Ashley has already posted about it, and now that I’ve finally read up on the topic a little, I’m totally flabbergasted at the sheer ignorance on display from Senator Conroy and the other MPs concerning this initiative — not to mention that of Australians in general, but I suppose like all such things, the mainstream news hasn’t exactly been clamouring all over it for a story.

You can find everything you need to combat this proposal at NoCleanFeed.com. Click on the ‘Take Action’ link to get started.

I wrote a letter to Senator Conroy, which went a little something like this:

Dear Minister,

As an Australian and an internet user, I have serious concerns about your
mandatory Internet filtering initiative.

Given the importance your Government has attached to modernising
Australia’s broadband network, pursuing a policy that can only slow down
and increase the costs of home internet access seems misguided at best.
Australian households are diverse, and most do not have young children, so
mandating a one-size-fits-all clean feed approach will not serve the
public well. I don’t think it is the Government’s role to decide what’s
appropriate for me, and neither do most Australians.

Given the amount of Internet content available, the Government will never
be able to classify it all and filters will always result in an
unacceptable level of over-blocking. I feel that the time and money could
be spent in better ways both to protect children and improve Australia’s
digital infrastructure. Australian parents need better education about the
risks their children face online. Trying to rid the Internet of adult
content is futile, and can only distract from that mission.

Aside from that even is the near-impossible technological problems that
this system will inevitably face. By design, this system is destined to
fail.

- limited to 12Mbit throughput right from inception. This is a diametrical
difference to all of the Governments promises of “faster broadband” for
Australia. Many Australians already have access to, and are happily using,
up to 24Mbit connections.
- based on blacklisting technology. This is the big one: by design,
blacklists will never be comprehensive. The proposal is that this system
will somehow protect Australians from “unwanted material” - yet how can it
possibly protect from all “unwanted material” unless it has a
comprehensive knowledge of said material?
- impossible to maintain. According to domaintools.com, the number of new
domains registered within the last 24 hours (at time of writing) was
95000. This gives an indication of the number of new websites created
every day which will not be on the blacklist.
- impossible to scale. With the introduction of IPv6 over the coming
years, it is feasible that *every single electronic device* could
potentially have internet access. The sheer amount of processing time and
power required to accurately filter internet for tens of millions of
internet access devices is astronomical.
- as raised by Senator Ludlum in the Senate recently, there has been no
documentation detailing exactly what would be considered “unwanted
material”. As mentioned previously, as a responsible adult, I can make my
own decisions about what I consider appropriate and wanted material.

I look forward to the results of the trials that the ISP iiNet is
performing which will provide hard numbers — facts — confirming in full
the criticisms of this proposal. As a result, I sincerely hope that
whatever political agenda has led you down this erroneous train of thought
can be corrected.

Sincerely,

me

I took the boilerplate from NoCleanFeed.com and added my own bits and pieces to it. I feel as though I should have added more now that I read it back to myself. There are a few things I missed, like:

• This filter does nothing to address P2P traffic. BitTorrent material will not be filtered.
• Does nothing to address encrypted traffic, such as VPN technologies, which are freely available.
• Apparently does include specifications for SSL/HTTPS inspection — an extreme violation of privacy. All of the secure websites you use (banking, online purchases etc) use these technologies to ensure the safety and confidentiality of your financial details.

The best way we can turn this thing around is by contacting the people who are able to do something about it: members of parliament, both state and federal. Write to your local MP, write to the state leaders, write to everyone in the Federal Labor Party. Using the boilerplate above is good, but writing something directly related your intended recipient is better.

The fastest way to get in contact with Senator Conroy himself? Call him: (03) 9650 1188. That’s his office number. I’ll be making a phone call today.

My week’s been alright this week. I saw Carly and my friends a lot which was good, but unfortunately for some reason, I haven’t had the mental agility recently to do the required thought acrobatics which allow for the override of bad experiences with good experiences.

In other words, I’m focusing on the negative and not on the positive, and it’s getting me down a little.

