Lets be clear about this, cracking webpages is legally wrong, and under Australian law, unauthorised access to a government computer system is punishable by 25 years in the pokey, BUT if you feel strongly enough about an issue, that's a risk you'ld have to take.
Ideally, the government would have listened to the people, but they didn't, so the people's next step has to be civil disobediance. The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are usually the ones who do;)
Unfortunately, even with all these cool features, Australia still has a problem with counterfieted money. There is an extremely large number of very high quality $100 notes in circulation. I work in the cash office of a supermarket in West. Aust. and we pick up a counterfeit *polymer* $100 about once a month. The quality of these fakes is amazing. About the only way to pick them out is a slightly misaligned print and a slightly different serial number font. Even then, we still wait for confirmation from the Australian Federal Police before turning them over as evidence.
And if anyone's interested in what our notes look like, I have a page up at http://www.theducks.org/old/notes/ with scans of all of them except the old paper $100. Enjoy:)
Easy way to add more to the site...
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Dumb Laws
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· Score: 1
I think they could probably add a lot to the site by just including ANY Australian laws regarding the Internet. We're yet to make any sensible ones...
Re:Questionable research concerning Swiss laws
on
Dumb Laws
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· Score: 1
I believe Ontario makes it a criminal offence to fail to secure a vehicle. I remember someone getting charged with it a few months back.
If the costs of internet access are a sign of a third world country, then count Australia in. A lot of ISPs have stopped offering any kind of unlimited access because of the telco costs they have to pay.
Just when I thought the internet situation in this country was getting better, down the toilet it goes:-P
Yeah, like the US companies will ever switch to a more superior standard unless forced to by the FCC:-) Plus, keeping with NTSC (Never The Same Color;) means that US film/video companies can be as protectionist as they like and keep other countries beholden to their local release dates.
PAL is a technically superior standard (to NTSC:), which most of the western world uses, but you'll never see it in the US.
But now, the worm is turning. In Australia at least, most A/V hardware is NTSC capable. Seems that the consumer hardware companies have worked out that making hardware work everywhere is cheaper for them than producing localised hardware. I was out shopping for a new VCR a few days ago, and saw one advertised as "Hyperband Cable ready!". Something which I've *never* heard of. Even the salesman at the store had no idea what it was:)
I can't wait for DTV. Hopefully countries will agree on a *standard* this time.
As an Australian, I really must agree with the fact that the international "clever country" image is a sham. What the government doesn't like people to know is that the majority of our aboriginal population lives in conditions which make the shanty towns in South Africa look good, and frankly, no-one seems to care.
And high speed net access in Australia? Unless you're Kerry Packer (professional rich bastard), or one of a *very* and I mean *Very* limited number of people living in a few exclusive suburbs of Melbourne or Sydney which have cable internet access, you can forget it. It would be cheaper to fly to hawaii, rent a house and download stuff onto a zip disk from a @Home connection than it would be to get single channel ISDN here.
Heck, most of areas inside Australia's state capitals don't have cable TV, with neither of the people providing it (both of which who happen to Telcos.. *urg*) planning on a big rollout any time soon. It's not so bad.. we still have 6 TV Stations. Well, 1 is government run and generally not that great, the other one is mostly foreign stuff, another is a public access one, so we effectivly have 3 channels. woohoo. And if you're outside Perth, capital of WA, a state hrm, three/four times the size of Texas, there's two stations, including the gov't run one.
The one great thing about Australia I do have to say however is that I'm perfectly allowed to trash the country's name any way I like. We do have freedom of speech in that way. Hell, in Indonesia a few days back they were burning our flag.. the general response of people seemed to be "hmm, well make sure nothing that's actually important catches on fire".
The Barbie Digital Camera is pretty damn sucky. I think you can get it for about CDN$50 or something like that.. I've seen them in stores. The quality is worse that Kodak's DC20, the entire selling point of which was it's small size. It ain't worth getting a pink PC for:)
Right, the second thing was what I was talking about. Allowing users to just specify what their hostname is would be daft:) I'm refering to a partial hash/randomisation of the hostname/IP address.
