Slashdot Mirror
Some Of Australia's Tubes Are About To Be Filtered
Slatterz writes "The first phase of
Australia's controversial Internet filters were put in place today, with the Australian government announcing that six ISPs will take part in a six-week pilot. The plan reportedly includes a filter blocking a list of Government-blacklisted sites, and an optional adult content filter, and the government has said it hasn't ruled out the possibility of filtering BitTorrent traffic. The filters have been widely criticized by privacy groups and Internet users, and people have previously even taken to the streets to protest. While Christian groups support the plan, others say filters could slow down Internet speeds, that they don't work, and that the plan amounts to censorship of the Internet. At this stage the filters are only a pilot, and Australia's largest ISP, Telstra, is not taking part. But if the $125.8 million being spent by the Australian Government on cyber-safety is any indication, it's a sign of things to come."
Please, if you use one of the ISPs in this program, send a very strong message and dump them as soon as the filters go live. Tell them that you are quite capable, thank you very much, of filtering your own content.
I guarantee that if this gains traction it will not stop at porn. Welcome back to the Middle Ages.
Everytime one of our friends or relatives asks us about a problem with their internet our response shall be,
"Oh that'd probably be the internet filter causing your drop-outs, thank Stephen Conroy"
I know what a secure proxy is, you insensitive clod!
Just VPN your way out and huzzah!
For putting the country back into debt and censoring the internet.
Its people's fault. Plain and simple.
Because after this tragic act of censorship, the people in the next elections, while having the opportunity to vote down the current government, most probably will not. Even if they do, they will most probably vote for another party that has most probably done something equally bad when they were government.
It's called mass amnesia, and its the reason why our democracies are in fact ""democracies"".
I know a lot of Chinese nationals have been immigrating to your shores lately, Australia, but this is the wrong way to make them feel at home.
Well - I was wondering why the net's a bit slower today... Thought it was the random fluctuations I get from time to time but no... Sigh... Sad thing is, you mention this to people here and it's oh... Well, kinda bad, but meh..
I don't understand these alleged Christians' obsession with force and control. Forcing your own will upon someone else is the very antithesis of Christianity.
I'm going to venture a guess that tor is going to become very popular in Australia very soon...
Though, I'm sure some teenagers will figure out how to bypass those filters even more simplistically. Good on them. Say no to a censored Internet!
Why do complicated things with VPNs when you can simply dump the ISP? It's still possible, sends a clear signal, and if people start using VPNs en masse to get around the filtering, they'll simply filter that as well. And you want a clear signal that filtering isn't wanted before all choice is gone.
Christian Groups in HK are trying to push web filtering on ISP to 'protect their children'. Those groups are nuts. They even think David (Michelangelo) is porn and should be banned. We will protest against it on 15 Feb. Sorry for my poor English.
I blame the Americans, for their culture of inactivity they brought over here back in the war.
Oh, who am I kidding, we're all lazy. And our general populous is just as ignorant as the American general populous.
I have not read TFA, due to the aforementioned laziness, but I think the summary misses some of the biggest news in regard to the filter trials: every damn ISP on the list (with the exception of iPrimus) are tiny little no-name setups that likely have customers numbering in the hundreds. Two major ISPs with large customer bases, Optus and iiNet, were excluded because, I would assume, their data would reflect poorly on the filtering scheme.
These "real world" trials are a sham, and Conroy's a bastard.
Ezekiel 23:20
But the 3 largest in Australia -- Optus and iiNet as well as Telstra are not taking part in these trials. How the hell are they going to get any accurate data if they're simply using 6 small ISPs? What next, they just flick on the switch for all ISPs and it it should work fine?
Once a jolly swagman plugged into the internets,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited as he torrented
"Don't go deploying your filters on me".
"Deploying your filters, deploying your filters
Don't go deploying your filters on me"
And he sang as he watched and waited as he torrented,
"Don't go deploying your filters on me".
Down came the content speeding through the internets,
Up jumped the swagman and viewed it with glee,
And he sang as he shoved that content on his backup disk,
"You'll be a-wasting your filters on me".
"Wasting your filters, wasting your filters
Don't go a-wasting your filters on me"
And he sang as he shoved that content on his backup disk,
"Don't go a-wasting your filters on me".
Up rode the Conroy, mounted on his ISP,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly content you downloaded so illicitly?
You've been evading the filters from me."
"Evading the filters, evading the filters
You've been evading the filters from me."
"Where's that jolly content you downloaded so illicitly?
You've been evading the filters from me."
Up jumped the swagman and handed them his backup disk,
"You'll never crack my encryption", said he,
And his packets are tunneled and proxied through the internets,
"You'll never get your bloody filters on me".
"Your bloody filters, your bloody filters
You'll never get your bloody filters on me".
And his packets are tunneled and proxied through the internets,
"You'll never get your bloody filters on me".
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Yahoo Serious when you need him?!
David from South Australia I would like to say that; I am so happy using Webshield because I don't have to worry about what the children are doing, passwords or anything. I was constantly keeping tabs on things before, but now I know Webshield is doing it for me.
Angie from South Australia Before I used Webshield, I would constantly be checking my children on the internet, worried and anxious about what they might 'accidently' find. But now with Webshield, I can leave them to their homework, etc and not stress."
Julie from Queensland With 2 boys approaching teenage years and a husband who works late into the night at times, we (and I say âweâ(TM) on behalf of my husband as well) are glad for the peace of mind webshield provides. With pornography and all that it leads too, sweeping through families â" even strong families â" as it is channelled right into our houses, wreaking absolute heartache and havoc, we can only be glad for protection.
Those three quotes are quite probably the most disturbing potential outcomes from such a system.
The brutal truth of the matter is that what ever you can _easily_ find on the web via http is far less dangerous than Predators lurking on Friend face or Instant Messaging, which cannot be filtered. (You could block them entirely, but could you imagine the uproar of Millions of people then!). And wanting to block "Unwanted Material" this screams scope creep in a big way.
I am an Australian, and the B/S the Dis-Honourable Senator Conroy continues to feed us is quite alarming. I have met the man in person and witnessed first hand his obvious technical ineptness.
