Most iconic image found on an Aussie blog this weekend

Found at Ken Lovell's Tweed Heads blog Verging_on_Random

Best political quote on the Teev this week

Paul Keating to Kerry O'Brien on the 7.30 Report last Wednesday.....

"I mean John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He was at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio. The guy did no thinking."

Few really want to consult with Australian Government by blog

According to a recent Dept of Finance and Deregulation publication few people are unreservedly enthusiastic about the Rudd Government idea that citizens could engage with it through an Australian Government consultation blog.

Most appear to have thought that the concept was O.K., but only those already engaged with politics and/or blogging were likely to use such a site.
There was little interest amongst focus group (as opposed to online survey) participants in actually reading comments made by others on such a blog/discussion forum.
Unsurprisingly no-one seemed to want Federal Labor's 'grand idea' to replace the traditional forms of community consultation.

Generally the public consultation indicated support for the development of a government online consultation web space that includes blogs, online discussion forums and details of public consultations.

The findings suggested ways that the Government could encourage the public’s participation in online consultations.

Respondents said they would be more likely to participate in government consultations if:
• the discussion topic were relevant to their personal circumstances;
• they had the opportunity to nominate the topics for discussion;
• discussion forums included the participation of Government officials;
• a range of registration options were available;
• the site was well designed, easy to find and use;
• participants were free to express their opinion without censorship; and
• it were unbiased in its operation..........
While many respondents expressed their cynicism about Government actually participating in the discussion, some respondents were optimistic and believed that Government officials would take the website and its discussion forums seriously.

In the same vein, there were clear expectations that an online consultation forum should focus on generating solutions to problems rather than rehashing political debates.

In other word, it's all pie in the sky. Because no government could resist political manipulation of such a blog.
For starters (if the Dept of F&D paper is any indication) it will require a higher level of information for registration and comment will be moderated.

How well I remember the quick censorship that members of the Howard Government put in place when FaceBook and YouTube political candidate sites suddenly became uncomfortable places for their egos during the 2007 federal election campaign.

$$ Beijing Olympics 2008 begin today $$

Poster from Google Images

Let us all get our priorities right

Save the planet

Not the International Olympic Committee

A short word on US 08 from Crikey's Gary Rundle

A slightly off (but rather funny) comment on the monumentally boring US presidential race:
The man who killed, beheaded, disemboweled, and souvenired and ate parts of a fellow traveller on a Canadian bus made no comment during hisarraignment other than "please kill me". He is believed to be covering the 2008 US presidential race.

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who finds the whole contest between McCain and Obama a bit of a bore.
The only real difference between the two is their age and the hair colour of their wives.
While that whole Kennedy-Camelot spiel that some Democrats are trying to run makes me want to chunder.
But then, I'm old enough to remember what a political fraud President Kennedy really was.

Wake me up when the whole thing's over - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

We're all seeing the big picture - here are some of the finer brushstrokes of US 08

Jan 08

Teen claims Obama's catchphrase.

Feb 08

SurveyU objects to the use of its data and issues a cease and desist notice [C&D].
Singer Mellecamp reportedly requests McCain election campaign to stop using his music.
R&B singer Moore reportedly sends C&D to Obama over use of his song Hold on I'm comin'.

Mar 08

Small US entreprenuer runs foul of football team copyright over Obama T-shirts.

Brainshavings accuses Obama of attempting to manipulate racial demographics when suing Ohio Secretary of State over ballot access.

April 08

Parody artist parodies Obama poster parody - Hope to Dope, but C&D is actually issued about Andre .

May 08

Official Democratic blog goes weird over Flavor Aid.

June 08

Evangelist Farris objects to Obama's use of the title, Joshua Generation Project and reportedly issues a C&D.

Plush toy maker requested to cease making Obama 'monkey'
Songwriter and US congressman John Hall objects to McCain using his song Still the One

July 08

Republican National Congress cites 'elephant' copyright to squash T-shirts - issues C&D to CafePress.
Minnesota student reportedly tries to sell his vote on Ebay and court gives him 50 hours community service.
Disgruntled Democrats accuse Obama of wage discrimination against women.

Aug 08

Paris Hilton's family upset at McCain campaign advert. Can she sue McCain?

