Well, it's empathy from across the ditch. We're getting some pretty shocking ineptness from our governing idiots here in NZ, too.

But at least we're not getting the fires of hell burning entire towns. Chins up, Aussies. I sincerely hope you beat this.

Once a jolly swagman plugged into the internets,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited as he torrented
"Don't go deploying your filters on me".

"Deploying your filters, deploying your filters
Don't go deploying your filters on me"
And he sang as he watched and waited as he torrented,
"Don't go deploying your filters on me".

Down came the content speeding through the internets,
Up jumped the swagman and viewed it with glee,
And he sang as he shoved that content on his backup disk,
"You'll be a-wasting your filters on me".

"Wasting your filters, wasting your filters
Don't go a-wasting your filters on me"
And he sang as he shoved that content on his backup disk,
"Don't go a-wasting your filters on me".

Up rode the Conroy, mounted on his ISP,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly content you downloaded so illicitly?
You've been evading the filters from me."

"Evading the filters, evading the filters
You've been evading the filters from me."
"Where's that jolly content you downloaded so illicitly?
You've been evading the filters from me."

Up jumped the swagman and handed them his backup disk,
"You'll never crack my encryption", said he,
And his packets are tunneled and proxied through the internets,
"You'll never get your bloody filters on me".

"Your bloody filters, your bloody filters
You'll never get your bloody filters on me".
And his packets are tunneled and proxied through the internets,
"You'll never get your bloody filters on me".

That's a nifty analogy, even if it mentions motor vehicles a total of 0x0000 times.

If I may extend it, let us place a vial in the box containing a deadly virus, and rig a thingy to break the vial at the moment some random script kiddie hits both shift keys simultaneously. In the closed-box model one has no way of knowing if the kitten is intact without opening the box. Just as the computer user has no knowledge of the integrity of the OS, applications and data without full visibility -- the box represents the vendor's level of disclosure. An open box very neatly circumvents the problem.

Man, it's getting late.

Gigantumous.

I walk downstairs.

I'll wager that this dark energy stuff is actually laziness, and there's heaps more of it than anyone ever imagined.

You call that funny? It's just ionic.

Thanks! I'll be here all week. Tip your servers and avoid the crab louie like the plague!

Kwitcherbitchin.

Nevada's got you beat six ways till Sunday. Utah and Oregon are not too far behind, and Idaho and Arizona are roughly 50 percent federally controlled on the basis of land area: Map plus top/bottom ten lists.

What's more to the point is the fact the federal ownership does not necessarily exclude economic exploitation. A significant portion of federal lands in AK are wide open to oil and gas production, coal and hardrock mining (the latter in the form of legalized looting thanks the the 1872 Mining Act), timber (hello Tongass NF) and dozens of other industries.

You've got a plethora of natural resources and lots of grubby opportunists who'd love an anarchic free-for-all to get while the gettin's good and say the fuck with the long-term consequences. Not too different from the placer miners in 1850s California, the sodbusters in the 1880s/1920s Great Plains, the real estate scammers and S&L kingpins of the 1980s, and myriad other shining examples of unfettered American enterprise. Thanks, but I'd rather see a steady hand on the controls even if some of y'all think it's a dead one.