The top 10 filtering questions yet to be answered by the Govt - http://bit.ly/8eiWkP
US says "Censorship should not be accepted by any company from anywhere." http://bit.ly/8aU0ue
Oz Government twisting words and meanings: “Global Internet freedom” means censorship http://ow.ly/ZewJ
Internet Censorship and The Arts, guest post by @unsungsongs - http://bit.ly/akEzGf
Twitter working on technology to evade censors - http://tinyurl.com/ylbejn8
The Great Australian Dog Fence - http://tinyurl.com/yadsy93

Petitions and campaigns
The EFA petition against the Government's mandatory Internet filtering policy - http://ow.ly/XxR5
10 things you can do to help the EFA's campaign against mandatory Internet filtering - http://ow.ly/1007V
ABC show Hungry Beast has a call out for videos on the Internet filter. Learn more and submit you video - http://bit.ly/bdQ2x2

Internet Blackout campaign -
Details - http://tinyurl.com/y8d2spt.
Instructions for blacking out icons and avatars - http://tinyurl.com/y8z8kbv
iiNet is participating in the Great Australian Internet Blackout - http://www.iinet.net.au/
Sydney Morning Herald says "Websites fade to black in censorship protest" - http://bit.ly/6Q1TkG

As you can see from my icon, I am participating in the Internet Blackout to raise awareness of and protest against the government proposed "clean feed" internet filter. Further details on the campaign are here and instructions for blacking out icons/avatars are here

Yoinked from Drew's FB:

An interesting read - http://blog.lvrg.org.au/2009/01/how-australia-loses-1-trillion-year.html (hat-tip to tcpip)

And now, just to make a change from the internet filter stuff, returning to an issue I have ranted about before: Ross Gittins opinion piece saying the same thing as I have previously - namely, that it is as much the type of housing being built (in the name of "investment") as anything else that is at the heart of the housing affordability crisis.

Government report - http://www.dbcde.gov.au/funding_and_programs/cybersafety_plan/internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/isp_filtering_live_pilot
@SBSNews: Write what you think of the Internet filter plan here - http://bit.ly/87AxIR
Google Australia has it's say on mandatory internet censorship - http://bit.ly/8ynzmp
itnews.com.au article by @bengrubb on the Filter Pilot's failure to test high speed internet - http://bit.ly/5VrrdR
Former Chief Justice Michael Kirby - "Net filters are the thin edge of the wedge": http://tinyurl.com/ybhfqpj
Refused Classification does not mean illegal - http://tinyurl.com/ylzxe9j
Commentary - http://tinyurl.com/yeawqr4
http://tinyurl.com/ycbmm86
http://www.atomiksoapbox.com/2009/12/an-open-letter-to-senator-stephen-conroy-from-a-concerned-parent.html

GetUp Campaigns - http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442
https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet&id=684
Electronic Frontiers Australia - http://www.efa.org.au/
EFA No Clean Feed Campaign - http://nocleanfeed.com/
The Pirate Party Australia - http://www.pirateparty.org.au/

Advice for effective letters to ministers - http://tinyurl.com/y9xtyoz

So yesterday the government finally announces a much-awaited enquiry into an R18+ classification for games (here), and lo, there was much rejoicing in the land ...

But then, just quietly, the report on the internet filter indicating plans to move ahead with it are released today (here and some commentary here). As far as I can see, only the abc has actually picked this one up yet.

Is there anyone out there naive enough to think that the timing of these two events was coincidental?


Edit: GetUp campaigns against the filter - http://tinyurl.com/6zr2w6 & http://tinyurl.com/lsoqvv

Here are my sets from Die Maschine last night.

10:00-10:50
Deine Lakaien - Over And Done (Single Edit)
GPKISM - Infernum
Resurrection Eve - Wine
Clan Of Xymox - Emily
Eisbrecher - Schwarze Witwe
Opera Macabre - Fire In Ice
Voice Of Masada - Looking Back
VNV Nation - Beloved
Funker Vogt - Narayan
Skinny Puppy - Pro-test


12:40-1:30
Placebo - Song To Say Goodbye
She Wants Revenge - I Don't Want To Fall In Love
The Graphics - Radar
Underworld - Underneath The Radar
The Presets - My People
Seraphim Shock - Little Gothic
(Request) Icon Of Coil - Dead Enough For Life
The Cruxshadows - Perfect
The Dirty Secrets - Lighthouse
(Request) Depeche Mode - Stripped


It was a great night and I had a lot of fun. A big thank you to Voodoo for having me DJ, and I hope to do it again soon.

