/michaeljensen/star-trek-fan-boys-react-set-phasers-to-whine ... after all these bloody years, you just don't believe it can still be going on ... homophobia among Trek fans. Still. Now. Forty years down the track. Incredible, isn't it?
What goes on, you ask? Well, there's a semi-pro fourth season of the original series (with Kirk, Spock, et al), in front of the cameras. Strictly non-profit, which is why Paramount turns the provebial blind eyes and deaf ears. But it's good enough that a couple of the original actors (Takei and Koenig) have been in episodes, and David Gerrold -- out gay screenwriter to whom we can credit some of the best Trek shows, including the iconic Trouble with Tribbles -- has reworked an old script into something new -- and, from where I'm sitting, terrific -- for the current show.
The story so far (in a thimble) is that Gene Roddenberry planned a spinoff show with Kirk, Spock et all, called Star Trek: Phase II. It was nothing to do with the Next Generation, and would have been shot in something like the eary 1970s. One of the episodes developed for that show was "Blood and Fire" by David Gerrold. The show was never made, but when the semi-pro crew got going with Phase II, the producer (who also plays the part of James T Kirk in the show) had the presence of mind to contact Gerrold and ask if there was any chance of the old episode being reworked and ... filmed.
Intrigued? So was I. Now, to be perfectly candid, I haven't yet see any of the Phase II shows. The last Trek I watched was about half of Voyager, before work and travel got in the way -- I still haven't seen most of it. I also missed three-fourths of DS9 for the same reason. I've seen all the movies, and liked almost all of them. I grew up on classic Trek, but have to admit that the jingoism and Hollywood-ness of some of the 1960s-style episodes make them borderline unwatchable to me, now, today. So I'm pretty darned qualified to talk about this and say --
At last! At bloody last, after 40 years, A GAY TREK EPISODE HAS BEEN MADE! It's wonderful that this has been done; it's a tribute to Gerrold, and the producers of the show, and as soon as I have my computers set up properly again, I shall be downloading all these episodes (there are three or four so far, with Gerrold's episode being the third or fourth). But --
Right on cue, at least some of the fans responded to the gay storyline with the same old homophobia we've come to expect from Trek people. The producers, writers and actors might have dragged themselves into the epoch of human rights, but the fans are still saying things like this: "I think the episode would have been better without the gay scene. In fact, I think you could have replaced the Freeman character with a woman, and very little of the drama would be removed. Having the gay scene means, as a father, I’m not sure if my eight-year-old son should watch this episode. He’s seen and enjoyed all the others. I’ve never had to worry about screening anything Star Trek before. ... I also think the gay storyline is the least interesting thing about the episode." And this: "What the hell is with the two guys dry-humping each other?? I’m sorry, but I’ve just lost a TON of respect for the Phase Two guys. Pushing blatant homosexuality in our faces is NOT the kind of Star Trek I want to watch! >:o( Completely uncalled for and not in the spirit of Star Trek. Disgusting!!"
http://www.afterelton.com/blog/michaeljensen/star-trek-fan-boys-react-set-phasers-to-whine
Well ... shucks. Why am I surprised? So long as it's females being turned into sex objects ... for example the Borg lady with the superstructure that comes through the door ten minutes ahead of the rest of her ... it's all fine and dandy; but let a gay couple express affection, and it's "disgusting," is it? Hmmm. I wonder if this qualifies as "the language of hate."
Anyway, if you're interested, go over the the show's own site and check it out. (You can also download for free; the episodes are shared around via P2P. If you don't have a "P2P client," don't even think about paying money for a service. Download Opera: it has P2P client software onboard.)
Here's the new Trek show's own page: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/, and here is the Opera page, to get the browser with the built-in P2P routine: http://www.opera.com/
A quick word to Aussie fans: if you want these shows, or at least the gay episode(s), get in fast, because when "the Great Aussie Firewall" goes up in about two weeks, P2P is probably going to be inaccessible to Australians. The government and critics are calling it a "BitTorrent" lockout, but "BitTorrent" is more than likely a generic term. I should think they mean "P2P" as a whole. In which case, loads of sites are going to go invisible and stay that way, very soon. Now, that's what I call disgusting.
More on the Aussie Internet censorship here: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-is-here-internet-filtering-is.html
and especially here:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/save-internet-get-into-petition.html
Ciao for now,
MK
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Internet Censorship looms closer downunder
Just in case we Aussies think we're the only ones being broadsided with impending Internet censorship -- have a look at this piece, which appeared in The Inquisitor a short while ago: http://www.inquisitr.com/13421/is-there-a-global-left-wing-conspiracy-to-kill-the-internet/ It's always about protecting children from what's available on the computer ... and I can see the point behind this; but here's the rub: parents are also in charge of TV sets, DVDs that can be highly un-kid-friendly, CDs of rap music with content that'd make a sailor blanch, plus the old but good paperbacks and magazines that depict anything and everything you can imagine, and a lot you can't!