I wrote a huge spiel about exactly what has been going on at work, but I’ve since deleted it, because it might be incriminating (not in an ‘I’ve done something illegal’ sense, more an ‘Someone might read this and WTF will occur’ sense) and it might make me look bad. That’s not important because it helped me come to the conclusion, and that’s what is important: I don’t get along with my boss. Not on a personal level, and not on a professional level. It’s as simple as that, and I can’t do anything to change it except get a new boss. Which I am working on.

Aside from that, I went out Tuesday night to the Down Under bar in the city with Carly and Annie, and although I don’t have a valid student ID (it’s about a month expired), they let me in anyway. Presumably because I’m really not that old and also because I had two chicks with me. It was alright for a while, until they started playing the shitty music. Vengaboys, that “Boot scootin’ baby” song, etc. Need I say more? It reminded me of highschool. It was ridiculous, and I got tired and a little grumpy. So I went and sat down while the girls danced, and some guy approached me and asked me how I was going, and we had a little chat. It came to the point where he told me he had uni at 9AM the next day, to which I replied “bad luck” — but not in an empathetical way. It was kind of malicious, and although I don’t know your name, I apologise for venting a little on you, dude. I’m sorry. Hopefully next time I see you I won’t be in such a sour mood.

Which brings me onto my next point which is that club Blink is awesome. It’s on Friday nights at 299 in the Valley and it rules. It’s like someone went to my Last.fm and just copied and pasted all my favourite metal and rock into the playlist. With some nice extras added to break up the mix. Plus they have happy hour $3 basic spirits from 9PM until 10PM; $3 bourbons! What more can you ask for? So I was there last night with Annie; I had hoped Bruce could come but apparently he was stuck at work. On his holidays. Yeah, you read that right.

So now as I sit by myself in the girls’ loungeroom, recovering from my hangover, while everyone else is at work, I bring this post to you. I think later I’ll play some WoW and see what Bruce is up to.

I did some grocery shopping today. I needed a few things; bread, milk, fruit, and some cold meat. The usual things. So, I headed down to my local grocery shop, and as it happens, the place was entirely empty. Bearing in mind that 1.30PM on a Wednesday typically isn’t the most busy time for grocery shopping, I was still a little surprised to see that I was perhaps the only customer in the entire building.

So, I thought to myself, this is going to be easy. You see, I don’t dwell in shops. Especially grocery shops. It’s food. You buy it, you cook it, you eat it. There’s no aspect of grocery shopping that I would consider to be … enjoyable. On occasion, when I’m feeling particularly inventive, I do take an interest in reading the labels of products which I’ve not purchased previously to see what kind of dish I can create. That’s about the extent of interest I have in grocery shopping. It’s mundane. Which is why I prefer to spend as little time as possible doing it. I can shop for myself for a week, week and a half, depending on the rotation, in about 30 minutes — or less. What I mean by that is: I can leave my house, drive to the shop, find a park, do my shopping, carry it to the car, leave the shopping centre, drive home, and be back before my washing finishes, for example. That takes about half an hour. On a normal day.

So, you can imagine why I was somewhat excited to be the only customer in the entire store. I was going to try and break my record. Oh, how wrong I was.

You see, after I’d done my shopping, collecting almost everything into a hand basket and the milk in my other hand, I walked quickly and efficiently to the checkout, where I came upon someone else just finishing putting up their groceries onto the conveyor belt. Oh well I thought, at least she’s nearly finished.

Nope. Oh, sure, she’d put all her groceries up onto the conveyor belt. They’d nearly all been scanned through. She was preparing to pay for them after the total was announced to her. But no, it couldn’t be that simple. She took out her purse and grabbed for her card. It wasn’t there. She unfolded every fold, zipped open every zip, and flipped every flap. There was no EFTPOS card. She put down her purse, muttering to herself, and proceeded to rummage in her giant handbag. She rummaged a little more, performing the same ritual as before: unfolding every fold, unzipping every zip, and flipping every flap. There was no card. At this point, about two or three minutes had passed. Fair enough. I can’t say I’ve never lost anything.

