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Dear Ms Kate Ellis, MP…

Mark Newton, the network engineer who Senator Conroy’s office tried to bully, has written to his local member Kate Ellis MP detailing his criticism of both the Internet censorship plans and Conroy’s behaviour — and calling for a detailed response.

The PDF of the full letter has all the references, but I’ve reproduced the main text below — verbatim, except for minor changes to suit my own typographical and linking preferences.

One important figure which was “hidden” in a footnote….

When translated into the network traffic handled by a medium-sized ISP, the 3% false-positive rate of the most accurate filter tested corresponds to more than 3000 “bad blocks” per second.

Imagine the bureaucracy you’d need to undo all that damage to legitimate Internet traffic!

Imagine if your business or your family’s holiday photos were being blocked and you had to “prove” to the government that you’re not a child pornographer — because that’s how Senator Conroy is characterising you!

Here then, The Letter… it had been released into the public domain, so spread it wide! (So to speak. Sorry, Senators.)

Continue reading “Dear Ms Kate Ellis, MP…”

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Cats work in mysterious ways…

… like sitting in high vantage points around ’Pong’s desk while he’s working.

Photograph of Trinn Suwannapha with cats Artemis (left) and Apollo (right) waiting for... something

That’s Artemis on the left and Apollo on the right. Artemis had spent all afternoon asleep on my jacket, near where I was working. Apollo had been sleeping on my other jacket on the office floor. I think they now expect to be fed or something.

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Just being nude doesn’t make it porn, you sickos!

A portion of a Bill Henson nude photograph of young womanMaybe I’m jumping the gun here, because the actual recommendations aren’t online yet. But news today that the Bill Henson “scandal” has prompted an overhaul of NSW art laws really gets up my nose.

Australian photographer Bill Henson is no stranger to controversy. His images, like the one here, are of nude or semi-nude adolescents, and “protecting the innocent children from the evil pedophiles” is a powerful rallying-call. Newspaper columnists and talkback radio hosts alike revel in its ability to stir the emotions — attention-seeking pricks that they are.

In an incident earlier this year, some of Henson’s photographs were seized by the police — but returned once the Office of Film and Literature Classification found that none of them were “child pornography”. Indeed, it called their nudity “mild and justified” and gave them a PG rating.

Got that? PG. Suitable for viewing by children under the age of 16, with parental guidance.

But apparently the considered judgement of the official body charged with this kind of analysis — the people who deal with and (sometimes) ban material which is pornographic — isn’t good enough.

Continue reading “Just being nude doesn’t make it porn, you sickos!”

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Oh FFS get over yourself, Telstra!

Telstra logo

Australia’s new National Broadband Network is the country’s biggest infrastructure project in years, and there’s (up to) $4.7 billion in government subsidies up for grabs. But our largest telco Telstra says it won’t tender if it faces “functional separation” into wholesale and retail divisions. Diddums.

Geoff Booth, managing director of Telstra Country Wide says:

We cannot submit a tender, we will not submit a tender… people think we’re playing a bluff here, but I spoke to the chairman yesterday, and the CEO this morning, and the message is clear: we will not bid if separation is not taken off the table.

Well, Telstra, don’t bid then! [shrugs] Honestly, no-one cares.

What’s the “bluff”, Telstra? That the government will just choose another entity to give the funding to? One which doesn’t piss away their time and energy with all this bitching and moaning? One which doesn’t have the overhead of a bloated, inefficient workforce working within bloated, inefficient silo structures?

Ooooh… I’m so scared!

Continue reading “Oh FFS get over yourself, Telstra!”

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HUMMER to WANKER

Last night I passed a Hummer parked on Enmore Road. Yes, a big, shiny black beast with silver trim helping to boost some poor man’s failing sense of self-importance. Or something. “What a wanker,” I thought.

I posed the question on Twitter:

Word puzzle: Changing one letter at a time, using only valid words, can you turn HUMMER into WANKER?

I didn’t expect an answer, but some people can’t resist a challenge. Warwick Rendell was first with a 15-step solution, but Steve ‘Doc’ Baty managed to do it in 11 steps.

HUMMER
HAMMER
HARMER
WARMER
WORMER
WORKER
WORKED
WORDED
WARDED
WARDER
WANDER
WANKER

Some people really do have too much time on their hands…

[Update 26 October: If you check the comments, you’ll find that we now have it down to a 6-step solution. Beat that!]