October 2008
33 posts
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“The image of technologically-disconnected parents floundering helplessly in a sea of pornography as they fail to adequately raise their children is a reflection of the appalling lack of Internet-savviness of our politicians, not society at large. Politicians assume that parents are ignorant about the Internet because politicians are ignorant. Yet parents came to grips with it years ago; the last remaining social group in our country who expresses difficulty with the Internet appears to be baby-boomer Federal politicians, whose child-rearing days are mostly well behind them.”
—Mark Newton writes an open letter to MP Kate Ellis regarding the ‘Great Firewall’.
Net filters may block porn and gambling sites →
theage.com.au
“Any group with an axe to grind and political clout will be lobbying the Government to blacklist websites which they object to,” EFA spokesman Dale Clapperton said.
Damn straight
“Having all Australians’ internet access subject to a secret and unaccountable government blacklist is completely unacceptable in a liberal democracy such as Australia.”
“Do we want Australia to join a censorship club in which Burma, China and North Korea are the founding members?”
—BBC reports on the proposed ‘Great Firewall of Australia’.
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[A]s we contemplate the world post-bailout, when economic reality once again bites, only Silicon Valley’s wealthiest technologists can even consider the luxury of donating their labor to the latest fashionable, online, open-source project…
The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren’t going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some “back end” revenue. “Free” doesn’t fill anyone’s belly; it doesn’t warm anyone up.
” —Andrew Keen: Economy to Give Open-Source a Good Thumping
Of course what he doesn’t realise is that most people blog, contribute to wikipedia, endlessly parse and experiment with code, spend time learning about things not related to their livelihood, for fun and the love of it all.
(via somethingchanged)
Somethingchanged, don’t waste your time reading Andrew Keen, it will just make you mad.
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penelope - pinback
hand clap mix.
Not my favourite Pinback song but there’s something about them. It’s almost sickly sweet, it’s cheesy but it draws me in. Maybe it’s just me wishing I was playing the guitar lines.
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The Black Angels - Black Grease
Thought I’d try out the audio feature. Been playing this song on guitar all week. Awesome band, wish they would come to Australia.
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“[By] dangling miraculous credits before their eyes, people devoid of the means to afford them were browbeaten into buying flashy houses. These people’s IOUs were then sold on, mixing them, as one does with sophisticated drugs, with financial securities whose composition was rendered as scientific as it is opaque by battalions of mathematicians. All of this then circulated, from sale to sale, its value increasing, in ever more distant banks. Yes, the material measure for this circulation was to be found in the houses. But it was enough for the real estate market to go bust and, as this measure became less valuable and the creditors demanded more, for the buyers to be less and less able to pay their debts. And when finally they couldn’t pay them at all, the drug injected into the financial securities poisoned them all: they were no longer worth anything. But this only seems to be a zero-sum game: the speculator loses his wager and the buyers their homes, from which they are politely evicted. But the real of this zero-sum game is as always on the side of the collective, of ordinary life: in the end, everything stems from the fact that there exist millions of people whose wages, or absence thereof, means that they are absolutely unable to house themselves. The real essence of the financial crisis is a housing crisis. And those who can’t find a home are by no means the bankers.”
—Badiou on the financial crisis.
No opt-out on future Australian net-filter. →
myt.ag
This is bullshit, for lots of reasons. A panel of public servants and protect-our-children censorists deciding what’s ‘illegal’? How ridiculous.
