The Australian Federal Police's (AFP) "High Tech Crime" division has only just now realised the risks of identity theft social networking sites pose. The slow speed with which they have realised these risks is a scary thought on it's own. These are the members of the AFP who are meant to understand computers, the internet and how crimes are committed with them. And yet it has taken how many years since the inception of Social networking for these apparent masters of technology to realise what to me has always been a rather obvious risk.

High Tech Crime Operation acting national manager Karl Kent said

"Children are providing personal details on these sites such as their full name, date of birth, their place of residence and even the school they attend. Online fraudsters can use this information to open credit card accounts and commit financial crimes in the child's name."

His warning of course doesn't apply only to children, adults are at just as much risk if these same details are displayed. Federal Police advised users to change the default privacy settings on their social network of choice to more secure settings. But lets think about this for a moment, what is the most popular social networking site on the internet? Answer: Facebook with it's 400+ Million users world wide. But as I have discussed previously in this blog Facebook MANDATE without option or choice by the user that your name, date of birth, likes/dislikes (in the form of fan pages), "Home Town", country of residence and profile picture are all a matter of public domain.

That is to say Facebook allows google and other search engines to collect that data from EVERY ONES profile without exception. Once google has hold of it that information is then accessible by ANYONE on the internet, even those who don't hold a Facebook account let alone be on your friends list. Doubt me? Read Facebooks privacy policy yourself, it's all in there. So 400+ MILLION people across the world have their details; the very same details an identity thieves need; publicly accessible anywhere on the internet, by anyone without any option to stop that from occurring.

If that wasn't scary enough, thanks to the demanding language Facebook use in their sign up form and the general nature of how social networking works, most Facebook users have input their real, true details instead of fudging them a little. In fact to fudge your details on Facebook is actually a major breech of the Facebook terms of service and will result in immediate termination of your account. Weird huh? It's almost like Facebook WANT you to have your identity stolen.

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Queensland police a completely useless, getting involved in civil matters, for which they hold no powers, while real crimes are being committed. A level of sexism exists in that they will respond to a female, but if a male is in the same situation they won't respond at all.

My personal example of this is as follows; A few years back my eldest son was living with me, happily when his mother snatched him from my house when I made the mistake in hindsight of leaving her alone with him. I immediately called emergency 000 but was told it isn't an emergency and that I should call my local police department. So I did just that and was told it's a civil matter, and as such they can't do anything. That they wouldn't be sending out a car, that they wouldn't be doing anything about it. They further advised me that I could not lawfully take one step in her yard. I of course ended up taking the matter to court but that's a whole different story all together.

Flash forward to tonight when Sarah and I ended (over what isn't important) and of course I wanted to take Dee with me. What happened in between is of no importance to the story other then to say no criminal action took place. I sat in the bedroom with dee trying to put him to sleep, quietly. At 8pm police arrived at my door to attempt to deal with the civil dispute. I very quickly put the two responding officers in their place and they left as they had no business getting involved. Sarah and I were still in the same house, dee was not in harms way nor neglected in any way.

Clearly this shows that if you're a man and your ex takes your child, the police don't care, but if your a woman and it happens the police respond and make up a bunch of lies. Thankfully I understand the law very well and called them on their lies, put them in their place and they left as they should have. But how many fathers don't know the law, how many fathers get stitched up by the police? That is an utter disgrace!

Now ask yourself this, while they were here arguing with me over the fact they had no right to be here, how many ACTUAL criminal offices took place? Ask yourself, while they were hassling me with my civil matter, how many children in ACTUAL danger went unheard? How many people were assaulted in that space of time on a FRIDAY NIGHT? Heck in the space of that time I heard no less then FIVE (5) people SPEED passed my house.

The Queensland police need to get their freak'in act together. The law clearly states they have no power or right to intervene in a civil dispute. None! They only have the right to become involved when someone commits a criminal act, or threatens to do so; which of course includes an act of violence. Where so such criminal offenses have taken place, or are likely to take place they have NO POWER nor the right under the law to become involved in the situation. They need to go out their and fight crime and stay out of civil matters. Civil courts are for civil matters, not police.

Is it just me or has anyone else in the area I live in noticed the sudden over whelming smell of curry? Seriously it's everywhere, I went for a run just before and the air was sickenly thick with the smell of curry. What happened to the smell of backyard barbecues? Of burnt meat, open flame and seafood? That's my Australia, not a land of curry.

Have the amount of immigrant Indians really reached such a number already that the place stinks like India does? This is Australia, we have our own culture here, I don't agree with the number of Indian immigrants coming into the country but if they're going to come in they could at least have enough respect to take on our culture. If they wanted to live in a country with the culture they grew up with, smelling the way the country they grew up in did and everything like their native land, DON'T IMMIGRANT!

If you're going to immigrate to another country then seriously have some god damn respect. You don't need to try and make my country the same as your country. No only is that disrespectful, but it's illogical. You move to a new country because you like the culture, lifestyle, etc of the new country and thus you assimilate into the new country. If you're not willing to assimilate into Australia then LEAVE and take your stinky curries with you.

Ok so it's 3:16am and this aboriginal show called "message stick" is on the ABC. This Aboriginal woman was just on and tried to claim that aboriginals are *cough* invisible to Australia. Excuse me? How do they figure that one? Invisible people don't get their TV shows aired on the government run ABC. They don't have special warns put at the front of TV shows which have people who have died in them because that effects their culture. Invisible people don't have land rights like in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Invisible people aren't counted as citizens and aren't allowed to vote. Invisible people aren't given special payments from the government and invisible people aren't allowed government provided lawyers even when everyone else isn't allowed one.

Fact of the matter is Aboriginals get a LOT of liberties afforded to them, a LOT of them. There is a great inequality going on which is now in the favour of Aboriginals and they have the nerve to complain and say they're invisible? WTF? And they want a treaty allowing them to take some powers away from the state governments because they were here first? They're not even joking, they're being serious..

Seriously, how many of them where alive in 1788 when Australia was colonised by the British? Oh right that would be zero. Ok, so what about the generation immediately after that, how many of those are alive today? Oh right, that would be zero. So what they're saying is NO LIVING Aboriginal has EVER lived in an Australia which wasn't colonised by the British. But beyond that, NO LIVING Aboriginal has EVER lived in an Australia which didn't contain WHITE AUSTRALIANS, that is to say white people BORN in Australia. Excuse me but if you've never known a world other then the one you live in now outside of stories, then seriously what makes you think for a second you have a right to go back to it?

EVERY country on the planet has at some stage in its history had people who invaded and took over. Deal with it. Stop living in a past that you've never known, we're talking about something almost 300 years ago here!! Seriously! You don't deserve ANY special rights at all, NONE!

You're an Australia, no better than any other Australia. Stop making excuses to get special treatment, because nothing is going to make all the white people pick up and leave, nothing is going to turn the clock back 300 years and NOTHING is going to make Aboriginals in charge of Australia. Deal with it.

I'm getting fed up with all this nonsense, it's seriously time to move on with yourselves. Stop beating each other up and breaking the law. Stop getting drunk off your head all the time and chroming. Stop all the anti-social behaviours and blaming white people for them. Take some responsibility for your own damn actions. GET A JOB! And don't give me some crap about no one will give you a job because you're Aboriginal because that's just utter bullshit now days. Sure there was once a time that was true, but now days it's an utter lie. Not only will employers give Aboriginals a go if they have the right skills, but there are even employers and jobs that ONLY aboriginals are allowed to apply for, which in itself is absolute bullshit. Apparently the anti-discrimination laws don't apply if you're a healthy, normal, fully functional white person who is discriminated against.

I'm tired of the excuses from Aboriginals, and I think most Australians are getting fed up with them too. There were a lot of people 10 years ago who were behind the Aboriginals, who helped fight for their rights and junk who now can just see a lack of movement by the Aboriginals themselves to better themselves. People who once backed Aboriginals, can now just see Aboriginals are all about excuses and getting something for nothing. It's stupid and it needs to end.

And I'm sorry but none of this is racist. Racism means that I am prejudice against someone because of their race. I don't dislike Aboriginals, I'm not trying to harm them, I'm not saying they shouldn't have equal rights, I'm not trying to belittle them or anything else along those lines. What I am saying is that they are getting ridiculous in their claims and their demands. What I AM saying is that instead of talking about something from 300 years ago, instead of talking about how different they are and their delusional land rights, they need to accept themselves as AUSTRALIANS. They need to accept the COUNTRY THEY LIVE IN and they need to focus on how they are the same as other Australians, what they have in common with other Australians and just become productive, useful members of society.

That's a decision each individual person in the Aboriginal community will need to make for them self. That instead of sitting around fighting to have more power and junk, put all that energy into bettering the country for ALL Australians not just a select minority. If we want to stop racism to stop then those who feel persecuted against have to stop making themselves out to be so different. Stop going on that you're black, you're aboriginal, you need this special treatment or blah blah blah. Just get on with it and people will follow suit. Geez, common sense much.

A reminder for parents to stay vigilant while their children are on the internet came this week from a somewhat unexpected source. It seems a Pennsylvania school is being sued after the deputy principle went ahead and punished a 15 year old student for "inappropriate behaviour" while he was in his BEDROOM. The "inappropriate behaviour" is of course rumored to be in the context of self pleasure.

How did the deputy principle even know about this event taking place you ask? It seems the webcam in the school provided macbook was remotely turned on allowing live, remote viewing. The deputy principle was certainly all to happy to furnish the boy with photographic evidence.

The FBI have now been called in to investigate the potential breech of multiple federal and state laws. The scary thing is it isn't isolated to this one child. There have actually been rumors going around the school between students that the teachers were spying on them through the webcams with a large amount of students claiming the little green activity light on their webcam would turn itself on randomly.

But beyond the obvious privacy issues this sparks off I fail to see where any one at the school thought that had not only the right, but responsibility to discipline a child for actions taking place in their own home. Their authority ends at the school gate as far as I'm concerned. What a child does whilst in the care of their PARENTS is certainly none of the schools business. The school district board now claims to have disabled the feature, but given they had denied it's existence for months, and are trying to cover up this whole indecent I really don't believe much they have to say.

This is certainly a case in proof that you really CAN'T allow your child, even teenager, alone with a computer that is connected to the internet. Of course that doesn't mean you have to sit next to your teenager while they muck around online like you would a younger child, but it does mean computers with internet access should be in high traffic walk ways of the house. In this way you can glance at their screen (and the activity light of the webcam) every time you walk passed. If they're rushing to close something down when you do, then you know you need to investigate further.

The internet can be an utterly powerful tool, which enables better education, flow of truth and friendships. But it does need to be understood properly BEFORE you mess with it, and children (and teenagers) need to be supervised while using it and taught proper, responsible usage skills.

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As the number of obese and morbidly obese persons begin to rise and the United States of America even have to create a new category called SUPER morbidly obese for those people who weigh in the vicinity of a TON (that's as heavy as a small car!) you have to wonder, does the government have a roll to play?

While we all like to think we're in charge of our on destinies, our past influences our decisions far more then we'd like to think. If for example you grew up in a household where it was junk food every night and sports weren't encouraged, then guess what you're likely to be like as an adult? Even more so, guess what you're likely to be like as a parent?

I do agree that the individual needs to make their own decisive changes in their life. Over weight and obese people need to exercise, with an active lifestyle. If you feel self conscious about exercising in public or like Sarah you have in your head that walking places is "scummy" (which of course it isn't, I walk a lot and I'm certainly not scummy) then you could always buy a treadmill or other at home exercise equipment until you feel more self confident. The families of Morbidly and super morbidly obese people; people who can't even get out of bed due to their shear weight; need to stop enabling their food habits. If you can't get out of bed then you'll eat what you're given. People need to get up and move around, they NEED to exercise, daily and develop an active lifestyle so that exercise becomes a part of every day things instead of a chore they have to schedule in separate to everything else.

But I also think government has a role to play. It is clear at this point people are NOT going to change on their own, they need a good hard kick in the right direction which is where government comes in. There are several measures governments in the western world need to take.

(1) P.E. before school for pre-school, primary school and high school students. That used to be a part of schooling in the 70s and it worked well. Governments cut it to free up money, but it was actually a very valuable tool. Not only will it mean every child exercises daily, but it means they will be able to concentrate better in school, be more confident and are far more likely to carry on the approach into adulthood.

(2) The development of more Parks and sporting fields. There are some areas where there is a distinct lack of these sorts of facilities and without them people are unable to include certain activities in their lifestyle which would aide in the weight-loss problem. Sports are a major part of combating obesity, so without a facility to hold sporting events people can't expect to be healthy for very long.

(3) Proper dietary and exercise education. For far to long people have been going on about diet. About cutting foods out and limiting calories. This is a MAJOR factor in why we have the obesity problem the western world is facing today. Our bodies have evolved in a way that requires us to move around and use energy. But our society has evolved in such a way that we don't really move around and use energy anymore. This is the BIGGEST systematic problem of all and the REAL cause for the obesity problem.

You can attempt to blame fast food all you like, but the fact of the matter is the average diet in the 50s contained FAR more calories and FAR more cholesterol then we consume today. Our lack of movement is the huge problem. Food isn't the enemy it has been made out to be, it's simply food. ALL food is perfectly find in MODERATION. Too much of anything even carrots will cause you problems. In this way government should educate at the primary school, high school and adult levels about the importance of MODERATION and ACTIVE LIFESTYLE.

(4) Legislation making it a crime for gyms and weight loss services to give INCORRECT information on weight loss or to misrepresent the facts should be brought forward. It should be a crime for a weight loss service to continue the lie that it's all about diet and you need to cut out foods and calories.

(5) Cooking classes should be reintroduced to schools. One of the biggest reasons fast food has become so popular is people have lost the skill of home cooking. If we teach it to our children in a proper way they are more likely to make good food choices.

(6) Amendments to the child protection laws to include obesity. Children can only become obese through ineffective and neglectful parenting. If you are teaching your child the correct eating and exercise habits then there is no possible way you child can become obese.

(7) Legislating more strongly about the advertising of food. NO FOOD products of ANY kind should be advertised during children's television viewing times for example. Children shouldn't be in the drivers seat, that's the parents job, therefore children shouldn't be advertised to.

(8) Parenting classes, perhaps mandatory, for people with new babies. These classes would address general issues like diet and exercise, conflict negotiation, basic first aide, child development, looking at things through your kids eyes on their level and ideas about games that can be played with your child at different stages of development.

(9) The banning of gastric bypass surgery. It doesn't do anyone any good in the long run and is bound to have some undesirable long term side effects.

I read an article today in iTWire which suggested that Google were hypocrites by opposing the Australian governments planned mandatory internet filter. The article claims that because Google filter their YouTube videos (or more over what they actually do is selectively take down videos which violate their Terms Of Service) that they are no different from the proposed nation wide mandatory internet filter. What an absolute joke of so called reporting that was. They couldn't have gotten that piece anymore wrong and have just made their entire publication look ridiculous as a result.

Google are a single company, a company from which you have a choice to use or not to use. If you don't like the terms of service on YouTube there are literally thousands of other video hosting sites on the internet, all with their own spin on acceptable terms of service. So if in fact you want to post something that YouTube doesn't allow there is always a place somewhere else on the internet that does. And heck if you really can't find someone to host your video, you can always host it yourself. So my first point of order is CHOICE! You as the consumer have a CHOICE as to which websites you frequent with your views. If the Terms of Service for a particular website weren't acceptable then they wouldn't become very popular, but the CHOICE for those who DO want to engage that site remains.

The ISP based GOVERNMENT internet filter in Australia however is MANDATORY. ALL ISPs will have to engage it into their system and ALL Australians will have to suffer through it. Meaning that you have NO CHOICE. The government gets behind the wheel of the drivers seat telling you what is and isn't acceptable and whether we like it or not we are forced to accept their decisions. This is dangerous for a number of reasons, not just because of the censorship it hales but also because it dangerously gets people hooked on not having to make a decision anymore or take responsibility for the consequences. Under such a scheme it would no longer be the parents fault if little billy looked at a porn site because his parents failed to supervise him adequately whilst he used the internet, instead it would now be the governments fault for not blocking the site out in the first place. Dangerous territory folks.

The second thing that differentiates google from the internet filter is that YouTube is NOT googles only asset. They have literally hundreds of them now. Their biggest asset being their Search Engine which the iTWire article strangely lacks mentioning. Google Search and it's variant Google Image Search both have the option to turn off "safe search" filtering allowing FULL access to the internet. Type in any keyword from the internet filters "Restricted Content" list into Google Search and you'll get back thousands if not millions of results. Google don't make judgments about your character or effect how you use the internet. They don't squash your voice.

