Tuesday 23 December 2008
Warning, Warning! The Great Firewall of Australia is being live trialled from 24 December 2008
International visitors to our blog will still be able to read all posts and we will endeavour to keep publishing.
Update:
Senator Conroy has announced that the live trial will not be starting now until mid-January 2009.
Presumably both the minister and department have run into a few obstacles on the way to the Great Firewall of Australia, given the less than enthusiastic response from Australian ISPs.
Graphic from Google Images
Christmas madness and sleepless nights
One final word before Senator Conroy [insert crow calls] the Internet
- There were 1,009,347 registered .com.au domain names
- There were 7.23m Internet subscribers - 5.66m being broadband and 1.57m dialup
- There were 22.12 million mobile services in total, and quite a few able to access the Internet on the move
Monday 22 December 2008
Buying political influence: getting in on the ground floor?
US ABC News has highlighted an interesting aspect of American political life - how Obama is finessing political donors' expectations of influence.
He's banned lobbyists from the transition team and stopped companies from giving money to the effort – some of the boldest limitations on money in a presidential transition
Meanwhile, the Presidential Inaugural Committee lists those privately contributing to his inauguration splurge; including shareholders/employees of a numbers of companies such as Agvar Chemicals, Innova Aviation Consulting LLC, Kpmg LLP, Verizon Telecommunications, Google Inc, Cheyenne Exploration Inc, Tyco International.
It looks as though companies might get to pay and play after all.
Full list of Obama bundlers at White House For Sale
Want to have a say on political campaign funding in Australia?
Details on how to make a submission here.
Favourite Wikileak of 2008
From Times Online and Wikileaks this month on the folly of pollies.
"JACQUI SMITH, the home secretary, has suffered fresh embarrassment from a new Whitehall leak disclosing that ministers are seeking new powers to search the homes of staff working on ID cards.
An 11-page confidential Home Office document – which was sent to a campaigner against ID cards – suggests that the employees’ homes could be entered without the need for a police warrant."
U.K. Home Office document is here.