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20 March 2009

ABC Lateline on the leaked Internet blacklist, with me

I was on the ABC TV program Lateline last night as part of a story on the leaked Internet censorship blacklist.

While Senator Conroy is saying this isn’t the actual ACMA blacklist, it’s certainly indicative of the problems that come with a manually-maintained list of banned content — especially when it’s kept secret.

As I told Lateline, further leaks are inevitable.

As soon as you try and make something secret, there will be someone who wants it to be not secret. Either because they feel politically that it’s wrong that it’s secret, or for monetary gain. I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there who’d pay good money to get their hands on the current list and distribute it amongst people who would find the material of value to them.

The ABC has Real Media and Windows Media video streams plus a transcript, as well as a Flash video stream on the program home page. The vodcast will have downloadable MP4 and WMV files later today. And if none of them are suitable, there’s a copy on YouTube.

I’ll have more to say about this in Crikey later today.

18 March 2009

Links for 11 March 2009 through 18 March 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 11 March 2009 through 18 March 2009, posted after considerable delay in some cases:

Conroy’s clean feed | Background Briefing: ABC Radio’s 45-minute exploration. “In the name of protecting children, the government will decree we’ll be forbidden to see ‘unwanted’ and ‘inappropriate’ things on the web. But exactly what that means is a secret, and the thin end of the censorship wedge. Reporter, Wendy Carlisle.”
The Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time | What’s My Pass?: Humans are remarkably predictable. Even when they think they’re being obscure.
One Laptop per Child trial | Centre for Learning Innovation: ’Pong’s video about the first Australian trial of the OLPC, showing kids using the XOs in a primary school in rural New South Wales. Interviews with Pia Waugh and the educators involved. For soem reason, DET have cut the credits off the end, which seems a bit rude.
The real facts about Telstra and the Fake Stephen Conroy | nowwearetalking: Telstra’s first official response comes via their blog.
Telstra man behind Fake Stephen Conroy | smh.com.au: Leslia Nassar has revealed himself as the man behind Fake Stephen Conroy. And now the shitfight begins…
Social networking & social norms | Aide-Memoire: My friend Kate Carruthers links to some interesting discussions about how we’re creating and negotiating new social norms for online social networks. A good a starting point as any.
File Sharing Has Become the “New Normal” for Most Online Canadians | Daily Exchange: New Canadian research on attitudes to “file sharing”. 45% say people who use peer-to-peer file sharing services to download music and movies are regular Internet users doing what people should be able to do on the Internet. Only 3% believe file-sharers are criminals who should be punished by law.
Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day | smh.com.au: Websites linking to Wikipedia and an anti-abortion website have been threatened with fines.
ABC Mobile Web Site Failed Accessibility Test | Link: “Currently I am teaching mobile and accessible web design to second year and postgraduate students at The Australian National University in the course ‘Networked Information Systems’ (COMP2410). The ABC
[Mobile] home page would not be of an acceptable standard for student work on this course.”
You can’t spell Lowest Common Denominator without “ABC Mobile” | Department of Internets: A less-than-complimentary review of the ABC Mobile website.
ABC Mobile: The new supposedly-mobile-friendly website from Australia’s ABC. But…
We Have Lasers!!!!!!!!!!: Just like “Sexy People” but… with lasers! Lasers improve everything, right?
Sexy People: Billed as “a celebration of the perfect portrait”, this collection of over-produced and overly-sentimental portrait photography reminds us just how bad the 1970s and 1980s really were.
A gentle introduction to video encoding | dive into mark: A set of six articles providing an orientation to to issues involved in video encoding, written with a suitably cynical tone given the dog’s breakfast of formats available.
Happy 20th Birthday WWW | Link: 13 March 2009 marked the 20th anniversary of the CERN paper outlining what would become the World Wide Web.
Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Amendment (Search Powers) Bill 2009 | NSW Parliament: This Bill proposes giving far more extensive search powers to NSW Police, including the ability to secretly enter premises next to the suspect without notifying the owner or tenant, and to secretly install monitoring software on third-party computers.
Unicorns and Cupcakes: Two of the worst styles of kitsch collide in an explosion of… kitsch.
An interview with an anonymous blog commenter | Joanna Geary: A regular commenter on the Birmingham Post‘s website, “Clifford” chats about his experience.
australian screen: Australia’s audiovisual heritage online. “Explore over 1,000 Australian film and television titles produced over the last 100 years, with clips, curator notes and other information.”
Gary Hayes Emerging Media Diagrams | Flickr: “A range of charts created by Gary Hayes across games, social networks, cross-media, broadband services, virtual worlds. Used in various presentations already and all marked as creative commons – attribution, non-derivative, non-commercial.”