The mandatory internet filter on the other hand does squash your voice. The Australian Media & Communications Authority (AMCA) which is currently in charge of rating TV and radio content would be in charge of rating and blocking out INTERNET content as well in much the same way the rate TV. The government have failed to realise that the internet is a vastly different medium to TV and can not and should not be subject to the SAME rating policy. If Senator Conroy has his way the internet will be G rated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Websites engaging in legal adult services like legal pornography will be blocked if they don't verify your age first by asking for your credit card details. Gone will be the free porn sites from Australian views. In addition, any pornographic content, even those who do verify age which can be classified as X-rated (that is shows full frontal sex scenes instead of hiding away the action) will be blocked.

This same strategy applies to legal gambling websites, and any other content you wouldn't want a 9 year old child seeing. If someone in a forum somewhere discusses how valid for example the terrorist nature of the 9/11 attack that forum page can and probably will be blocked under the filter. In direct contrast Google would still serve that page up indiscriminately. Anything the government deems to be racist, prejudice or discriminate in nature ban and will be blocked under the filter. So for example if you don't like the immigration policy Australia is currently engaging and the flood of Indians it has brought into our country and you write about it in your blog, it can and WILL be blocked by the filter because someone could wrongly view that as racism.

And while I don't in anyway agree with or endorse their politics or views, even sites which hate certain groups in society have their place on the internet. I don't agree with what they have to say, so I would never visit such a website, nor would the majority of our community. In fact the only people who WOULD visit such a website would be those who ALREADY feel that way. But just because I don't agree with their point of view doesn't mean they don't have a right to it. Who is Senator Conroy to say what people CAN and CAN'T talk about?

This is a filter which contrary to what the iTWire article claims will NOT be transparent. The blacklist used in the filter will NOT be publicly available. Think about it, why would you not make the list publicly available if you are innocently blocking out ONLY content which the community could understand why you blocked it. Not only is there the clear historical danger of this turning into a filter which blocks out everyone who speaks against the government, it's political, social or economic views or anything else they don't like; but it also has the fowl whiff of such an event in the making. China ringing any bells to anyone?

And while I will admit I do NOT agree with everything Google do (some of their privacy policy models for example spring to mind) in general they genuinely seem committed to a better working, more accessible and easier to use internet which sponsors freedom of speech and expression for all. It is because of this reason, and the millions of dollars Google has to put into lobbying the government for changes to the filtering legislation that I am glad to have Google onside. So thank-you Google for joining the fight to keep the internet free for everyone.

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iTWire Article

I seemed to get a better response (although limited) from embedding use a youtube video instead of a vimeo one. If you like the video please be sure to rate it up. Cheers guys and be sure to check out the special ending.

The long talked about and much contested Australian mandatory internet filter has new opposition in the form of the "Australian Library and Information Association and Inspire Foundation". Dubbed the 'Safer Internet Group' and with members such as web giants Google and Yahoo! the group actually stand a good chance at achieving their objectives, which would see a revision of the legislation to better target illegal acts such as child porn while leaving the rest of the internet open, uncensored and free to use.

The filter works in the same way any home blacklist software on either your modem/router or home PC does. The government plan to place URLs of websites they and the public find which you wouldn't want a child to see onto the black list. Once on the black list no one in the country will be able to view the site or any pages listed on it. This I believe is why companies Google and Yahoo! are stepping in, because at the end of the day it would hurt their bottom line.

Take for example if the URL to a specific YouTube video was placed on the list, this would have the effect of causing ALL users who visit YouTube to pass through the filter leading to YouTube videos that aren't blacklisted under the filter not loading and a general slow down of the site. Independent testing by the government in Tasmania in 2009 showed the filter would also significantly slow down general web usage, dropping your speed by 30% during normal usage periods and during high traffic periods by up to 70%!

The Safer Internet Group is points out something I have argued since the inception of this filter, stating

"As a large proportion of child sexual abuse content is not found on public websites, but in chat-rooms or peer-to-peer networks, we know the proposed filtering regime will not effectively protect children from this objectionable material,"

and continuing

"In fact, the policy may give parents a 'false sense of security' encouraging them to reduce their supervision."

Under this filter arrangement websites of a criminal nature will NOT be mandatory passed on to the police, they will ONLY block the content under the filter and leave the matter there. The AMCA (the government body responsible for rating commercial TV and radio) will manage the filter and attempt to apply the same guide lines to the internet that apply to TV. Meaning if they find something you wouldn't want your 9 year old to see, then no one in Australia can see it either, regardless of age.

As I have already previously stated, if the goal is ultimately to stop cyber crime there are FAR better and more effective ways of achieving that goal than instituting a mandatory filter across the internet. Education is key, explaining to the general public internet safety, about email scams, phishing and so forth. It troubles me that there are still grown adults who will today fall for a Nigerian 419 scam (The ones where they say you've won a stack of money, but you need to give them a few grand to collect it). And the filter isn't designed to combat these types of problems, in fact it really isn't designed to combat ANY kind of truly harmful cyber crime.

Kiddie porn will still be just as prevalent as it is now, but legal porn won't be viewable. Everyone will still get just as many spam and scammer emails as they are right now, but watching a legitimate video YouTube will become slow and tiresome. Phishing websites will still continue to exist as often by the time anyone figures out it's a phishing website the phishers have already abandoned the site in search of the next prize. Yet internet banking will take forever (opening people using wireless internet to even future hacking attacks and fraud).

The ONLY criminal activity that I can see the filter would actually combat is the downloading of copyrighted materials such as music, movies, games and software through bit-torrent sites and so forth. But again, that will only stop the use of it in a web based way, it will NOT stop peer-to-peer downloading using software like LimeWire. Beyond that, it will all be business as usual to the cyber-crime world. The ONLY people who are impacted by this filter are the law abiding Australian public whom will lose their right to freedom of information. Not only will legal porn sites be blocked, but so will any sites which even so much as TALK about things that are "undesirable". This includes NEWS sites and BLOGS which are seeking to educate on the issues surrounding a criminal activity or just talking about a criminal activity in a negative light.

Think about it, all those websites giving you tips on how to avoid pedophiles getting in touch with your children, clearly community education groups, being added to a blacklist that no one can visit. How does that make logical sense?

Thankfully with the "safer internet group" lobbying the government, combined with the legal action the Australian Internet Services Association are taking to try and block the filter things should hopefully change on this front. Hopefully someone amongst this group can get Senator Conroy to understand he does NOT know what is best for Australians better than they do themselves, nor does he know what is best for our children better then we their parents do. Lets hope they move fast on this though, as the legislation only needs to pass through the senate before it's law and is already scheduled to be in place by the end of THIS YEAR!

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In 2009 the Australia Federal Police raided 20 residences across Sydney and Melbourne after a massive operation looking for terrorists. 5 immigrant men were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. This is the FIRST recorded time in Australia's history that ANYONE has attempted to commit an act of terrorism on Australian soil. A HUGE stock pile of tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition was found at the homes of the men as well as stock piles of chemical agents used in the production of explosives.

The 5 men subsequently CONFESSED to their terrorist plot, explaining to Australia Federal Police offices (ON RECORD) that they had planned to attack the Hollingsworth Army Barracks in Sydney, take the complex over and hold Australia at random with it. That's right, they wanted to take over an entire Army base, and with the amount of ammunition and explosives they had stock piled, it was certainly something that they were likely to have achieved should they have been able to execute their plan.

Fast forward now to earlier this week when the 5 men were sentenced to jail. Individually the men received sentences ranging from as little as 17 years to a measly 21 years MAXIMUM jail time! That is to say, that is the MAXIMUM amount of time they can be held for these crimes, but can be paroled much earlier. With such like sentences it isn't any wonder the men were laughing and smiling in court while their sentence was handed down. The men have maintained the whole time that they HATE Australia, resiting exactly that publicly as late as just before they were sentenced.

To me this is absolutely INSANE! How can people convicted of conspiring to murder Australian soldiers on Australian soil, to hijacking an ENTIRE military base and holding it for ransom be give such absolute light sentences. These are the sorts of people you either want to execute under the treason act (They're immigrants who have undergone citizenship of all things) or jailed for their ENTIRE life without chance of parole.

Was the judge off his rocker with this one or what? Does the judge honestly think they're going to come out of jail and not want to commit another act of terrorism? I'm sorry but these are the sort of people who hold conviction to this sort of plan. Sticking them into an Australian jail is only going to make them more angry with Australia and more committed to killing Australians. This is wrong on so very many levels and puts our nation at risk in the future.

I don't even get the logic of the terrorists here; I mean they're a group of men who have immigrated to Australia with their families from a poorer country. They have been given multiple opportunities they would not have been granted any other way. We have welcomed them as citizens and they have undergone at their own free will that process. And yet they hate Australia? I'm sorry but why is that exactly? And more over, if you hate us so freak'in much the answer is simple, don't come here And if you get here and then realise you don't like Australia...LEAVE! Is it really that hard a concept to get? I think it's an easier concept to grasp then learning how to make complex explosive devices and do surveillance on a military base.

The government needs to step in here and declare this a matter of national security. The men need to be remanded in custody for the remainder of their natural lives. Unless this happens (and honestly I can't see it happening) expect a terrorist attack on Australia in around 21 - 22 years time.

I've embedded using YouTube this week to see how well it's received. I want to see if more people will watch and share the video if I embed with YouTube instead of vimeo. If you like this video, please be sure to rate it 5 stars and pass it on to as many other people as you can. Thanks

I recently seen a guy by the name of Jonathan Safran-Foer (No, not John Safran the mega awesome comedian, another guy), on The Colbert Report and again at 1am on Big Ideas on the ABC. He's written a book, which I must say I have not read, and he has started on a bunch of keynote addresses as part of a book tour. It's from these keynote addresses that I want to talk about today. See Jonathan has decided eating meat is really bad, but instead of taking a confrontational stance like PETA would, he's trying the buddy buddy, logic path to try and turn people vegetarian.

A vegetarian human race would be a terrible thing, and I hope I don't live to see a day when the majority of people are sustained on a vegetarian diet. I've actually downloaded one of his keynote addresses, and I'll prove you with a link to download it yourself and watch it. Does Jonathan seem like a nice guy? Sure, he seems like a great, normal guy. Does he present a halfway logical argument, sure I'll concede that too. But that doesn't mean some of the things he says aren't lies? No, it certainly doesn't. Does that mean that his way of thinking is the only way of thinking, the most logical or the best way of thinking? No. And I also MUST point out that MOST of his arguments are for things happening either solely in the USA or only in small scale in other parts of the world.

So the major thing Jonathan talks about is how bad Factory farming is. How it's bad for your body, bad for the environment, bad for the animals involved. I'm not arguing that point, in fact I agree totally with him, factory farming is bullshit and should be banned. But that doesn't then mean the only option in vegetarianism, nor does it mean that vegetarianism is better or healthier or that the same sorts of problems don't exist in the fruit and vegetable farming world. I don't know how much research Jonathan has put into fruit and veg, but he certainly isn't talking about all the bullshit happening there.

He makes great repetition of the fact that turkeys can't reproduce naturally anymore because their bodies are so distorted; but fails completely to mention that MOST of the fruit or vegetables you buy in the supermarket now days (and this IS a global issue) are genetically altered so they can't reproduce anymore. Their seeds are sterile, due to what is known as a terminator gene which has been introduced to all the grains and most fruit and veg so that farms have to continue to buy seed each year.

He talks about how animals in factory farming require antibiotic shots to survive their conditions, but fails to mention the genetically altered crops which now produce and excrete their own insecticides and herbicides. For a man who claims to want a balanced discussion on the issue, he doesn't seem to be talking much of a balance argument. Indeed there are countless genetic modification to the fruit, veg and grains you eat every day and in much larger quantities than you do meat. It is a LIE to say that fruit, veg and grain is healthy for you when there is evidence starting to come through connecting these wide spread genetic modifications with numerous health issues.

And while there MAY be a couple of factory farms in Australia I know very confidently they are very uncommon. I know extremely confidently that when I go to woolies, coles, IGA or even my local butcher that the meat I buy will come from an animal which has been able to graze, which was fed grain and grass/hay. I've seen the process, I know how it works over here.

Which leads me to my first main point; Just because factory farming is a bad idea, doesn't make eating meat a bad thing. In fact as I've talked about in previous posts meat, particularly red meat is an important part of your diet. Your human body has evolved in an omnivorous way, and without meat in your diet there are loads of things that can go wrong. Your iron levels plummet (unless you eat huge amounts of veg; eg 14.1Kg of broccoli has the same iron content as 500g of steak), you won't have any animal protein in your diet (which actually your body has evolved to use best), amongst a number of other things which I've already talked about in previous posts.

To me a FAR more logical stance to take to factory farming, far from deciding to not eat meat anymore (which lets face it would be nothing more than some sort of deluded protest) is to fight to have those commercialised and industrialised farming practices BANNED. THAT is the logical conclusion, to fight for farming returned to sustainable ways. Jonathan touches on that for only 20 seconds in response to someones question and remains impartial to it.

It is a LIE to state that humanity needs to become vegetarian in order for our continued existence. We don't. What we DO need to do is control our population and our wastage better. Explain to me how ANYONE thinks it's reasonable that 1/3 of the global human population lives in the tiny country of India. Clearly over populated countries like India and China need to look at how to stop their population problems (and no immigrating to other countries is not a solution, we need LESS births). Explain to me also why ANYONE thinks it's reasonable that the USA uses 1/4 of the GLOBAL resources, and WASTES in the quantities it does.

Drop the population to sustainable levels and the amount of wastage to almost zero; if not zero itself; and you immediately need to produce far far less food to feed them. And the thing is that over population of humans plus wastage are major problems not just for food production but in every part of the environment. If we don't fix those 2 fundamental things then the earth will die taking us and every other creature along with it. So it is a MASSIVE lie to say if we all turn vego everything will be ok, because that simply isn't the case.

I also reject entirely the comment made by Jonathan that humanity is the stewards of the earth. That is perhaps the BIGGEST lie propetuated by humanity, particularly animal rights groups. It is a LIE to say that humanity is special, different (in a way that makes us superior) or separate from other animals. And is certainly a lie to say that humans are the only animals capable of choosing what their diet will contain. My best example of why that particular point is a lie is that my dog is currently experiencing a moment in time where he is choosing NOT to eat the dog food I provide him and instead trying to get hold (by whatever means necessary) foods like crisps and pizza.

That is a conscious choice HE has made. In fact I have no doubt that any animal when presented with a seemingly endless choice and variety of food would be capable of making dietary choices on their own accord (and yes sometimes good choices and sometimes bad choices, just like humans). The biggest lie ever invented is that you're somehow special. You're NOT! If for example human only disease wiped humanity off the planet tomorrow, no other creature would blink an eyelid, except perhaps in relief. The fact of the matter is humanity is as far from special as it gets, humanity is also as far from good for the planet as it gets too.

Humans have NO extra rights, no special responsibilities, none of that. It's all LIES! We do not have the right nor responsibility to "cull" (which is a polite way of saying massacre) the populations of other animals; especially when ours is so over populated. If we want to cull animals, lets start with ourselves. If everyone who thinks culling other animals simply picked up a gun, stuck it to their head and pulled the trigger, then we'd at least be on the way to getting our population in check . That isn't to say I think we should cull humanity, but we certainly shouldn't be culling another species. The day that humanity realises just how far from special they are, how intelligent other animals actually are and honestly how stupid and insane humanity actually is will be the day the earth moves forth.

I also reject Jonathans idea that the only reason humans hunt is for thrill. That's absolute bullshit. THAT IS A LIE! What's to say a hunter doesn't grow his own fruit and veg? In fact hunting is natural, it's how humanity was built. It's fairer on other animals, much fairer than penning animals in and then killing them. It also means you can get close to nature, close to your roots. You can most certainly kill to eat. Think of it this way, a vegetarian or vegan makes a conscious decision to only eat plants, even when that means going out of their way, even when there is plenty of other food down at the local supermarket. A hunter can be the same, in that they may sure have a supermarket within shopping distance, but they can make a conscious decision to hunt their meat instead of buying it from the supermarket.