Vale the Lower Lakes and Coorong, South Australia

Pelicans at Coorong

and the Lower Lakes

Federal Water Minister,

Penny Wong says that

there is no water left

to save Coorong and

the Lower Lakes.

Greg Hunt, the Coalition Shadow Minister for Environment has the audacity to attempt to lay the blame solely at the Rudd Government's door.

Despite the increased urgency of expert warnings of impending disaster, for over a decade the Liberals and Nationals dragged their feet on the issue of environmental water flow for the Murray Darling river system - they more than anyone else are responsible for the imminent death of the Lower Murray.

The Howard Government obviously had the constitutional power to force the issue, however by the time of its electoral defeat last November it had done almost nothing except play politics in the media over the issue.

Hey, Stevo! Time for the belt and braces, mate

I don't know about you, but I'm getting truly teed off with good ol' Stevo Conroy and his bells 'n' whistles attempt to censor the Internet.
So I've decided to post a few tips as I come across them.

Introduction to Web Filters 1

How to bypass Websense filters

Proxy sites which circumvent server filters

Setting up your own proxy site - Glype Proxy

Surf from Texas

How to unblock websites

Is your ISP filtering P2P traffic?

Boing Boing's guide to defeating censorware [Classic from the archives]

Global Internet Freedom site with

UltraSurf
FreeGate
GTunnel
FirePhoenix
GPass

Psst, Stevo......you do realise mate that there are also a number of other international sites which have been helping Chinese dissidents and others browse and publish. They will help anyone for free - even an old greybeard like me.
So do your worst in 2009-10.

"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

John Gilmore

Rudd's 'Grocery Choice' website now showing price comparisons for NE NSW

The Rudd Government's new website Grocery Choice is up and running this morning.

The August 08 basic staples grocery basket comparison for the NSW North Coast shows that Coles/BiLo is the most expensive shopping experience out of the large retailers listed.

Small independent stores are naturally the most expensive generally.

Lucky Yamba. Not only does it get a poor range/quality of goods from Coles/BiLo at Yamba Fair - it also gets the most expensive supermarket basic staples basket of groceries at $77.31.

Basic Staples

This basket includes a selection of staple grocery products purchased by Australian households. It includes a variety of products from each of the other grocery baskets. This is the only basket that has an ALDI supermarket price.

Findings of the ACCC Inquiry into the competitiveness of retail prices for standard groceries here

If Conroy filters the Internet online banking may grow riskier

In Securify This! by Liam Tung at ZDNet Australia on Tuesday the spectre of Conroy's internet censorship weakening data security raised its ugly head.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has welcomed "improvements" in ISP filtering technologies, but will a broad-scale roll-out make ISPs a thief's favourite target?
The great success of the ISP filtering trial was that current technologies impose far less interference on an ISP's network than similar tests done five years ago.

Improvements like this give the impression that yes, the government has its collective head around the challenge of making the internet a safe place.

But after an interesting chat with Internode's core networks and infrastructure group team leader Mark Newton, I came to the conclusion that any concerns about network degradation are peanuts compared to security worries around what could happen if the technology is implemented — in particular to the protocol used to conduct secure Web sessions with your bank or the tax office — HTTPS.
Newton raised an interesting idea: for an ISP to filter HTTPS sessions it would have to engage in a Man in the Middle attack, where the attacker intercepts and changes information being transmitted between two parties...
Normally HTTPS means that data streams pass unfettered between your computer and the bank's servers, but ISP filtering would see that data unencrypted at the ISP, inspected, re-encrypted and then forwarded on to you and the bank.
Now, I don't use Dodo, Exetel or TPG, but these ISPs don't seem to be able to afford call centre staff, so can we rely on these ISPs to implement whatever technology the government approves?
And if the filtering products run on Windows operating systems, what happens if and when those systems become infected with a trojan or virus that siphon information to cybercrims?
Let's hope we find out a little more about the security and privacy implications in the "live" trials the government plans to run in the coming months.

Unfortunately for Liam and the blogosphere, it is highly unlikely that Senator Conroy or his staff have even given this issue a passing thought.
From where I am sitting, the progressing of this national ISP filtering scheme is principally about a narrow, faith-based, ideology ridden agenda.