I for one will be fighting tooth and nail to inform everyone I know and I am already geared up at home to "circumvent" any filter.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
There must be some way to bypass the tube tying that these folks in the governments around the world are doing. Yes, sure there are snoop blockers and other web sites that enable encrypted bypassing of restrictions but State based Freedom Limiting Terrorists have figured out that firewalls exist. I'm wondering about legal means to assault these State Based Terrorists who continue to assault our freedoms including our freedoms of communication.
Sure it's likely different in each country due to the differences in laws but there must be strategies that will work across the entire planet to protect the masses Natural rights to free communications.
One idea is the open project to monitor ALL GOVERNMENT AGENTS, EMPLOYEES, STAFF and POLITICIANS and publish their movements, their activities, their lives. Millions of Little Brothers watching the members of the Big Brother control freak cult (aka members of any group that considers itself a State or Government at any level).
The purpose in part is to expose the hypocracy of these members of the governments but it's also to let them know that they are being watched.
Who watches the watchers? The population must be the ones who watch the watchers. This is why all public business must be in the public domain for it to be valid public business, otherwise it's just the work of "terrorists pretending to be the State"!
ps. If I vanish you'll know why.
First, the little penguin bites Linus, and now it bites the internet!!
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
They should be spending that money on improving our internet instead. Doesn't seem like they want any votes in the next election.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
Yes, but he's been "Feilding" some bigger problems.
Personally I would be happier with the very dishonest way this "for the kiddies" stuff was done by the previous government to keep Harridine happy than the stupidity of actually keeping the promise to keep Feilding happy. When single issue loonies like the Philanderers First Lesbians Last party (the very hypocritical "family first") have the deciding vote in the senate all kinds of crap gets proposed.
The disappointing thing is the government is acting on some of this crap. Since they are the only party with more than two sitting members with a clue we don't have a lot of choice.
Don't like content filtering / tampering / snooping?
So what's YOUR excuse for...
Not having a PGP key of your own so people can send you secure emails / files?
Sending emails without digitally signing them (anyone can do it) and by default encrypting them to any/all recipients who will provide their keys for that purpose?
Complaining about "internet filtering" yet not even running the software to check and see whether YOUR internet / ISP is filtering / port blocking / et. al.? Last time I checked there were pretty pervasive problems with wholesale port blocking for both incoming and outgoing traffic on many ISPs. That's wholesale blocking / censoring / filtering of communications too. A "network neutral" internet provider should allow ANY protocol, on ANY port, IN or OUT without tampering with the connection (throttling, blocking, et. al.). Anything less is just accepting the encroachment of such filtering.
Willingly USING an ISP that does any kind of connection filtering / tampering?
Willingly USING webmail systems and similar ones where your private communications are left out on some 3rd party server, especially ones where they don't facilitate end to end message signing / encryption / access purely over HTTPS, et. al.? Sites like yahoo, hotmail insert ads into every message you send by modifying YOUR content / message. Sites like google/gmail snoop on the contents of all your email and basically sell that information to advertisers to profile you and intrude on you with ads. If you don't want your content to be modified, filtered, sold, snooped then make sure they cannot either understand or alter your communications and the problems will be mostly solved!
Willingly using software like SKYPE or MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger all of which go to great efforts to be able to be able to route your communications through THEIR servers and not offer any meaningful true verifiable end-to-end content encryption such that not even the service provider can intercept / filter your communications.
Most of the IM software that is "popular" indeed does all sorts of content filtering based on keywords, blocking URLs it doesn't want you to share, et. al. Content tampering / filtering of a private communication should be the end user's option, not the service provider's! There are alternatives out there that use open source software, publically documented protocols, and which offer true encryption / privacy support like SIP, JABBER, et. al.
Running a site that doesn't use HTTPS as its PRIMARY mode of communication, i.e. don't even ALLOW HTTP except as a deprecated option to satisfy very old cell phone browsers or such that aren't capable of SSL?
Using HTTPS, although they could block sites based only on the domain name, they couldn't easily look at or filter / tamper with the content of the communications themselves -- NebuAd insertion or whatever simply wouldn't be possible. Also one wouldn't reveal anything more than the domain name / IP address being contacted for HTTP, so even the rest of the accessed URL would be secure. Enabling HTTPS is a trivial change to almost any web site, and compatible with most any browser platform. Why don't we provide this as sysadmins and demand it as users. Why
am I not on https://slashdot.org/ now? In the old days the CPU performance cost for the crypto was somewhat of a factor for fairly high traffic sites, but now that CPUs/Network processors are much more capable, I very much doubt it would be a significant impediment for ANY site to offer. Is the privacy and security of your users not worth another 3% of your CPU load or whatever? Certificate cost? Ok, self sign (it's better than plain HTTP!), or use a public / free CA or whatever.
As others have said, it more customers demanded full open unmodified internet access from their ISP, it would be offered by more ISPs and ones that want to tamper with your data (NebuAd, DNS hijacking, content snooping / altering) or whatever either wo
Fuck that is one of the most idiotic things I've read today (I won't go 'ever'). Are you that much of an opportunist? You've never alluded to this in earlier posts.
It is so dumb that you sound like one of those people who watch and believe 'Today Tonight'
Kevin caused the financial crises, eh? The coalition never had plans for filtering? This is Australia ... nobody else gives a fuck ... and I like it that way.
C'mon, you're smarter than this.
.
And I thought that censoring what my 7 year watches would be MY responsibility as a parent. Turns out you can just get the government to do it for free. Who'da thunk it ?
Just turn OFF the damn TV, parent your OWN kids, and stop spoiling the fun for the rest of us who ARE old enough and mature enough to decide what we watch.
And yes the coalition had a filtering policy, it was free filtering software they would send you on request. a perfectly reasonable and much cheaper solution.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
And one of the ISP's, Webshield, is only known because it's business model is based on already offering a "clean-feed" connection.
For this to come into force properly, the Government will need to pass legislation through Parliament. While they can get it through the lower house easily, the Senate will be much harder. In the Senate the Government will need the support of either the Coalition or all the cross-benchers (Greens, Family First and Xenophon) in order to gain the majority. I know the Coalition intends to vote no and I can't see Greens supporting it, so it will fail to pass.
when all of you geeks become parents, either you will spend 95% of your time manually filtering your child's on-line access, buy closed-source software from some "very dependable" company or be a very bad parent.