In fact Jonathan Safran-Foer introduces NO new arguments to the table. He is the same old vegetarian coming with his arguments why everyone else should be the same way as he is. He pretends to not try and get other people to be like him, but if this was truly the case there would be no book, there would be no keynote addresses and this post wouldn't exist because I would never have heard of him. Fact of the matter is, yes the people who operate factory farms lie and yes the state of the food system (like basically EVERY OTHER SYSTEM) in the United States of America is broken. But it's also fact that Jonathan Safran-Foer is trying to convert you, it's also fact that he (like all vegoes) tells as many (if not more) lies than the people who run the factory farms.

Links;

Jonathan Safron-foer's keynote @ Sixth & 1

If you ever wanted to see justice come to missionaries, this story it is. The 5 Male and 5 female Christians from Ohio, USA who entered Haiti and stole 33 children have been denied bail. The group of 5 couples attempted to take the Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic with the idea of setting up an orphanage. The ill equipped group failed their duty of care with all 33 children suffering dehydration and hunger when they were stopped by border authorities. Some of the children also were injured and required urgent medical attention.

But perhaps even more scary is the fact the Christians seeming had forgotten (or perhaps they simply didn't care) to actually check the children they took really where orphans, with most of them actually still having living parents. A Haiti court has denied the group bail, ordering them to be remanded in custody; charged with kidnapping minors and criminal association.

In situations like this you just have to smile at the fact justice has actually prevailed. But you can't help but feel bad about all the millions who didn't have justice go their way. One would think by now Christian missionaries would be outlawed, I mean consider this; In the USA it was Christian Missionaries who stole native Indian children and denied them their culture. In Canada Christian missionaries did the same to the Inuit people and here in Australia they stole aboriginal children and trained them as servants. Now look at all the pain, suffering and money this has cost those countries? Yet we allow Christian missionaries to go forth from those very same countries and cause ever more havoc around the world.

At what point do our governments see the harm this is doing, at what point do they see that by allowing this practise to continue it costs governments more in tax payer funded charity. At some point surely our governments will see sense and benefit from ruling it illegal to go over seas as a missionary. Personally I think anyone who does such should be stripped of their citizenship and their actions dealt with in international court as crimes against humanity. Just remember, the worst acts in history were ALL perpetrated with the "best of intentions".

At any rate, I want to see more of these poor, third world countries standing up to missionaries, charging and imprisoning them for crimes like those of the 10 Christians in Haiti. If all third world nations did this, then perhaps just that would be a big enough deterrent to stop missionaries entering those countries in the first place.

If you haven't already, I suggest you read the original post titled "Can it get anymore ridiculous" in order to understand the content of this post. As I said in that post, I did have a constructive post in mind but Sarah started hassling me about going to the shops so I lost my train of thought. This post attempts to pick up where I lost my train of thought in the original post.

I am all for healthy debate and alternate points of view, but only when the discussion and view is based on rational thought and evidence. When someone starts misleading the facts, and throwing all rational thought &/or ignoring all evidence which contradicts their argument, it ceases to be a healthy debate and turns more into the absurd. Ellery Schempp's article on Gravity is an example of such ludicrous positions of thought. Take one of the leading statements from the article

"First of all, no one has measured gravity for every atom and every star. It is simply a religious belief that it is “universal.”"

It would actually be near impossible to physically measure the gravity of every atom in existence or every star given the shear infinitesimal number of them. It's also important to point out that science takes into account the fact that not all objects have a gravitational field, or at least not one that counts for anything. You can demonstrate this if you for example pick up two pieces of metal, plastic, wood, etc and hold them near each other. Now let one go, notice how it falls to the ground? This is because the level of attraction between to two objects isn't high enough.

This however does not serve as any form of proof that gravity doesn't exist. Gravity is a measurable force of attraction, which can be clearly demonstrated if Ellery would simply jump out of a plane. Now if as Ellery likes to believe, we're all under "gods" control, then Ellery wouldn't plummet to his death. However, has we all know this simply isn't the case, and Ellery would, thankfully die, taking his nutty ideas along with him.

While the existence in some cases is assumed, there is much logic behind this. For example, the gravitational force of many stars has been measured, thus it is a logical assumption that gravity would in all likelihood exist for other stars. If it were proven that gravity didn't exist in some situations then the theory would be adapted to embed the new evidence. This unfortunately isn't something creationists seem capable of doing.

Never the less Ellery gets even more silly when he states

"Secondly, school textbooks routinely make false statements. For example, “the moon goes around the earth.” If the theory of gravity were true, it would show that the sun's gravitational force on the moon is much stronger than the earth's gravitational force on the moon, so the moon would go around the sun. Anybody can look up at night and see the obvious gaps in gravity theory."

Poor Ellery must have skipped class when his teacher explained the nature of gravity and planetary orbit. The moon of course revolves around the earth because it is closer and thus it's gravitational force is stronger. Think of it like this, if you take 3 magnets of increasing size. If you place the smallest magnet next to the middle sized magnet they'll attract. If you take the largest magnet and place it some distance away you'll have a small attraction between the large and middle sized magnets but the smallest magnet will continue to attract to the middle sized one.

The moon is caught by the earths gravitational field, and while the sun does affect on it (giving it a wobble) the strongest force is the closest one. I should also probably point out that the mass of the moon has an effect on the effects of gravity on it as well. You'd think that would be the end of the nonsense from Ellery and he'd start with some logical arguments, sadly this isn't the case. He now starts trying to use the tides to attempt to disprove gravity.

"The existence of tides is often taken as a proof of gravity, but this is logically flawed. Because if the moon's “gravity” were responsible for a bulge underneath it, then how can anyone explain a high tide on the opposite side of the earth at the same time? Anyone can observe that there are 2 -- not 1 -- high tides every day. It is far more likely that tides were given us by an Intelligent Creator long ago and they have been with us ever since. In any case, two high tides falsifies gravity."

Oh Ellery, I'm surprised you're able to count to two. I have to wonder if little Ellery ever passed high school, it certainly doesn't seem likely. It's true that most coastal areas experience two daily high and low tides. This is because when the water experiences the sub-lunar point (essentially it's "under" the moon) the gravitational force of the moon takes effect causing the water to rise. The high tide on the other side of the world is explained by a slight flex in the earth. That is to say, the water on the other side of the earth is effected by the moons gravitational attraction the less, while on the other hand, the earth itself is pulled closer to the moon. This gives the effect of the water "rising". Low tide occurs at the points in-between.

What is even more ludicrous though is that Ellery thinks that god explains tides better than gravity. At this point I must state that I actually have several Christian friends whom equally find Ellery's explanations a joke. They instead (and perhaps more logical for their motives) that god created gravity, and gravity influences tides. If there wasn't a mountain of evidence disproving god, that would actually be a believable theory, for from Ellery who makes no effort to explain how he thinks god influences tidal change.

Ellery then goes on to make a bunch more foolish comments which show how little about gravitational theory and the nature of the universe he actually understands, before bringing Thermodynamics into his argument.

"Furthermore, gravity theory suggests that the planets have been moving in orderly orbits for millions and millions of years, which wholly contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Since everything in the Universe tends to disorder according to the 2nd Law, orderly orbits are impossible."

Now as the name suggests thermodynamics is to do with the movement of heat. That is to say, heat as opposed to gravity. And transversely to what Ellery thinks the Second law states it actually makes no mention of disorder or orbits. Instead the law says that any system (and we're talking about a system involving heat) not in equilibrium will increase over time approaching a maximum value which causes equilibrium. Another way to think of it is when you boil a pot of water, the temperature of the water increases until it reaches 100 degrees celsius then remains constant. Hopefully now you can understand now how VERY little this has to do with gravity.

Instead I think this was more an attempt by Ellery; thinking you wouldn't actually bother to research what the law actually states; to make his argument sound more plausible by bringing it laws and scientific sounding words. Or perhaps poor Ellery was so far off his understanding of science that he actually thought the two things are related. Remember, gravity is a force of attraction, thermodynamics is a set of laws to define the movement of heat.

From there it becomes so laughable as to not even bother reading. But if you insist on doing so I've provided a link below about gravitational theory which should explain the flaws in the rest of his argument. Now as I've already pointed out not all Christians think this way, but the morons who do, prove to be a source of great laughter. But then, all morons are such a source, and I must say I am truly thankful for them (morons) as they brighten every day of my life through their provided laughter. I still however fear for the sakes of these people, it seems unethical to leave them in such stupidity.

Links;

Original Post
Ellery Schempps article
Wikipedia on Tides
Wikipedia on Gravity

Have you ever noticed that everything in our increasingly overly capitalist society can be assigned a monetary value? If a fall over in the street and break my ankle I can sue the council for money. If at work I lose a finger I can sue for money. In fact there is actually a list which the courts go by stating how much you can get for different injuries.

We buy and sell other animals, assigning them a dollar value; when lets face it they're actually another intelligent (much more so then most of us give credit for) sentential being. Heck we even assign our own lives a dollar value through life insurance and funeral insurance. It seems nothing is without a dollar value these days, think about it.

But how can you assign dollar values to some of this stuff. I watched an ad on TV for funeral insurance that said if your "loved one" dies in an accident you'll get $45,000 extra to "ease your pain and suffering". Yep, even your pain and suffering has a dollar value now days. But lets be honest, if you just lost you partner, the mother or father of your kids, they're dead, gone forever. Is any amount of money, let alone $45,000 going to ease your "pain and suffering"? It certainly wouldn't mine.

If Sarah died I can tell you no amount of money is going to make that good with me, nor should it be able to. Sure with Life Insurance the money helps you survive, but lets be honest here...if you have kids and a mortgage even half a million dollars isn't going to last you to long. No matter what, if you lose the bread winner in your family, your lifestyle is going to change. You will eventually need to go out and work, the amount of life insurance you receive only dictates how long you can delay it. It certainly doesn't ease the pain of losing your "loved one"!

So why do we do it? Why as rational but emotional beings do we attempt to assign a dollar value to everything in our world? And more importantly how do we expect that our children will grow to have good morals and values, as well as being emotionally well adjusted if they live in a world were everything is defined by how much money it's worth? What do we think happens to our attachments to each other, our attachments to the environment, our self value and emotional state if we have money attached to everyone? Together, we as a community design our own society, so we need to start asking these questions of ourselves before it's to late. Remember, extremism, regardless of it's reference is always a bad thing.

The Australian Film and Television industry have lost a class action against West Australian ISP iiNet. The brief charged iiNet with authorising it's users to breach copyright laws by allowing them to use bit torrent software.

With common sense on his side Justice Dennis Cowdroy ruled that iiNet was not responsible for the breach of copyright. Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft who launched the action are of cause very upset with the decision with their spokesman Neil Gane stating
"It's very difficult for the movie industries to compete with a free alternative which is perpetrated by theft"

You're right Mr Gane it is difficult to continue to make billion dollar returns on movies you make when people can download them for free. But with movies like Avatar making 1 billion dollars at the box office in the first 3 days of it's US release I hardly think the industry is in any real danger. What the industry needs to understand is that regardless of what laws the bring in, someone will always be offering free copies of the latest movies. And people will continue to download them, and that isn't always a bad thing. Most of the time these downloaded copies are of poor quality, and certainly never anything approaching High Def.

If people want to see a movie in good quality, their only real choice is to purchase it. So the Movie and Television industry need to look at these downloads as a way for people to preview a movie by watching it in low quality, then if they like the movie they'll of course be much more likely to go out and buy it. That said however, the price of cinema tickets and DVDs certainly doesn't help the piracy issue. Honestly why pay $20 each to go see a movie at the cinema when you can download the movie for free?

Heck, even if you couldn't download it for free, there would still be an almost equally sized amount of people not going to see movies at the cinema simply because they don't want to pay the exorbitant prices. At the end of the day, movies were invented as the working mans pass time, they were meant to be affordable. But instead modern studios have increased prices to unbelievable levels and they're still going up. Here's a hint for the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, drop the prices and you'll immediately see more people buying your products legitimately.

Thankfully todays judgement by Justice Cowdroy is likely to be adopted in the US, EU and UK as we all share and model copyright law from each other. This means ISPs a likely to remain without blame for the piracy issue.

Links;

ABC News Article

In the whole of Australia's history until 2009, terrorism in our country has been limited to 1 single plot to assassinate the Queen during a visit in the 1970's. Beyond that we have always lived in a safe, happy country, free from extremist views and forth coming violence.

In late 2009 that all changed when at least 5 Arab immigrants conspired to attack and take over hollingsworth military base. Fast forward to today and you'll note that two acts of terror occurred! First we have an attempted hijacking of a Sydney commuter bus by an immigrant man trying to escape police. While over in Darwin an Insurance building has been bombed! And while thankfully no one was fatally injured in either of these events, they do certainly highly a growing trend.

Here we have persons whom have immigrated into our country, committing acts of terror on our soil. A country which was previous a sanctuary from terrorism now exposed to it on our own soil. And I blame Kevin Rudd and his ridiculous approach to immigration. The simple fact of that matter is that it's precisely because of situations like this that until Kevin Rudd came along Australia had always maintained such a minimalist immigration policy.

Honestly, what does Australia need with 260,000 Indians a year? How does that help our country? It's time we took a real hard look at our immigration policy and set things right. The way things were, whether you agree with it or not, worked. It kept us and our way of life safe. Enter Kevin Rudd and his extremely liberal immigration policy and suddenly we have a growing trend of terrorism inside Australia. It's not racism, it's common sense. Large numbers of immigrants, especially when they can get in without proper security checks through student visas, will cause extremists to enter our country. We need to take a good hard look and decide if we want to continue our peaceful way of life, or whether we'd much rather plummet into a country plagued by terrorist attempts and inevitably terrorist successes. I know which I'd prefer, how about you?

It was "revealed" in todays Sunday mail (and I assume at least all other APP publications) that murdered multimillionaire businessman Herman Rockefeller met his killers through an internet sex site. The article continued he had "at least five (5) secret pre-paid mobile phones" and had "at least one mystery girlfriend".

The article also noted that Mr Rockefeller is a married man with 2 children before it continued to drag his name through the proverbial mud. I find it utterly appalling, that a journalist would stoop so low as to write such an article. A man has been killed, and I honestly don't see how his past transgressions are any of our business. Indeed, by making such public statements about the man when he has only recently been murdered must be causing untolled heart-ache and distress to his family.

And the worst part of the whole thing morally is that Herman Rockefeller isn't here to defend himself. At any rate I fail to see how the interworkings of anyones personal life, including their transgressions, where they don't directly effect public life, should become public knowledge. I'm sick of hearing about this or that persons sexual transgressions, it's none of my business nor is it any of yours. It only adds mountain to an already painful situation. It also cheapens the publication, reducing it to little more than a trashy tabloid magazine. I feel journalists should be legislated in such a way as to prevent them reporting on such things.

If it doesn't effect more people than a persons private family, then it honestly shouldn't be reported on.

I recently stumbled across a website for a Christian organisation calling themselves "The Institute for Creation Research" (ICR) with their main goal apparently being to harmonise Science with the Bible. One would think then any serious attempt at such would be done by a team of fully qualified science majors specialising in a selection of fields such as variants of Biology, Geology and the sciences involved in genetics amongst others.

Logically speaking, one has to be able to understand the science before they attempt to harmonise with it, or indeed as the organisation seem to often do, refute it and so the aforementioned team would be necessary for serious conclusion. However; as is often the case with Christian websites refuting science; no such team exists at the "Institute of Creation Research" with their misunderstanding of DNA sequencing and even the roles of different chromosomes easily demonstrated in their front page article "Are Humans as Close to Chickens as They Are to Chimps" (the miscaps are theirs not mine).

The Article refers to the results of the comparison of Human Y Chromosomes with the Y Chromosomes in Chimps which were published in the biological journal "Nature". The original article in Nature speaks about how little knowledge of the Y Chromosomes evolution across species as full sequencing has only ever, until recently, been performed on Humans. The article then goes on to speak about how divergent the Y Chromosomes in Humans and Chimps are.

Showing their total and complete ignorance to genetics, the "Institute of Creation Research" then picked up the article in Nature and decided to run it's results as proof humans and chimps are unrelated and share no common ancestor. In fact the results actually prove nothing like that. In outright incomprehension they continued on to attempt to use this data to disprove the fact that Humans and Chimps hold 98% of their genome in common.

"Most of their findings do not fit well with the often-repeated erroneous statement that humans and chimps are 98 percent similar, nor with the more general hypothesis that they share a common ancestor. One sequence class within the chimpanzee Y chromosome had less than 10 percent similarity with the same class in the human Y chromosome, and vice versa. Another large class shared only half the similarities of the other species, and vice versa. And one whole class on the human Y chromosome “has no counterpart in the chimpanzee MSY [male-specific Y chromosome].”"

