Following off of somebodythinkofthechildren.com and the previous “How to be Senator Conroy” post.

5. Bully and silence your critics.

Mark Newton, an engineer at Internode, has heavily criticised the Government and its filtering policy on the Whirlpool broadband community forum, going as far as saying it would enable child abuse.

…

On Tuesday, a policy advisor for Senator Conroy, Belinda Dennett, wrote an email to Internet Industry Association (IIA) board member Carolyn Dalton in an attempt to pressure Newton into reining in his dissent.

“In your capacity as a board member of the IIA I would like to express my serious concern that a IIA member would be sending out this sort of message. I have also advised [IIA chief executive] Peter Coroneos of my disappointment in this sort of irresponsible behaviour ,” the email, read.

It is understood the email was accompanied by a phone call demanding that the message be passed on to senior Internode management.  SMH

It should be noted the SMH article makes mention that even Youtube could be censored.

Far flung, but I have not seen any mention of how these banned site lists will be generated, if the porno-really-kiddy-bad-thanasia-fiddler-banned sites will be derived from the many already commercially available filtering software available off the shelf or whether they will be outsourcing an Indian company to seek out the most horrible filth on the Internet in the name of saving the children.

On that I leave you with a word from Ben (Franklin).

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Also I have received a few emails regarding my lack of pictures. Here’s your damn picture.

That’s bubble-wrap.

1. Discredit and devalue public opinion as wild and HYSTERICAL. Example.

Senator Ludlam – So what are your benchmarks or what is acceptable?

Senator Conroy – We are just at the very early stages. You are actually jumping ahead. I can understand that if you have been reading some of the wild and-

Senator Ludlam – Some of it is not so wild, Minister.

Senator Conroy – enthusiastic commentary that I keep seeing both in blogs and in the media.

2. Brag that you are certain you have read more blogs than the person opposing you even though you have no clue on how much research they have done. Then repeat step one. Example.

Senator Conroy-As I said, we are at the early stages. We have not made any decisions along those lines, so we are taking it step by step. This is a complex issue. Notwithstanding some of the commentary that borders on hysterical at times that you have possibly seen, we are just slowly and methodically working our way through and gathering information through this trial.

Senator Ludlam – Some of the comments that I have seen did not approach hysterical at all. I think there have been some quite well thought through concerns.

Senator Conroy-I am sure I have unfortunately probably seen a wider range of commentary than you have, Senator Ludlam.

3. Lie about your facts or at the very least bend the truth to make your words sound morally right. In fact do it while in Parliament. Example.

Senator Conroy – Just to indicate the countries that have implemented along the lines that Abul is talking about include Sweden, the UK, Canada and New Zealand. This is not some one-off excursion.

Makes you wonder why people who know what the hell they are doing aren’t in Government.  Mark Newton caught this one out.  Itch.

• UK: Government specifically excluded from online censorship by the Communications Act. British Telecom has implemented a private, voluntary clean feed system which its customers can use if they wish;
• Canada: Eight ISPs, without any Government coersion at all, run a voluntary parental control tool. The project’s FAQ specifically states that “There is no legal obligation to do this; it will be entirely voluntary. ISPs may have technical or other reasons for not adopting the system;
• Sweden: One ISP, Telenor, runs an optional blacklist. It was embroiled in controversy last year when the police tried to add P2P trackers to the list as child pornography sites, demonstrating how pernicious “scope creep” is in these systems: As soon as they exist, there’s always political pressure to make them block more;
• New Zealand: Examined the BT Cleanfeed system from the UK in 2005, and concluded that it was only 10-15 per cent effective in a fitness-for-purpose study launched by the Department of Internal Affairs Censorship Compliance Unit. The Government abandoned the idea as something too stupid to pursue; I contacted the President of InternetNZ today to confirm that there’s no NZ censorship system whatsoever, and they don’t expect that situation to change if there’s a change of Government in their election later this year.

4. Suggest that everyone in Australia is a bunch of pedophiles. Example.

Senator Ludlam – Just let me finish. In terms of the countries that you have just listed for me, it is mandatory or is it an opt-in system that, for example, concerned parents could take advantage of?

Senator Conroy – Illegal material is illegal material. Child pornography is child pornography. I trust you are not suggesting that people should have access to child pornography.