I can tell you first-hand (as a parent and someone from a "very dependable company") that Internet filtering is not all it's cracked up to be. The filters are simply not accurate enough to rely on for home use; there are sites out there which deliberately try and remain unfiltered. There are a LOT of ways to get around them, depending on the tech. I can tell you that none of the companies that I know of are perfect. The government's expensive testing even proved that. The only reason Internet filtering works in schools and businesses is group mentality. Students and employees start to think they're being watched and tend to avoid doing things that are inappropriate lest they be found out and others find out what they're doing.
Porn is not a problem. If you're letting a young child out onto the Internet unsupervised you're a fucking moron. You are the problem in that case. Plain and simple. Are you so fucking stupid you let them swim in a pool without watching them too? I bet it'll be the government's fault for not when they drown! Do you take them to large events (sporting ones perhaps) and let them run around where you can't see them? Oh, Uncle Sam should have protected them there too because you were too fucking lazy to!
Being a parent is not the job of the gumbiment. Being a parent is your job, and I've got some news for you shit-stick; it's a full time job. I know this because I am a parent and it never ends. It may be hard work, but it's also great fun and a real rush, knowing you're molding and shaping them into responsible little versions of you.
*end rant*
I make no apologies for flying off the rails. It sickens me to the very core that some people actually think they shouldn't have to look after their own children.
I drink to make other people interesting!
like it or not, when all of you geeks become parents, either you will spend 95% of your time manually filtering your child's on-line access, buy closed-source software from some "very dependable" company or be a very bad parent.
Why does no one ever demand actual evidence of harm from people like you? You claim that all of these dire consequences will arise from allowing your children unfettered access to information, and that we, as a society, will have to accommodate your beliefs. We've heard it before, over and over, for a large part of a generation now.
If you actually had to cite concrete, peer-reviewed, reproducible studies demonstrating the societal benefits of draconian ISP-level censorship before your position was taken seriously, it'd be amusing. Because such a requirement would leave you gasping and sputtering and waving your hands, unable to point to any evidence that children are actually harmed by media content. Yet, for some reason, people with your opinion are exempt from such requirements.
So... let's see that evidence, shall we?
Dear Senator Conroy,
I am a member of the Western Australian Labor Party and a long time supporter of the ideals and values the Australian Labor Party and Trade Union movement promote in our country. I am writing to express my extreme concern on the mandatory Internet filtering you and your office are trialling over the next six weeks.
I understand that the decision is being considered as an option to assist parents, schools and public resources (such as libraries) to keep children away from unwanted Internet content. However, I do not believe that the planned solution will ever be appropriate for the Australian cultural climate. As a teacher, uncle and future parent I cannot stress enough the complete apathy and ignorance this policy encourages in parents of young and adolescent children in relation to the Internet. It should be the absolute responsibility of the authority figures of each household to understand, take action on and maintain any steps taken to remove perceived inappropriate content entering the household through a connection to the Internet. This policy is the antithesis of promoting an open caring relationship between parents and children in relation to online content.
Your policy discourages education and accountability because it takes the responsibility of filtering away from the parents of the household. It also discourages communication between the parent and child, not only stifling the need for dialogue but also, as shown through the lack of information given to the public by your office, the idea that information can be withheld by those "who know better" (in this case those who think they know better). Furthermore, the technical, financial and freedom of expression (as upheld through our constitution) issues are well documented and those in themselves should be more than enough to kill any further life in this poorly planned, poorly executed and poorly though-out plan.
Please understand that I do not advocate nor do I support the idea that the government cannot assist parents, schools and other public institutions from helping them with filtering their access to online content. However this policy which will continuously block any number of unnamed web sites is not aimed at targeting an individual's right to choose what they view, instead generalises values for the entire Australian population. I cannot think of anything more "un-Australian" than that.
As a Labor member and supporter of both a Labor government at both a state and federal level it is with great disappointment that if this policy is to be enacted I will do everything in my power to ensure that only members of parliament who oppose this policy will represent me in my electorate in the future. I understand that this may well end up in me needing to leave the Labor party but this issue is too important and your policy to narrow sited for me to ethically be able to support any Labor party member encouraging this policy.
I am looking forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
Really? It sickens me to the core that children are so mollycoddled.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
All those filters are usually erected in an attempt to 'protect the children' but so far I haven't seen any kind of hard evidence showing the children are 'damaged' from looking at porn or similar.
Actually I've seen a study showing quite clearly that porn has no negative effect on children at all. Back in 1968 porn was legalized in Denmark and porn shops popped up everywhere, especially in a section of Copenhagen called Vesterbro. About 1/3 of all shops there were porn or porn-related shops in those days. This meant that almost no matter where children looked they saw porn (dildos, explicit magazines, books, movies) and there was a lot of prostitutes in the area as well. All this happened when the children was mostly unsupervised by adults (on the way to school etc.). Now the study compared the children that grew up in this area with similar children from similar backgrounds growing up elsewhere, and looked at deviations from 'normal' when it came to crime (especially sex offenses), sexual preferences and orientation, attitude towards sexual deviations and so on. The result was quite clear: The 'porn-exposed' children had a similar life to the 'normal' children but had a more tolerant attitude towards everything sex-related, and often had more friends from the 'deviant' groups like homosexuals, transsexuals or so on.
The conclusion was therefore clear: Porn does not hurt children emotionally or sexually and it even seems to create more tolerant adults that is less likely to be ignorant of sexual themes. This is a good thing in my book.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
The only reason Internet filtering works in schools and businesses is group mentality.
That is so wrong. Take websense and category based filters. From here, I can't even log in to /., let alone visit any site that isn't academic or news related if the site in question is older than 48 hours or so.
Once a filter gets large enough, it has enough data coming in to quickly block and site or service the settings would deem...inappropriate.
I mean, you can block the websense bot from categorizing your site using .htaccess - but damn do they have a lot of bots. And yes, they ignore the robots.txt file.
-Kyreas, who can't login due to a filter.
Just a couple of nitpics for you there old mate...
A) I have two children aged 1 and 8 and another on the way. Which makes me a parent, so no you are not special and you don't get to corner any sort of moral high ground in this debate.