They couldn't have gotten it more wrong. Beyond the use of their continual phrase "vice versa" being redundant (It's like saying X and Y are different and so is Y and X different), they've also demonstrated thorough naivety towards how genetics works, how the 98% genome comparison between humans and chimps was achieved and the role the Y Chromosome plays.

So on the off chance someone from the ICR stumbles across this blog, and to better educate people before they read such crude pseudo-scientific articles I'll explain the situation a little better. The Y chromosome exists ONLY in males, meaning that females exist entirely without it, but funnily enough are still part of the same species. Meaning the Y chromosome is more about gender difference then it is about species difference. While they haven't yet been compared, I'm quite certain you'll see equivalent differences in the Y chromosomes of birds. It doesn't mean they don't hold a common ancestor, nor that they aren't all birds.

Furthermore, if you compare the human Y chromosome with that of another human, you'll find a large amount of differences just as you will with any other part of DNA sequencing. This is because of genetic variation, and so it isn't overly surprising to find differences between humans and chimps. What the scientists involved WHERE surprised at was there were more differences than they predicted. But as previously stated little is known about the evolution of the Y chromosome, it's an area for which this comparison is only the beginning of research.

But simply misjudging the number of differences is no more proof that humans and chimps are unrelated, than the countless misjudgements and mistakes made during the evolution of IVF proves it won't produce babies. Clearly IVF does produce babies, and clearly misjudgements in differences doesn't disprove theories nor do they disprove the FACT that humans and chimps share 98% of their genes in common.

To illustrate how completely out of context the ICR have taken comments made in the original Nature article check out these 2 sequential paragraphs taken from the "Institute of Creation Research" article

"The Nature paper expressed the mismatch between this data and standard evolutionary interpretations in a more muted tone: “Indeed, at 6 million years of separation, the difference in MSY gene content in chimpanzee and human is more comparable to the difference in autosomal gene content in chicken and human, at 310 million years of separation.”1 Autosomes are the chromosomes other than the X and Y.

So, the human Y chromosome looks just as different from a chimp’s as the other human chromosomes do from a chicken’s. And to explain where all these differences between humans and chimps came from, believers in big-picture evolution are forced to invent stories of rapid wholesale rearrangements, and rapid generation of both new gene-containing and regulatory DNA."

The Nature article quote clearly is referring more towards the timeline difference, rather than actual similarities between humans and chickens. It's a quote that is clearly directed toward the surprise in difference between Y chromosomes and how long those changes were previously thought to have taken. But undoubtedly it's a quote that will go on to haunt science for years to come as creationists misunderstand the quote continually.

Ultimately anyone who can not conclusively see the similarities both in physical looks and behaviour modelling between humans and chimps is delusional. Evolution is a theory backed by insurmountable evidence, and while there may be surprises found during it's continued research, those surprises won't be such as to disprove the theory of evolution, which itself is still evolving as new research is preformed. If anything, all this new data about differences in human and chimp Y chromosomes proves is some timeline theories are off. To conclude anything more than that however is laughable.

Links;

ICR Article
Original Nature Article

The much anticipated apple iPad was announced yesterday as expected; and as I imagined isn't really what one would call a show stopper.

The iPad measures 9.5 x 7 inchs with basically all of that space constituting the touch screen. And while I praise apple for their continued green approach to new devices, I fear the aluminium frame may feel bulky, and the glass components make it easily broken. The first thing one notices when they look at the device is that it literally resembles a super-sized iPhone or iPod Touch, and you honestly aren't to far off.

The iPad is yet another apple device to lack a physical keyboard, with apple choosing to embed their proprietary virtual keyboard which has featured in their other touch devices instead. This indeed limits what can be done on the device as the user must type with the underwhelming virtual keyboard, causing most people to churn out numerous typos. With that said however, I suppose it's down to apples good thinking that they haven't marketed this product as a desktop replacement or office tool.

The iPad features a 1Ghz processor which, for a device of it's size leaves me entirely under-whelmed. Even my netbook which is 10.1 inch contains a 1.6Ghz atom processor. The large screen is somewhat obviously touch, allowing for the familiar navigation of the iPod Touch & iPhone. It's capable of playing ACC and mp3 music files as well as mp4 and mov video files. The iPad also contains the full safari web browser and email client, so it comes as no surprise I guess that apple are marketing it as best used for surfing the web.

While I have to credit apple with including an inbuilt microphone, I can't shake the feeling that they missed the boat completely by failing to include a web cam. With the virtual keyboard ruling out using the device for emails of great length or substance, and with the growing market for video calls I would have thought it a logical conclusion to add in a web cam.

So what CAN the iPad do? Well apart from surfing the internet, sending and receiving email, listening to music and watching videos the device is able to...wait for it...view photos! Beyond that you're able to download and use apps from the app store, and use the iPad as an ebook reader by downloading iBook and purchasing apple proprietary format ebooks. And that brings us to the extent of what the iPad can do.

To be honest I can't see a reason ANYONE would want one. With desktop and laptop computers taking care of your work/office needs and much of your home computing needs; with netbooks and laptops enabling mobile computing and smart phones taking care of the rest of your internet (including email) needs, where does the iPad fit in? That is to say, when you get down to it the iPad literally is just a giant iPod Touch. In fact, the iPod Touch is able to do some things that the iPad can't!

Can you really see yourself carrying something around the size of an A4 piece of paper in order to listen to music, watch movies and look at your photos when the smart phone in your pocket can do all that and more? And can you really honestly see yourself wondering around with an aggravating touch device trying to write emails on the go and surf the web when again, the phone in your pocket at a fraction of the size can do all that too? And lets face facts here; at $259 including free unlimited GSM data transfer to purchase and download ebooks, the amazon kindle is far better designed and priced if you're after an ebook reader.

The iPad has 3 storage choices; 16GB, 32GB and 64GB and comes in both a wifi stand alone and a 3G + wifi versions for surfing the web. And lets be real here, no one is going to want to be tied to a wifi network, so the 3G + wifi version is the only realistic option here. With the 16GB 3G+wifi model costing $629US and the 64GB model at $829 the iPad has priced itself out of the market. But I'm sure that apple will come up with some ingenious marketing ploy to suck people into buying this underdeveloped offering. Essentially however it comes to this, if you want to waste money, get no real benefit and look like a dork by all means rush out and by an iPad. However if your sensible, value your money and your self respect then give the iPad a wide berth and leave it to shrink into obscurity as another apple iFail device.

Links;

Technical Specifications
Pricing
Amazon Kindle

Once again the media has attempted to state a debate about changing the Australian flag. There was once a time, when I was a teenager that I supported the idea of changing the flag. The argument that we aren't apart of England any more, so we shouldn't have the union jack on our flag, somehow used to make sense to my teenage brain. Thankfully however, age has set me straight, I no longer feel it's a good idea at all. Indeed now days I can't think of a worse idea and there is a great deal of logic to me thinking this way.

Most often the argument for keeping the flag realise entirely on our history, but while that argument is a very good one; I mean most of our grandfathers fought for the rights and freedoms that flag represented; it isn't the only argument for it not to change. I think the best reason for us not to remove the union jack is simply that contrary to what proponents of changing the flag might say, we are actually still technically part of England and the commonwealth. Now if we want to have a serious conversation about becoming a republic that is something completely different, and does not require us to change the flag at any rate. But certainly while we are still officially and technically a part of England and the Commonwealth then the union jack should remain in place without question.

Another quite major point is that Australia is only recently starting to make a name for itself and gain some respect on the international stage. Where previously we were thought of as some tiny backward country in the middle of the pacific, suddenly world powers are starting to sit up and take notice of us. We suddenly have the weight to have our say actually count for something and be included in some pretty important global discussions which we previously would have been excluded from. By changing our flag we seriously risk losing the respect of the international community.

Flags are the symbol of a nation, by changing it you risk sending a message of instability and/or the loss of national identity. If the international community were to think of us in such a way, we would lose serious political respectability and clout. It is extremely important for our nation and our region that Australia continue to have a voice on the international stage. If we lost it, then it would spell doom for our nation in a number of ways.

We would no longer have a say in the direction our country moves, instead going back to the days were we simply followed. Australia is a country of innovation and leaders, I don't think any one wants to go back to being sheep. But more than that our economy would crumble. If was became somewhat of a joke to the international community then we risk losing private, corporate investment in this country. Both from foreign companies already here and from those whom might otherwise have come in the future. Say what you will about foreign investors; but when it comes to the crunch they provide hundreds of thousands, if not millions of AUSTRALIAN jobs. Chances are that if you work for a large company then foreign investment has played a part somewhere in there. Changing the flag could threaten your job!

Another point of order is simply that there are no viable replacement designs. I find the suggestion we place the aboriginal "flag" where the union jack currently is offensive. Aboriginals had no concept of flags prior to European settlement, after which time they became incorporated under the Australian flag. The idea that aboriginals have their own flag is ludicrous and goes well to show their unwillingness to become a true part of this nation. There is no alternative to the current flag design that is viable! Without a viable alternative why is anyone even bringing up this debate in the first place? Seriously...

But mostly, the flag as we know it inspires pride by all Australians. It's a flag that celebrates our history; good and bad. It's a flag that our fathers and grandfathers have fought for; and some of them died for. It's a flag that helps define our national identity both locally and in the international community. You only need look around tomorrow (Australia day) to see the absolute pride that it helps to develop. Our flag is perfect the way it is and should NOT change. What should change however is this debate periodically being brought about by the media. I understand that they want news that will make you watch their show or read their paper, but honestly if this is the best they can come up with then it's no wonder their entire industry is in danger to bloggers, podcasters, vodcasters and amateur news distribution.

So I thought I'd start doing a weekly wrap-up by way of vodcast. We've had a bit of a problem getting the video on YouTube as it runs for 13 minutes and YouTube apparently don't want to know you if your video goes over 10 minutes. So contray to what the video says, currently you can't want this episode on YouTube. I will keep you posted as to developments on whether we decide to trim future vodcasts to fit youtube, or just give them the flick.

I've been saying for years that they should ban those electric scooters (mopeds) on the gold coast. The people who hire them drive around in packs like a bunch of hooligans causing trouble. They're a traffic danger and a danger to pedestrians. Usually the people who hire them also have no clue how to ride the freak'in things which makes it all the more dangerous.

Not convinced? Well think about this. A 6 year old boy was travelling down the footpath on the boardwalk in front of Sea World at the weekend. He was riding his foot powered scooter while his nanny walked next to him. Some fucktard on one of those hired mopeds came flying down the footpath full throttle and went straight over the little boy.

The force knocked the boy forward where he hit his head on the brick/concrete footpath and suffered severe head injuries. Apparently the moped rider hadn't even attempted to break! And worse still he did not stop to assist the child he just decimated with his motor vehicle. The boy was rushed to the Gold Coast Hospital but due to the nature of his injuries had to be transferred to the mater hospital in Brisbane. As of yesterday the boy was still listed as being in serious condition. Police say the child has sustained a fractured skull and was dragged for 20 meters on the front of the moped before being thrown to the path.

Now if these devices, or more over the hiring of them were banned from the Gold Coast this tragedy would never have happened. But lets at least learn from this experience and make sure it doesn't happen to any other people, especially young children.

Other adults whom were walking down the same path claim to have been almost struck by the same rider. The police are seeking information in regards to the identity of the rider who was described as wearing board shorts, a singlet t-shirt and a black open faced helmet. If by chance any of you have information regarding this case please contact crime stoppers immediately on 1800 333 000. Your call is toll free and can be anonymous if you wish.

And if by even bigger coincidence you're the rider of the moped, man up and turn yourself into police. What you did was utterly atrocious and you should count yourself lucky it wasn't one of my children you hit with me walking next to them. If you had, you'd be dead now. So just take a good hard look at yourself and what you've done to this poor little boy then do the right thing idiot and turn yourself in.

Links;

Crime stoppers
ABC News article
ABC News Article

Awesome Sandwiches (White Bread)
   Butter both slices of bread. On one slice add Strawberry Jam, on the other add Vegemite. This sandwich can hold it's own and gives a great contrast between sweet and bitter. For extra depth however add Luncheon and cheese as well, giving a creamy, smooth element to the sandwich. Very tasty.

   Buttering both slices of bread, add strawberry jam to one, sprinkle with shredded cheese. I prefer tasty cheddar, but I'm sure other people would probably prefer another type of cheese. The mixture of the smooth, milky, well matured cheese with the sweet jam is brilliant. To add an extra element of contrast to the sandwich melt the cheese in the microwave on one side of the bread; and spread the other with jam that has been kept in the fridge. The cold and heat together take the sandwich to another level.

   Again spreading both slices with butter, fry off some diced bacon and sprinkle over the bread. Add ketchup and Nacho Supreme Doritos. A bit of shredded cheese over the lot and you're done. This is a great sandwich when watching big TV events.

   With two buttered slices of bread, grill a juicy thin cut piece of steak. Something like a schnitzel cut is perfect. Add 2 rashers of short cut bacon to the grill as well. In a pot of blended canola/vegetable oil deep fry some fries (chips). Do you best to time everything so they're all finished cooking at the same time. Tare the cooked steak into bite sized pieces and lay them out over a slice of bread. Add shredded cheese, the fries (chips) and cross the bacon on top. Top off with Ketchup. A perfect dinner sandwich!

Drinks

   A great non-alcoholic drink to wash it all down is to mix 2/4 glass of schweppes traditional raspberry, 1/4 glass of pepsi max and 1/4 glass of sunkist. Mmmm tasty.

My Agora Netbook came by courier today. The first noticible thing when opening the box is the lack of any manuals, fliers, special offers, discs or other such things. The box simply contains the Agora netbook, a Australian mains power adaptor and the battery. Upon lifting the netbook out of the box and fitting it with it's battery I was very impressed with it's weight; or perhaps I should say, lack there of.

Weighing in at just 1.4Kg the Agora netbook is quite well suited to travel. The 10.1 inch screen is large enough to comfortable do most tasks on a computer (I'm writing this blog entry on the netbook). I have the standard Agora which comes with 1Gb of 667mhz DDR2 RAM, but the Pro comes standard with 2Gb. Upgrading my netbook to 2Gb of RAM will be a simple enough process however, as I've seen brand new 1GB suitable modules for $19.95 on ebay.

The 160Gb hard drive is MUCH appreciated, and while it's not a SSD unless the netbook really starts cooking then you still get completely silent operation. The Hard drive itself makes no noise, the only noise you do get is a very quiet buzz from the system fan. The fan also does extremely well, as even pushing the netbook to it's limits it remains at a temperature comfortable to sit on my lap.

The inbuilt webcam and mic are extremely handly, not just for video chat, but vodcasting in a mobile environment becomes very simple. The inbuilt wifi is very responsive and gives me a great signal anywhere in my house. I haven't tried it out back, but I'm pretty sure I could travel anywhere in my garden as well. The inbuilt speakers give amazing sound for their size. There is NO distortion, even when they're at their highest setting. With the aide of the Realtek HD Audio manager they do a great job of giving virtual 3D sound.

All in all with an intel atom 1.6Ghz cpu, 2Gb of RAM (in the pro version) and a 160Gb hard disc it's a netbook well ahead of the curve. And at a price of $450 it's hard to find something better at a similar price. But it's not all good news, this netbook won't appeal to everyone. It comes with gOS preinstalled, which to me is not only a pretty annoying OS, but relies far to much on Google apps for my liking. Personally, due to googles privacy policies, I tend to keep as far away from google apps being on my hard drive as I possibly can.

Being a Linux distro as well it means none of your windows apps will run natively on the system. You can get some to run through wine, but it's always a bit of a hit and miss deal. For most users it's going to be a learning curve that really isn't worth the hassle. For this reason I formatted the drive and installed Windows XP. The process of installing Windows from a USB stick (there is no optical drive) is surprisingly easy, you simply get a tool like win2usb to format you usb stick, transfer the windows cd to it and make it bootable. After that it's pretty much the normal way of installing windows except you plug in the usb instead of slipping in a CD.

I chose Windows XP because;

• I have a copy of Windows XP
• I don't really see anything in Windows 7 that makes upgrading worth while
• Windows 7 requires a minimum of 1Gb RAM to run, and as my netbook has only 1Gb of RAM, I didn't want to chance it running slow.