18 January 2009

Links for 12 January 2009 through 18 January 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 12 January 2009 through 18 January 2009, gahered with care and moistened with love:

All the ephemera that’s fit to print * | Noisy Decent Graphics: A lovely idea: take all the cool stuff your friends have written in the last year and print it in newspaper format.
P2P is Killing the Porn Star | Perceptric Forum: Hollywood is not the only casualty of P2P, it seems. A nice essay.
Business Sense | News.com.au Business: Buried in here is Business Sense TV, some Internet-based video productions. I have a reason for bookmarking this which is 100% Secret Squirrel.
Twitter Spreads News Of US Airways Crash In An Instant | InformationWeek: Yet another story about Twitter spreading the news of an event before the mainstream media could touch it.
Victoria Cross citation for Trooper Mark Gregor Donaldson | Department of Defence: The official Australian Army citation for the first Victoria Cross awarded to an Australian in 40 years. Terse, army bureaucratic language hides an amazing story of bravery.
Child porn laws being turn on their heads – by the kids themselves | The Inquisitr: Child pornography laws were designed to cover situations when an adult was coercing a child into sexual contexts. But what if the “child pornography” in question is “just” teenagers taking photos of each other?
Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown | NYTimes.com: A task force set up by 49 US attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of online sexual solicitation of children finds that there actually isn’t a significant problem.
Right Whales, Wrong Whales | Media Watch: It's from September 2008, but a great story about how journalists got it all wrong because they didn’t fact-check with people who know something about whale. There’s also a bonus photo of a whale penis. I rediscovered this story while researching a piece for Crikey.
Ten things every journalist should know in 2009 | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog: What struck me about this list is that any modern journalist should been across this knowledge well before now. Knowing that your readers are smarter than you on specific topics? Knowing how to use Google’s advanced search? How to use RSS feeds? Are working journalists really this far behind the pace?
wordpress wiki plugin | Instinct Entertainment: This new plug-in which can turn selected WordPress pages into Wiki-style editable objects could be useful. I should look at it. If I had the time. Would you like to look at it for me and report back?
BT-1 Bluetooth Webcam for Mac: The new BT-1 wireless webcam streams H.264 video and AAC audio. It’s compatible with Skype and iChat, so presumably it’ll work with Cam Twist and therefore Stilgherrian Live. I want a couple NOW. Available “late Q1”.
In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates | NYTimes.com: Ted Nelson’s book Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now was an enormous influence on me and many others. He’s now 71, and this piece based on a recent interview is a reasonable introduction to his work.
How I Use Twitter at Volume | chrisbrogan.com: “At volume, [Twitter is] a bit different. It’s a lot like showing up to a very busy, very loud cocktail party, but also a business meeting, plus a focus group, plus several other social situations. Twitter, unfiltered, is like someone with mind reading powers walking down 38th Street in Manhattan. It’s not especially easy to manage, and it’s very different how things work at this pace. Looking at unfiltered Twitter at this volume just doesn’t cut it.”
You are the President of Your Career | chrisbrogan.com: One person’s framework for focusing on your goals in an economically tough year. I like the reminder that a “career path” was something for your father, but not for you.
The Bush Administration’s Most Despicable Act | Time: Joe Klein summarises the Bush II government’s contribution to the wonderful world of torture.

