Tag: mark newton

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More Links for 16 November 2008

Here’s another batch web links for 16 November 2008, posted semi-automatically.

  • Where Attention Flows, Money Follows | Kevin Kelly : The Technium: “The new rules for the new economy can be summarized as: Where ever attention flows, money will follow. Almost anything else except attention can be manufactured as a commodity. Luxury goods are only luxuries temporarily. They quickly are counterfeited and commodified. Premium brands are only premium because they garner a surplus of attention. Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow.”
  • “Firewalls Under Fire”: Mark Newton talks internet censorship on Today show" | Hoyden About Town: Karl Stefanovic interviewed internet service provision expert and outspoken censorship critic Mark Newton on Friday’s Today Show. Here’s a transcript.
  • Ericsson W25 Fixed Wireless Terminal, 3G Fixed Wireless Terminal, EDGE, UTMS, 3G, Gateway, HSDPA: One one side it’s a standard Internet gateway device with Wi-Fi and 4-port Ethernet switch. On the other side it’s HSUPA mobile broadband. In between, it can run off an internal battery for 3 hours should the power fail. Add it all up and maybe this is what Stilgherrian Live can use for mobile programs. At least Our Man At Telstra thinks so. Stand by.
  • How to defeat internet censorship | DanuPoyner.com: “If you think we will defeat internet filtering just by being right or just because the facts are on our side — think again. This is politics. If we don'’to hear it – we WILL lose.” A good analysis.
  • Dr Google | Memex 1.1: Google search trends can predict flu outbreaks 7 to 10 days ahead of the US Centres for Disease Control.
  • The Barack SlideShow | Tools of Change for Publishing: “What’s notable is that the images are fairly informal — and they are on Flickr. This kind of photostream — not unique in itself — would previously, a generation ago, have been highly curated, entitled ‘The new presidential family waits for news’ and published the week following in Life or Look magazine. However, the Obama pictures appear less curated (or at least have that air), were published nearly instantly, and do not involve the mediation of traditional media. In fact, whether these are eventually printed or not as official administration photos is secondary, because they are available freely and publicly online.”
  • Election Night 11-04-08 | Flickr: An 82-image slideshow of how Barack Obama and his family spent election night, posted by BarackObama.com.
  • What I learned about Blogging from the US Presidential Election | ProBlogger: Guest writer Trisha from Ideas for Women points out the importance of having a personal narrative in your blog. I’m not sure whether I agree for all blogs, but it’s food for thought.
  • Japanese Sewer System | + megabunny: Apparently this is actually a flood control system rather than a sewer system, but it's still a fine set of photographs of this massive infrastructure project, only slightly spoilt by the unimaginative comparison to The Matrix.
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Links for 10 November 2008 through 13 November 2008

Stilgherrian’s links for 10 November 2008 through 13 November 2008, greased up and wearing a beanie:

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Lame parrots try to defend Internet censorship

[Update 21 December: If you’ve just found this post through recent links just before Christmas 2008, you might also want to check out some of the later material which I list at the end of the article.]

Scan of letter from Anthony Albanese MP

Anthony Albanese, my federal MP, replied to my letter about Internet censorship. It’s nothing but platitudes and a regurgitation of Labor’s policy-speak.

Network engineer Mark Newton met with his local MP Kate Ellis in Adelaide yesterday. She too had nothing but canned responses.

This is not good enough.

The same goes for “pro-family” lobbyists like the Australian Family Association’s Anh Nguyen in Online filtering recognises families’ concerns today, or the people quoted in the Courier Mail‘s Web filter ‘needed’ to protect kids from porn on Friday.

Detailed, coherent critiques have been put forward addressing the technical, economic and policy flaws in clear, straightforward language. If you can’t counter those arguments with evidence and logic, not more “think of the children” hand-wringing, then we must stop wasting time and taxpayers’ money on this “filtering” folly. Now.

Continue reading “Lame parrots try to defend Internet censorship”

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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”

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Links for 28 October 2008 through 31 October 2008

Stilgherrian’s links for 28 October 2008 through 31 October 2008, gathered using an automatic government-controlled thought-filter:

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The argument is simple, Senator Conroy

Photograph of Senator Stephen Conroy labelled Cnut of the Week

For the second week in a row, the Stilgherrian Live audience voted Senator Stephen Conroy our “Cnut of the Week” for his persistence with and behaviour over the Australian government’s Internet censorship “plans”. The program is now online for your viewing pleasure.

OK, that’s a biased sample, sure. But as I wrote in Crikey yesterday, Conroy is thoroughly tangled in his own Rabbit-Proof Firewall. I’ll try to sneak that article out from behind the paywall later. However in summary Conroy is blustering, maligning his critics with the McCarthyist tactic of bullying and calling them child pornographers and generally ignoring the rational questions being put to him.

He’s also back-pedalling fast. On ABC Radio National’s The Media Report yesterday, he was even denying the policy was about censoring legal material at all, despite clear evidence for exactly the opposite.

Not good enough, Senator Conroy.

If the government wants to persist with comprehensive, centralised, secretive, unaccountable Internet censorship — let’s not use the spin-words “filtering” and “clean feed” because that just reinforces their moral-panic frame of the Internet being “dirty” — then they need to deploy this evidence-based policy-making they used to talk about and actually address the evidence.

Mark Newton, the network engineer Conroy’s office tried to bully into silence, has only become more vocal in his criticism. And at Online Opinion yesterday he puts his case more clearly than ever.

Continue reading “The argument is simple, Senator Conroy”