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Fixing the Correct Network Bottleneck

The latest news in the Australian IT industry is the new National Broadband Network (NBN) plan [1]. It will involve rolling out Fiber To The Home for 90% of the population, the plan is that it will cost the government $43,000,000,000 making it the biggest government project. Kevin Rudd used Twitter to say “Just announced […]

Australian Democracy is “Microsoft Compatible”

Here is the Australian Electoral Commission documentation on how to register a political party [1]. It includes the requirement for “A Microsoft compatible electronic membership list (and paper copy) providing the following information“.

So a prerequisite for registering a political party appears to be the ownership of a PC running Windows. While it may be […]

Censorship, Piracy, and Movie Ideas

Flame has written a satirical post about the different methods used to try and prevent unauthorised use of copyright movies and the distribution of illegal porn [1]. He has also written an amusing rant about how offended he was by the false advertising of an erotic movie [2].

I think that both these issues need […]

The Cost of Car Crashes

An article from 1999 suggested that car crashes caused a financial loss in OECD countries equivalent of 2% of their entire economies [1]. An article from the Sydney Morning Herald in 2001 gave a conservative estimate of the cost of a road fatality at $1.5 million [2], it also notes that due to different analysis […]

Lobbying for Free Software

I am not aware of any Linux Users Group (LUG) being active in informing it’s members of how the policies of the various political parties compare with regard to free software and the other issues that are of interest to most members. I believe that this is a grave mistake.

Shortly before an election there […]

A Police SMS about Fire Risk

My wife and I have each received SMS messages from “Vic.Police” that say:

Extreme weather expected tonight (Monday) & tomorrow. High wind & fire risk. Listen to the ABC local radio for emergency update. Do not reply to this message.

Presumably the police are trying to contact everyone in Victoria. The problem seems to be […]

Tragedy and Profit

Every time something goes wrong there will be someone who tries to take advantage of the situation. The recent bushfires in Australia that have killed hundreds of people (the count is not known yet) are a good example. Pastor Nalliah of Catch the Fire Ministries [1] claims that it is due to legalising abortion. This […]

How to Support Straight Marriage

There is currently a lot of discussion about how to protect “marriage“, such discussion is based on the issue of whether Gay Marriage should be prohibited to protect Straight Marriage. Some straight people believe that their own marriage would be better if homosexuals were allowed to get married, some have even declared that they won’t […]

Voting and Linux Australia

Dhanapalan writes about the small number of voters for Linux Australia elections [1]. I guess that blacklist-voting is partly to blame for my inactivity in this regard. Linux Australia is running pretty well so I don’t think there’s a great need for me to go out of my way to vote.

One thing that could […]

More about Australian Internet Censorship

As the Australian government wants to show how well they understand technology, they have started a blog about the “Digital Economy” [1]. So far they have hundreds of comments, most of which just tell them that their censorship ideas are wrong.

In what may be related news, Barack Obama has announced details of some of […]