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Australian IT Minister Alston Replaced
srouvray writes "The Australian is reporting: In a re-shuffle of the Australian Federal Cabinet, current Communications Minister Richard Alston will be replaced (Alston is going to retire) with Attorney General Darryl Williams. Alston is 'credited' for introducing tough anti-spam laws into parliament... Although it will be interesting to see if Williams will be branded a 'Luddite' as well!"
Let's not forget that this is the minister who said that broadband was only for games and porn.
I for one welcome his replacement.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
It sounds to me like he's got his finger on the pulse of the geek community (or at least the /. community).
I, for one, give him +1 insightful.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
their penises are already big enough (or so I'm told)
Warning: Excessive usage of stupidity may be harmful to your health
...but does seem to be (or should I say can hardly help but be?) an improvement. Even if we must work slowly and carefully, at least we can work with him with a reasonable expectation of being taken seriously.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
At last, the cretin has gone. And despite the media claiming he left of his own accord, everyone in politics knows that he was pushed, due to his own ineptitude.
Of course, Williams is just as much of a wanker, and probably won't fix anything.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
* Stop the Telstra Bulldozer in it's tracks -- support broadband. Canada proves it's possible in a big country
* Sensible censorship
* Sensible copyright
* Serious commitment to anti-spam
* Keep investing and committing to open source
Alston's policies have left Australia as an international IT joke. So much local telent, and so many opportunities in the Asian and global markets have gone to waste. More importantly, every Australian business and consumer has suffered from the 1950s attitudes of the present Aussie govt. Step into the 80s guys, the economy is not all agriculture and textiles!
.. you insensitive clod!
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
After all, the job could of been given to Amanda Vanstone ;)
Alston was a communications disaster, presiding over failed Telstra rollouts/privatizations, 3G rollouts, HDTV rollouts; if it rolled, he screwed it up.
OTOH, Williams has possibly been the worst Attorney-General in living memory, and he's being replaced by the most embarrassing Immigration Minister of all time so he can replace Alston! This I gotta see.
Yup, it's the good ol' Disaster Shuffle. Take yer partners for a foot-stomping good time :)
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
I literally cheered when I read the /. headline. Alston is a drongo and we're happy to see the back of him.
I just submitted this most excellent news item to /., but spent so much time digging up links to his inglorious past that someone beat me to it.
However, I found the original Register article that named Alston as "The World's Biggest Luddite".
As mentioned in the article, it was only a few days ago that he was reported here as being a "pin-up" boy for anti-spam. Perhaps this was a final good deed to make up for his many earlier sins? Or was it so that the new luddite-in-chief wasn't instantly lynched?
I hereby propose a new award be named in honor of the retiring Alston - "The Richard Alston Trophy for the most boneheaded government IT policy decision". Any suggestions for the trophy design?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I personally would greatly enjoy 100 megabits to my door, which could be done quite easily for most towns of about 5,000 or more and would obsolete wired telephones on the day, but while I've seen far worse abuses of it, I think spending tax money is not the way to do this.
I say "most" because towns like Wyndham are kind of difficult to get the bandwidth to, and quite a few West Aussie towns are difficult to wire for anything because the ground is too hard (Albany) or too salty (Lancelin).
I also fear what would happen with 100Mb door-to-door when the next CodeRed/Nimda/MSBlast goes off. Someone could suck out your entire hard drive in a few minutes. Perhaps in 5 years when hardly anyone's using MS-Windows any more?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Er... oh, you meant the Kiwis...? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Don't forget about the arts. Alston was more than a luddite.. he was also a cultural retard.
As an Australian, I am thoroughly embarrased. I'm sure Americans and Britons who don't agree with their elected leaders and associated parties can sympathise.
"Gala" is as in festival. "Galah" is the pink-and-grey avian clown.
Alston would be more of a chook - clueless and not particularly pretty. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
While I am glad to see he has finally gone I'm not sure what real effect it will have. Alston was by far the worst ever Alston communications minister Australia has ever had but his party did not seem to care. As long as they can sell Telstra off they will remain happy. Assuming that the lib's do lose the next election it would take the new government some years to fix the damage caused by Alston.
Dear Mr. Alston,
:-
I head up a medium sized Web Development company that specialises in Govermental website makeovers.
Attached, please find quotation for website that includes
* 45 Graphics
* 73 Scans
* A search function
* 144 html pages
* 666 animated gifs
* Hyperlinks
* A site map
* Lots of Pornography & Games to make use of that Broadband we all love !
I hope you'll agree that the $1,000,000 development costs are very reasonable for such advanced technology.
We can also offer you a RedHat Linux server at a paltry $500,000
Your sincerly,
Mr. Alstons Back Pocket.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
The worst thing you could say about Richard Alston is that he is an incompetent luddite.
Darryl Williams is much worse. He is cunning and intelligent, but with some truly awful political views.
He is well-known for:
trying to destroy the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
Being the force behind Australia's equivalent of the Patriot Act
Refusing to defend a homosexual judge, despite being bound by his position as Attorney General to act as an advocate and protector for the judiciary
Refusing to accept UN reports on racism in Australia
Lobbying for increased intellectual property rights
Lobbying for laws allowing Australia's spy agency, ASIO, to read domestic emails
Supporting the increase in the rate of phone tapping
And generally trampling on human rights and civil liberties wherever possible.
This is definately not good news.
I'm sure the new guy will need his website redesigned. I am going to offer to do it for 50% of what it cost Alston. At $2 million that is a bargain.
--
0x00
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>Not everything is as simple as it seems.