To anyone I haven't told yet, I'm DJing at Die Maschine on Saturday night. So come and dance :)

I was going to stay out of this, but I'm being dragged into it whether I want to be involved or not, so ...

Firstly, I am not my boyfriend, nor am I answerable for his behaviour. I don't appreciate the implications being made that, simply by virtue of my dating him, I am somehow responsible for Drew's actions, that I approve of them, or that I share the guilt for any wrongdoing he might engage in. And I am particularly disappointed by a couple of people who seem to have accepted this tarring-with-the-same-brush without question.

Secondly, thank you to those people who contacted Drew or I to get the other side of the story. As the saying goes, there are always (at least) two sides to every story, and I'd just like to point out that BOTH sides are equally capable of putting "spin" on a story, something people should be keeping in mind.

Now, as to what happened, this is what I saw:

When we were preparing to leave the club on Saturday night, Drew went over to say goodbye to Joh, who was talking with Paul. Both Drew and Joh were excitedly "talking with their hands" and Drew clipped Paul on the cheek with the back of his fingers - accidentally, I thought at the time. It did genuinely look like an accident from where I stood, and it was only on the way home that Drew told me that he'd done it deliberately.

Just a couple of points of clarification:

• There were no jaw-drops and "did he just hit you?" or any bullshit like that. It was such a light tap that NOBODY ELSE in the club noticed at the time that it happened, including Joh. I wasn't even entirely sure that Drew had actually connected with Paul. This does not excuse it in any way, shape, or form, but it's not like Drew hauled back and king-hit him, as Paul is implying.
  
• Drew didn't "hightail it out of there". Drew and Joh continued conversing for a few more minutes after it happened, and we were there for a good 10-15 minutes more as we said goodbye to Voodoo, Eric and a couple of other people we passed on the way out. Make of that what you will.
  
• There is no way on god's green earth the finger-tap Paul got broke the skin. As I said, I wasn't even 100% sure it had connected. Make of that what you will also.
  

This is all I'm going to say on the matter. Frankly, at this point in time, neither side holds the high moral ground and both sides have behaved incredibly poorly.

As reminded by lillim, today is White Ribbon Day. See her previous post for some background and links. She also posted a link to an opinion piece by Andrew O'Keefe about it.

And something I stumbled upon serendipitously that is germane to the topic -
opposite world and "Rule of thumb".

Via greylock and patchworkkid: Wierd?

ROFLMAO @ today's DorkTower -

sithmagician and I watched Robert Newman's History of Oil last night, and discussing it and the topics in a couple of other videos we plan to watch over the weekend - "The Age of Stupid", "Food Inc" and "Zeitgiest" - the conversation turned to the fall of the Berlin Wall, amongst other things.

Today, sithmagician sent me this link, remarking on the spooky timing. I certainly hadn't realised that we were coming up on the 20th anniversary.

As I remarked to sithmagician last night, for those of us who lived with the cold war all our lives and were old enough to understand the significance of the fall of the Berlin wall, those couple of years were extraordinary ones. We had The Fall, the collapse of Soviet Russia and the freeing of eastern Europe, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. We even had long-running problems like Northern Ireland and yes, even Palestine, taking some tentative steps towards resolution. For the first time in a very, very long time, it looked like humanity was actually heading in the right direction, together, and that we just might be getting it right for a change. There was hope. I cried the night the Berlin Wall came down.

And then, just one short year after The Fall, the first Gulf War started. And it seemed then, as it still seems now, that that conflict killed the fledgling hope that the events of the previous years had created, and it had dragged humanity back about 30 years, to the tensions at the height of the cold war. It seems that America just cannot function without an external enemy that it can never hope to beat. I cried again when that conflict started.

As sent to me in an email ...


Ever wonder why you pay professionals less than business or sales guys:


Dilbert's 'Salary Theorem' states that 'Engineers and scientists can never
earn as much as business executives and sales people.' This theorem can
now be supported by mathematical proof based on the following two postulates:

Postulate 1:
Knowledge = Power

Postulate 2:
Time = money

As every engineer knows:
Power = Work / Time.