The drivers are a bit of a hike to find, and there are a few tricks to get the wifi and webcam to work. For example to get the webcam to work you have to go into system --> device manager --> click on the webcam and click to upgrade the driver. You have to let it search the internet to find the drivers and then it's all set up. Kogan don't actually provide the drivers in their download which is disappointing. Also I only seem to be getting 2 hrs max out of the netbook in battery mode, but I'm not sure if I only have a 3 cell battery so that may be the problem. I'm going to buy a 6 cell battery ($65) from the kogan website and see if that fixes the issue.

Also the space between the keyboard and touch pad is very compact causing accidental touchs of the pad while typing. By default the touch pad has touch clicking enabled which means accidental touchs result in some pretty odd things happening. You need to manually go through and turn this setting off. These however are all quite minor problems, and still leaves the Agora ahead of the pack. Kogan is also an Australian brand which is always a big plus in my book.

In sumary it's definitely not a netbook that will suite everyone, but if you're looking for a styish netbook that gives you leading features at a budget price it's certainly worth at least a look at.

Ok so after hearing that Avatar is meant to be the best movie ever now I mistakenly seen it. Boy was I disappointed. Far from being the greatest movie ever; avatar presents us with a jumble of story lines from previous movies. Think Braveheart, but set on another planet with people who are actually blue instead of having to paint themselves that way. Add to that a splash of the movies alien and aliens, a dab of surrogates and sprinkle the lot with a cliche love story and you've got avatar. I'm not saying it's a bad story line; although it isn't exactly great; but what I am saying is that it isn't a very original story.

I'm not going to argue that it wasn't a visually stunning movie, because it was. I didn't see it in 3D but it isn't hard to see that it was purposely shot to be seen that way. The imagination doesn't have to stretch in the slightest to be able to know where scenes were created just to have things jump out of the screen. But there have been plenty of other visually stunning movies in the past, some of which with far better story lines.

We shouldn't judge a movie based on how cool it's visual effects or special effects are. That isn't what movies should be about, you only need to watch some great old school black and white films to know that! It all comes down to story line, and this film just didn't have what it takes to become the greatest film ever made. Sure it's made lots of money, but it's one of those gimick films where they give you a different technology.

On an acting side, the characters aren't believable at all. Most notably is sigorny weaver who does an absolutely woeful job of her performance. But the bulk of the film is made up of CGI enhanced actors, which leave you wanting for some sort of connection. This is a movie that tries to do and be far to much and loses it's heart along the way.

I'm not saying don't go see the film, sure go see it, I'm sure you will be entertained. But what I am saying is don't go to see Avatar thinking it's some great movie, because it's not. Instead go for a visual experience, to experience 3D CGI mixed with the real world in High Definition. That to me is the only reason to see this film, I mean it is definitely lacking in every other department.

Since when do technophiles start putting down others because of products they own? "ha ha you own a such and such brand" it's the sort of statement you expect to come out of the mouths of primary school children, NOT from grown adults. But it seems an increasing trend online with adults putting other adults down for no good reason. It's a trend who has eaten its way into places like the whirlpool consumer forums and even facebook!

Recently I was looking at purchasing an Agora Netbook by Australian manufacture and importer Kogan. As a result I was looking around online for information about the device and reviews from people whom have purchased one. Now from all the reviews I've read they're brilliant little netbooks with owners extremely happy with what they're capable of. But I found that there were a few instances on the whirlpool forums where people had asked for input about the pro version (which costs $439) from people who owned one, or had asked questions about how to do something on the netbook. In return they'd had some loserish nerds teasing them that they owned an Agora netbook.

This is a device which has gotten incredible reviews from both industry professionals and average users alike. But yet for some reason these idiots decided it's a bad thing to own one? They made out that it has basically the same specs as an MSI Wind U100 and people should buy one of those instead. Now I'm sorry but unless you work for MSI why would you say such a thing? Also while the CPU is the same in the 2 netbooks the Agora Pro has double the amount of RAM as the Wind U100 and costs more than $100 less. I'm sorry but seriously, what exactly is the go with that?

Is it that some people are so sucked in by brand that they feel it should reign supreme over quality and value? MSI is a lame brand as it is, so after reading so many positive reviews I have purchased the netbook from Kogan and it should arrive Monday.

Another example is on facebook. I had a friend on facebook today making fun of everyone who has what he feels are really old specs in their computers. Now honestly, what is up with that? If a PC does what it's meant to do, if everything the user wants to do is catered for, what is the problem? I challenged him over it and he said "he likes performance". Performance is all good and well, but you'd hardly buy an F1 race car to commute to and from work now would you? Nor would you buy an industrial oven capable of going from room temp to 450c in under 10 seconds. It'd be a waste of money and a waste of performance.

I mean lets face it, at the end of the day a computer, regardless of it's brand, it's system specs or what OS it's running, is just an appliance for the home or office. It should be no more important to your personal identity than what brand or type of Kettle or toaster you own. What's next, people are going to start criticize each others light fixtures? Perhaps someone wants to tease me about the colour of the walls in my house, which incidentally are all white.

Surely these people have better things to do with their time and lives then attempt to belittle others over what amounts to a trivial device in the grand scheme of things.

Links;

MSI Wind U100 Specs
Kogan Agora Netbook Pro

So I was thinking about this Mandatory Internet Filter that Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy are bringing in to Australia and something dawned on me that hadn't before. See previously I was pissed off that this filter will stop Australians' seeing anything and everything that the ACMA decide someone under the age of 16 shouldn't see. Not just legal stuff, but just stuff in general that someone under the age of 16 apparently shouldn't see.

But it dawned on me that a filter of any kind has to take our information about where we're going online and what we're doing online and sort through it. Of cause due to the nature of the internet your ISP already has this information but under the privacy act can't do anything will it. But as this filter apparently exists to keep us safe from harm and includes sites which are illegal in nature; one would expect there to be logging going on.

Logging is the capture and storage of information pertaining to computerized activity, in this case being your online activity. It's something ISPs aren't allowed to do, but something the government do intend to do. It's bad enough we have companies like Google and Facebook giving us the online big brother treatment without our government giving us the same.

I for one think Australia is better than that. That we aren't a paranoid country, and up until now haven't had paranoid governments. The ability for a government to collate data about each households internet usage without criminal cause for line tapping, without the consent of those who occupy the household and on a mandatory basis is unconstitutional. Sure our constitution doesn't protect freedom of speech, but what the Australian constitution does protect is the individuals right to go about their business in a lawful manner without interference from a government agency.

Seriously, who voted for Kevin Rudd? Because everyone who did is a freak'in idiot. I tried to tell you all not to do it, I warned you he'd screw up Australia. He's more interested in playing fairy tale princess meeting "important people" and flying around the world than in anything that benefits Australians. This government artificially took Australia into a time of economic downturn through scare tactics and misinformation. It lost a lot of Australians their jobs and set us back quite dramatically. They then blew out the budget and put us into such heavy debt that our childrens children will still be paying it off.

But not only are they a clueless government, incapable of making a truly healthful decision, not only are they wasting billions of tax payer dollars, dollars you and I worked hard for, but they have also shown themselves to be a fascist, big brother government intent on controlling the populous at whole. This isn't what our fathers and great grandfathers fought and in some cases died for. They'd roll over in their graves to see the country like this. So thank-you to everyone who freely chose to vote for Kevin Rudd, because in that free choice you have doomed all Australians to have none.

I've had a few people question me about what Sacrifice and Celebrations is, as has Sarah. It's nice to see so much interest from people. So I thought I might take a moment to quickly just define what it is.

Sacrifice & Celebrations is the only "holiday" event in the Sourzairian religion. It lasts for 4 days, and consists of the last two (2) days of the year, followed by the first two (2) days of the new year. For the Sacrifice element, the participant enters an extreme fasting ritual where you are not able to ingest anything. That is to say for the last two (2) days of the year no food or drink (including water) is consumed.

During this time the participant undergoes a lot of self reflection, and induces a powerful mindset, slowing bodily functions; which enables them to make it through the fast without injuring themselves. Sacrifice is about personal growth, personal reflection and cleansing of the bad from the year passed. It is a deeply spiritual and moving time for the participant; but should only be preformed under guidance by a spiritual leader. That is to say, please DO NOT try this at home without proper guidance by a leader in the Sourzairian faith. There is a LOT that can go wrong, including permanent injury or death.

The first two (2) days of the year are the Celebration section of the "holiday" and involve feasting on a grand scale. The first day of the new year is also where presents are given. Presents however are not what you may traditionally think of them as they do not have to be materialistic in nature. For the Sourzairian a gift can be the pleasure of someones company, a song, a piece of advice, a kind hearted gesture. Sure you can give material gifts (especially to kids) but it is by no means a requirement of the "holiday". Celebrations is about renewal, rejuvenation and celebrating all the good and potential of the year to come. In this time the Sourzairian formulates ways to deliver on the self development achieved in sacrifice, making the coming year better than the last.

Together as a singular the "holiday" increases enlightenment, mental strength and will, physical power and highens our connection to the source and the power and knowledge held within. The source of cause being the universe as a singular living being.

So there you have it. A quick run through of what Sacrifice and Celebrations is all about. Now that you understand, you can stop asking me what it's all about

As 2010 rolls in you may be feeling let down that the sci-fi future we were promised isn't here yet. I read an article today in the Big Issue which consisted of some guy bitching about just that very thing. But what you may have failed to realise is while we haven't gotten everything the jetsons promised, we're certainly on our way.

Ok so our skies aren't littered with hovercars flying around, but other than the fact that's clearly a good thing... you can actually purchase one. That's right they do actually exist and have done for over a decade! So why haven't they taken off (excuse the pun) you might ask? Well, other then the price tag; which is somewhere around 1.4 Million USD each due to the small amount made; you have to factor in that there is no infrastructure in place. I mean even if the price came down over night and everyone ran out and brought one, there'd be nowhere to land it (think about it the average yard gets smaller every year), nowhere to refill it's tank, nowhere to service it... There aren't any rules or legislation in place so it would currently stand as a plane and you'd need the appropriate licensing and have to submit courses and junk. You can get them, but honestly why would you want one?

Ok so we're not zooming around in the stars visiting other planets for holidays. But that actually might be closer than you think. Richard Bransons company Virgin have invested heavily into creating commercially viable rockets and space craft in which the average joe can afford to make it into space. He's getting VERY close! He craft can already make it into inner orbit! In the last decade we've also seen the Russian space program begin to take paid space tourists on some of their less intense missions. Ok so 20 Million dollars a pop is out of 95% of our budgets but space tourism certainly does exist and is a growing market.

Think about all the cool stuff that we have now days that didn't exist even 5 years ago let alone in the 70s, 80s and 90s! I mean we have mobile phones capable of video conversations, indeed the average mobile phone is capable not only of making a video call, but taking a large number of high quality photo's & video, listening to music, plugging into the GPS network, surfing the internet, checking email, play games and so so so very much more. With the aide of services like facebook, myspace and twitter we're able to keep everyone we know up to date with every last insignificant event that happens in our lives, regardless of where they or we are in the world.

With the aide of services like paypal, we're able to instantly and securely pay for products and services from the comfort of our own home. Indeed the market for internet shopping is growing exponentially. And computers have not only become more a part of our lives than sci-fi ever predicted, but they're capable of far more as well. Think about it, there is a computer in ever single aspect of your life now. Your car has one, your mobile phone is one, you probably own a netbook or a laptop, you probably have a desktop at home, your games console is one, you most likely use one at work in some facade. Computers are EVERYWHERE! They're in our factories, they're in our offices, they're in our schools, hospitals and basically anywhere else you can think of. And each one, connected to a world wide network.

And ok granted we don't drive around in cars that drive themselves yet. But again, they exist. In fact EVERY major car manufacture on the planet has had at least one vehicle capable of driving ITSELF in the testing phase for well over a decade. And yes our cars might still use petrol, but again that isn't because the technology isn't there. It's because of money that we're still stuck on the petrol powered combustion engine. Australia at least (I'm sure other countries are doing the same but I'm not well researched on the subject) is making a switch from petrol to hydrogen powered cars over the next 10 to 15 years. The switch will first move consumers to diesel and then to hydrogen. But hydrogen isn't the only alternative fuel source we have technology for. There are far to many to name them all! But examples are things like bio diesel or solar.

Solar power itself has made some amazing leaps in the last decade, and I'm excited about the commercial launch of the daisy solar panel which increases solar energy conversion by up to 90% while taking up less than 1/4 of the space of a traditional solar system.

Just think about all the literally millions of new inventions and technologist which have been developed over the last 30 years. The microwave oven for example. A device which automates the cooking process and reduces cooking time into a fraction of what it is in a conventional oven. Kevlar vests stop speeding bullets in their tracks. plasma, LCD and LED TVs which have made the TV thin enough to be hung from a wall like a picture. The exciting new world of 3D Television. Yes, that's right I said 3D television, and they're available right now! Sure with a price tag of $13,990AUD there isn't going to be a mass herd to the store to buy them, but just remember it was only 5 years ago that LCD TVs cost that much and look at them now.

In every aspect of life technology has advanced. So sure we aren't quite where sci-fi promised we would be, but we also have things that sci-fi writers never even thought of. So as we enter 2010 I reckon we should all just take a moment to reflect on all the advancements we've made in the last few decades and how much they've changed our lives. Lets just take that moment to give thanks to all the 10s of thousands of people whom put their blood, sweat and tears into creating these inventions and technologies. And then take a moment to dream about where we might be in another 10 years time!

For all the tax payer dollars the government intends to put into the mandatory internet filter, they will be wasted. Not only because as Australians we do not require, request nor as a majority desire such a filter; but also because the whole filtering process even at the ISP level can be side stepped in a quite uncomplicated way. With the current adoption of dependency on the internet in Australia, it's my prediction that the filter will be, more often than not, side stepped by the general Australian public.

What remains unclear however is how legal, post filter implementation, these side stepping methods will be. As it stands however, these methods are legal, and do not harm anyone. Regardless of whether new laws making these methods illegal are implemented along side the filter, it is clear anyone whom is actually guilty of committing a cyber crime or engaging in any illegal activity this filter was apparently designed to stop, will continue to use these methods.

And why wouldn't you, considering some of them render you completely anonymous and thus untraceable and not able to be charged with any offense. There are numerous methods to achieve unfiltered access to the internet, some of which are free, some of which charge a fee. There is a great guide to all of these methods over at flossmanuals.net

I do make the suggestion however that if you're even considering side-stepping the filter, you look into it all NOW BEFORE the filter is turned on. I have a strong feeling that once it is turned on, websites offering information on side stepping the filter, as well the websites of services offering commercial methods to side step the filter will be part of the black list. That of cause is just my judgment on the issue, there hasn't been an announcement by the government to say they will be on the list, but it does make common sense.

Links;

FlossManuals.net

The following letter is from a network engineer named Mark Newton whom has brought up multiple concerns about the internet filter with the AMCA. But instead of addressing these concerns, in true fascist nature Senator Conroy and his office have attempted to bully Mr Newton into a campaign of silence on the issue. I am reposting this letter as I feel it captures a great deal of the concerns at the heart of this issue. I have pulled this letter from homepagedaily.com

Senator Stephen Conroy

------

Mark Newton's letter:

20 October 2008
The Hon Kate Ellis MP
Minister for Youth and Sport
161a Main North Road
Nailsworth SA 5083

Dear Ms Ellis,

I am writing to you to express my concerns about moves by Senator Stephen Conroy to implement the "clean feed" proposal described on page 5 of Labor's Plan for Cyber Safety by Senator Conroy prior to the 2007 election.

My objections to this policy are detailed below. In your reply to this letter, I would appreciate a direct, detailed response to each of these issues. I am making the assumption that collating such responses will be a simple matter, because a proposal as important as this one obviously wouldn't have proceeded as far as it has if these basic concerns had not been considered and alleviated. If that assumption is unfounded, then that fact should justify revisiting (or, alternatively, abandoning) the "clean feed" proposal.

While I approve of the general thrust of the Cyber Safety proposal, I have serious objections to the "clean feed" section, which will erect an online Government censorship regime in Australia for the first time.

I also have significant objections about the professional conduct of Senator Conroy as he has pursued this issue. The Senator has attacked critics by comparing them to child abusers; refused to provide details of his policy then maligned opponents for their "speculative" remarks; lied to the Australian voting public about the availability of an "opt-out" in December 2007; and failed to consult with the 21 million Australian stakeholders who will be most affected by this plan, in contravention of the Prime Minster's oft-repeated aim to implement a "Government for all Australians" [1, 2, 3]. Rather than addressing the serious policy objections which I outline below, Senator Conroy has preferred to respond with aggressive, offensive, extremist bluster.

