I oppose the mandatory internet filter proposed in Australia

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I oppose the idiotic mandatory internet filter that is being proposed by the Australian federal government at the moment.  I took the time today to write to my local member, Michael Danby, to oppose the policy.  I suggest that anyone who agrees with me that the filter is stupid, which should be anyone that understands the concepts of the internet, does the following things:

1. Sign the petition against the policy at GetUp
2. Write a letter to your own Member of Parliament complaining about the policy.  Most if not all members of parliament will have web sites with feedback forms.  Who knows if they actually read them, but it will only take 10 minutes of your time.  Besides, you'll feel better after doing it.

Below is the content of the message I wrote to Mr Danby

Good afternoon Mr Danby, I am a voter registered in your electorate, and would like to speak with you regarding the proposed mandatory internet filter announced by Stephen Conroy and in the media eye at the moment. I am opposed to any such measures, not because I oppose censorship (which I do), but because the scheme will inflict significant penalties on normal people accessing the internet and it will simply not work.

When the trial was introduced, a 16 year old boy managed to circumvent the measures put in place within 30 minutes (ref http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Teen-cracks-AU-84-million-porn-filter-in-30-minutes/0,130061744,339281500,00.htm). Any user capable of using google will be able to bypass the filter by using a foreign proxy (of which there are many (e.g. http://www.hidemyass.com/)) or an encrypting router (such as The Onion Router (ref http://www.torproject.org/)). This indicates that anyone who wants to get around the filter can do so trivially. Children growing up right now already have the skills to circumvent these filters. Given that this is the case, all the filter will do is affect people that are viewing any other sort of content.

As another has put much more eloquently than I, the use of the filter also directly contradicts the interests of the NBN (ref http://newmatilda.com/2009/12/16/conroys-clean-feed-wont-block). The filter has not been trialed at any speeds above 8 megabits/sec, 1/12 the proposed bandwidth of the NBN. The federal government is sending out a mixed message of both trying to usher in a new era in connectivity in this country while attempting to hold it back with ineffectual and intrusive measures.  

I have worked in the I.T. industry for 16 years, and this is the single most stupid technology policy that I have seen in my working career. I implore you to oppose this policy within your party and within parliament. I would welcome the opportunity to speak directly with you on the topic. I can be reached by email on bruce@brucecooper.net or by phone on xxxxxxxxx  

Thank you for your time,

Bruce.

Its not poetry, but I hope it gets the point across.

I want to invest in Social Business for christmas

My extended family is beginning to ask the standard christmas question: What do you want for a present?  I'm having difficulty thinking of a gaudy trinket to ask for, so I've decided to ask for a donation to a worthy cause.

We saw Muhammad Yunus On Andrew Denton's Elders show the other night, and I was very impressed with his vision for improving the lot of the world's poor.  He makes it seem like solving poverty isn't hard, which makes a great contrast to the things that some people say.  I especially like the concept of a Social Business, whose purpose is to serve the people in a locally logical way rather than turn a profit.  Interestingly, one would invest in a social business with the intention of getting the investment back at some point, although not necessarily with a profit.

So now I'm all fired up, and I'm going to ask people to invest in Social Business instead of buying me presents.  The only problem is I don't know how to let people do that.  I'm going to have to do some research to find out how it can be done.

TI introduces a customisable watch which does HRM out of the box

Engadget have just reported that TI have released a hackable watch, which can do all sorts of things including HRM straight out of the box.  This is really interesting.  I wonder if I can make it work with Bleep.  Of course I should probably concentrate of finishing Bleep first. At $49 I reckon its a steal!  I might ask Santa for one for Christmas

Google Wave for EJA Enterprise Futures Forum 09

A lot of people are saying that using Google Wave to discuss conferences live is the new hotness. Given that there will be a special google wave announcement at tomorrow's Enterprise Futures Forum in Melbourne, I'm willing to guess there will be waves for the conference.

In anticipation, I have created a wave for the tech discussion session I am running on local implications for cloud computing. There's not much there at the moment. I'm hoping to bulk it out a bit this afternoon and tonight in prep for tomorrow's conference.

Abbe May at the Wesley Anne

Melissa, Courtenay and I went to see Abbe May perform a blues/rock solo gig at the Weseley Anne last night. We always try and see her when she's in town, and as usual she delivered. The style was a bit different this time, as she was on her own and had to adapt some of her songs to fit the format. Abbe also performed a bunch of covers, as she explained afterwards to "keep it fun for me", and you could tell from the performance. Especially good were the two covers originally by Willie Dixon, whom Abbe cites as a major influence. 'Twas great

She's playing the Edinburgh Castle (in Melbourne) next Friday, and she's back at the Wesley Anne on the 27th.  Go see her.  Its a bargain.

EJA Futures Forum, Nov 17th

Enterprise Java Australia are holding a conference on the 17th of November in Melbourne, with keynote speeches on the Broadband initiative, Green IT, SOA, and Google Wave.  I will be facilitating one of the afternoon tech sessions on Cloud Computing.  If you're at the event, come and say hi to me.


There's a 2 for 1 registration offer open until mid day on Friday.

Melissa's name is on the wall

Its not nearly as bad as all that.  In fact its a good thing.  Melissa's first solo show outside of the university system opened last night at Metalab in Sydney, and was very successful.  She sold some pieces, chatted with lots of people, and we had some fun.  The proprietors of Metalab are very welcoming and friendly and we all went out for Vietnamese food afterwards which I thought was a nice touch.

Apparently numbers for the opening were a little down on usual, but that is because both artists that were opening that night are from out of state, so the locals weren't brought in by the artists themselves.  Still, there were lots of people there even if they weren't spilling into the street so I thought it went very very well.

If you are in Sydney and you'd like to check it out, the exhibition is on till the 26th of November 2009 at 10B Fitzroy Place, Surry Hills, NSW 2010


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