I’m really into whiskey, but I think I’ll pass on tasting Gilpin Family Whisky. Why? Because this single malt whiskey is made from urine. Specifically, it’s made from the sugar rich urine of elderly diabetics.
While in Berlin for the LinuxTag 2010 conference a couple of months ago, I took the opportunity for a 8-mile long meandering walk across the city, from Warschauer Strasse and the East Side Gallery to Wittenbergplatz and KaDeWe, taking in the various historical sites along the way. It was a great refresher course in 20th century European history. I especially enjoyed the free outdoor exhibit in Alexanderplatz, which dealt with the Revolutions of 1989 with a focus on the various dissident movements and publications in the DDR. Most were self-published, stealthily distributed samizdat newletters, copied laboriously using typewriters and carbon paper, primitive printing presses, or toward the end, some personal computers smuggled in from the West. They had on display an Amiga 500 and an NEC Pinwriter P6 used in 1989. Through “advanced” technology like this, document production could be raised from a few hundred to tens of thousands of copies.
While the focus of the election from a geek standpoint has shifted from internet filtering to the NBN given the fact the Libs and Greens have both promised to block the filter in the senate, that doesn’t mean online safety has gone away as an election issue. The Greens today announced their policy, and to give them credit, it’s a common-sense approach.
If you missed yesterday’s ICT debate between Comms Minister Stephen Conroy, Shadow Minister Tony Smith and the Greens’ Scott Ludlam, you can watch the entire thing here and now thanks to YouTube’s Australia Votes channel. You can also read through our Liveblog here.
Over the weekend, Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull held an anti-filter event in his electorate, where he promised that the filter is now, “dead, buried and cremated, and if it shows any signs of revival it will then be exorcised”. Let’s hope he’s right.
As I speak with parents (as I did two weeks ago when I spoke at St Mark’s Anglican Church on the topic of ’How to keep our children safe online‘), one thing continues to stand out – many parents have very little idea about what their children are doing online: both the opportunities and threats that the internet presents.
I was pondering why this is, and concluded that to a large extent, this is due to the particular point in history that we inhabit.
In May 2007, Turkey began censoring the internet. It started out innocent enough – according to Al Jazeera, they just wanted to block child pornography, online gambling sites, information on recreational drugs and sites which insult the country’s founding father. Today over 6000 sites have been blocked, including YouTube and parts of Google.
The proposed filtering technique is based on exact HTTP URLs, not IP addresses nor domain names. URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) are the full address that you might type into your web browser’s address bar. For example: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/07/the-evolution-of-labor-internet-filter-policy/
I’ve been following the debate around the proposed mandatory internet filter closely since the horrific idea was first made public. The entire Kogan team and I have been disgusted by the Australian government’s blatant infringement on basic human rights. It even led us to create this fictional product launch a few weeks back, the Kogan Portector. Even though it is clearly a joke, it has a serious message. The proposed mandatory Internet filter is quite simply one of the worst ideas ever proposed in the history of Australian politics.
Stephen Conroy cops a lot of flak. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already read a plethora of articles outlining various reasons why his plan won’t work, why it is a waste of money, why it could actually harm children, and infringe on our freedoms. I’m going to look at things from a different angle and start by telling you why Stephen Conroy is an underrated genius.
