Spying the Ferris wheel over the overpass at Darling Harbour.

John Howard must be eating his own liver around about now. He had only to look sideways at a little brown foreign chap and the media would be all over him for dog-whistling up a storm of racism. Granted, he might well have been blowing some wicked tunes on the bow-wow flute, but he'd have been called on it. The Orange Roughy meanwhile is in danger of popping her eyeballs out she's blowing so hard but nobody's calling her on it.

The federal government has censored approximately 90 per cent of a secret document outlining its controversial plans to snoop on Australians' web surfing, obtained under freedom of information (FoI) laws, out of fear the document could cause "premature unnecessary debate".

A long row of people stand on platform 22 at Central Station, Sydney waiting for the train going around the city circle via St James.

Why the Internet filter issue is just a beatup by IT journos. And that the election will be decided by issues that more Australians connect with.

Because some parents do not understand the Internet, Professor Matt Warren thinks that the Internet should be censored for all Australians. Dumb down the Internet to cater for the lowest common denominator.

Lots of piles of crashed cars on the set of Transformers 3.

The Australian Christian Lobby was briefed one day before Labor's major announcement on delaying its controversial internet filter plan.

On how it was possible that the expert would be able to access pages automatically blocked by all Australian ISPs, the spokeswoman said: "The independent expert will have powers to carry out their job." The government is not saying how much the expert will cost taxpayers. (Or how they will deal with checking 10,000 pages individually)

Looking out the windows of Kingsford Smith Airport's domestic terminal at planes of fluffy white clouds and blue sky peeking through.

If video killed the radio star, then downloads may in turn kill the video. The advent of Foxtel IQ, Telstra's T-box and fetchTV, which allow movies to be downloaded on demand, threatens to render the local video store redundant.

New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts — and often become even more attached to their beliefs. The finding raises questions about a key principle of a strong democracy: that a well-informed electorate is best.

"Trading in shares on the stock market requires certain skills and expertise and to expect this from deities would not be proper," judges P.B. Majumdar and Rajendra Sawant said, according to Indian newspapers.

About the beatup and FUD behind cybercrime.

While preaching is not allowed in Australian public schools, it is apparently fine to replace school counsellors with 'Christian Volunteers' such as Darryl.

Digital advertising billboards being trialled in Japan are fitted with cameras that read the gender and age group of people looking at them to tailor their commercial messages.

Maslow’s classic hierarchy of needs has now been updated and adapted for the Internet age

A Senate Committee has censored a link to a morally-ambiguous parody on the US TV show Family Guy that was included in a written submission by prominent anti-filter campaigner Mark Newton.

A document has been making the rounds showing that the RIAA paid more than $16 million to its lawyers while recouping only a fraction of it through settlements. While some might grin at this seemingly unfavorable outcome for the music industry representatives, the RIAA told TorrentFreak that the overall result of their efforts in court are in their favor.

Sadly for us poor voters, we all know that no matter how much trust we invest in our elected officials, they won't return the favour by investing trust in us.

Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains

An online line vote about the filter run by a large number of media outlets.

Mandatory Internet censorship, and for that matter voluntary censorship, will not protect children in any impactful sense. While voluntary censorship fixes some of the problems of the mandatory model, the overwhelming preponderance of content which it is illegal to possess is still not published on the open web but rather inside of secret networks of criminal associates.

The Chinese Communist Party has detailed its ambitious but secretive strategy for transforming the internet into a force for keeping it in power and projecting ''soft power'' abroad.

China, in the opinion of many, has the most extensive Internet censorship system in the world. The government has spent tens of millions–perhaps hundreds of millions–of dollars on filters and other blocking devices to prevent the spread of information over the Internet.

Ms McMenamin of Child Care thinks it great that ISPs will voluntarily implement filters. Though the time frame for implementation is set to be close to 1 year.

The is division amongst ISPs. Telstra, Optus and iPrimus want to implement a "voluntary" filter (though only voluntary to ISPs). And Internode and TPG want no part in it.

Aside from the political and moral justifications for or against
censorship, what Australian internet users are faced with here is
either submission to a capricious, incompetent and ineffective censor
that blocks content largely at random, or blind rubber-stamping of
any vaguely risqué URLs nominated by anonymous complainants.
Either of those alternatives is a nightmare.

It's a little premature to celebrate the demise the Australia's mandatory internet filtering plans. – There was much jubilation late last week as the digerati claimed a victory over the government's "back down" on plans to implement mandatory ISP-level internet filtering. Don't be fooled, Conroy has in no way capitulated to the demands of the Twitterverse. He's just dreamed up the idea of yet another review, so the Gillard government can sweep the filter under the carpet until after the next election.

On Friday Conroy announced a delay to the filter while RC classification was reviewed. But this is not an end to the filter, just a delay till after the election. And there is no indication as to what the review is actually supposed to achieve.

THE government's decision to delay legislation for a mandatory internet filter should prompt a complete reassessment. And according to industry figures, the controversial policy should be dumped. Internet security consultant Phil Kernick yesterday called instead for resources to be spent on more police to fight child pornography, the main reason behind the proposed filter.

