Myself, as very much a technical person, practical solutions to the core. With current filtering technologies, any automated filter is pretty much a shotgun with its accuracy. When using a shotgun you get a spread, sometimes if that target you’re aiming at is close to something else you don’t want to hit – there’s a good risk you might hit that unwanted target anyway.

Therein lies the reason how filtering can used as a breach into freedom of expression, as well as a poor method of attacking ‘unwanted’ content.

Intentional or not, certain people and groups play politics – which may eventually be abused to edge the filtering system into the realm of suppression of information. If not, it’ll at least make the thought of mistakenly blocked content more palatable, making us more accepting as the filtering eventually works its way deeper and deeper into the content of the internet.

Technically as the filter list gets larger and more dynamic. The requirements for the filtering system become larger – most likely not just linearly, potentially exponentially. As do the costs, and for the ISPs that have to provide the system, passing those costs back onto us – the customers – quite a substantial increase in internet costs. Inherently as network response times increase, hardware costs will increase to rectify the situation.

The government won’t be able to help as each ISP is unique in its own way, and custom solutions cost more. I’m sure lesser ISPs will begin to fail providing filtering and not provide any internet at all to their paying customers – who by now will have already begun to shoulder quite a hefty burden of the filtering.

In these times of economic uncertainty and desperation – adding extra baseline costs to companies and businesses who pass costs onto consumers can’t be a good thing. Increased baselines costs can’t be a good thing for international trade, why bother with a country’s industry that is so hampered by risks and additional costs lumped on by an Internet filter intended to protect the country’s children.

Children who by this time on their slowed down, unreasonably more expensive Internet because the NBN also did not properly address future communications requirements, have already learned to bypass the filtering system that was deemed necessary to protect them while they send their self-shot nude photos to some lacking in life adult across the world via IM/Social networking from their government funded laptop.

All the while their parents are in the next room enjoying their newly acquired Digital HD TV bought with child support bonuses just in time for analogue tv transmission to be turned off.

While at this moment the Government has only pledged about $15M for the bushfire recovery funds, although government is happy to spend $128M on this internet filtering shenanigans.

Every night I confuse myself with how mandatory ISP level filtering could actually be considered at any level as being beneficial for our country’s future.

Chief executive of child protection group Child Wise, Bernadette McMenamin, said most of the criticisms levelled at the internet filter scheme were founded on misinformation.

“It’s disturbing that people are getting hysterical about all the misinformation that is being spread about the internet filter,” Ms McMenamin said.

“Instead of hearing hysteria from the minority we need to hear from the Government and exactly what it intends to ban.”

Ms McMenamin was equally critical of the past weekend’s protests and the DLC’s plans for future action.

“Let the 300 people march on Canberra because it looks pathetic,” he said. “It looks pathetic and shameful because most of these people are not fully aware of the facts and secondly, those who are aware are, in effect, advocating child p-rnography.”

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”.

GLAMOUR swimmers Stephanie Rice and Eamon Sullivan left behind angry and sobbing fans yesterday in a sponsor’s grab for gold.

After queueing hours for an autograph, unsuspecting admirers were told the Olympic medallists would sign only Davenport-branded clothing.

…

After 2 1/2 hours in the Myer basement queue, St Albans woman Jade Gunn, 21, burst into tears when Rice told her: “We only do Davenport.”

Ms Gunn hurriedly got two pairs of underpants off a rack and joined the queue again.

She stood in tears after organisers then set a queue cut-off point, to end the session, in front of her.

“It’s business for them. That’s all anyone cares about these days,” she said.

Ms Gunn spent about $300 to fly to Sydney on Tuesday to get the pair’s signatures on a T-shirt, but missed them at the airport.

…

Ms Gunn said she had skipped work-for-the-dole job training to be there yesterday and she might lose benefits.

Full Article. News.com.au

Medium-to-large Australian ISPs routinely carry in excess of 100,000 HTTP requests per second during peak times, SAGE-AU said in a statement.

Under ideal conditions with the best-of-breed filter in place, those ISPs would be incorrectly blocking over 3,000 HTTP requests every second.

…

The Guild also claims the filtering regime will undo any benefits from a future Fibre to the Node (FTTN) network, due to the delays and processing required by the content filters that were tested.

Preliminary results from the ACMA study showed that five of the six filters tested degraded Internet throughput speeds by at least 22 percent.

IT News

• Look after your own children.
• Protecting the children is a media emotive beatup and does not have any real logic behind it.
• Look after your own damn children.
• I like my Internet the way it is.
• Look after your own goddamn children.
• Our quality of Internet access can only get worse.
• Look after your own goddamn children or don’t have any.

jamiemao:

man, i am the expert at this.
i can lose 5 kilos in 3-4 days, and i’ve done it on numerous occasions.
but the catch is, u have to starve yourself.
now, this isnt the most healthy way to do it, but its effective for a snap diet.
basically, do NOT starve for 3-4 days straight. do it at regular intervals. for example, starve for 1 day, to get rid of ur sugar cravings, and eat something really light on the second day. wait for at least 5 hours after eating before u sleep. then starve on the third day and go for the stretch on the 4th day. on the fifth day u’ll be skinny.
remember, starve means eating NOTHING. but make sure you DO drink lots of water and some exercise such as light jogging or long walks. sleep 5-6 hrs at the most.
it shud do the trick.
NOTE: only do this as a desperate measure (e.g losing some weight before a wedding/going on a first date). it is very unhealthy and can create eating disorders.

Passengers ‘feared the worst’ in new Qantas midair drama

Passenger Douglas Ewington, from Launceston, says when last night’s problem became known, most passengers feared the worst.

“After what happened in Manila, it was a little more worrying than I think it would have been,” he said.

“I think it was very noticeable that the plane was dead quiet once the first PA announcement was made.”  ABC News

The cause of this fear.

The airline says flight 692 performed a routine air turn back to Adelaide Airport because there was an indication that the plane’s landing gear doors had failed to retract.

Coming soon to Australia. DEATH BY FAN.

A New Zealand judge has ordered that the parents of an eight-year-old girl change her name, saying it is highly embarrassing and makes the child a target for ridicule.

The girl, who lives in New Plymouth on the west coast of the north island, is named “Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii”. ABC News

Sydney mother Laurina took her 8-year-old son to the movie as a school holiday activity and left the cinema highly disturbed by the violent scenes, and felt the movie was inappropriately rated.  News.com.au

WTF WERE YOU EXPECTING?

“I’m horrified, this movie is rated M and I almost feel it’s heavier than an R rated film. I had to cover his eyes and talk to him throughout to cover some of the dialogue.

For clarification – M is recommended for ages 15 years and over. Reading comprehension is tomorrow at 4 at your local Centrelink.