The Rudd-Conroy national plan to filter the Australian Internet, according to the Australian Computer Society

Chart from OrzeszekBlog
Click to enlarge

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has just released a report on the Rudd-Conroy plan to censor the Australian Internet aka plan to implement a mandatory national ISP-level Internet filtering scheme.

Now it's no secret that ACS was and is generally in favour of the Rudd-Conroy plan, but even it felt compelled to point out the following blindingly obvious.

There are a number of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to the implementation of ISP based filtering, including:

• sites can easily be renamed and so the names will not match the black or white list;

• language translation (often automated) often produces mistakes and so international sites may not be filtered effectively;

• lists must contain domain names as well as IP addresses to be highly effective;

• not all applications work well with a proxy server and so the performance of the ISP can degrade;

• push technologies (such as RSS) often bypass the proxy server and deliver content directly to the user so circumventing the filtering process;

• not all users access the Internet via an ISP;

• many sites have mirrors and multiple URLs and if these are not included in the black list then the filtering process can be circumvented; and

• proxies can degrade ISP performance particularly during periods of high traffic – they become bottlenecks and can reduce Internet speeds;

• mandating or architecting a network so that all packets pass by a filtering point can create performance problems, duplicated traffic paths and may increase the bandwidth costs for ISPs.

The report also canvasses the real possibility of overblocking sites such as Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and any other hosting site where users share the same basic URL.

The full ACS 2009 report with a few handy hints concerning methods of circumventing ISP-level filtering: TECHNICAL OBSERVATIONS ON ISP BASED FILTERING OF THE INTERNET.

Cattle kindergarten duty

To my relief I managed to have some success on cattle kindergarten duty.
The calves hung around me till it was time for the mid-day feed, then they scampered back to their respective mothers and I headed home to avoid the afternoon shift.

We'd filled in the morning weeding wild cotton bush, a job that has to be done preferably before flowering finishes and seed sets.

The calves were very interested in the concept of pulling something out of the ground and not eating it, one of the small things their mothers had obviously forgotten to teach them.
They sniffed the growing mounds of weeds with interest. Some taste tested the plants and soon decided that it did not taste good.

The more adventurous discovered that there was good grass where the cotton bushes once stood and took full advantage.
It didn’t take long before they were all feeding around in the area cleared of weeds.

It soon became apparent that calves can eat grass quicker that one lone human can weed cotton bush.
Luckily we were near the dam, I went for a swim and the calves paddled and played chase on the bank.

By 11am we were under the trees on the north side of the dam, the calves had their naps as I dried off in the sun with young Arnold Bully lying next to me contentedly chewing cud.
I think he is proud of his surrogate mum.

Featured drawing from Simon Streatfeild's The Animator

If you are reading this you might be one of Ruperty Pooh's "flat-earthers"

News Corporation put out a press release of its master's words on the occasion of

the World Media Summit in Beijing, China.

Here are the really funny bits from Rupert Murdoch's speech:

"Too often the conventional media response to the internet has been inchoate. A medium once thought too powerful has often seemed impotent in the past few years. Of course there should be a price paid for quality content, and yet large media organizations have been submissive in the face of the flat-earthers who insisted that all content should be free all the time. The sun does not orbit the earth, and yet this was precisely the premise that the press passively accepted, even though there have been obvious signs that readers recognize the reality that they should pay a price. There are many readers who believe that they are paying for content when they sign up with an internet service provider, presuming that they have bought a ticket to a content buffet. That misconception thrived on the silence of inarticulate institutions which were unable to challenge the fallacies and humbug of the e-establishment. The value of content has been volatile in the past decade but we are entering another decisive phase in which device makers are again courting the creators of content. I have sensed that shift in recent days during my travels in Japan and South Korea where I met some of the world’s leading electronics manufacturers. These companies don’t want their customers to be served a diet of digital dross, and yet that will be the inevitable consequence if the worth of content and creativity are not appreciated. The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph. "

Today is the start of Anti-Poverty Week 2009 in Australia and still Rudd, Swan & Macklin haven't acted against September pension increase grab by the states

This week across Australia people and organisations are observing Anti-Poverty Week 2009 which has as its main aims:

• Strengthen public understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty and hardship around the world and in Australia;
  
• Encourage research, discussion and action to address these problems, including action by individuals, communities, organisations and governments.

Over 100,000 Australian single pensioners (National Seniors statement to Courier Mail) will begin this week still worried that the Rudd Government has yet to make any concrete move to protect their recent $30 per week pension increase from the greedy grasp of state governments and community housing companies.

According to 2007 FAHCSIA data the majority of the 714,156 Disability Support Pension (DSP) recipients across Australia are single and don't own a home, so one would expect that these pensioners are significantly represented among single pensions who will lose 25% of the 2009 pension increase in late 2010.

