A response to my anti clean feed letter

So today I was excited when I received a letter from the office of Stephen Conroy.

But I was disappointed when I got a fairly flat letter.









I wanted to put this up because I don't think many people that wrote a letter would have put their return addresses down.

I guess I need to do some work to find out if the filters in UK, Sweden, Norway and Finland are mandatory or by request. I would like to say that I think a clean feed as an optional feature from an ISP is an awesome idea. But I fear if we give them an inch on the subject, they will just keep running with it.

The interesting bit about the letter is that they think they can control the content on the Internet like they can control movies and games. All I can think of is my .NET lectures, if all you have is a hammer, all problems start looking like a nail.

Another interesting note is the "live trial" mentioned so that they can be sure that the performance issues are as minor as possible. Who conducts a live trial starting 24th of December. Most of the technicians that would implement the features would want to be on holiday. Families usually try to get away for Christmas and there are lots of things to do outside. I also thought I heard that the live trials were no longer going to be live, they were going to be tested by a task force and not citizens. GAR!

From their FAQ:

Parents rightly expect the Australian Government to play its part in helping protect children online.

Really? We expect the government to assist in babysitting our children? Do parents really just want to have kids so they can palm the responsibility off to someone else?

I love their use of numbers. ACMA has a blacklist of 1300 URLs. Performance may be an issue at 10,000 URLs. Who hands them this information? I mean if I add some GET parameters to the URL, does that mean I can get past the filter (ie. ?filter=lame). All you have to do is get a couple of domains pointing to the same server and you are increasing the number of items on the list. Hell, even subdomain (somthing.domain.com) would cause chaos for whoever needs to look after the list. Regex and wild cards do I hear you say? Is that why people are getting upset at the potential for overfilter. Oh sorry, you're freely hosted webpage on cute kittens is hosted on the same domain as someone who shows a nipple, bad luck for you.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get the letter from Stephen Conroy out to the nocleanfeed people or even the EFA. Whilst it would be cool to have them link directly to this post, I think they could do a better job of disecting the letter. I just feel let down by the government.

Please note that I have no problem with the letter being used on any other page. A link back to me would be handy so that people knew where the letter originated from.

iPod shuffle no longer charges / mounts

I thought I'd write this one up since I did win the shuffle via a Byteclub quiz (or whatever it was).

The other day I found out that my shuffle wouldn't mount. Either under linux or windows. So I ran it flat to see if it would charge. No luck in a computer. Tried charging it via an AC adapter, still no luck.

Googling turns up a lot of results of owners with similar issues. So I believe the shuffle is dead :(

I'm currently in the process of pulling it apart to see if I can play with anything on the inside. I might be able to replace the battery and have it charge from a different source. My music will be locked but at least I'll still have some portable music.

Currently trying to follow teh instructions from http://homepage.mac.com/bner/iblog/B1570693677/C1723801931/E303819815/index.html but I only have a stanley knife which could be a bit big for the task at hand.

Action on Australia's "Clean Feed"

I was going to wait until I got all of my old post back before starting up the blog again, but lets hope that when the old stuff gets imported, it doesn't cripple the new stuff.

So a while ago I decided to do something about the Clean Feed that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy wants to bring in.

With the template of what is provided at No Clean Feed, I wrote a letter to Rudd and Conroy.

Bitten by the GPS update

So I was thinking about upgrading the maps on my GPS because I noticed a few round-abouts the have become lights, lights that have become round-abouts, new roads and changes in which is the “main” road at T intersection.
But hang on, how much are the maps. $150 AUD. What a joke.
I can buy a melways for the next 5 years or so at that price, but who buys a melways every year.

So I’m looking at other alternatives.
I noticed a N810 in Dick Smiths today and I wasn’t quiet sure if it had a GPS unit in it. It does, but it doesn’t seem to come with any Navigation software (for australia).
Roadnav seems to be the one at the top of everyone’s list and apparently it is aiming at integrating with Open Street Map which I have used before.

Just another bad day

So here is the day I was hoping to enjoy, just another 4wd adventure.

But I came around a corner, fish tailed and hit a tree (then did a 180, don't know how that happened though).

This was on the way home so I still had a good 4wd, it just took a little longer to get home than expected.

I’m lost on feeling though. I’m confused how it happened. I came out of it ok, mum is shaken up again.
I’m sad that I won’t be able to drive anywhere, but it is not going to bring me to tears.
The tow truck guy suggested that the car will be a write off, so I guess all of the work I’ve put into the car just dissapears.
I’m not particularly worried about the money on the car, because I’ve had a blast in it. But I kinda wish it lasted longer.
I could just replace the car, but does that mean I would have to go back to work to build the funds up again…
Does the freedom the car gives me outway the freedom I wanted from my own project…

-= Comments
1. Intrinsic | September 29th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Nasty,

I’d get a proper assessment before writing it off, looking at that external damage the only thing I can think of that I’d write it off for is kinked chassis rails.

That is assuming you’re willing to do the work on it yourself, if you were going to get it done “professionally” it’s probably a write off on cost.

2. RuF! RuF! RuF! | October 2nd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
OOoooo slow down you hoon its not a race (unless it was)

Yarr Har

Well ye dirty land lubber.
We made it to international talk like a pirate day and some of us take it the extra step.

Spam on the rise again

For the longest time, I was getting next to no spam.
Now it seems that I am getting 3-4 every day.

I’ve started turning off comments for some of the posts that keep getting spam to stop the emails coming in.

One thing I noticed was that they all come from the same ip address (200.63.42.136). I would normally expect it to come from many addresses.

Just wondering if anyone else is suffering at this point in time?

-= Comments
1. Zooba | September 6th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I agree, spam is on the rise.

Most of mine are from various IP addresses, I can’t see any pattern.

2. Lucien | September 7th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I don’t seem to be having that problem. I’ve switched of trackbacks on all posts. I leave comments open until I start getting spam on that post, then I switch comments off for that post too. Perhaps you are just more popular than me