*Season's Greetings for 2009 from the* *******North Coast Voices crew*******

Best wishes for the festive season from all at North Coast Voices

Clarencegirl, Clarrie Rivers, Petering Time, WaterDragon, K. Roo and others

North Coast Voices will be on holiday until New Year's Eve

Animation from Google Images

Mandatory National ISP-Level Internet Filtering: Mark Newton sends a letter

Mark Newton has published yet another letter to his Federal Labor MP Kate Ellis and it is well worth reading.

Excerpt from PDF copy of the letter dated 20 December 2009:

EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY FORMULATION

For the year that it has taken to conduct his six-week trial, the Minister has claimed that evidence gained from the trial will inform the policy.

The Minister also relied on evidence supplied by Mr. Tom Woods in 2007 as a justification for moving from user-based filtering (under the Coalition's policy) to ISP-based censorship due to Mr. Woods' ease of bypassing the Coalition's NetAlert filters.

So it's curious that the evidence5 delivered by Enex Testlab in the trial results released on 15 December weren't similarly persuasive.

Enex found that all of the solutions they tested could be trivially bypassed when blocking defined blacklist

(with success rates for circumvention blocking ranging from 16.2% down to a lousy 8.1%).

The success rates were higher when additional censorship methods were employed, but even then none of the products successfully prevented circumvention and all of them experienced reduced reliability.

Specially notable is that WebShield, the ISP in Australia with the most experience at running censorship systems, was included in the testing and was circumvented.

Even the experts can't prevent bypass, leaving the efficacy of these systems worse than the PC-based filtering systems employed by the previous Government.

At least a PC system can intercept your Google search to block knowledge of bypass methods.

ISP systems have no such defensive capability.

Other results of the trial include further confirmation that increases in accuracy lead to decreases in performance (You can have it fast or good - Pick one) and a moderate increase in underblocking errors as measured against the 2007 lab trial previously carried out by Enex Testlab for ACMA.

5 http://www.dbcde.gov.au/online_safety_and_security/cybersafety_plan/
internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/isp_filtering_live_pilot"

Report into the conduct of the trial. Recommendation is to ignore the Minister's press release and examine the raw data in the Enex report.

The real Rudd Family 2009 Chrissie card pic

I believe the inscription inside the Chrissie card might have read:

Will do better try to do better continue our triumphant progress on behalf of the Australian people next year.
Merry Christmas. KRudd

Moggy Musings [Archived material from Boy the Wonder Cat]

At last a tweet I understand! musing:

stilgherrian Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Miaow. Yes I know.

A Get well soon, Apollo musing: Apollo (a very intelligent cat who cunningly found himself a very comfy berth in the stilgherrian household) has just had a big op. A big get well soon wish from one moggie to another!

A Smartypantz Cats musing: Rod3000 has the best tweets. He found a Wikipedia entry which shows that cats, George, Oliver, Oreo & Henrietta all received degreees or diplomas after handing over hard cash - which was some feat for H'etta as she had been deddy for some time past.

A media says it's true musing: A Bolivian man's cat saves him from being deported from the U.K. About time that having a moggy in the family was judged to be part of a hoomanz human rights!

A cat in the dog house musing: I'm not coming out from under the bed until Clarencegirl apologises for wagging her finger at me because I went into the herb patch and mowed down the lemon grass before moving on to trim those young tomato plants - can I help it if I like my greens?!

A Just like our house musing: An amusing tweet - stilgherrian I am home and arguing with the cats about the logistics of the fishing industry.

A By George! musing: George the Pillar Valley staffie saved his owner on 25 September 2009, when he raced to her rescue and killed a highly venomous brown snake slithering near her feet. Although not normally condoning snake killing, George is being feted by his family for this daring deed.

A gaming cat musing: I had to snicker behind a paw as I watched Clarencegirl try to Circle the Cat in this itty bitty online game.