B) If in your household it's possible for your seven year old daughter to come across content like you mention then your already a failure as a parent, sorry.
C) Don't push me (a real dad) and the rest of us down because you can't swim. We real parents can handle the internet in our homes, in fact of all the day to day dangers to my boys health and safety the internet rates about a 1 / 10.
D) Don't ever, ever assume to speak for 'parents' again.
E) If you can't handle having the internet in your home without the federal government getting involved, your the bad parent.
Unfortunately your predictions for the future are sadly more than likely accurate and fairly insightful.
He's not sending us into debt, we're already in debt! It's amazing how the coalition fed us the bullshit of historical consecutive surpluses and 'fiscal conservatism' but managed to DOUBLE the national debt to a trillion dollars in ten years.
This is after record taxation rates on the population (remember that the GST was meant to get rid of various taxes ... no wonder he promised never to move the GST to 11% ... Costello never needed to. How much after PAYG tax do you then end up paying on more taxes? Petrol? Milk? Bought a house in the last ten years? How much tax do you pay?) and a mining industry that brought in such huge amounts of cash from China and other developing nations but somehow the tax gained from that never found its way towards infrastructure or reducing the national debt.
They are all the masters of spin. Feed with one hand and rob with the other.
The filtering software was a first step that was deemed to be inadequate. They just got booted out before they could initiate secondary protocol.
Apologies for getting an Insightful mod on my previous post. It never should have.
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Sending the government into debt is the most widely held view by economists on how you bloody well SHOULD fight a recession.
But I suppose you're one of those nutters who believes we shouldn't borrow money at an interest rate of basically zero (rate - future inflation) while people lose their jobs.
If it makes sense for companies with good future revenue and credit rating to borrow money to fuel growth why does it not make sense for governments to do the same when the private sector is incapable?
The only attack needed is financial.
If the customers leave, the money stops. If the money stops, the lobbying stops.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Let us know how it goes. I'll check my comments page for a response.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Even if there are technological measures you can take, they are worthless since the opponent has the whole backing of the government.
Yes, you con win a round but you cannot win a war against a determined government.
The battle should be done using the correct ways, legal and clear ways.
It should be clear to all population that "filtering" can and is usually used to shut down political opponents and such risk leads to a type of government that put all effort in preserving itself instead of creating better wealth for the citizens.
It should be clear that the "save the children" is just a salesman trick. The proponents will swear that it is so, show you "statistics" that have been made by "professors", what do you expect, they are not stupid. It is up to the general person to be smarter and see behind the hype.
It should be clear that one way accountability leads to abuse (who is controlling the filters?). On a side note, why is it illegal to take pictures of cops or filming a crime scene ? are we saving the children or is just the government protecting its abuses ?
Until at least 60% of population behaves like sheeps they will be treated like sheeps, unfortunately.
So, instead of digging ourselfs into technology we should blog, write to newspapers, talk to people and make sure that freedom is preserverd, since freedom creates better wealth for everybody (even the government)
i'm not buying that without some kind of credible link. to my knowledge Costello paid off 100 billion in debt after the last labour government,and it took 10 years to do it. as for petrol, you were paying excise which is levied by STATE governments, which were all labour most of howards term. The same goes for stamp duty on houses - state government levied (and yes i have purchased a house). you never paid GST on milk, it was exempt as an essential food item just like fresh fruit,veg and preventative items like condoms http://www.ato.gov.au/businesses/content.asp?doc=/content/13287.htm
as for PAYG, or income tax, we are all paying less tax than ever before thanks to the previous government. Costello lowered the top tax bracket from 68% at 50,000 to 48% at 127,000. the lower brackets had even larger cuts.
yes things like hospitals were left up to private enterprise to expand, i used to work in the medical industry and i can say both private AND government run hospitals are a shit fight. i don't really think more money from the government is going to fix it, it's going to take a reversal of peoples attitudes.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
And one of the ISP's, Webshield, is only known because it's business model is based on already offering a "clean-feed" connection.
Which is a fine business model---it's selling something that people want. And by participating in this trial, they might demonstrate that they've got a product that works. (Maybe. For some value of "works.") Or get some free publicity.
What's not OK is imposing a filter on people who don't want it.
because they are planning to just give away 23 billion of it as hand outs, most of which i'm betting will be spent on booze/drugs/smokes/pokies? companies have a business plan that's going to make a return when they loan money, our government just spent 10billion on that stupid xmas bonus and they can't even say with certainty it saved a single job long term.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Then you're thinking emotionally and not with your head, if governments are unable to act on a timeline longer than 4 years then they've got the same problem as the private sector and cannot act as a buffer.
Iprimus is just in there to lend credibility, I have never heard of the other ISPs.
But wait, iPrimus is not actually listed only their parent company Primus Communications who won't have the same infrastructure configuration as an actual ISP.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Actually the numbers from december are in, and we saw a significant trend spike that has been wholly attributed to the 10bn.
Booze, smokes and pokies all have massive taxes on them, so if you're interested in the government recouping their money then that's a surefire hit. The idea that most people in Australia who make less than 100k are going to spend it on that is a bit absurd however.
What gives is that modern Australians aren't the same hardass cons that built the country. Life's so good and easy and comfortable here that people have nothing to really worry about, so they make shit up and worry about that.
Half the equation is that Australia's population is aging badly, and most old people think that everything is too fast, too loud, too dangerous and too untidy. This is a problem when a sizable portion of the voting public makes up this group.
The other half of the equation is, as I said first up, that life's too good here. We don't worry about getting shot at or knifed. The worst we generally have to contend with is bushfires (just had a doozy but it's been a few years since the last big one before that) and poisonous native animals. Out of work? No problems, Centerlink will pay for your cask wine and internets.
When people spend too long without serious threats to life and limb, their brain adjusts to see trivial things as big and important. Humans do that, our brains are great at adapting to their circumstances... but in this case, people rate their top 3-4 concerns as "life threatening" even when they are things like "my neighbour plays music after 7pm" and "my kid might see a digital nipple if he plays this M-rated game".