So, she decides the best course of action is to pull things out of her handbag. Out come tissues, painkillers, lipsticks, lip balms, hair clips, hair ties, combs, brushes, a random assortment of papers and plastic slips and other miscellaneous items. There is no card. She mutters more loudly now, talking about how she had it this morning, and is so worried she might have lost it. Yeah, well, that seems pretty obvious now, doesn’t it? But, what does she do next? She doesn’t give up. She unfolds every piece of paper, opens everything that can be opened, unzipped, unflapped, and undone. She does this three or four times, each time with more haste and less sense.

Now, I’m normally pretty patient, but by this point in time, I’ve probably been waiting about seven or eight minutes. This isn’t good. The entire store is empty, remember. I just happened to get the only checkout just after this crazy woman got it. I’m thinking nasty things about her in my head; thinking she’s an old fuddy-duddy, stresses out way too much, and should just get out of the way while she’s searching so I can pay for my measly portion of products and get the fuck home.

My thoughts are interrupted when she says, finally, after about ten minutes or so: “Oh, I guess I’ll just pay in cash. But I really wanted to use my card.”

What the fuck?!

It’s pretty bullshit. Just picked up a new laptop with Vista Home Premium pre-installed. First impressions: grim. I’m at the screen where it prompts you to accept the licencing terms to use the laptop. Funny thing is, you can’t do anything but accept them. It’s either: accept and use the computer, or, just sit staring at the screen. There isn’t an option of, “No, I do not accept, please uninstall Windows from my PC” like you’d have if you didn’t accept the EULA of a particular piece of software.

Of course, if Microsoft included that option, they might find their market share dented somewhat. Which is exactly why they don’t include it. I’m going to format and put XP on it anyway, but that’s not the point. Non-technical users should be given a choice. 99% of the time they’ll hit “yes” without a second thought (without any thought at all for some), but that other one percent, maybe they’ll wise up…

Visit Wikipedia’s article on Operation Clambake:

DMCA and Google delisting

In various incidents documented in such publications as The New York Times, Slashdot and Wired,[21] Scientology has also used the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to force notable Web sites (including the Google search engine)[22] to remove the Operation Clambake homepage, and several leaflets containing copyrighted information, from their indexes.[23][24] Because the Xenu.net site itself is based in Norway, it does not fall under the jurisdiction of the DMCA.[25][15][26]

In March 2002, Google agreed to limit access to material critical of Scientology on www.xenu.net, after it was sued by the Church of Scientology for copyright infringement.[26][27][28] Information the Church of Scientology had objected to included an internal report on the death of Lisa McPherson, and images of L. Ron Hubbard.[29] Google received criticism for its actions, and The Guardian reported that Operation Clambake suspected the Church of Scientology was mainly concerned about secret documents where “L Ron Hubbard is said to describe how an alien galactic ruler called Xenu is the root of all human woe.”[30] After Operation Clambake was delisted by Google, free speech advocates besieged Google, complaining that the company was censoring search results.[31] Prior to Google’s delisting of the Operation Clambake site, CBC News reported that the site was listed fourth in a search for “Scientology.”[32] However after Google’s actions, Xenu.net did not appear in searches for “Scientology”.[33]

Attention all consumers:

Please read your warranties, either before or immediately after purchasing a product. Most companies will have their warranty agreements available either on-line, or you may request at your place of purchase to read the warranty before handing over your hard-earned.

Please, for the love of all customer service people worldwide, read your warranties and understand what obligations you as the customer have to the company you are purchasing from, and what obligations that company has to you as the customer.

If anything is left out, or appears ambiguous, ask about it. Sometimes sneaky companies like to leave things a little cloudy so they have some leeway in the event of a problem. If this concerns you, perhaps buy from another company.

I’m sick of talking to people who invent portions of warranty agreements to suit their own selfish needs. They cause arguments and waste time; precious time I could be spending solving genuine problems of customers who aren’t ignorant, arrogant, or outright stupid.

You can’t work around a warranty. They’re written by teams of smart lawyers who know more about the law than you do. You either accept it or you don’t. There’s no leeway. Don’t like it? Don’t buy the product.

Once again, I state: please, customers, please read your warranty agreements; thoroughly and thoughtfully. They’re typically only a page or two in length. You have five minutes to read it. I don’t have five minutes to argue the finer points of it with you all several times a day. I have work to do, and you probably do too.

Stop wasting everyones’ time.