Being totally anonymous on IRC would be a bad thing for all concerned, in my opinion. It's still important on IRC to know which ISP someone comes from.
I can see the byline now when these people find out about the existance of IRC: "Massive privacy concern's discovered using popular IRC program!". Like it or not, people using IRC have their IP address made available, but it's consentual, in a way. Everyone can see your IP address, by you can see everyone's IP address too. But of course, only the really stupid packet warriors smurf someone from their own dialup.
The close to 500k people who use the various IRC networks around don't seem to complain about their IP's being shown.
Ok, actually yes quiet a few of them they do, and it's something I think IRC networks should really get their butts into gear over somehow masking. Knowing who to email when some butthead floods you on IRC is all well and good, but in these modern days of packet warriors, showing the whole IP address is less than wise. Rumour is that a near-future version of a certain-network's ircd will employ some form of hostmasking technique.
Disclaimer: I don't represent Undernet Administration as a whole.
I am of two minds about this. One mind, the good mind, says this is probably just an oversight, and that it will be corrected with the next firmware update, after they realise the mistake that this is. Imagine their poor users, who've just bought a Mac. They won't want another one for a few years, so an upgrade is a good interim solution
Of course, the other mind, the evil mind, thinks this is a deliberate corparate move. Consider, how much money does Apple make off an upgrade? Well in the short term, basically nothing. Being able to upgrade *might* make them money with happy ocnsumers wanting to buy their product again, but it doesn't pay off as quickly. Apple's unenviable position as both a hardware and software company means they have to make money off both of these things. If they're only selling a $90 OS to someone every few years, instead of a $1599 CPU, what's the benefit to them?
I hope the good mind is right, I really hope they haven't delibrately crippled their hardware. As for that "We never said it was upgradeable" crap, it's not really endearing when you consider it *was* upgradable, but then they *fixed* that.
The laws of a nation seek ot control the inhabitants of said nation. In this case, the fine Australian people. If they're in Australia, and they are responsible for breaking a law, they're under Australian juridiction, regardless of where the crime is committed. It is similar facts of law which allow countries to prosecute people for offenses commited whilst overseas (specifically child sex offenses, but it could theorhetically be expanded to other things)
The thing people forget about countries making laws like this is that they're intended for Australians to be punished by. Sure, it might not control a webserver in Tazikistahn, but it can levy penalties on someone living in Australia who breaks Australian law with this site.
What, Discworld doesn't have it's own country code you can use?;> In Australia, you can only register a domain name if you have a sufficiently similar registered business name. Which means that recently a lot of companies have stopped "trading as" a company, and actually registered that name so they can get a website with a valid address.
One of the cocnerns for governments about cryptography is obviously because of it's ability to be used to do the things the lawmakers talk about, like encrypting kiddy pr0n and other unpleasant things like that. Canada's culture dictates that the rights of the individuals are paramount over those of law enforcement, and they don't have a problem with them encrypting the stuff. For example, un-warrented participant surveillance is illegal in Canada. That's where you get a person to wear a "wire" to record their conversation with someone, who presumable, you the policeman, want to talk to. You can still do it, you just need to show just cause for a wiretap order.
AC speaks the truth. I spent some time living in London Ontario. Inside London was great.. Cable TV and internet everywhere.. 5 mins outside London, at a friends place... lets just say there are some areas of Canada where bell still uses party lines. I am not joking. Here we are in 1999 and major Telcos still force people to use partylines. I've also spent a lot of time in rural Australia. My uncle's farm (200kms from the capital city) has four phone lines going into it.. one for the business phone, one for the residential phone, one for the modem to their ISP, in the local calling area, and one for the fax. Even in the middle of the Australian desert, they have public payphones, solar powered with an immarsat uplink, but still;>
My point is this.. Canada is a wonderful place. Just as long as you live in a decent sized city. Otherwise.. think yourself lucky if you have electricity.