Another exacerbating effect of the general pantywaistness of the proletariat is that our political system is, for want of a better word, pan-partisan. Campaigns are based either on smearing the opposition (the last couple of federal elections have done this) or making a stand on the traditional party differences (unions and workers rights vs. tax breaks for businesses, for instance). Any remotely controversial issue is swept under the carpet and then laws about it are ninja-passed at 3am. As an Australian citizen I feel about as far removed from the running of this country as I am from the running of Uzbekistan.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
You made me check my facts ... I was wrong.
In 1996, the national debt was 298.8 Billion
In 2008, the nation debt was $1032 Billion!
The states didn't remove the taxes because the government didn't let the *full* money from the GST flow through to them.
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Filters seem to be either fall on false positives or ineffective. Working for Ed Queensland, and sites that are definitely safe are blocked. I've been to sites that (IT research) that had inappropriate (for children) ads.
The balance required is too fine to be practical for anything other than the one in your head.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Who said ANYTHING about mollycoddling children? I certainly didn't. I merely pointed out that expecting the Government's Internet filter to protect them from the evil 1nt4rw3bs is madness. In my own very pissed off way I pointed out other things that you wouldn't expect the government to protect your kids from.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Why aren't iiNet participating in the trial?
They have been the most vocal in agreeing to the trail since it was announced, specifically so they can use the results to show how stupid this is!
Have they been banned from the trial because of this attitude?
I'm hoping that all these attempts will fail in the test phase. Because the last thing I want is to be denied information because someone else is not capable of protecting themselves due to their stupidity.
The Australian Labor Party that's pushing this isn't particularly known for its ties to Christianity, growing as it does out of the historically anti-religion Socialist movement.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Ummm, will you have my babies?
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
I hope you have some success, it's worth sending, but I can probably send you the same scripted letter I received. Quite offensive and completely dismissive.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
You fail
You're an idiot if you think Household debt is actual Federal Government debt. If I borrow money for a house, it's my debt and overall it contributes to national debt but it's not actual Federal Government debt. I bet if you check you'll find most Government debt is from the states, and guess which parties run those these days?
So you're just saying:
Harden the fuck up Australia!
I go to the protests, I write to the appropriate officials, and since neither of those look like they'll have any effect, I have a wide variety of free VPN solutions and the like to distribute to anyone that wants one. :)
Ezekiel 23:20
Oops. My bad. I've been playing too many old PC games.
Ezekiel 23:20
Tech2U has worse value for money than even telstra. Omniconnect, netforce, and highway 1 provide internet for businesses. In short, the people who will be trialled will either have more money than sense and no idea about technology, or be one of the miniscule amount of businesses that are with these ISPs.
Any results from this trial have no credibility at all.
Ezekiel 23:20
If the federal government doesn't spend money on education, health and other public infrastructure, what do you think happens? The State governments and the private sector has to loan money to pay for those services. That is why you look at the National Debt. It encompasses everything - total in / total out.
Like I said before, they are all masters of spin.
.
These so-called Christian and Parent groups who advocate such nanny state intervention are only doing so because they are too lazy.
You want to protect the children? You supervise them. You don't give them a computer with internet access that they can use privately in their bedroom in the dead of night: You put the computer in some family location where a responsible adult is available.
Or... Lock the router in a cabinet with a simple timer switch on the power brick.
The phrase which sums up our modern era : "Can't someone else do it?"
Bah!
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
I would think they would be against the filter, since if it becomes widespread, there is no need for their business model anymore. They will go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers.
"Turns out you can just get the government to do it for free."
For free?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaa!
My wife won't let me. ;) To save double posting, @sortius below: Yep, I'm basically saying that a bit of HTFU won't go astray.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Dude, were you asleep during high school economics? National Debt = Government (Public) Debt + Household & Business (Private) Debt. If the Coalition did one thing right (and it may very well be one of the few things), it's eliminate the public, i.e. Government debt. Which they did through, yes, consecutive surpluses and fiscal conservatism.
If the private sector wants to go and borrow bucketloads of money to buy cheap shit from Taiwan, that's not the government's fault. Or would you like the state to "direct" your spending via more taxes so that you don't increase the current account deficit? From there it would only a short hop to "directing" your internet usage.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
I agree with you and sortius_nod, this country is a fucking nanny state. We have governments who insist on appeasing a bunch of scared old fuddy-duddies. At this rate every corner will have a padded edge, driving will be at the fixed speed of 40K everywhere and a curfew will apply to everyone under the age of 30(those over that age don't need a curfew, they never go out at night). 1984 comes in a maid's outfit under the guise of fixing your buster.
This country needs to get some fucking dignity and remember where it put it's balls.
Dude, you live on an island with the most poisonous animals on earth. Ridiculously poisonous spiders that snuggle up in the toes of slippers and are native to your capital city.
I live right outside of Washington, D.C., and if I couldn't walk around at night in my apartment for fear of poisonous, deadly varmints holing up in my Nikes the last thing I would be is complacent.
Re: governance, I would like to point you towards a recent statement by our new president in which he said something along the lines of, "Debate's nice and all, but you've had your fun and now it's time to pass the legislation I want you to pass." Translation: "Democracy, shemocracy, blah blah blah!"
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
I can't say anything at all about Webshield, but most commercial filtering software also blocks things like game sites and employment resources(job search sites, as well as sites with information about how much people in specific jobs get paid) .
They wouldn't have to pay for an anti-porn blacklist, so that saves them a little money and they probably offer services(or at least could) above and beyond just porn and IP filtering.
This is net neutrality in action. Once you hand over responsibility to the government, your service is only as good as those in power see fit. Internet censorship becomes a political whim, to be used when it is politically profitable for campaigns.
Parents are going to get a false sense of security because of the web-shield -> less parental control -> more unsupervised children online
if the parents think that the biggest problem online is the porn then they are more ignorant than i thought, and that's the main problem here isn't it?
so government censorship cant work without the parents involvement with the protection of there children and if the parents are involved then why the hell do we need government censorship in the first place.
the even more important point here is freedom, shouldn't I as a consenting adult have the right to view any website online, what give the right to any person to control or limit my activity's online, and whats next censorship of the media if they say something anti government or god forbid(i say sarcastically) anti Christan.