The Government has not demonstrated a need for an online censorship regime.

While I accept that the presence of illegal material on the Internet is a cause for some concern, I'm appraised of two important points which the Government appears to have missed.

Firstly: Australians have been using uncensored Internet access for at least 30 years, and there's no evidence of a burgeoning problem concerning access to illegal material. I have been using the Internet almost every day since 1989 and have never seen any content that I'd expect to require Government intervention. Without demonstrating a need for this system, how can the Government credibly claim that it should be mandated?

Secondly: There is little evidence that Australian parents require Government assistance. Indeed, those who claim that parents require such assistance have a remarkable track record of being wrong.

In 1989 / 1990, the Senate Select Committee into Online Services carried out an enquiry into the nature of content available online, and made a rash of recommendations in favour of some kind of censorship scheme based on the expectation that unfettered access would harm the fabric of Australian society.

The passing of time has shown that 1990 Senate's concerns were completely wrong: Almost 20 years have passed since that enquiry, and Australians have enjoyed uncensored Internet access for the entire period. Society has not fallen apart, there is no emergency, children are not being raised in moral vacuums and turning into rapists and axe-murderers, parents are diligently and capably excelling in their efforts to raise their children into fine, upstanding citizens. Today's parents are comfortable with ubiquitous access to unfiltered Internet, having grown up using Google to assist with homework assignments, publishing blogs and websites, using email to stay in touch with friends and family, and treating the Internet in its current unfiltered form as a valuable resource for the education and social engagement of their children.

This fact is reinforced by the public's unresponsiveness to the previous Government's offer of free filtering software for family PCs. When only 140,000 users downloaded the free software over 12 months, and less than 29,000 of them were still using it three weeks later, Senator Conroy concluded that the $84M filtering software distribution plan failed because it wasn't mandatory, rather than the more rational conclusion that the failure of the initiative could be traced to lack of public desire.

The image of technologically-disconnected parents floundering helplessly in a sea of pornography as they fail to adequately raise their children is a reflection of the appalling lack of Internet-savviness of our politicians, not society at large. Politicians assume that parents are ignorant about the Internet because politicians are ignorant. Yet parents came to grips with it years ago; the last remaining social group in our country who expresses difficulty with the Internet appears to be baby-boomer Federal politicians, whose child-rearing days are mostly well behind them.

It is thoroughly insulting to Australian parents to undermine their efforts by asserting that the way to prevent societal decay is for the Government to step in and make decisions about the appropriateness of online content. That is a parent's role, not Senator Stephen Conroy's role.

The government has not demonstrated that mandatory online censorship is technologically feasibly.

Senator Richard Alston, in his tenure as Minister for Communications and the Arts, passed amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act in 1999. As accompaniment to that legislation, the Minister directed the ACMA (then ABA) to establish NetAlert, and for NetAlert to carry out periodic assessments of the "state of the art" of filtering technology.

Since that time, NetAlert and the Department have commissioned separate studies by the CSIRO, Ovum, and most recently RMIT and Enex Testlab. All of the studies have uniformly demonstrated that online censorship technology:

* slows down Internet access;
* inaccurately blocks content which should not be blocked;
* inaccurately fails to block content which should be blocked;
* is ineffective at inspecting or blocking "Peer to Peer" traffic that comprises over 60% of Australia's Internet traffic; and
* fails to accurately distinguish between legal and illegal content even when specifically configured with lists of illegal content under laboratory conditions.

The most recent trials, conducted in Tasmania by Enex Testlab earlier this year, found that the most accurate product tested incorrectly blocked 3% of innocent material, and incurred a "slowdown" performance penalty in excess of 70%, and failed to reliably block the ACMA's prohibited content list. It stuns disbelief that the Minister for Broadband would be interested in pursuing these systems whilst at the very same time advocating for a $20B National Broadband Network (NBN) intended to increase Internet speeds.

There is no evidence on the public record to demonstrate that mandatory online censorship is technologically feasible. Every time experts have been asked, they have uniformly concluded that it is not possible. Furthermore, advances in technology cause Internet speeds to increase faster then censorship systems' speeds, meaning that as time passes the performance penalty caused by these systems becomes worse.

It is very poor public policy to proceed with mandatory implementation of provably failed technology.

The government has not demonstrated that online censorship is effective.

Any Australian can obtain encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) access from the United States for less than $5 per month [1, 2]. This is the same technology that human rights activists use in China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to hide their activities from the Government, and provides an effective, guaranteed bypass of any effort by any National Government to filter Internet content.

There is no requirement for complicated software to use these services, VPN clients are installed by default on all common Operating System platforms. Australians who wish to hide themselves from Government Internet censorship efforts are only a few clicks away from total anonymity.

The government has failed to consider unintended consequences arising from the policy.

In order to implement a censorship scheme, the ACMA will need to make its blacklists available to ISPs.

There are approximately 400 ISPs in Australia. Even if each ISP only has a handful of staff in a position to access routers and scrutinise network configurations, that still leaves several thousand ISP technical staff with full knowledge of the contents of the blacklist.

A moment of consideration of that state of affairs yields the unavoidable conclusion that the blacklist will be "leaked". Many sites on the Internet specialise in providing repositories of "sensitive" Government data for the purpose of providing public access to documents against Governments' wishes, and a Government blacklist is exactly the kind of content those sites exist to publish.

When the Government makes a mistake, it will be public [1, 2, 3]. It is simply not believable that putting the same people who called for the destruction of the Bill Henson photographic exhibit in charge of a blacklist of pornographic imagery can end well. It also strains credibility to assert that there is value in putting the people who decided that Mohammad Haneef should be pursued on terrorism charges, or that David Hicks should rot in Guantanamo, in charge of a list of illegal terrorist material. Governments of both sides have a long and distinguished track record of embarrassing failure in these areas, and the public is wise to be sceptical of moves to place further faith in the demonstrably flawed judgement of our public officials and political representatives.

Leaks have other hazards: It will only be a matter of time before someone, somewhere in the world, testifies in open court that they knew where to find child pornography due to the assistance and enablement of a leaked copy of Senator Conroy's Internet blacklist. The Government will no doubt launch a flurry of PR spin to demonise the leaker and portray itself as an innocent victim of circumstance when it happens, but one fact which will not be in dispute when it happens is that the Government was warned and carried on regardless. How much child exploitation is the Government willing to accept as "collateral damage" associated with this policy? More than zero? How much more?

Encouraging people who wish to bypass censorship to use encrypted VPNs carries a further unintended consequence, namely that the Australian Federal Police are unable to effectively execute Interception Warrants on encrypted traffic. Implementing censorship will drive criminals towards encryption by blocking non-encrypted methods of accessing the content they desire. I invite you to ponder the likely political effect of the revelation that Australian law enforcement was unable to gather evidence to convict a child abuser or a terrorist because the ALP's censorship system had inspired the offender to encrypt their Internet traffic.

Senator Conroy has invalidated the government's claim for a mandate by lying to the Australian public about the scope of the policy.

In December 2007, Senator Conroy was widely reported in the press as stating that "...anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service."

In October 2008, Darren Pauli from IDG/Computerworld obtained confirmation from the Minister's media spokesman that no opt-out will be available, "... the filters will be mandatory for all Australians."

As far as politicians' lies go, this one is breathtaking in its audacity. The Minister took the false impression that Australians will be able to (in his own words) "opt out of the service" to the last election, and allowed it to persist for almost an entire year even as the policy progressed to "live trials" with no opt-out provision. Then when the truth was exposed he launched personal attacks to denigrate critics as "extremist" "speculators".

Summary and Conclusion

Nearly a year has passed since Senator Conroy announced his plan, and none of the concerns described above have been addressed. The 21 million people comprising this policy's largest stakeholder group have not been consulted. We have not even been provided with the details we'd need to assess whether Senator Conroy's efforts to implement the policy are consistent with the Australian values, societal fabric, and child-rearing aims that the policy is purportedly designed to protect.

It disturbs me that Senator Conroy's response to these criticisms has been to label those who disagree with him as "speculators" and "extremists" and to compare them to child abusers. My criticisms are not "extreme", and I am not a child abuser. I am a voter, and I expect Senator Conroy to show some respect by answering my concerns without resorting to hysterical personal attacks. Senator Conroy's job is to convince the Australian public that his idea is worthy, but his habit of resorting to bluster, offensiveness and secrecy has severely undermined that role. Without Senator Conroy's detailed responses to these issues, the responsibility for any undesired "uninformed speculation" lies directly upon his shoulders.

I call upon you to:

1. respond to the policy concerns that I have outlined above; and
2. represent my interests in the Party Room to persuade Senator Conroy and the Prime Minister Mr Kevin Rudd to change track by abandoning the "clean feed" proposal.

The general aims of the ALP's cyber-safety initiative are worth defending. In particular, budget allocations for education programs and investigative law enforcement are commendable. But the "clean feed" proposal is impossible to defend on technical, moral, financial and public policy grounds, and should be reviewed for suitability for inclusion in the Government's policy agenda before being allowed to proceed any further.

Sincerely yours,

Mark Newton

-----

On the 15th of December it was announced that a Mandatory Internet Filtering system would indeed be installed in ISPs around Australia and should be switched on within 12 months time. Supporters of the filtering cite that it will stop child pornography so it's a good thing. How wrong can you be?

"Fact, online child pornography is most often distributed by private email attachments to avoid detection. The internet filter will ONLY block out websites"

Child pornography which is distributed online, is most often by private email between pedophiles as apposed to putting it on a website which would open the creator of the website, and it's members up to all sorts of criminal prosecutions. Simply put, if the main distribution network for child pornography was websites, then there would be a lot more pedophiles in jail. If your sole reason for supporting the filter is stopping child porn, then you need to rethink your position.

So what are the facts about the list? Well, the filter has it's roots all the way back in 1999 when the then liberal government introduced laws which gave the Australian Communications and Media Authority; authority over internet content displayed in Australia. Under that law Content hosted in Australia and classified Classification restricted, or 18+ without an age verification system would be issued a take down notice. Such content hosted internationally would be added to a black list for use in voluntarily installed software on home PCs.

In August 2007 the Australian government through it's NetAlert department offered free, voluntary downloads of internet filtering software to be installed on home PCs. Late 2008 the scheme was shut down, with ACMA Senator Stephen Conroy citing it had not been successful with very few Australian's downloading the software. Clearly that should have woken him up to how Australians feel about filtering the internet, but instead it only inspired him into ISP level filtering instead.

"This very much seems to be a situation where Stephen Conroy feels he knows what's better for Australian's then they do for themselves. If you look up fascism in the dictionary, it will define it very much in that way."

During the elections which seen Labor form the federal government, they claimed the ISP level filtering would be an opt-out scheme. Of course an opt-in scheme would have been more desirable but at least in an opt-out scheme you of course have a way to not be filtered online and gain unrestricted access to information on the internet. But since forming government the policy has changed to one of mandatory filtering at the ISP level. This means every household, school, business, organisation or other entity connected to the internet will be under the power of the internet filter without any way to remove it. If you have an internet connection, the internet filter affects you.

So what is the big deal right? I mean surely they're only going to block out websites that are illegal... right? Wrong! All Restricted Classification content, X18+ content and R18+ content will be blocked. Speficially the AMCA criteria states;

• * Any online content that is classified RC or X 18+ by the Classification Board. This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, material containing excessive violence or sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use, and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.
• * Content which is classified R 18+* and not subject to a restricted access system that prevents access by children. This includes depictions of simulated sexual activity, material containing strong, realistic violence and other material dealing with intense adult themes.

In other words, ALL pornography will be subject to the filter not just child pornography. As well anything which is of an adult nature, that being something you wouldn't want someone under the age of 16 to see. All added to the filter and blocked from view for EVERY Australian, regardless of their age. But this isn't subject just to porn, there is so much more on the list than porn but before I get into that, consider this.

On the 18th of March 2009, wikileaks leaked a copy of the black list onto the internet. A user of the popular internet consumer forum whirlpool posted a link to the black list on the site. The AMCA then issued a notice to Whirlpools hosting company Bulletproof Media that fines of 11,000AUD would apply per day, for every day the link remained on the site. The AMCA furthermore when to extraordinary lengths to forcibly have the black list removed from the wikileaks website. So, consider this, the black list comprises simply the URLs (or domains names) of websites which can not be viewed through the filter. If the filter is such a great thing, then why is it that they are so guarded against the general public viewing the list?

The answer? Because of what the list actually blocks out. From the leaked list it was found that a Brisbane dentist's website was blocked, as was a tuckshop vendors website and the website of a dog kennel. These websites clearly have nothing to do with anything even remotely illegal or 18+ in nature, but yet somehow they're on the list?

But it goes further. In may of 2009 the Australian press, citing wikileaks as it's source broke the news that Dr Philip Nitschke's online Peaceful Pill Handbook, which is a website dealing with euthanasia has been added to the list, as have a range of other websites dealing with the same topic. Apparently the right to a peaceful death for the terminally ill remains out of the scope of reasoning for the federal government even though it isn't illegal in several Australian states.

But still, EVEN MORE FILTERING! In June 2009 the AMCA and the Australian government confirmed that the internet filter will block downloadable games, flash-based web games and websites which sell physical copies of games (like ebay and amazon) that do not meet the MA15+ standard. If the AMCA don't think someone under 16 should see it, then neither should anyone over 18 apparently.

"This isn't about stopping cyber crime; it's about controlling information the public see"

Already many anti-censorship websites campaigning for the filter to not go through have been forcibly taken down by the government. Other sites containing content which is anti-government, or does not support the government has been either forcibly taken down, or added to the black list.

In short the filter classification system stops anyone from not only committing an illegal act online, but from discussing anything that is illegal online, be they for or against the action. It further stops any member of the Australian public, regardless of age viewing any content not suitable for children. It blocks out anything that is deemed to be racist, or that submits a view other than that shared by the censor. Under this classification system, websites like wikipedia (which is a free, user contributed online encyclopedia)have already been announced to be added to the black list; and social networking websites like facebook (due to their user groups, fan pages and applications) have only a limited amount of time before they too are added.

It seem the ONLY way this filter is going to be revoked is if the majority of the Australian public, publicly announce this distaste for the filter and their desire to axe the scheme. If even that didn't work, well then it would be clear that we indeed no longer live in a democracy society. As it stands the labor party are moving very steeply toward a fascist dictatorship not only on filtering but on many issues. It time Australia, that we cut the government back down to size, before we end up in a situation where we suffer from tunnel vision due to lack of information and millions of Australian jobs are lost.

Links;

Wikipedia Article
Electronic Frontiers Australia
No Clean Feed
Labors plan for cyber safety (pdf)
USA Today article
Sydney Morning Herald article (March 19)
Sydney Morning Herald Article (December 15)
ABC News Article

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As the year draws to a close we start to reflect on what that year has brought; and one can't reflect on such things without realising a considerable amount of the individuals privacy has been lost. So the question draws, will history hold 2009 as the year privacy was lost?

Facebook and Twitter and of course the Google machine have been the big violators of our privacy in 2009, gathering wads of data on us. This year Facebook made no less than 4 changes to their privacy policy, each one inching just that much more of your privacy away. As a result not only is everything you place on facebook up for documentation and collation with them, but so their privacy policy states, so is every other website you visit including how you interact with every site you visit.

Facebook also teamed up with Microsoft to place facebook on the Xbox 360, automatically updating your facebook status with what games, movies and music your using, as well as various other detailed information about them. Of course once the data is on facebook they file it away to make just that much more of an accurate picture of you. The world went twitter mad in 2009 as well, updating each other with their smallest, most tedious of actions. twitter itself; with a very facebook like privacy policy violated our privacy collating all the data we unwittingly delivered to them.

But it doesn't stop there, facebook took our twitter content and got us to stream it directly from twitter to them where the data could become facebooks to gather as well. And all the while the google machine gobbled up data from facebook, twitter and every other corner of the internet. Google's privacy policy shifted this year to allow for the collection of even more data. Your name, age, date of birth, the school you went to, your medical records, your likes and dislikes, your ex's, school grades, the games, movies and music you involve yourself with, your marital status, your credit rating, how much money you make, how much you paid for your house and how you paid for it...it's all their, publically viewable through google if you only know what to search for.