Rumour has it that Optus is talking with a US company with experiance in Cablemodems, about rolling out cablemodems. Sadly for me tho, my neighbourhood isn't cabled by either of the pay-tv companies (Telstra/Foxtel and Optus Cable and Wireless) It's a 20 min walk from Telstra's Perth Central exchange. I'm waiting to see what DSL prices will be like:-)
Well, you wouldn't have to do it too loud.. the Palm Platform is faster and has more RAM than an Apple II. One article I read said that the Palm IIIx had more storage and processing power than the embedded systems inside the Apollo rockets. Of course, they used a Windows CE device for Apollo 13:-)
We had a nasty little massacre a few years back at a tourist site. 32 people were killed. In Tasmania I might add.. Tasmania isn't very big. 32 people is a sizable number of people to die anywhere. At this point, we kinda realise that you don't need automatic/semi automatic/high cap/high power guns, so the federal government introduced a gun buyback scheme for these weapons, which were made illegal. Sure, you had to give up you 8 round pump action remingtons, but you got fair market value for them.
These days, the only people who really have guns are farmers, whos guns are liscenced and secured, and maybe a few nuts from the One Nation Party. The One nation party supports Australian's having gun ownership. Along with cutting off ties with Asia and re-introducing the White-Australia policy...
Hunting isn't big in Australia, actually almost non existant. Duck hunting is illegal in several states, and hunting native animals is also illegal. The only people who regularly kill animals would be farmers killing foxes (and introduced species), rabbits (another pest) and the odd feral cat.
Being the nice peaceful nation we are, we don't have the death penalty, corparal punishment, wide spread gun ownership, or a high crime rate. Do you see a pattern here?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
'Now Bond, listen very carefully... this is the pen that goes "neee! neee! neee! ekkie ekkie ekkie ffffkang"'
On Toronto Island (the island off downtown Toronto, Ont, Canada) there is a petting zoo, which has a half-zebra, half-horse. Brown and black stripes.
Lets be clear about this, cracking webpages is legally wrong, and under Australian law, unauthorised access to a government computer system is punishable by 25 years in the pokey, BUT if you feel strongly enough about an issue, that's a risk you'ld have to take.
;)
Ideally, the government would have listened to the people, but they didn't, so the people's next step has to be civil disobediance. The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are usually the ones who do
Unfortunately, even with all these cool features, Australia still has a problem with counterfieted money. There is an extremely large number of very high quality $100 notes in circulation. I work in the cash office of a supermarket in West. Aust. and we pick up a counterfeit *polymer* $100 about once a month. The quality of these fakes is amazing. About the only way to pick them out is a slightly misaligned print and a slightly different serial number font. Even then, we still wait for confirmation from the Australian Federal Police before turning them over as evidence.
:)
And if anyone's interested in what our notes look like, I have a page up at http://www.theducks.org/old/notes/ with scans of all of them except the old paper $100. Enjoy
I think they could probably add a lot to the site by just including ANY Australian laws regarding the Internet. We're yet to make any sensible ones...
I believe Ontario makes it a criminal offence to fail to secure a vehicle. I remember someone getting charged with it a few months back.
If the costs of internet access are a sign of a third world country, then count Australia in. A lot of ISPs have stopped offering any kind of unlimited access because of the telco costs they have to pay.
:-P
Just when I thought the internet situation in this country was getting better, down the toilet it goes
Yeah, like the US companies will ever switch to a more superior standard unless forced to by the FCC :-) Plus, keeping with NTSC (Never The Same Color ;) means that US film/video companies can be as protectionist as they like and keep other countries beholden to their local release dates.
:), which most of the western world uses, but you'll never see it in the US.
:)
:)
PAL is a technically superior standard (to NTSC
But now, the worm is turning. In Australia at least, most A/V hardware is NTSC capable. Seems that the consumer hardware companies have worked out that making hardware work everywhere is cheaper for them than producing localised hardware. I was out shopping for a new VCR a few days ago, and saw one advertised as "Hyperband Cable ready!". Something which I've *never* heard of. Even the salesman at the store had no idea what it was
I can't wait for DTV. Hopefully countries will agree on a *standard* this time.