They're a not for profit organisation.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
I generally find these anti-censorship threads boring, because they end up being long rants by wankers worried about the loss of easy access to their free porn and movies. In this context, "free speech" is usually just camouflage for "free porn".
If you really want to worry about "free speech", go post in some threads about Google and China! Or, go blog about the US "Fairness Doctrine". Both topics offer you an opportunity to rant about political censorship pure and simple, with no subterranean porn issues.
Nevertheless, let me say I don't care that much about porn, per se. If you want to watch porn on your home or office PC (as long as MY tax dollars aren't paying for it) till you have a right arm the size of a pro wrestlers and a pecker so calloused it's always hard . . . have at it! It's no worse than spending your life on Warcraft or a some redneck virtual football pool.
But, this kind of filtering matters for reasons most of you wankers miss: its absence totally cripples the use of computers in public schools!
Public schools -- at least in the US -- specialize in educating kids whose parents don't give a sh$$, but who will $ue at the drop of a hat. Teachers, and especially administrators, live in terror of Johnny Pervert pulling up Wikipedia's illustrated pages on pornography. Johnny Pervert may see his mom or 'aunt' screwing around with 'Uncle Bob' at home, or may leaf through Hustler on his weekends with Dad, and nobody gives a sh$$. But mom is likely to become "upset -- just totally upset" if he sees a pecker or pu##-E on a PC at school. And she's likely to stay outraged till there's a school board hearing and hush-up settlement involving $$$. At that point, either the administrator or teacher or possibly both will be unemployed, and possibly sued or charged with a crime.
At least, that's what the teachers and admins believe -- and act upon -- thanks to some highly public cases and news accounts.
As a result, PCs at schools -- elementary through high school in my school district -- are so restricted and filtered as to be useless. They essentially have no internet access, except maybe to National Geography, Discovery Kids and the like.
I have to laugh, every time some PC industry titan, like Gates or Cuban, pontificates about needed more technology in schools. It's a big joke, because you until you give EVERY student one, PCs have to be used for largely unsupervised activities like research or using targeted programs for reading, math or typing. Because these activities have to be somewhat unsupervised -- since the REST of the class is doing something else -- teachers don't want, and won't use more PCs. They can sort of keep an eye on 2 or 3, while teaching the class, but they can't keep up with 6 or 8.
The bottom line here is simple: until you can find a way to keep PCs from being a threat to teacher's and admin's jobs, all the talk of technology in the schools will remain just talk, no matter how many millions or billions you spend. Even teachers with AOL level tech skills can find the off-switch!
In order for them to be able to use 6 or 8 PCs, they HAVE to have reliable and trusted filtering. It's doesn't have to let everything good through, it just has to keep almost everything bad out. AND -- and this is VERY, VERY important -- it has to be provided by someone official enough to create a high CYA factor. That is, if Johnny Pervert does manage to show Cindy Angel a stiff pecker, the classroom teacher has to be able to SUCCESSFULLY defend him or herself by saying, "But, we've been told we could trust the filter -- after all it's provided by the GOVERNMENT!"
Almost by definition, a private company's filter is useless for this purpose -- unless it's PERFECT -- because it will NOT be effective at protecting the teacher or administrator. At the outside, a private filter -- selected by the school board -- will only move blame from the teacher to the board . . . and THAT is NOT going to happen. By contra
I do not understand how someone in the 21st century would still feel the urge to CENSOR anything, again. We have not learned from our past , not a thing, if we are still debating such basic issues. Freedom of speech and thought is something that should not be never ever menaced. But since the governments are still so much into the deep mud of religious influences and other anti-human believes, I propose that the Internet should be split in two trunks, one for the government usage, that allows completely official comunication and information between citizen and the state. And another, which is the 'normal' internet, which would be only for 18+ yrs old citizens and has no censoring whatsoever. Granted, it is a compromise , but it's maybe the less problematic one. Religions are the relics of a world in which absolute military power and violence was the daily routine. We should get rid of them. And this comes by a correct education. my2c mrn
Re: governance, I would like to point you towards a recent statement by our new president in which he said something along the lines of, "Debate's nice and all, but you've had your fun and now it's time to pass the legislation I want you to pass." Translation: "Democracy, shemocracy, blah blah blah!"
I can actually empathize with that. If they're all talking and no-one's making any cohesive points, you'd want them to get on with it already.
I live right outside of Washington, D.C., and if I couldn't walk around at night in my apartment for fear of poisonous, deadly varmints holing up in my Nikes the last thing I would be is complacent.
It's not that bad, I had a spider in my shoe once and trust me, when you put you're foot in, it's vastly more stuffed than you are.
How do you kill that which has no life?
In a galaxy far, far away, I remember when many IRC channels banned .au addies on sight because, it seemed, the vast majority of Australians on efnet were troublemakers.
Seems the .au government agrees.
Here is a call to action: enable https on all your sites and use the Firefox extension that uses https instead of http by default.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
...reason to be cheerful:
iiNet doesn't feature on the list of perpetrators. They were initially proposing to join the pilot scheme in an attempt to prove it wouldn't work, but for whatever reason it seems they've abandoned that idea. I guess there are arguments both ways as to whether or not that is a good thing, but as an iiNet customer (*) I'm not unhappy that my connection will not be slugged (yet).
* By way of an OT footnote, I might add that there was a time when the cognoscenti here in Western Australia (myself included) regarded iiNet customers with the disdain accorded to AOLites. Fact is that they were by far the first off the starting line with ADSL2+, and they've been good to me since...
Our prime minister is a communist.
I wish.
That would at least be interesting. Instead we have a narrow-minded, suburban, mealy-mouthed motherfucker who is content to run around screaming ohmygodohmygodwhataboutchechildren rather than actually do anything valuable or useful with his office.
All his blathering about "rolling up our sleeves" has no meaning other than that he doesn't want his cuff-links to bruise his butt.
Although I heartily despise the asswipe he replaced, Kevin Rudd is a serious disappointment.
the states, and guess which parties run those these days?
;-)) you'll have seen it any number of times before, and it doesn't get any prettier.
Except here in WA. And needless to say, our state government (in the absence of any real policies) has simply reverted to type and started kicking heads in the health/public services and unions. It's like they just can't help themselves.