But where facebook collate each piece of our data as their policy allows for more collection, google play a more shifty game. For google the game plan is to creep through gathering more and more data, but to wait until the time is write to change the policy on collating the data.

But make no mistake, the time WILL come, after all Google are a targeted ads company, gathering data about you and collating it is what their business model is made up of. And with new services like Google's Public DNS and comments from Googles CEO Eric Schmidt on CNBC like

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

the stage is certainly set for a future where google know and collate EVERYTHING you do online. And what's more, knowing google; it will all most likely become publically available as well. The thought becomes even scarier when you consider that more and more devices are moving online.

The future see's devices like the Television and Radio, the telephone, the washer/drier and even the fridge all moving online. Even the video game console seems set to be replaced by a Set Top Box to link into a virtual unit. In this future one can expect your weekly shopping list, your phone calls and even how often you wash your clothes and how much water you use to added to the list of google indexed and publically available content. A wise man once said, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The big question now becomes, where do we go from here? Knowing what has happened to privacy through 2009 do we allow our privacy to further unravel or do we steal it back from the fingers of sleazy two faced advertising corps, back into our own control?

The Australian Labor party announced the terms of their new proposed CPRS, which looks set to be implemented as early as this week. Labor of course are all hearts and smiles about the package, selling it as if it's the best thing since sliced bread. The greens however aren't so pleased. Senator bob brown has emailed me twice in as many days about the scheme and has revealed the scheme will see another $5.8 BILLION of tax payer money going to privately owned companies.

That basically means we're paying these companies money just to run their business in accordance with laws being set in place. To me, this doesn't seem very fair, or in accordance with the ideas of the capitalist society we live in. An economy built on debt and on robbing other vital projects of funding, is an economy destine for collapse. As I've said before, the only real reason we had any consernable dip in our economy during the "global financial crisis" is because of the scare tactics the government deployed. It's highlighted by just how quickly the economy has bounced back.

Now after placing us in such significant debt, the government is asking us now to take our tax dollars and give them to privately run companies. This is money that should have gone towards other government funded programs OR to paying off their ridiculous debt. Meanwhile, while these massive polluters in industry with their millions and even billions of dollars in profits get a tax payer hand out, what about the Average Australian?

Well the Labor website has said:

Voluntary Action: The Government will ensure the CPRS takes into account voluntary action by households. Voluntary action by households will now allow Australia to go beyond our 2020 emissions reduction target. In addition, the CPRS will be amended to ensure that all existing and future purchases of GreenPower will be counted, and allow Australia to go beyond our 2020 national targets.

So the current subsidy scheme will now let you buy solar panels and junk like that beyond what is needed to meet your 2020 targets. Great, so the average aussie who is cashed up and wants to go beyond their legal requirements will have some subsidy to their purchases. Meanwhile private companies like those in the coal industry, get everything paid for by tax payer money. Nice.

And why is it the coal industry is even in there? Surely the government realise here that the coal industry, has to die in order for us to actually affect climate change.

But the big kicker? We're paying 1.1 BILLION dollars of tax payer money towards ELECTRICITY bills for these private companies. Seriously, not only do we pay for their shiny new stuff that they'll over charge us to use, but we're paying their electricity bills as well. Remind me, how are these private companies still if everything is publicly funded?

If they're going to introduce funding for these companies, then it should be solely on a LOAN basis! I as a tax payer expect that my money will be used wisely in the best interests of the nation. If I'm going to have to prop up an old world company trying to change for the new, then I expect a return on my investment as should all Australians.

Links

Labors webpage on the CPRS
Detailed changes to the CPRS (PDF)

The Rudd government is one step closer to realising their dream of having an CPRS in place before going to Copenhagen next year. The government announced changes to their proposed CPRS today after talks with the Coalition. While some Liberal front benchers still don't back the CPRS, the wider Coalition now seems too which means it is likely to be voted through when it is next introduced to parliament.

The government promises the new changes should mean individual Australian's who volunteer to cut their carbon use will "be rewarded". It furthermore goes on to promise Industry will be compensated. Hold on a moment, what? More tax payer money promised to be forward to privately owned companies? I get they're trying to protect jobs here, but seriously you're either going to do something about climate change (which means massive lay offs in certain industries, or you're not going to do anything which is basically what this CPRS does).

The big thing I can't get my head around is what the labor parties rush to have an CPRS through is. What is so important about having one in place before Copenhagen? Seriously, does Kevin Rudd think the rest of the world leaders will see it and go, oh yeah Ruddy you're awesome?

Passing an CPRS through before Copenhagen is an idiotic move. No other developed country is doing this, so why is Australia rushing? Climate change can not be fixed by one (1) nations actions. Australia having even the most stringent of CPRS policies in place won't really have very much of a lot of an effect on climate change, unless all the other nations follow suite. That is the whole point of the Copenhagen conference, to discuss what we as a planet will do to stop climate change. And here Kevin Rudd goes rushing his CPRS through before Copenhagen. This could be very easily seen as arrogance on Australia's behalf viewed from the world stage.

We need to discuss the issues as a planet and come up with a global decision. Anything less than that is simply wasting time and money. I mean lCPRS think about this, we get the CPRS in place, industry start spending money, tax payer money starts following into these privately owned companies. Then Copenhagen comes and goes and we find the rest of the world is doing something else. Oh great one there Kevin Rudd, now industry will have to pay even more money to change over yet again, even MORE tax payer money will pour into these companies and you'll get even more job losses.

Yeah, this sounds like a seriously terrible idea to me

Today facebook released the following statement in relation to their new privacy policy which I highlighted in a previous post.

On Nov. 5, we wrapped up a week-long notice and comment period for a proposed revision to our privacy policy. This was a continuation of our ongoing effort to run Facebook in an open and transparent way. The goals of the revised policy were to make it more accessible and easier to understand.

We've spent the last week reviewing each and every one of your comments. While a lot of people participated, the total number of people commenting did not reach the threshold of 7,000 that makes a vote necessary according to our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Because of this — and the fact that many of the comments were positive — we've decided to adopt the revised policy. We'll be posting it in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish soon.

In the coming weeks and months, we plan to build on the progress we've already made in making the document more accessible by also adding definitions of key terms, screen shots of important pages and informational "learn more" videos. We think these visual resources will make it even easier to understand how privacy works on Facebook.

We received excellent feedback from many of you over the course of the week, and the number of fans for the Facebook Site Governance Page more than doubled. Overall, you supported the proposed changes. For example:

* Most of you liked that we removed more complicated technical and legal terms and replaced them with simpler language that everyone can understand.

* You preferred the structure of the new document, which provides key points at the beginning and easy links to jump to the different sections.

* A few of you asked for a redline version so you could compare the proposed revision to our current policy and see exactly what's changed. We weren't able to provide one this time because the policy was completely rewritten, but we think it's a great idea and are committed to doing it for future proposed changes to our governing documents.

As always, thanks for taking part in this important process. We're glad to have so many interested and engaged people using Facebook. Stay tuned for future updates by becoming a fan of the Facebook Site Governance Page.

Now it seems to me that given the majority of facebook users have NO CLUE the facebook site governance page exists; Let alone that they have to fan it in order to see announcements about how facebook will deal with their private information in the future, that this is NOT an open and transparent company. It is instead a company whom is trying to give a half arsed impression of being open and transparent, without actually needing to be open and transparent.

I tell you what, the majority of comments to their proposals where "give us a redline version". They weren't positive, they weren't negative they were impartial comments because they wanted a redline version to highlight the changes. Rewriting the document is no reason as to why a redline version can't be provided, that's a poor excuse if any. And 7000 people needed to vote? What? When are they EVER going to get 7000 people commenting on an announcement? Especially when only like 5%, that's right 5% of facebook users actually know there was an announcement in the first place. What happens to the voice of the other 95% of users? Where does their chance to vote come into play?

Fact of the matter is, regardless of how many people commented or what they had to say; facebook would have brought about the changes. They need those changes or all their new features they have lined up and have spent money on developing will go down the tube. They need those changes to further support business partnerships and link ups like the new Xbox Live & Facebook thing they have going. It's certainly no coincidence that Facebook was launched on Xbox Live the same day as the new privacy policy officially came into effect.

And seriously lets think about this Xbox Live/Facebook partnership. What does the user actually get from it? You can't navigate your facebook page like you can on your computer, you can't play your apps and game or visit peoples profiles. All you can do is look at friends photo's and change your status automatically depending on what you do on your Xbox. Lets think about it for a moment, do you really want your friends knowing what movie you're watching and when? Or how long you've been playing a game for, or what Achievement you just won in a game or whatever music you're listening to? Do you really want that automatically streamed to your facebook account?

And more over, do you really want that information falling into Facebook's hands with their privacy policy? A privacy policy which leaks your information to 3rd parties without consequence to facebook. A privacy policy which collates your data with you as a person and not annonymously and then uses that information to give to 3rd Party partner companies and advertisers? Do you seriously want them to know your every move?

What's next? The TV? Downloading information about what we watch on TV, for how long and when? Or the Fridge? What it's stocked with and how often we restock it? OR will facebook simply get inside the RFID network and log everything we own and how often we use it? Will that information become a matter of public record too? Facebook represents an advertisers dream world, where by WE the users ARE the PRODUCTS that facebook sell. They collate non-anonymous data on us in an ever growing way and I for one find it scary as hell.

I remember growing up a BigMac was actually a pretty large burger. With the circumference you would expect from a Quarter pounder the BigMac truly lived up to it's name and reputation. But somewhere around 10 to 15 years ago the BigMac Junior was introduced and it slowly took the place of the BigMac. So now when you go to your local Macdonalds in Australia you get a burger with a circumference no larger than a cheese burger. A BigMac in Australia isn't a BigMac, it's a BigMac junior served at the price of a full BigMac and offered as such.

But the BigMac isn't the only burger to share the shrinkage fate. The Quarter pounder, the next main stay of the Macdonalds menu is no longer a quarter of a pound. Last week I brought one and found it too had shrunk to the size of a cheese burger. Will someone please tell me, other then the very slightly thicker patty and the sesame seeds on the bun, what exactly is the different between a quarter pounder and a cheese burger now? It's basically the same thing, only the quarter pounder costs 2 and a half times as much.

Even the Chicken McNuggets seem to be shrinking, from lush plump chicken snacks into shriveled up lumps of fried mess containing only but the smallest amount of chicken. And with all this shrinking do the prices fall as well? Hell no, in fact there seems to be a direct corrolation between a menu item shrinking and it's price rising. Less cost, more profit. Now I have been a supporter of Macdonalds forever, even when it seemed people abandoned the resturant in favour of fad outlets like subway I was there. I'm sure with my eating it daily during that period I was single handedly responsible for keeping some of their stores afloat.

But now with the shrinking sizes and growing costs I'm saying goodbye to MacDonalds in favour of Hungry Jacks where you can still get a decent sized burger for a semi-reasonable price. On Wednesday we got 3 Double Quarter pounders, one for me, one for Sarah, one for bro. Not meals, just the burgers alone. Like I already said, they were the size of cheese burgers, cost? $19.80! Think about that before you stop at MacDonalds next time.

Kevin Rudd visited India today and was attacked by the local media over Indian students in Australia being beaten. Minister Rudd in my opinion dealt with the issue in the wrong way, stating that these attacks won't be tolerated. Clearly this shows just how out of touch Kevin really is.

Attacks like this aren't financially motivated, they're racially motivated even Kevin Rudd and admit to that. But won't he seems unable to see is that they're racially motivated because his constituents, the people he represents, don't want this flood of Indians. We want the Indians out of here. But this plea falls on Kevin Rudds deaf ears. So some people feel the best solution is to beat the heck out of Indians until they leave and send a clear message to India that they aren't wanted.

Come on Kevin Rudd, get with the program. We don't want all these India's coming into Australia under the falsity of study and getting permanent residency. They can't speak English properly and they're incompetent as hell. Change the immigration laws back Kevin, the new ones are stupid and will devastate what it is to be Australian. I certainly don't want Australia to be over run by Indians all demanding they get some sort of rights. Come on, if you don't like it here get the heck out because we don't want you here anyway. geez

Traditionally hackers and virus programmers will go after the most popular Operating System for the device they're trying to attack. For example when it comes to computers, while there are SOME virii for MAC OS and linux the vast majority infect only windows systems. But with Microsoft windows representing 89% of the market it's not hard to see why this is so.

Enter the iphone, and although you wouldn't know it because everyone seems to have an iphone, they don't have the ruling share of the market. Nokia still owns 80% of the mobile phone market, while the iphone only represents 10.8% of the market. So I guess it comes as some what of an oddity that while Nokia phones remain virus free, Apple iphones do not.

Perhaps it's yet another demonstration of how poorly made the iphone is. There are currently multiple iphone viruses in the wild, each doing different things. Some are relatively harmless doing simple things like changing your background image on you; sure that'd get annoying but it's not the hugest of big deals. Others however are not so tame. Lets take iPhone/Privacy.A for example; this virus silently infects jailbroken iphones spreading wirelessly between handsets. Once your iphone is infected it steals personal data such as your smses, emails, phone book, calendar and any data recorded by iphone apps.

But jailbroken iphones aren't the only ones at risk. There are viruses in the wild that infect non jailbroken phones too and do similar things. It seems to me that the iphone os is extremely insecure being that hackers have targeted the device when they only hold was is a relatively small market share. Surely if this was about hacking quantity Nokia phones would be the target, yet to date nokia phones have not suffered a virus.

Just one more thing on the ever growing list of why your iphone is a piece of junk. Lets go over the main points breifly. The iphone is over priced and delivers substandard features such as low quality (compared with other phones on the market) cameras. The iphone is prone to explode, over heat &/or burst into flames without warning. And the iphone is plagued by virus attacks. Someone people remind me here why you own an iphone and think you're cool for having one? Seriously, sounds like a piece of garbage to me. Perhaps it's time for a new phone, check out the Nokia N97.

Recently facebook have decided to make their second change to their privacy statement in 4 months. Each successive change seems to be loosening the statement to remove privacy rights and allow them to share more of your personal information with a greater number of people. What is worse is that unless you’re a fan of the “facebook site governance” page than you won’t know about the changes, which you automatically agree to, by being a part of the site.

For a company that continually claim to be fully transparent, it’s a bit of a contradiction to hide these changes from the bulk of users, requiring users to fan a page they most likely have no idea exists. To make matters worse, while they claim to be letting their users whom actually are fans of the page give their input to the changes, it seems very much to be falling on deaf ears. Of the 1720 people who had commented by 2pm AEST on the 30th of October, all of them had issues with the new privacy statement. Yet none of their concerns have to date been met with any response from facebook and the changes are still going ahead.

The major points in the Facebook privacy statement to be wary of include the following quotes from the statement itself as displayed on facebook 30 October 2009.

"Access Device and Browser Information. When you access Facebook from a computer, mobile phone or other device, we may collect information from that device about your browser type, location, and IP address, as well as the pages you visit."

Which gives them the right to build a database of devices, browsers, locations and IPs you use to access your information. This information paints a accurate picture of not only how, when and were you access facebook and the greater internet at large, but also places you go often, who your ISP is and an assortment of other information about you.

"We may receive information about whether or not you’ve seen or interacted with certain ads on other sites in order to measure the effectiveness of those ads....If in any of these cases we receive data that we do not already have, we will “anonymize” it within 180 days, meaning we will stop associating the information with any particular user"

This essentially gives facebook the right to place cookies on the device you used to access facebook and track which pages you use, how you interact with those pages and capture the data you input into those pages. It also grants them the right to find out directly from partner companies information they have gathered about you. All of said information gathered is then linked to YOU personally for the first 6 months before it, quite illogically is then made "anonymous". That is to say, your surfing habits, websites you visit, purchases you make, your credit card information, passwords and other personal information you input in other websites is collected by facebook, stored and linked to you. THAT is scary stuff.

"Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available, and therefore do not have privacy settings."

To bad if you only wanted your friends to be able to see your profile picture. Want to fan some pages? Be prepared for everyone you know to know about it. I'm sorry, but there are some things about my friends I just don't want to know.

"Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.”"

This means everything in the previous quote is accessible ANYWHERE on the internet, by ANYONE, will be searchable in google plus most other search engines and may be used by anyone who stumbles across this information for whatever purposes they see fit. It also means any information whose privacy settings you haven't actively changed from "everyone" is just as searchable in the same places. That includes phone numbers, email addresses, IM addresses, other personal information which you have entered into facebook, photos, videos and more.