Since Knowledge = Power, then Knowledge = Work/Time. Since Time = Money,

then Knowledge = Work/Money.

Solving for Money, we get Money = Work / Knowledge.
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity,
regardless of the amount of work done.

ROFLMAO!!! After this morning's weird weather, the Dictionary.com Word of the Day for today is "eldritch", meaning "unearthly; weird; eerie". How appropriate :)

So, for those not on my Facebook, ( this was the view from my window this morning: )

Sydney was hit by a freak dust storm blown in from the west of the state in the early hours of the morning.

So I was woken up at 6 this morning because I was choking on the dust as I'd left my window open a bit last night. And the sky was just blood-red. The photos really don't do it justice. I was a bit worried about coming in to work because of the wind (predicted to hit gusts of 100km an hour, and the wind gets gusty on the bridge at the best of times) and because the dust was making me wheeze. But after taking some of my asthma meds I ventured out. The bike was covered in dust because I forgot to cover her last night, and I wiped that off but I needn't have bothered, she'll be filthy again by tonight. I must have lucked out because the wind was not too bad on the bridge, a couple of hairy moments, but not worse than I've dealt with previously. Riding in the lee of a train that was conveniently crossing at the same time I was probably helped too :) I'm actually glad I came in to work because the air quality is actually better here than at home because of the air con filters, which was what I was hoping for. I am beginning to smell the dust again, though, so maybe they are at saturation point already. Every outdoor surface is covered in dust, and all of my riding gear is now covered in a layer of orange dust too. Its been a weird and eerie morning.

Firstly hat-tip to thorfinn and others for this article on Managing Geeks. It's so very, very true.

Also, the last-but-one XKCD had me in stitches -



Heh, a plot-hole you could drive a mac truck through. I bet OSC hates the internet now, not least because all of us left-wing types who demand things like equality and respect and don't bow down in immediate adoration at his insane, homophobic ranting as he clearly expected to happen :)

It even pays homage to the squirrel.

So sithmagician and I went on a road trip to Canberra this weekend. Some of you will have been following sithmagician's as-it-happened twitter stream, this is the redux version from my POV.

We started out Friday afternoon and headed down the Hume Highway, where I couldn't help but laugh at sithmagician's Perth-tinged pronunciation of the names of some of the places we passed. Perth really is a world apart :P We stopped at Goulburn for coffee and got stared at by the locals, including a bunch of MallGoths/EmoKids (whom sithmagician dubbed "FlannieGoths"), who positively glared at us. We were probably the first real Goths they'd ever seen in the flesh, LOL. We arrived at my friend Tim's place in good time where we then spent the evening relaxing and sithmagician and Tim getting to know each other.

Saturday sithmagician and I spent visiting Questacon and the War Memorial. I'll let sithmagician wax lyrical about these, as I'm not very good at that :) I'll comment that driving in Canberra is ... an interesting experience. By the time we'd finished at the War Memorial, I was beginning to flag so we stopped to pick up some snacks for pre-club drinks, got lost getting out of the carpark, righted ourselves, got lost trying to go around the "small ring" road around Parliament House and ended up driving right up to it. Oh well, sithmagician wanted to see it anyway. Unfortunately, I was too fatigued at this stage to see if slowlight was available for a coffee and catch-up as I'd planned, and needed to go have a rest if I was going to be able to make it Chrome.

So, after a bit of a rest and pre-club drinks we headed off to Chrome, where much fun was had. There were a couple of people from Sydney there, but we also met a whole bunch of very friendly Canberrans. Lots of talking, some dancing, and I even whipped dj_voodoo's arse at pool. We stayed 'til closing, then went back to Tim's where we continued drinking and talking until we realised that the sun was well up and that I at least should try to get some sleep if I was going to be able to drive back.

Sunday was a complete write-off due to a couple of poor decisions the night before, and none of our battle plans survived contact with the enemy. We didn't make it to the brunch that we'd been invited to with dj_voodoo and some Canberrans, and we didn't leave until much later than I'd planned to as we had to wait until I was in a fit state to drive. We were very, very glad when we finally got home. But it was a great trip despite all that and one that we'll have to do again some time.

Thanks to all the Canberrans that helped us have such a great time at Chrome, and thanks especially to Tim who was an absolutely terrific host.