Proclamation Of Doom « Personal And Hobbies « Categories

Seriously, no.

Jun 112010

http://delimiter.com.au/2010/06/11/govt-may-record-users-web-history-email-data/

Sorry, but this is a very important Proclamation of Doom, and thus had to be posted ASAP. The Australian Federal Government is apparently quite serious about a proposal to requires all Internet Service Providers to store precise data on what their subscribers are doing online.

“The Federal Government has confirmed it is considering a policy requiring Australian internet providers to retain precise data on how their users are using the internet, with the potential to include information on emails sent and — reportedly — their web browsing history.”

Seriously, this has to stop. I’m proposing we march on Parliament and bring some justice to bear on these morons who are messing with the fabric of Australia’s T&T industry and, by all accounts, the right to privacy of basically all the Netizens in the country.

With the stupid Firewall proposal, we’re already a laughing stock but this is beyond the pale.

Windows Mobile 6.1 : Fail

Proclamation of Doom No Responses »

May 242010

Enough Said.

Quick Q & A – About this Blog

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May 012010

Hello there, I’d like to take a moment of your time and ask you whether you think this site violates any of the following criteria (leave a comment, if you could please):

Disallowed site behavior

The landing page must be available and reliably respond even at peak use times.
The Back button on the landing page must be functional and allow users to return to the previous webpage.
If the landing page requires registration, users must still be able to access some useful content without registering.
The landing page must not:
- Be under construction.
- Open any additional windows.
- Mislead the user with "imitation" dialog boxes or browser windows.
- Perform an automatic download of anything to a user’s system.
- Present a download dialog box without first presenting detailed information to the user about the download.
- Be designed to look broken or simulate a non-working webpage in any way.
- Use "fake" close behavior. For example, when a user clicks a "close" icon on the page the page should close, and no other behavior should result.
- Use scare tactics to convince users to download or buy software.
- Promote or contain viruses, worms, corrupted files, cracks, or other material that is intended to or may damage or render inoperable software, hardware, or security measures of Microsoft, any user of MSN.com or the Microsoft network of services, or any third party.

Because in my humble opinion, this blog does not violate any conditions, however a 3rd party (who shall remain anonymous) appears to disagree.

More on Internet Filtering in Australia

Proclamation of Doom No Responses »

Jan 042010

This document (linked below) arrived in my inbox today after I had emailed the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Stephen Conroy) with my concerns about this flawed and mandatory plan.

Unfortunately, besides wasting my bandwidth all this document does is summarize the position held by Senator Conroy and the Australian Labor party. It does very little to address any of the concerns raised, it does not even attempt to consider opt-in (optional) filtering, even though it points out that such filtering exists in other countries.

From the document:

It goes without saying that our Internet speeds in Australia are far behind the countries listed in the Minster’s diatribe. Filtering of higher speeds may not be “noticeable” (whatever that means, it is highly subjective) all of whom have unmetered (no caps) and had achieved ADSL2+ speeds in domestic residences many years ahead of Australia. In fact only a small percentage of Australians can even get ADSL2+ – for the record.

So despite the fact that it basically won’t work (can easily be circumvented – in the Senator’s own words), and a vast majority are against it (I can state unverifiable generalizations just as well as the next Labor MP), the Labor Government is going to press ahead anyway. Despite the colossal waste of tax payers money and after strong dissent from both ISPs and the wider IT industry.

We do not want mandatory filtering.

In this context filtering = censorship, which is exactly why China receives so much criticism. It is unbelievably hypocritical to besmirch China’s Internet firewall whilst simultaneously enacting one in our own country.

Once a mandatory filter is in place, it will (lets be realistic) never be removed. What will remain is the temptation to start blocking access to any number of legitimate websites, which is a power no Government can be trusted with, now or in the future.

#NoCleanFeed and #NoCensorship

Attachment: Document from the Minister

Merry Christmas

Proclamation of Doom No Responses »

Dec 252009

Well, it’s been an unfortunate 24 hours for me, I managed to somehow cause my RAID-5 array to lose a member drive, and then the Intel Matrix software/RAID controller refused to rebuild or add a new drive to the disk set. So basically, I lost my 700GB RAID array, and all the data within.

What a crazy time.. I’ve been spending the past 12 hours re-installing and reconfiguring my main tower PC as a result of this little Christmas mishap. Hopefully your Christmas has turned out better then mine!

So, anyway – the show must go on.. Merry Xmas and all the best for the new year/decade!

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