"when you visit Facebook-enhanced applications and websites you are making your Facebook information available to someone other than Facebook. To help those applications and sites operate, they receive publicly available information automatically when you visit them, and additional information when you formally authorize or connect your Facebook account with them."

If it's set to "everyone" and is therefore "publicly available" then facebook don't need your permission to give this information to applications. They only require your authorization for information which is not "publicly available".

"Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users."

AND

"You understand that information might be re-shared or copied by other users."

Together add up to facebook giving people a green light to steal photo's, videos, information and other content from other users, without permission. The green light for them to store it and do with it what they see fit. Facebook will take no responsibility for such actions and will NOT publish any user for such actions. They are furthermore stating that just because you delete your account doesn't mean that the information you have given won't be searchable on google or other search engines. Essentially your information can never be deleted once it's on facebook.

"Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your information, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other users with whom you share your information. We cannot guarantee that only authorized persons will view your information. We cannot ensure that information you share on Facebook will not become publicly available. We are not responsible for third party circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures on Facebook. You can reduce these risks by using common sense security practices such as choosing a strong password, using different passwords for different services, and using up to date antivirus software."

So basically if something goes wrong, it isn't there fault. Awesome.

Facebook boast 2 million pieces of content shared daily on their website, 20 billion pieces of content shared on facebook since its inception. Each one of those pieces of content is bound by the statements in the privacy statement. Each one of those pieces of content is now out in the great expanse of the internet for anyone, anywhere to do with as they see fit. Think about it, everything you share on facebook is collected, stored, shared and accessible. Every status message you put up, everyone photo, every website you visit, ad you click and don't click, everything.

How many of you have set your status to "is watching blah blah movie" or "is listening to blah blah song" or "is going here". Facebook get to store that information. Think of how well they know you, how accurate a picture they can make of who you are. Now think of this, their privacy statement lets them share that information with "partner companies". This is no longer a case of advertisers going well 51% of the population like this sort of advertising. It's a case of Joe Blogs likes x, y and z and it's best to advertise it in this way, on this day because this is when he will be doing whatever. Jane Doe on the other hand likes a, b and z and it's best to advertise to her in this way, in the afternoon because thats when she is the least busy.

The scariest thing is that there is no way for you to delete this information. No way to get it back. It's out there, forever, for everyone to see. Best we can do is either stop putting anything else personal on facebook or simply delete your facebook account. Sure you won't get your information back or delete it, but you'll at least stop anything else from becoming "publicly available" and isn't THAT at least some sort of solace?

Links;

Facebook Privacy Statement

In Australia recently there is a lot of talk once again about "boat people"; and in particular a vessel holding 163 of such people coming from Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan people on the boat are claiming asylum and want to come to Australia, however they're docked in Indonesia. But for some reason there are a LOT of people whom are giving the government a tough time over this issue and whom think we should let them come here.

Most advocates for letting these people come to Australia cite that there is only 163 and thus use the argument that this small number makes it ok to let them in. We have reporters hyping up the issue and making statements like "the government are probably breaking international laws". Did you catch it? The word probably? The existence of that single word invalidates the entire sentence. Seriously, do you think these stations lack the ability to research these things?

Of course not, they have teams of people whose job it is to look up such things, so the use of the word "probably" turns the sentence from a fact, into an opinion; at the same time as demonstrating it has no scrap of truth to it. It's far better for news ratings to prove the government is definitely breaking an international law, than it is to say "probably". They know it's a lie, its there because it makes you feel something.

The international organisation UNHCR states on their website there are as of June 2009 42 million displaced people in the world. Of those people 26 million are simply displaced inside their own country, but 16 million are claiming refugee status. 16 million! That's a damn sight more than 163. I wonder how all the proponents of letting in "boat people" would feel if they woke up tomorrow with boats containing all 16 million of these people were headed toward Australia? I wonder how they'd feel if the flood gates were opened and all the worlds displaced flooded in. Forget the fact it'd be near impossible to find work in such a situation, and start thinking about how water and food resources would hold up.

Yes, I agree that some of these people on the boats come from countries were they can't queue for an asylum visa. But that is reason to fix the way people apply for asylum visa's, not reason to allow in queue jumpers. The government have taken this stance because it's the right stance to take. We do NOT want to show a message to all the displaced people of the world that Australia will let them in. We simply can't support them.

As it is we have far to many Indians coming into Australia, we certainly don't need a bunch more Sri Lankans which are almost the same thing. Sure it's sad that children are displaced and have been through a lot, but heck there are plenty of displaced Children right here in Australia in the form of the homeless. What about these AUSTRALIAN children? Does their pain not matter to you? Worry about them before you worry about people displaced in another country.

We aren't the wealthy country some people seem to think we are, near 50% of Australians are living under what the international community defines as the poverty line. If you look at just the financial data for Australia and nothing else, you'd have to classify Australia as a third world nation.

Our water supplies are already failing. Our electricity supplies are near breaking point and electricity providers are getting ready for government imposed power rationing. Heck, some places in Australia already have power rationing. Our public transport systems already can't support the small percentage of the community who use them. Our road infrastructure already is having trouble supporting the number of drivers on the road. And the price of food is already through the roof. Tell me, under those circumstances, how on earth are we meant to be letting in an ever increasing number of immigrants? Of refugees?

Think about this, if the government not letting in "boat people" was such an international law breaker, then why does every other western country do the same thing? The Americians SHOOT Mexicans who jump the border ON SITE! No trial, no jail, no deportation process, you jump the border, you die. Australia is an island nation, there is no way for people to jump out borders other than by boat! This is about protecting our life style, about protecting the nations interests and more over about protecting Australians.

This is about having order and control. WE should decide who comes in our country and who doesn't. WE should decide the terms. Otherwise what is stopping people coming and going from Australia as they please? What would stop criminals and terrorists from entering our country and leaving after they'd achieved their objectives? We'd be in chaos! So the question is, do you really want that?

links;

Sri Lanka Tourism
UNHCR article
Sri Lanka Tourism Portal

As the "free love" spirit of the 60's disguises itself as being an "independent woman" I thought it might be appropriate to talk about DNA Transfer. But first what is DNA? DNA is the common and abbreviated term for Deoxyribonucleic acid. Deoxyribonucleic acid is a chain of protein polymers which through the laws of biochemical attraction, form genetic code. Essentially like most of you already know DNA is the blueprints that make you, you!

So how does this relate to being liberal with your affections? Whenever you ingest, touch or otherwise come in contact with another bio-organic organism, be it a plant or an animal (this includes humans); part of the DNA from that organism breaks off and mutates your own DNA. In this way the saying "you are what you eat" is entirely true as you will have small parts of DNA merge with your own DNA from whatever you eat.

In the same way as eating, so does this DNA transfer take place when you hold hands, kiss, fondle or indeed have sex with someone. It is for this reason that couples whom have been together for a long time can start to look like one another. Indeed, if a couple starts to look like one another it's often a good indication of a healthy relationship with plenty of affection and sexual activity.

The amount of DNA that is transferred between partners is relevant to what sort of interaction takes place. For example, a quick touch of the hand will transfer less DNA then walking down the street holding hands. Kissing will transfer even more DNA, pashing someone even more, and of course sex, good, long sex will transfer large amounts of DNA between partners.

In this way, if you "make out with" or engage in sex with multiple partners your DNA becomes ever more corrupted by the DNA of said multiple partners. Another way of saying it is, if you sleep around, you take a little bit of each of partner with you, and lose a little bit more of what it was to be you.

So next time you go in for the pity pash, or the pity fuck, think about this concept. Indeed before you engage in any sexual activity ask yourself, do I really want a piece of this person inside of me forever? Is this person really worth giving up some of who I am? Think about it.

Martin Scorsese seems to have proven his worth as a director once more with his newest picture Shutter Island due to be screened in cinemas February 2010. Even Leo Decaprio's obvious lack of acting ability is made up for by the brillence for this film. Check out the trailer below.

The 48 Hour Rapid Detox by HiLife is promising you can drop weight in just a weekend and be magically fit and healthy.

The diet consists of drinking nothing but their Acai & Goji Juice drink for 48 hours. The drink which comes in concentrate form; and thus removing large amounts of any nutritional value they had to begin with; is claimed to detox your body from "toxins" and make you lose weight.

Their website goes as far as claiming;

"With 48hr RAPID DETOX, time is not an issue any more. In just one weekend, you can flush away all the toxins that build up in our systems. These are toxins that make us lethargic, that take all the life out of our skin and hair, that make us bloated and unhealthy, toxins that make us gain weight."

These claims aren't just false, they're dangerous and here is why. With any detox diet all you do is drink only their "magic" drink for a set time period, but these drinks can cause kidney damage and failure. They can also cause liver damage and failure. As with everything in life too much is definitely a bad thing.

These isn't to say that by doing a detox you're guaranteed to go into liver or kidney failure and die, but the risk is there and it is VERY real. At the very least, whether you notice it or not, you will have caused yourself slight kidney &/or liver damage. This occurs because of large amounts of specific enzymes entering your body which your liver attempts to remove. Your kidneys also become over worked during this process, coupled with the excess fluid.

The "toxins" they claim to "flush" from your system simply don't exist. There is no scientific or medical evidence to suggest that any of these detox diets have any beneficial results on the body in any way. Detox diets are a scam, plain and simple. And they can cause you to DIE! They can also cause you to be on dialysis for the rest of your life.

The 48 Hour Rapid detox diet shares these same high risks as other detox diets. It to is a scam! So what about the weight loss? Is that real? Sure, you will lose some weight by drinking nothing but acai and goji berry juice; but this has nothing to do with any special properties of the berries.

The problem with this diet from a weight loss stand point is clear, you lose weight because your body is starving. The juice being a concentrate has little to no nutritional value, you might as well be just drinking water for 48 hours, it would probably be healthier. You lose weight because your body starts to run on your fat reserves as you aren't eating anything.

This on it's own is quite dangerous as it can cause a number of different life threatening conditions, including a heart attack. Beyond that the most disheartening part of it all, if you are lucky and don't end up with a serious health issue as a result of these diet scams, you will put the weight straight back on, and then some

Why? Well it goes back to the fact that your body went into starvation mode. While your body is starving it does what it can to survive, and makes the assumption that food is no longer plentiful. You lose weight for the period that you starve yourself. Once you commence eating again, you body then tries to store as much energy as fat as it can in order to prepare itself for the next time food isn't plentiful that you just told it would happen. This is why people yoyo with their weight.

It isn't your body doing anything wrong, bad genes or anything of the sort making your weight yoyo. Fad diets like this 48 hour Rapid detox diet are the cause. This is why when you yoyo, you end up fatter than you where before! And the sad thing is, the more times you starve yourself the worse it gets! The feeling of being more alert and energetic is actually a symptom of starvation.

If you have been considering getting this detox diet, of have even purchased it, I urge you to reconsider. The risks are to high for something that will give you know benefits.

Links;

48 Hour Rapid Detox
Acai Berry Scams (Google Search)
Acai Berry information
Evolutionary Minds (The smart way to lose weight)

Taxes; they're meant to go to keeping this country running. They're meant to go into Hospitals and Schools, into Roads and essential services. They're meant to go into a fair, equal and reasonable welfare system. But they don't. TJandSarah.com has received insider knowledge of Australia's social welfare system and how through it, you're paying to keep drug addicts in habit.

Centrelink has many payments which it offers, which with different rules. None of which however is more cooshy then the Disability pension which see's recipiants not required to look for work, but still earning quite a reasonable and livable sum of money. It is a payment which is meant to be for people who have a disability which prevents them from holding down employment.

TJandSarah.com have been advised by a source at centrelink that this payment is NOT living upto what it is meant to be. We were advised of a case involving a man who had lost one of his arms and had come into centrelink to claim the disability pension. You would think this would be easy for him wouldn't you? But his claim was denied because he still has one arm which apparently makes him capable of work.

So what does this all have to do with drug addicts you ask? Well while people who have lost limbs are denied the pension, TJandSarah.com have been told by a senior Centrelink offical, that Drug Addicts regularly qualify for the payment. Apparently chosing to drink excessively, shoot up or otherwise take drugs qualifies you as a disabled person under Centrelinks definition.

A payment, whose funds are gathered from our taxes, and was meant to support those in our society phsyically incapable of doing so themselves is being rorted by drug addicts the nation over. While you go to work day in, day out these addicts are able to live it up on money collected by the government from YOUR tax dollars! They then use this money to continue thier lifestyle of addiction, and even to purchase their substance of choice!

Furthermore, by being under this payment there is no incentive for them to ever stop their addiction. There are no requirements to look for work, no requirements to seek rehab, no requirements to report in at all. Drug addicts are getting a free ride, and we the tax payers of Australia are funding it.

If we want to truly battle the drug problem then how can we honestly enable these people in their addiction? Why would anyone ever stop using if they get such a sweet ride because of it? If anything the system in it's current state encourages addicts to remain that way, as if they were to ever clean themselves up, they would lose their payment.

We need urgent welfare reform to (1) disqualify any addict from receiving the disability pension (2) require all persons whom have addictions to not only seek employment but to undergone a mandatory drug rehab program and (3) make the disability pension easier for persons who genuinely have a disability to access and claim.

Their marketing campaign has been a winner, taking inferior products and making them the must have gadgets. The idea that their devices are only for the coolest people, and that you aren't cool without one, whilst not being a new idea, has gone off better than most could have hoped for.

For a long time now I have been trying to show you the obvious misgivings of Apple devices such as the Ipod and the Iphone. And now there is another reason to not buy Apple and it isn't just poor system specs or lack of features; it's the fact they explode! This isn't an isolated case, a one off or a few unlucky campers. The problems first started emerging last year, but I failed to tell you about them as they were at that stage simply rumors.

But now it has come out that this is a wide spread problem across the whole of the Ipod and Iphone range. There have been reports of serious overheating, to the point the battery is visable glowing through the case, and unable to be touched. There are further reports of them shooting sparks, catching on fire and exploding. The problem is effecting a great deal of people, which goes to show you truly shouldn't listen to marketing hype.

The products which haven't been recalled are a popular item for School aged children and teenagers; putting young lives at risk. I'm not suggesting that an exploding iphone will kill you, more over that the screen exploding in your face could leave you some pretty nasty scars for the rest of your life.

The thing that is most appalling about the whole matter is not only have Apple failed to act in response to the issue, they are actively trying to sweep it under the rug, issuing gag orders to people who report the issue to Apple. It is clear that Apple aren't the squeaky clean company their marketing division would have you believe. They are out to make a buck, plain and simple, and will do so by whatever means necessary; even if that means putting their customers at risk. Shame on you Apple. Clearly buying an Apple product is a bad idea

Links;

Times Online
Engadget
MobileWhack
Sky News
CNet News

Many years ago we were promised 100mbps wireless internet in the form of the 802.16e (WiMax) standard. Unfortunately only select countries ever had this promise fulfilled, for the rest of us, wireless internet has been confined mostly, to the 3G networks of cellphone providers.

With 3G HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) and 3G EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) we seen speeds of up to 3.5mbps and 7.2mbps respectively. This was great for most web applications, but no good for streaming high speed, High Definition video on the go, or for multiapping across the web and uploading/downloading large files.

Now there is a new kid coming to the block and he's about to kick 3Gs ass. I predict 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) will be the talk of late 2010 and into 2011. With promised theoretical download speeds of up to 160mbps it'll easily out do your home fibre optic connection. It's important to note also, this speed is considered stable traveling at up to 120km/h

Expect 4G to be released on mobile handsets and USB dongle modems to start with. But as this technology takes hold and blankets an evermore larger area expect other 4G enabled devices to be released. With a stable, super fast internet connection, while traveling at high speeds, there is no reason why internet radios, or car radios with internet radio capabilities can't be released. Nor is there a reason why the same can't be said for IPTV.

With faster mediums like 4G coming into play I can see no reason why eventually handset manufactures won't start to favour VOIP over traditional telephony signal mediums. But that again is only on the assumption we have a united developed world uptake of 4G.

With that said, such data through-put rates, in a mobile setting has to be enticing to ISPs and Mobile Carriers alike, and assuming they are able to get hold of the technology through a suitable reseller deal with a Mobile Carrier, I'm sure we'll see more ISPs entering the mobile internet and mobile phone markets. Yep LTE are the 3 little letters you need to remember, they're the next mobile future and could, if implemented right, spell good things for us all.

Links;

Wikipedia
iTWire Article
Nortel LTE site
Gigaom post