DSP recipients are most heavily clustered in New South Wales which makes the Rees Government pension grab all the more distasteful - a fact these pensioners will possibly remember at the next election.

Etching from CAP Art Blog

Don't rubbish the environment

From the hinterland through to the beaches, the Clarence Valley is renowned for its natural beauty. It is an environment that provides us with a charming lifestyle. It is an environment that is admired, and oftentimes envied, by visitors. It is home to a diverse range of native animals.

It is vital that we care for what we have, and don't risk losing it, as has happened in other places. Throughout the world, areas that were once pristine are now overwhelmed by the rubbish in their environment - debris litters the roads and waterways; insidious chemicals hide in the soil and water.

We must ensure that does not happen here.

We must ensure that we do not see a re-occurrence of the tragic plight of this pelican on the Clarence River [© Gill Bennett].

What you can do:

Be mindful of your rubbish – don't leave it behind when you are out – don't let it escape with the wind.

Don't let chemicals get into gutters and drains – these all discharge into our waterways.

Participate in clean up programs.

Prevention is also better than cure – support programs such as the Yamba Chamber of Commerce project to eliminate plastic bags.

Do what you can to keep our environment clean – it is good for us and good for the wildlife.

Imelda Jennings Wildlife SOS

Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email ncvguestpeak at live dot com dot au to submit comment for consideration.

Because Andrew Bolt brandishes a truncated graph, once more it's time to look at that global warming data again

On Sunday 11 October 2007 journalist Andrew Bolt was a guest on the ABC Insiders program and that gave rise to a post on his News Ltd blog on the same day.

In this post Mr. Bolt presented a graph which he thinks demonstrates that the world has stopped warming and hence there is no climate change going on.

Now that graph (left) apparently came via the Watts Up With That blog from information compiled by Dr. Roy Spenser an anthropomorphic climate change sceptic and supporter of the legitimacy of Intelligent Design Theory.

However, when one looks at NASA graphs of those same years placed within a longer time scale it is obvious that although there are 'plateau' periods the overall global temperature has been steadily trending upwards since at least 1880.
The report of the RSS graph (which relies on the same data as Spenser and Bolt) indicates that there are significant variations within those plateau and NASA points out that past plateau have been known to last for up to 9-10 years in living memory.

"Despite the fact it's been warmer and cooler at different times in the last 10 years, there's no part of the last 10 years that isn't warmer than the temperatures we saw 100 years ago." Josh Willis, NASA, 22 September 2009.

Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change

Line plot of global mean land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present. The dotted black line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean. The green bars show uncertainty estimates. [This is an update of Fig. 1A in Hansen et al. (2006)] January-September (9 months) mean is used for 2009 data.

(Last modified: 2009-10-06)

Our traditional analysis using only meteorological station data is a lin e plot of global annual-mean surface air temperature change derived from the meteorological station network [This is an update of Figure 6(b) in Hansen et al. (2001).] Uncertainty bars (95% confidence limits) are shown for both the annual and five-year means, account only for incomplete spatial sampling of data. January-September (9 months) mean is used for 2009 data.

(Last modified: 2009-10-06)

While Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) released this satellite derived global chart opposite for September 2009:

According to RSS, September 2009 was warm compared to normal with a global temperature anomaly of +.476 C. Keep in mind, the RSS temperature data covers the latitudes between 82.5 North and 70 South across the globe, so large areas of the polar regions are omitted.
Based on RSS data alone, September 2009 was the warmest month compared to normal since January of 2007 and the warmest September since September of 1998, when the anomaly was +.494 C.

Is Nicola Roxon suffering from a lack of foresight?

Maud up the Street is one of many in New South Wales who were diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes this year.
Like a large number of other pensioners she will have to go on the Medicare waiting list as there's no money in the pot for private surgery of any sort.
Maudie's livid over reports that Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon has stated that if the Senate doesn't agree to pass legislation introducing a reduced Medicare benefit for all cataract surgery, the government will automatically cancel the whole rebate anyway leaving those with diminished eyesight to find the entire cost of this operation and presumably both the pre-op and post-op visits.
Maudie reckons Roxon classing retaining your eyesight as a "minor surgical procedure" misses the point entirely.
Reasonable eyesight is one of the main supports of autonomy and independence for those getting on in years, so I agree with my friend that Ms. Roxon is getting a little too uppity in how she approaches the matter.
If saving health care dollars is such a big issue, perhaps the Minister should consider proposing a lesser reduction in the rebate to meet the ophthalmologists halfway - before Oz turns into a land where the poor are distinguished by higher levels of blindness than the general population.
How about it, Nic?