Pics from #Riverfire 2010
katyand (twitpic):
"I think it would be a pain to use, like you’re trying to browse the internet on a tamagotchi."
— Will Jenkins’ comment on Gizmodo
"Privately, I’d revile any Government where my information needs are suddenly in question. The adage ‘if you don’t have anything to hide, show it’ fails - I should never be coerced to reveal anything about me without cause - that’s privacy. Respect that."
— omnibit commenting on Slashdot’s AU Government Censors Document On Planned Web Snooping
"There is a place for comparative studies of religion in the curriculum, but ultimately we consider it a private matter for parents and their children"
— Australian Education Union’s federal president, Angelo Gavrielatos, responding to Tony Abbott’s belief that all children should read the bible.
Paul the Octopus
Good ‘ol Paul. The World Cup might be over, but there’s plenty else he could predict. Or the poor guy might just be the punch line of jokes…
I regret to announce that Paul the Octopus will not be available to predict the #ausvotes outcome. He’s pulled a mussel. Julia_GillardPM
RT @HonestFrank: Paul the Psychic Octopus to retire from #worldcup predictions. I hear he has pulled a mussel ——> or he’s clammed up RosiePark
What other things might be wrong with Paul?
The filter
This is fairly depressing… why oh why can’t we just have some investigation without pre-concieved ideas, and some discussion without crazy ‘you-must-be-for-child-porn-if-you’re-not-for-the-filter” talk?
… So this is a fairly lengthy list of reasons why it can’t work, and we’ve only just scratched the surface. There are many more issues and many more workarounds available to both users and content providers. (And that is without even exploring non-technical issues such as censorship and freedom of speech). Even Enex Labs’ commissioned report on this issue to the government listed 37 different methods by which such a filter could be bypassed.
Industry experts (such as SAGE-AU members) are all saying the same thing: that legislating to force ISPs to perform such filtering is a costly exercise in futility. Gizmodo – Why The Filter Won’t Work, A Technical Story
A comment on the story by T
it’s telling that input from Sys Admins working in education hasn’t been sought.
We’ve been fighting this battle for decades now. We were on the front lines well before this stupid plan was a twinkle in the eye of whoever is ultimately responsible for it.
Why, then, were the people who’s life and career is all about blocking and filtering technologies and and child safety not accessed as a resource?
Simple answer is; because we’d all say the same thing “It doesn’t work. We’ve tried it. It doesn’t work.” Which isn’t an answer that fits with the agenda driving this crap.
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Days of learning turned in to months. I learned that hacking was way harder than it looked, and I partly blame that due to books like “Become a Master Programmer in 24 Hours”. As I dove deeper and deeper in to the world of hacking, my respect and admiration for true hackers rose exponentially. At the same time, my frustration increased as well. I felt like I had digressed so far from my original goal, to create a startup. I dreamed of marketing to users, pitching to investors, and cold calls to potential advertisers; but instead I was stuck here learning how to create pointless number games and address books in a language I barely understood.
And then I realized what I was doing wrong and why this was all so displeasing to me. My approach to hacking was the wrong one. I approached it as a means to achieving an end; not because I was genuinely interested in it. I approached hacking as a stepping stone, and once that was done I’d go to the next step. But hacking, programming, whatever you want to call it—it’s not like that. Its something you have to invest real time in to, and you have to have a special drive to become good at it.
"— Why Programming Isn’t For Me - Hamza