If you're as old as I am (ancient
because they are planning to just give away 23 billion of it as hand outs...
Regardless of how this money is spent, we shouldn't forget that this money has been taken from us and is otherwise sitting there unused.
Although I've never been tempted to play pokies, a devil's advocate could say that if Joe Public uses that means to shed his disposable income, he has a better right to waste his own money than the government does.
I hope everyone in their government gets thrown out on their asses when this completely fails and pisses everybody off. They're wasting taxpayer money on a stupid and useless idea that doesn't serve the interests of the population as a whole but instead serves only a special-interest group. Dumbasses!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I am a Christian but one thing that annoys me about the Christian community is this nonsense about God being so overly worried about sexual practices. With all of the wrong things that every person does I find it mystifying that so many Christians are so hung up over sex. I suspect that the Lord has more concerns than just worrying about who, what, when and where we have sex.
Well their exports are: coal, iron ore, gold, meat, wool, alumina, wheat, machinery and transport equipment.
FRA: STFU GTFO
I assume that by "safe" they mean no phishing, no viruses, no botnets, no trojan horses...
ANSWER HER QUESTION. And TELL THE TRUTH. Damn, how hard is that? Coward.
I'm a software engineer. I write software, both closed source and open. I write it at work and I write it at home on my own time. I think that qualifies me as a geek. I'm also raising a 10 year old girl. Last week she wanted to know what a phallus is. Her mother and I were sitting on the couch together. "It's a man's penis," we said, after a second. "Oh," she says. That was all. Yes, she knows what a penis is. She's 10. She doesn't care.
This is the great truth that adults somehow forget. Pre-pubescent children do not have the hormones that make sex and sexual things of such raging importance to adults. Before the testosterone kicks in (yes, girls have it too), they literally do not care. Except for abstract curiosity, which is very quickly sated, sexual material is boring to children. They self-censor to an amazing degree. I've watched it.
Yes, we watch her web surf on her laptop. We don't lean over her shoulder or anything, but she uses her computer in the living room, like we do, and we generally know what she's looking at. If she clicks on a video on Youtube that turns out to be full of obscenities, she immediately clicks the back button. If she follows a link that ends up at a porn advertising site (something that happens only extremely rarely), again, she pounds the back button. Most of the time she's very careful to stick to sites that won't ever have porn links on them in the first place. She knows what naked people look like, and she doesn't want to see them. She just wants her web games and her music videos and her funny videos and her lolcats.
Anybody who pays attention to an actual child should know all these things. Lunatics who propound global censorship so they don't have to answer a question that is only awkward to them not the child are busy foisting their own prejudices and parochialism onto that child. "Think of the children" is rightly ridiculed on this site for the worthless cantrip that it is. Another poster in this thread said it best: censorship is radioactive. It contaminates everything it touches.
No, I won't spend 95% of my time manually censoring her internet. No, I won't spend a dime on a commercial closed source product that will censor her internet. Yes, a 7 year old (or a 10 year old) CAN filter their own content. They do it successfully and well, and being a parent that can stand aside and LET them makes me a GOOD parent, not a bad one. The content exists because the world exists. Parenting a child means teaching them ways to live in the world and deal with it successfully. The example we set as parents influences how they will treat it. We don't get excited about it when she encounters a naked person. We don't rant and rave and censor. We answer her questions honestly, and don't make a big deal out of it. It's not a big deal to her and she moves on with her life with nary a bobble.
All of this to an anonymous coward. Hopefully somebody who isn't a coward will read it...
Is the effectiveness of conservative opinion substantially diminished by the mere presence of dissent?
blame the Americans, for their culture of inactivity they brought over here back in the war.
The other possibility was for the Japanese to bring their culture of quiet industry and octopode porn Manga to Australia...OK, maybe you chose the wrong side!
My high school (boarding) used websense when they "gave" students laptops. That was 5 years ago, so maybe it's improved since then, but back then I certainly wouldn't have called it "good". It commonly blocked stuff I needed to do research on (such as journal articles on enzymes), and rarely prevented me from stumbling onto unsavory content. And I don't think it stopped anyone (teenage guys) from finding such content intentionally. The only time I remember it "working" was when it messed up and blocked nearly every category. And even then it was trivial to bypass with fragmented HTTP headers.
Now, that the internet is even larger, and given websense's rate of improvement (imperceptible over three years) I wouldn't think it's even close to a "good" solution. Well, unless you don't try to bypass it or go to uncommon sites (e.g. work scenario). The IT people at my school probably thought it was pretty good since I doubt any student actually told them how ineffective it was. OTOH, maybe they knew... I remember them joking that it was supposed to block AOL instant messenger but all it did was block the advertisement, so the client showed the school logo (from the "Blocked" page) in it's stead, making it look officially sanctioned. Same deal when I talked with the BOFH of my local highschool casually a couple years ago... he had complete confidence in large, state-wide filter files as well. In a demonstration it took about 2 minutes to find a proxy type site despite that category being blocked.
Also, what's the point of keeping someone from logging into a site? I mean, it's not like you can't read or post to slashdot, so I fail to see how it's "protecting" you...
Our Christian groups control our over air & pressure cable TV networks in the USA and tried to filter the internet too.
How do they plan to filter satellite internet? Drop a large mesh net around all of Australia?
Firstly:
* Really, the deadly animal thing, REALLY not that much of an issue unless you actually live in the bush. We have antivenoms for all the spiders and snakes and the number who are killed by any of them is sweet bugger all
* In regards to you thinking that somehow Obama is not being democratic in his current problems with the republican party, I would instead perhaps put this forward:
He has debated with, consulted, talked to and had great dealings with all sides, listened to all of their concerns, and yet really, the only thing that the Republicans want to do is... give tax cuts... that's it, that's their sole solution for ANYTHING, which makes no sense as then you have a government that has less money to DO anything with. You think somehow giving back little amounts to everyone will suddenly make the US become a power again? HOW?
Spending money on developing sustainable industries and education and things that might actually lift the US in its world standing are GOOD things to do for long term economic health. Giving a bit of money back to everyone so they can spend it on a larger tv or a few more take away dinners helps no-one.