Yeah, right
I think he was making a comment regarding our net censorship issues :)
As an Australian, I really must agree with the fact that the international "clever country" image is a sham. What the government doesn't like people to know is that the majority of our aboriginal population lives in conditions which make the shanty towns in South Africa look good, and frankly, no-one seems to care.
And high speed net access in Australia? Unless you're Kerry Packer (professional rich bastard), or one of a *very* and I mean *Very* limited number of people living in a few exclusive suburbs of Melbourne or Sydney which have cable internet access, you can forget it. It would be cheaper to fly to hawaii, rent a house and download stuff onto a zip disk from a @Home connection than it would be to get single channel ISDN here.
Heck, most of areas inside Australia's state capitals don't have cable TV, with neither of the people providing it (both of which who happen to Telcos.. *urg*) planning on a big rollout any time soon. It's not so bad.. we still have 6 TV Stations. Well, 1 is government run and generally not that great, the other one is mostly foreign stuff, another is a public access one, so we effectivly have 3 channels. woohoo. And if you're outside Perth, capital of WA, a state hrm, three/four times the size of Texas, there's two stations, including the gov't run one.
The one great thing about Australia I do have to say however is that I'm perfectly allowed to trash the country's name any way I like. We do have freedom of speech in that way. Hell, in Indonesia a few days back they were burning our flag.. the general response of people seemed to be "hmm, well make sure nothing that's actually important catches on fire".
Fear the power of the Roo.
Don't you mean "ph33r th3 p0w3r 0f th3 r00"? Our kangaroos are very l33t
The Barbie Digital Camera is pretty damn sucky. I think you can get it for about CDN$50 or something like that.. I've seen them in stores. The quality is worse that Kodak's DC20, the entire selling point of which was it's small size. It ain't worth getting a pink PC for :)
Right, the second thing was what I was talking about. Allowing users to just specify what their hostname is would be daft :) I'm refering to a partial hash/randomisation of the hostname/IP address.
Being totally anonymous on IRC would be a bad thing for all concerned, in my opinion. It's still important on IRC to know which ISP someone comes from.
I can see the byline now when these people find out about the existance of IRC: "Massive privacy concern's discovered using popular IRC program!". Like it or not, people using IRC have their IP address made available, but it's consentual, in a way. Everyone can see your IP address, by you can see everyone's IP address too. But of course, only the really stupid packet warriors smurf someone from their own dialup.
The close to 500k people who use the various IRC networks around don't seem to complain about their IP's being shown.
Ok, actually yes quiet a few of them they do, and it's something I think IRC networks should really get their butts into gear over somehow masking. Knowing who to email when some butthead floods you on IRC is all well and good, but in these modern days of packet warriors, showing the whole IP address is less than wise. Rumour is that a near-future version of a certain-network's ircd will employ some form of hostmasking technique.
Disclaimer: I don't represent Undernet Administration as a whole.
There's always the Social Security Deaths Index, available in many many geneology places online. Look up what Richard Nixon's SSN was and use that :)
I am of two minds about this. One mind, the good mind, says this is probably just an oversight, and that it will be corrected with the next firmware update, after they realise the mistake that this is. Imagine their poor users, who've just bought a Mac. They won't want another one for a few years, so an upgrade is a good interim solution
Of course, the other mind, the evil mind, thinks this is a deliberate corparate move. Consider, how much money does Apple make off an upgrade? Well in the short term, basically nothing. Being able to upgrade *might* make them money with happy ocnsumers wanting to buy their product again, but it doesn't pay off as quickly. Apple's unenviable position as both a hardware and software company means they have to make money off both of these things. If they're only selling a $90 OS to someone every few years, instead of a $1599 CPU, what's the benefit to them?