Today’s lesson is derived from somebodythinkofthechildren.com

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

I’m not feeling too well today so this will be a budget post. However a very important one. Something that’s been riding under the radar since the election.  Hopefully some of the other bloggers who read this will pass this further down the social daisychain better than the FPM site can.  Do take note.

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

…

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contacted by Computerworld say blanket content filtering will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch.

Online libertarians claim the blacklists could be expanded to censor material such as euthanasia, drugs and protest.

…

“Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked — end of story.”

…

“Once the public has allowed the system to be established, it is much easier to block other material,” Clapperton said.

Please do read the rest of the article at Computerworld.

I’d hate to pull the political bandwagon, but Rudd’s been smoking a bit too much of the Chinese pipe.

For many of us this would probably mean many sites we know well will be blacksited and unavailable to us given the current save-you-from-yourselves type society we live.  How many of the games you know have been banned from Australia?

If you feel you’re against this (and you should) – it’s one switch away from being at China’s censoring levels – contact your local Federal Representative in your area, as well as send a letter (yes an actual physical paper letter) to Stephen Conroy.  Why a paper letter? That’s because Timmy your e-mail basically doesn’t get read – they skim it (if at all) and then send you a pregenerated response.

It’s the proverbial Pandora’s box for Internet censorship. Where does it end?

UPDATE 19/Oct/2008

INTERNET users could be forced to subsidise the federal Government’s quest to censor the internet, with early estimates indicating the scheme could cost $60 million a year.  AustralianIT

When’s the last time you knew a Government project to stay on budget? How often does the Government admit defeat on a project instead of beating it to death to prove that it will work?

Of course you could always call the people opposing the government ignorant extremists.  From “Interview With Media Contact Tim Marshall For Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy.”

and you know there’s a few lobby groups in the sector who are pretty keen to put there extreme view out there without perhaps having too much interest in the facts.  Techwired Interview

There’s quite a good reason insurance is so high these days.

A woman who claims she was injured going down a slippery slide at a prominent Brisbane private school is suing for compensation.

Fiona Ciranni, 36, is claiming almost $102,000 in compensation from John Paul College Ltd – Queensland’s largest private school – and A&L Hawkins, trading as Affordable Amusement Rides, due to injuries sustained while she accompanied her daughter on a “super slide” at the college on October 2, 2005.

…

Mrs Cirani claimed she was thrown off the super slide “with significant velocity” and a “significant distance into the air”, before landing on her coccyx.   Brisbane Times

If things continue this way, Australia’s Funniest Home videos is going to go out of business.  A bit of research pulls seems to find that the slide should have looked a bit like this one.

Could hazard a guess at what the woman’s mass would have been for her to gain enough momentum to gain injury from the falling distance from a “significant velocity” however if that were the case we would have on the headlines “Woman told she was too fat to ride on fun slide”.

That’s right, if every other game works, no virus/malware/spyware, hardware check or patch finds a single problem in the space of the universe. Then this is blizzard’s answer.

Since I’ve hopped onto Warhammer until WOTLK (or slightly before) and hooked up with a few FPM guildies, it should be a decent past time.  Anyway, a few things seem to pop up when you start playing.

1. Everything seems very quick, no grind like WOW.  Literally no downtime when doing anything.
2. PVP you can jump straight into it from the get go.
3. It’s all dumbed down, it’s an mmo-espresso.   It’s like DAoC without the massive depth, and of course doesn’t hold a candle to Eve-online.
4. Dwarves. Naked dwarves.

   
   

5. You thought WOW had spam? You were wrong!

   

6. Lots of little annoying things. Intro clips always have sound. You can’t skip them. EULA every single time you log in. By day two it’s already making my eye twitch, I’d hate to imagine what it’s going to be like by week 2.

So they forgot to include the game executable on the DVDs in Australia. Epic fail.

Due to the previously communicated problems with the installation of Warhammer Online Standard Edition, we are pleased to announce that we have located the file that was corrupted. The file is available for download from the link below. Instructions for installing the patch:

download the patch from http://ll.cdn.static.jp.eaplay.com/u/f/eacomasia/ea.com/files/patches/warpatch.exe
drag it into the program file where you had saved the install
click on the patch
enter login and password
run download
then click play

We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

It seems to be the year for overhyped games, that just end up as terribly horrible pathetic excuses for what the game companies would like to try and call a game.