Books, magazines, videos and music are all under similar scrutiny ... but none of them are censored or filtered the way the Internet seems to be in danger of. You have the official State Censorship Bureau for your region, and they decide what's going to be burned right there on the dock, and what's going to be rated G or R or triple-x, or whatever.
I agree with pasting ratings on websites! In fact, responsible publishers already have well-positioned warnings as per adult content. You can go into your Blogger settings and have them display a "warning" page before the blog loads, for instance. You can also slap up an image or text block in the sidebar space, giving fair warning, along the lines of "This page contains adult material, do not proceed if you have problems with this."
But how in the world is the Internet going to be regulated like television?! Various websites go offline in the UK, Australia, China, Iran and Egypt, until 9:00pm, when the sex and violence get revved up on TV?
Where is the text on the rap CD case that says, "This CD may not be played during daylight hours due to offensive content" ...?! Where's the sticker on the DVD skinflik that says, "It is illegal to play this DVD before 9:00pm" ...?!
Surely, it comes down to the responsibility of parents. Would YOU leave an inquisitive, disobedient 7-year-old in the house alone with your prominently-displayed collection of DVDs, skinrags and so forth? No? Then why don't you just password-protect the computer and TURN IT OFF before leaving the kiddies alone with it? That way, they can turn it on if they like, but if they don't know the password ("thispcisakidfreezone", or, "thispciskidproof," or "getyourdamnednoseoutofthispc," or similar), they'll just look at a pretty blue screen for two hours.
Just as parents are responsible for hiding their skinrags, p*orno novels and DVDs and locking out the "adult" channels on the cable box -- make them responsible for password protecting the damned computer and LEARNING WHERE THE POWER SWITCH IS!!!
If fact, make it illegal for parents to have unprotected computers.
Make it illegal for a unprotected PC to be in the same building with a child over 2 and under 18. That way, your pregnant 17 year old, who's home minding the twins to which she gave birth last year, and watching We Were Soldiers and Saving Private Ryan, while chain smoking with both hands, knocking back a six-pack and lighting up the whacky-weed, won't be able to start up the computer and look at sex and violence on the Internet ... where it's illegal. Fine or imprison the parents if they let this 17 year mama old get onto the computer without the supervision of a mature adult.
Okay, I'll stop being flip and glib ... but you take my meaning. Here's the bottom line:
- Parents are responsible for their children
- The WWW is no more virulent than TV and DVDs
- the community at large has come to depend on the net
- you can't cripple the net to protect little kids because
- the community at large depends on it! And
- parents must be MADE to take responsibility...
...even if they don't want to, or are too lazy, or too stupid.
Yet we're still on the road where all Internet users are rabbit-punched because of the few stupid, lazy parents out there. P2P is about to be worst-hit in this country .... the Rudd government is looking at just blocking the lot and calling it good.
Read 'em and weep for the sheer stupidity of "The Great Aussie Firewall":
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i3agqiMrtVoJZzcaRDg2795uSLAAD95AGJQO0
http://www.p2p-weblog.com/50226711/australia_may_block_all_p2p_traffic.php
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/22/australia_bittorrent/
...stop the planet, I want to get off!
Cheers,
MK
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Save the Internet - get into the petition!
The widget doesn't fit the right side margin of this blog too well, so let's park it in its own post:
Please share this far and wide!
See also:
Internet censorship looms closer:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/internet-censorship-looms-closer.html
Internet Filtering is around the corner:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-is-here-internet-filtering-is.html
Repression worse than Iran starts soon:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/aussie-internet-censorship-repression.html
A useless waste of Aussie taxpayers' dollars:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/australian-internet-censorship.html
Internet filtering, banned books and the APA:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/internet-filtering-banned-books-and-apa.html
Internet content filtering is an impossible waste of time and money:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/internet-content-filtering-impossible.html
Big brother's watching ya, mate!
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/australian-internet-big-brothers.html
Please share this far and wide!
See also:
Internet censorship looms closer:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/internet-censorship-looms-closer.html
Internet Filtering is around the corner:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-is-here-internet-filtering-is.html
Repression worse than Iran starts soon:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/aussie-internet-censorship-repression.html
A useless waste of Aussie taxpayers' dollars:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/australian-internet-censorship.html
Internet filtering, banned books and the APA:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/internet-filtering-banned-books-and-apa.html
Internet content filtering is an impossible waste of time and money:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/internet-content-filtering-impossible.html
Big brother's watching ya, mate!
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/australian-internet-big-brothers.html
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