I hope the good mind is right, I really hope they haven't delibrately crippled their hardware. As for that "We never said it was upgradeable" crap, it's not really endearing when you consider it *was* upgradable, but then they *fixed* that.
The laws of a nation seek ot control the inhabitants of said nation. In this case, the fine Australian people. If they're in Australia, and they are responsible for breaking a law, they're under Australian juridiction, regardless of where the crime is committed. It is similar facts of law which allow countries to prosecute people for offenses commited whilst overseas (specifically child sex offenses, but it could theorhetically be expanded to other things)
The thing people forget about countries making laws like this is that they're intended for Australians to be punished by. Sure, it might not control a webserver in Tazikistahn, but it can levy penalties on someone living in Australia who breaks Australian law with this site.
What, Discworld doesn't have it's own country code you can use? ;> In Australia, you can only register a domain name if you have a sufficiently similar registered business name. Which means that recently a lot of companies have stopped "trading as" a company, and actually registered that name so they can get a website with a valid address.
One of the cocnerns for governments about cryptography is obviously because of it's ability to be used to do the things the lawmakers talk about, like encrypting kiddy pr0n and other unpleasant things like that. Canada's culture dictates that the rights of the individuals are paramount over those of law enforcement, and they don't have a problem with them encrypting the stuff. For example, un-warrented participant surveillance is illegal in Canada. That's where you get a person to wear a "wire" to record their conversation with someone, who presumable, you the policeman, want to talk to. You can still do it, you just need to show just cause for a wiretap order.
AC speaks the truth. I spent some time living in London Ontario. Inside London was great.. Cable TV and internet everywhere.. 5 mins outside London, at a friends place... lets just say there are some areas of Canada where bell still uses party lines. I am not joking. Here we are in 1999 and major Telcos still force people to use partylines. I've also spent a lot of time in rural Australia. My uncle's farm (200kms from the capital city) has four phone lines going into it.. one for the business phone, one for the residential phone, one for the modem to their ISP, in the local calling area, and one for the fax. Even in the middle of the Australian desert, they have public payphones, solar powered with an immarsat uplink, but still ;>
My point is this.. Canada is a wonderful place. Just as long as you live in a decent sized city. Otherwise.. think yourself lucky if you have electricity.
Rumour has it that Optus is talking with a US company with experiance in Cablemodems, about rolling out cablemodems. Sadly for me tho, my neighbourhood isn't cabled by either of the pay-tv companies (Telstra/Foxtel and Optus Cable and Wireless) It's a 20 min walk from Telstra's Perth Central exchange. I'm waiting to see what DSL prices will be like :-)
Well, you wouldn't have to do it too loud.. the Palm Platform is faster and has more RAM than an Apple II. One article I read said that the Palm IIIx had more storage and processing power than the embedded systems inside the Apollo rockets. Of course, they used a Windows CE device for Apollo 13 :-)
s/stolen by/sold to/
:-)
We had a nasty little massacre a few years back at a tourist site. 32 people were killed. In Tasmania I might add.. Tasmania isn't very big. 32 people is a sizable number of people to die anywhere. At this point, we kinda realise that you don't need automatic/semi automatic/high cap/high power guns, so the federal government introduced a gun buyback scheme for these weapons, which were made illegal. Sure, you had to give up you 8 round pump action remingtons, but you got fair market value for them.
These days, the only people who really have guns are farmers, whos guns are liscenced and secured, and maybe a few nuts from the One Nation Party. The One nation party supports Australian's having gun ownership. Along with cutting off ties with Asia and re-introducing the White-Australia policy...
Hunting isn't big in Australia, actually almost non existant. Duck hunting is illegal in several states, and hunting native animals is also illegal. The only people who regularly kill animals would be farmers killing foxes (and introduced species), rabbits (another pest) and the odd feral cat.
Being the nice peaceful nation we are, we don't have the death penalty, corparal punishment, wide spread gun ownership, or a high crime rate. Do you see a pattern here?
Just as a side note, that photograph of the demonstrator in Tianhmen square was taken by an Australian photographer ;-)