It took me less than a day in between doing house chores to complete the game.

It’s like I’m playing a game on the old xbox/ps2. That’s what the graphics quality is like out of cut scenes.  They’re chunky, blocky and the characters walk like the proverbial drug dealer after a bad encounter with airport security.

The game in Apprentice mode difficulty makes this unbalanced game just bearable.  Barely. Get knocked down once?  Guess what’s that’s game over as you’ll get knocked down over and over and over and over and over and over and over.  Let’s not mention the hulk smash purge troopers.

Did they even play-test the goddamn game. Darth Vader fight, I tested it and got myself suspended in the air for at least five minutes before I got bored of spamming the O button.  Gotta bring down a destroyer? No problems. If. And I stress IF you don’t hurt yourself trying to destroy the TIE fighters.

Then let’s not mention repetitive.  Gotta kill wave after wave after wave after. Well you’d wish there was some variation. In fact the same planets are repeated twice with the same enemies.

Oh and annoying.  Climb up and up and up, oh whoops you jumped onto a slope. Back down all the way you go.  Let’s not mention a certain stomach wind which keeps on blowing you back lest you accidently stick your nose out in the way.

Don’t buy this game.

Word getting around the water cooler is there are some preferences that are available for change to reduce the number of RSI and tourettes inducing events.

That way you shouldn’t have to rage back across the Galaxy to shoot a couple of ships down for your completely incapable Empire who deems that you should be the only spaceship for the other Empires’ 50gazillion* ships.

[spoiler /See all the cheats by clicking here/ /Hide the cheats/ ]

1. Go find your Spore’s directory. It should be located in your applications directory.eg. C:\Documents and Settings\<<USERNAME>>\Application Data\SPORE\Preferences
   
2. Make a backup (make a copy) of your original preferences.prop file.
   
   
3. Open the file preferences.prop and add some of the lines to the end, where x is the set variable of your choice.  Using Notepad is probably the easiest way to edit this file.universeSimulatorPirateRaidFrequency x
   universeSimulatorPirateRaidAllyFrequency x
   universeSimulatorPirateRaidPlunderFrequency x
   universeSimulatorHappinessDisasterFrequency x
   universeSimulatorBiosphereCollapseFrequency x

   Some other potential things to play around with.

   universeSimulatorGrobTeaseAttackFrequency x (default:100)
   universeSimulatorGrobWarAttackFreqExtremelyAware x (default:40)
   universeSimulatorGrobWarAttackFreqVeryAware x (default:80)
   universeSimulatorGrobWarAttackFreqAware x (default:160)
   universeSimulatorWarAttackFrequency x (default:300)

   0 should disable the given event normally.

4. Save the file.
5. These apparently can be entered during the game the same you can enter Spore’s cheat system by pressing ctrl+shift+c, but then you’d have to do that all the time and Spore gives you enough RSI as it is.  On the subject of console cheat entry, entering “help” should bring up the list of all the available cheats.

[/spoiler]

Also got word from EA game support on Spore crashing a little too often. Not that it’s very helpful for me but might work for other people.

Hi Jort,

It might be worth trying the Nvidia beta drivers that have solved a lot of issues for folks.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

Regards,
EA Support

If like me you have been blessed with Spore’s excellent saved game feature of giving you only one saved game. Then only to find at some stage become stuck with a broken saved game, where by it crashes every time you load it. There is some hope.

1. Go find your Spore’s saved games. It should be located in your applications directory.

   eg. C:\Documents and Settings\<<USERNAME>>\Application Data\SPORE\Games

2. There should be a folder called Game0 (or similarly otherwise) as well as a folder Games0.old (again similarly otherwise).   Copy the folder Game0 to a spare location, as backup in case it doesn’t work.
3. Open the .old folder of the relating saved game you’ve just backed up.
4. Copy all the contents of this folder into the normal folder (eg. Games0) and overwrite all the files in there.
5. Load up and Spore, and check out when you saved your game previously.

Of course this may not work for everyone. Also it’s somewhat dependent on your saving habits.

Best of luck. Or not.

UPDATE: If you can’t find your “Application Data” folder. Go up to your menubar and go Tools -> Folder Options. From there go to the View tab.  Go down and look for the Hidden files and folders option. And select “Show hidden files and folders” from the radio buttons. That should then make the hidden “Application Data” folder visible.