My ISP has just increased the monthly download quota. Going from a reasonable 30 GB peak and 30 GB off-peak, to more impressive 50 GB for both. And it only

Location-based services on a mobile phone are terrifically helpful when you need to find a nearby business or directions to the freeway. They're also terrifically helpful to advertisers, government agencies and even stalkers who can use them to track your every move.

Piece by Gizmodo on why Kate Lundy should replace Stephen Conroy as Communications minister.

Although Kevin Rudd claims his popularity collapsed because he was trying to make 'tough reforms', it appears that a lack of conviction and ability to follow through with the 'tough reforms' was the problem.

I couldn’t help but laugh when I read Stilgherrian’s rant on ABC Unleashed yesterday about how Australia’s “digital elites” may understand technology but somehow don’t get the apparently unbelievably complicated world of Federal politics.

The Italian Windows website "Windowsette" somehow managed to get a hold of a super-secret, highly confidential PowerPoint presentation outlining many of Microsoft's goals and plans for Windows 8.

Despite having just released the latest version of its browser software – Internet Explorer 9 – in beta for developers, Microsoft is still trying to convince home and enterprise users to upgrade from IE6 to IE8.

Both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd mentioned the National Broadband Network in their introductory speeches on Thursday morning, but there was no mention of Labor's more embarrassing policies — the internet filter, the vendetta against Google, plans to snoop on email and web usage, Australia's participation in the vindictive ACTA legislation, or even the Big Red Button.

∏ x 1337% = 42

Several of Stephen Conroy’s harshest critics have backed the idea that Julia Gillard should hand his Communications portfolio to fellow Labor Senator Kate Lundy in the event Gillard took the Prime Ministership this morning and conducted a cabinet re-shuffle.

Several of Stephen Conroy’s harshest critics have backed the idea that Julia Gillard should hand his Communications portfolio to fellow Labor Senator Kate Lundy in the event Gillard took the Prime Ministership this morning and conducted a cabinet re-shuffle.

By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world, just so they could make a fatter profit.

The United States and to a lesser extent the European Union are trying to force international institutions as well as less powerful nations to adopt a wide variety of bad policies as part of the so-called "war on terror." This Website is intended to serve as a central clearinghouse of information and advocacy materials to help citizens, governments, and civil society groups to monitor international bodies and combat this strategy of policy laundering.

The term policy laundering is used to describe means to disguise the origin of political decisions, laws or international treaties.[1]. The term is based on the similar money laundering.

You’d think Minister Stephen Conroy, the man proposing the biggest regulatory change to the Australian internet in history, would have a firm grasp of the internet. I mean he doesn’t need to know the technical specifics on say an engineering level of how it works, but y’know, is a basic understanding too much to ask?

A new U.S. Senate bill would grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet.

The foreign policy priorities enumerated by the State Department, from Secretary of State Clinton to senior innovation advisor Alec J. Ross to case officers abroad, now include supporting Internet freedom around the world. As always with big ideas, the devil is in the details. "The issue for governments is that the same technology used for Internet freedom can be used for porn, copyright or terrorism," said Andrew McLaughlin, deputy chief technology officer at the White House, at Privacy Camp in Washington, D.C. this spring. Implementation of Net freedom is where the opinion of researchers, academics and public intellectuals diverge.

It was revealed today that the Australian Government has been making inquiries regarding a policy of storing the browsing history of every Australian Internet user1 in another move that displays the federal governments contempt for the privacy and civil liberties of the Australian people.

We, along with all other ISPs I assume, received the 'courtesy' email asking us to visit the fourth Reich's official sub-site where we could find the details of how to participate in Herr Krudd's and Obersturmfuhrer Conroy's scheme to purge the Fatherland of the filth emanating from the diseased brains of the untermenscen.

The Australian Democrats have expressed deep concern following reports that the Attorney General’s department is considering requiring all internet service providers (ISPs) to keep a record of everything their customers do online, including potentially every website visited and every email sent.

There has been a lot of talk both online and offline since yesterday’s revelation that the Australian government wishes to force ISPs to log internet browsing histories for an extended period of time for all users, without the need for a warrant.

Facts about the problems and dangers of the proposed Australian internet filter

Anything Europe does, Australia would like to think it can do better – and when it comes to snooping on individual internet usage, Australia is determined to lead the way.

Australian internet service providers may soon be forced to document and save all subscriber's web browsing history.

The federal government wants your personal internet data, and they don't want to have to apply to a court to get it. Revelations that the federal government wants Australia's 400-odd internet service providers (ISPs) to log and retain customers' web browsing data, so law enforcement can access it during criminal cases, have sparked alarm in the industry.

A POLICY adviser to the world's largest social networking site, Facebook, says he doubts the Australian government's proposed mandatory internet filter will work. A former member of the US Federal Trade Commission, Mozelle Thompson described the Rudd government's plans for an internet filter as a challenging proposal. "The proposal that they're making is a static proposal for a dynamic problem,'' he told reporters.

Restaurants and cafes across Australia are breaking the law more than a year after public holiday and weekend surcharges were banned,yet not one has been prosecuted by the national consumer watchdog.

Australia’s division of the Pirate Party has declared war on the Federal Government over a controversial proposal which could potentially see telcos required to keep records of web browsing history, telephone calls and emails of their users.

The recent shift of attacks on internet services and ISPs from our beloved Professor of the Portal Stephen Conroy to Attorney General Robert McClelland is no small thing.