21 December 200816 December 2010

Fine posts for 2008

Given that mere popularity doesn’t reflect quality, here’s my personal selection of my best, timeless posts for 2008. Happy reading!

Kruddiversary: The internet thanks you for 12 months of achieving nothing, my Crikey article looking at the first year of the Rudd government from an Internet geek’s perspective.
Thailand’s political crisis: an introduction, though later pieces in The Economist are better than my amateur efforts.
Journalism in a hyperconnected world.
@KevinRuddPM stumbles into the Twitterverse, a Crikey article which includes links to the previous three essays I’d written about the PM’s entrance into modern social media.
Gonzo Twitter 1: Saturday Evening in Newtown, my experiment in live-tweeting a descriptive essay and still one of the best things I’ve written all year.
How Dell fixed my monitor order, which is being used by clever consultants as an example of how to use social media for quality customer service.
Sunday Thoughts about Journalism, a rather lengthy essay with many links to background on the Death of Newspapers this year.
Finally, The Shave, a rather wonderful film we made.
The Great Firewall of China: how it works, how to bypass it.
Note to “old media” journalists: adapt, or stfu! This piece triggered an entire wave of discussion and was quoted globally.
Winter Solstice Meditation.
Anzac Day Rememberings.
ABC Playback: so this is the future of televisionâ€¦? Nope! A review of what’s now called ABC iView.
There ain’t no shortcuts to professionally-managed IT.
Remembering the Space Age: Arthur C Clarke dead at 90.
Super Hornets are Go.
Jason Calacanis and the Evil Cult of the Internet Start-up. I don’t really think Jason is evil, but I do worry about the self-centred anti-human attitude of many people connected with Internet start-ups.
New national anthem: I am So an Aussie, when the Snarky Platypus and I created, yes, a new national anthem. Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!
Is it really so wrong to mix business and politics (and religion)?
Leaving room for elephants: a chat with David Attenborough, a personal fave since it harks back to an interesting time in my life. This is still one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve done. Ever.
Angry geeks: “Don’t waste money on internet filters”, one of many articles I posted about censorship, but which outlined the key issues way back in January.
Post 801: Kill the Hallucinating Goldfish.

01 November 2008

Conroy thoroughly tangled in his own Rabbit-Proof Firewall

Crikey logo

[This article was first published in Crikey on Thursday, along with the superb Conroy a fearless combatant in the war against free speech by their Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane. I’ve added a few extra links and changed it from Crikey’s typographical rules to my own.]

As any farmer can tell you, fencing is bloody dangerous. The stretch-wire-between-posts thing, I mean, not the pointy-steel-pokey thing. One mistake and it’s THWACKKKK! Ten metres of barbed wire whipping into your face.

Senator Stephen Conroy is discovering the hard way that trying to build a Rabbit-Proof Firewall around the Internet is just as dangerous. As Bernard Keane points out in Crikey [Thursday], the standard politicians’ tactic — lying — doesn’t cut it in today’s hyperconnected world.

Continue reading “Conroy thoroughly tangled in his own Rabbit-Proof Firewall”

14 October 200814 October 2008

Marcus Westbury’s “Not Quite Art” is quite unmissable

I can’t be “objective” about Marcus Westbury and his truly awesome TV series Not Quite Art. Marcus, I am totally envious and I want to have your babies!

OK, failing that (for various biological and logistical reasons) I’ll simply demand that everyone — and I do mean everyone — watch Not Quite Art when series two is squeezed like a threatening pimple from ABC1’s transmitters across Australia tonight at 10pm. Or ABC2 at 7pm Sunday. Or streamed from ABC iView. ~~Or downloaded illegally from the torrents.~~

Quite frankly, if you reckon you’re interested in “art” and “culture” and how it’s evolving, then you must consider Marcus’ worldview. If you fail to watch this program, you’re missing out on a delightful, witty and above all intelligent journey.

Now I suppose I’ll have to explain why this series is so important…

Continue reading “Marcus Westbury’s “Not Quite Art” is quite unmissable”