The Republicans are blocking for blocking's sake. Obama was voted in with a landslide, which should suggest that the majority of the country believes in his ideas, so perhaps they shouldn't be so grandstanding as to block things for blocking's sake. If the populous want these things through, and have rejected the piss poor financial management of the Republicans for the past 8 years, then MAYBE they should let it through.
It seems to me that the very idea an ISP is allowed to interpret the data you transmit over their service *in any way* is akin to the phone company listening in on all your phone calls. Now we know in the US that's business as usual, at least in Australia it doesn't take an telco whistleblower for them to find out about it.
Time to buy stock in some VPN service companies, I'd say...
That's exactly what it's like in the US, right down to the campaigns. Except our police beat us, protest is suppressed, and there's a lot of dirty underhanded corporate and political scheming.
Oh, and you forgot-- for the last 20 years or so the banking and securities industry has been running a giant Ponzi scheme that makes even Madoff look like an amateur.
Well, I'd still be a little nervous about needing antivenin in a major city, but I suppose it's something you get used to.
The thing about "blocking for blocking's sake"...that's exactly what drives me up the wall about what the current administration is doing. They assume that no one could possibly in good conscience disagree with Keynesian economic policies which have proven time and again to fail, or with a massive spending package concocted in secrecy and then rushed through Congress without anyone knowing how they came up with the numbers or how, for example, monies going to Ms. Pelosi's home state of California for the protection of a particular breed of mouse's habitat relates to economic stimulus.
"If you disagree with me, it must be out of spite." That's a level of arrogance I am uncomfortable with.
That argument is usually followed by the second you mentioned, which boils down to, "Well, the Bush administration was AWFUL!" As has been pointed out repeatedly, the race is over and Bush is no longer president. Stop running against him. Furthermore, just because the previous administration was wrong doesn't mean that this current administration must be right.
I don't disagree that developing a broader industrial base, investing in infrastructure, education, environmental policies, etc. are worthy goals. I have a problem with packing pet projects in to an omnibus spending bill of historic size and having the gall to describe it as an "economic stimulus package" when even the Congressional Budget Office has determined that, in the long term, our economy would be stronger without it.
And, speaking as one of the people who received the tax refund, I can tell you that I didn't spend it on a bigger television, nor did most other recipients. Although, as it was MY MONEY in the first place, I would've had every right to spend it on hookers and blow if I so chose, legalities aside. I, like most people do in a shitty economy when they aren't making enough money to pay every bill on time, paid off outstanding debts.
Believe it or not, the stereotype of the fat, lazy, consumerist American isn't 100% accurate.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Spiders? Hah! If you're ever by ol' Sydney town, you'd best watch out for the drop bears. Big, mean drop bears. Just waiting to... drop.
Would be for all major websites outside of Australia to start blocking Australia surfers preemptively, redirecting them to a page informing them they are being blocked from accessing this site due to the government's filter.
If they choose not to be full participants of the internet, why should the rest of it (that isn't blocked) cooperate with them?
Tell him exactly how you feel.
Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Deputy Leader Of The Government In The Senate,
minister@dbcde.gov.au
Tel: 03 9650 1188
Fax: 03 9650 3251
sustainable living
Furthermore, the technical, financial and freedom of expression (as upheld through our constitution) issues are well documented and those in themselves should be more than enough to kill any further life in this poorly planned, poorly executed and poorly though-out plan.
Constitution fail. There is no such protection under the Australian Constitution. We have no bill of rights. This is not the Almighty US of A. Are you sure you're a politician? If so, that's a bit scary... though not surprising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_constitution#Protection_of_rights
-Steve http://www.stevennicholson.com
The problem isn't that they have control over their OFF switch, its the fact that "advocate" groups don't have control over your OFF switch which is driving this.
I agree with you, Parents should parent their own kids.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yes I know that.. my point was more along these lines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_constitutional_law#Implied_rights
However I can see that I may not have been clear in exactly what I meant.... and I agree that not having a Bill of Rights is rather poor on our part...
PS I'm not actually a politician simply a lowly paying member of the ALP... I also hope that I would be able to...express... my limited knowledge of the constitution a little better had I been one :)
Did you understand the headline - "Some of Australia's Tubes are About to Be Filtered"?
Yes? - you're a geek!!. No? - Congratulations, now get off slashdot, and spend some time with real people, before it happens to you.
And, have you ever heard anyone in real life refer to the internet at "tubes"?
I'm a software visionary. I don't code.
hear hear. I would also like to add that while some groups may have 'Christian' in their title, or in their party, its a bit much to call them Christian groups. This is not the only case I have seen, and it makes Christians seem like a bunch of fanatical luddites. While this may be true for some, its certainly by no means a requirement. And there are a bunch of other well-meaning stupid people who have nothing to do with Christianity who are behind this in the name of 'the children'.
I'm just really looking forward to the day when the people who were born before the invention of the transistor (1947: Bell Labs prototype) to either a) get the hell out of my government, or b) shuffle off this mortal coil. Whichever comes first.
We do have a implied freedom of POLITICAL expression in Australia. So says the High Court. But yeah, you're right. It doesn't cover all expression, and the link with the internet filtering debate is tenuous.
Couldn't agree more. Great post.
Well Said!
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
Maybe they won't like having competition? I doubt it, I assume they're doing it not just for the cash, but because they believe porn &c should be filtered. Either way, good on them for providing a product that people want, and bad on them if they go trying to impose their own moral standards on others.
And---it may be unpopular around here, but---bad on them if they provide a broken filter so that people are paying for something they don't want (access to porn).
Does anyone have a list of the sites that the Australian Government wants to block. After all, I don't live in Australia so it isn't illegal for me to look at what the Oz-ies are being silly about. Indeed, it isn't illegal for an Oz-ie to look at these sites. Yet. So whom do they want to block?
Right now, I wish I was that cute girl from across the street from you. Too bad. Rock on dude!
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
You, sir, deserve the Nobel prize for outstanding citizenship and generally being a cool dude. Every log on to /. you make is a blessing to it and it's inhabitants. Thank you for existing. I thought people like you existed only in my imagination.
BTW, as someone who recently turned 15, I believe I can remember my childhood quite well. What you say is entirely correct. An 8 y.o.'s self-censorship is the most impeccable filter in existence. Cheers!
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.