You're talking to an australian. THE dumbest brand to human to ever exist.
What I don't like is the other things that have happened in the process of this reshuffling. Philip Ruddock, previously of immigration (that is, he dealt with the detention camps and visas-for-cash), is now attorney-general.
I don't want to know. This country scares me.
I've currently got enough gear to start a wireless broadband ISP sitting here in my house in Melbourne. I've got two high spots with access points that are installed and ready to go as well as a 10mb uplink.
I don't have a telecommunications license.
Thats going to require setting up the right type of company and then paying the 1st $10,000 application fee. Rumors from someone thats just started the 1st years paper work is saying its going to cost $50,000 just to get to the second year.
Damn cuting into Ziggys gravy train is a hard game to play.
Lucky for me I can ship all this gear over the Tasman sea where the political situation is so messed up.
Unfortunately good sense is in short supply down under. The Prime Minister has taken another step towards his dream of rendering the public completely helpless by imposing sweeping confiscations of handguns. Needless to say this is being done ostensibly as a crime prevention measure (although I dont think anyone seriously expects actual criminals to tamely hand over their tools of trade) the immediate victim is the law abiding gun owner, followed by the general public as the crime rate inevitably soars again.
Phillip Ruddock is the new Attorney-General. As recent news articles state, the reason is to "strengthen the security aspects" of the job. Phillip Ruddock is firstly a favourite of Howard, and once is given a task he will pursue it to the letter no matter who gets hurt in the way, even if they are innocent kids (look at his actions as immigration minister). To say he is dedicated is an understatement. And to wrap up the package he truely absolutely believes that what he is doing is the "good" thing eg. he refuses to take off his Amnesty International Badge even though Amnesty has asked him to. With him as Attorney-General, any innocents who get harmed will be like the kids in detention, collateral damage in an ideological crusade in which to bend or to show any sort of sympathy or humanity is a sign of weakness and a failure. He has the fervour of a Crusader riding into Jerusalem. And the worse thing is, he is actually a very talented adminstrator. Once he sets out to do something, it'd probably get done and he has the favour of Howard to push through th e laws he wants. Basically think of how he runs immigration in Australia. Think of him running national security in the same way. If he can treat little kids the wa he does because he believes it is the right thing to do and he can't show any weakness, imagine how he's going to treat a "terrorist suspect". I'm sure we're going to end up safer from terrorists. But the collateral damage is likely to be huge.
This is absolute hogwash! Gun crime has never really been much of a problem here in Aus. I have only ever heard of two gun murders in my entire life. I seriously doubt this guy has ever even been to Australia.
Finally this pratt is no longer in a position to do any more damage to his portfolio. IMHO he has done more to damage telecoms and tech in Australia than any other communications minister in recent history. Good riddance Richard. Get rid of Tony Abbott while you are at it, John.
I had to do it...
Not sure where you heard this rubbish. Australia feels and is a lot safer now than before this ban - the kind of fear that Americans live under is unheard of in Australia.
I sent in this story a lot earlier than this version, and mine was "rejected". We are told not to get upset when stories are "rejected" but there seems to be an issue here, CmdrTaco! Editorial policy should be consistent! (Okay, I'm not really upset, really, really I'm not... :-)
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
I notice that when a story relating to the US (eg a new policy or achievement ) is posted here, it is accompanied by the US flag. Why no Aussie flag? Couldn't find the graphic?
Wyndham is notoriously difficult to get wires to, is often overcast (bad for satellite) and regularly has weather which is... unkind to antenna towers. Then there's the crocodiles... but despite that I've been told by several unrelated people that it's a nice place to live.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I would suggest that this reshuffle is more to deflect criticism of the heavy-handed way in which Alston has attempted to directly influence editorial and policy and journalism in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation over, for example, the Iraq War II.
The guy was a talking arsehole (even looked like one), let's hope his replacement has at least half a brain (preferably more ... but we are talking about politicians)
That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
It is 100% accurate to say that gun crime peaked after the buy-back.
It peaked from 'so fucking little you'd never even know it was there' to 'a little higher than that but its still so fucking little you'd never know it was there'.
Don't bring your gun culture down on us. We're a country that doesn't have it and doesn't want it.
Daniel
-Commonwealth "Fewer gun crimes in a year that you have in an hour" of Australia
Yes, and please don't export your gun-grabbiness to the States. We do have it, but we really don't want it - only our politicians do so they can "fight crime" without going after the reasons crime exists.
With 2.4 a licence will is not needed. I don't think you can be a telecommunication carrier with 2.4 public waves.
Gone down a similar road to you but I live on a ridge overlooking a city.
The only way I see it is to be a hotspot. On your website say that the customer needs to be within 500M of the access point, this gets round stuff as the client is in the wrong not you.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD!
Thank the gods for this one. This man was such a technically clueless son of a bitch that when he walked down the street people would goes "god damn! there goes one technically clueless son of a bitch"
HAHAHAHAH PARTY AT MY HOUSE!
What is this!? I submitted this story 24 hours ago and it was rejected and now someone else posts it and it's put up?! What my post wasn't good enough was it?!
btw as I wrote in my post, Daryl Williams isn't exactly the best guy for the job, he wasn't a very good A-G and I don't think he knows anything about Communications and IT.
Well done and very funny but sadly the wrong joke. How about:
We welcome our new IT OverLord!
The buffoon is gone and now we will see what someone with malice aforethought can do, no more crazy ball, this is going to be knives in the night from here on.
Cuiusvis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
WTF?
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans