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Comment Re:Lol? Sif it will happen. (Score 1) 280

by mister_tim (#31696690) Attached to: Will Australia Follow China's Google Ban?
Not to mention that the Government itself is a big user of Google. Various Google services are integrated into the systems of a number of Government departments. Also, Google is actually an invaluable tool for policy research (or political research, e.g. googling for embarrassing press releases put out by your opponents in years gone by). The Government's censorship plans might be stupid, but they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot *that* much.

Submission + - Movie studios lose case against Australian ISP (apcmag.com)

Submitted by danwarne
danwarne writes: The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft today lost its landmark case against major Australian ISP iiNet, with the Australian Federal Court stating that simply providing internet access was not authorisation of copyright theft. The Australian movie studios had been arguing that iiNet should have disconnected customers and handed over their details when presented with evidence of BitTorrent copyright infringement by the studios. The Pirate Party Australia met the news with great rejoicing and used it to launch a membership drive to solidify itself as an official political party in Australia.
Censorship

Submission + - Australia Internet Filter Fails Speed Tests (apcmag.com)

Submitted by nathanh
nathanh writes: The Australian government has completed the trial of its contentious Internet Filter. Not only did it fail to meet the 2008 performance benchmarks — handling only 8Mbps of the 12Mbps required — it falls well short of the planned 100Mbps FTTP. Yet Senator Conroy has deemed the trial "a success" despite widespread opposition from the judiciary, the ISPs, the technical experts, and the citizens of Australia!
Editorial

Submission + - Could a meteor have brought down Air France 447? 1

Submitted by niktemadur
niktemadur writes: In light of an Air Comet pilot's report to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority that, during a Monday flight from Lima to Lisbon "Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds", the Cosmic Variance blog team on the Discover Magazine website muses on the question "What is the probability that, for all flights in history, one or more could have been downed by a meteor?". Taking into account total flight hours and the rate of meteoric activity with the requisite mass to impact on Earth (approximately 3,000 a day), some quick math suggests there may be one in twenty odds of a plane being brought down in the period from 1989 to 2009. Intriguingly, in the aftermath of TWA flight 800's crash in 1996, the New York Times published a letter by Columbia professors Charles Hailey (physics) and David Helfand (astronomy), in which they stated the odds of a meteor-airplane collision for aviation history up to that point: one in ten.
Networking

Submission + - Australia to get $43bn fibre-to-home network (apcmag.com)

Submitted by
KrispyConroy
KrispyConroy writes: "The Australian Government has announced a $43 billion fibre-to-the-home network that will provide 100Mbit/s Ethernet to 90% of premises in the country. It will be one of the largest FTTH rollouts in the world because of Australia's vast geographic size. Despite many private companies bidding to build smaller-scale fibre networks, the Australian government decided to go it alone, because it didn't believe any of them could actually stump up the cash in the global financial crisis. The network will be supplemented by a wireless (probably WiMax) and satellite network to reach the remaining 10% of far-flung premises."
Security

Submission + - New worm can infect home modem/routers (apcmag.com)

Submitted by
KrispyBits
KrispyBits writes: "A new botnet, "psyb0t" is the first known to be capable of directly infecting home routers and cable/DSL modems. This is an alarming development because it's both difficult to detect (software running on your PC can't detect it) and significantly more useful to the botnet operator than infected PCs because home routers generally run 24 hours a day, unmonitored. The botnet malware contains the shellcode for over 30 different Linksys models, 10 Netgear models, and a variety of other cable and DSL modems (15 different shellcodes). Any router that uses a MIPS processor and runs the Linux Mipsel operating system (a port of Debian for MIPS Processors) is vulnerable if they have the router administration interface, or sshd/telnetd in a DMZ, with weak username/passwords. DroneBL noted this includes devices flashed with the open-source firmwares openwrt and dd-wrt."
iMac

Submission + - PHOTOS: Apple smashing Macs to pieces (apcmag.com)

Submitted by
KrispyPancakes
KrispyPancakes writes: "A whistleblower has provided details of how Apple orders Macs be smashed to pieces rather than allowing them to be sold at a discount or even used for spare parts. Apple says they were beyond economic repair but the contractor says many of the Macs he was tasked to smash booted up fine, proving that there were at very least plenty of salvageable parts in them."

Comment Re:Senator Conroy's handiwork (Score 5, Interesting) 158

by mister_tim (#26117111) Attached to: Telstra Kicked Out of $15bn Broadband Project

Or rather:

3) Telstra submitted a non-conforming tender and the Government had no choice but to reject it.

Being a Government employee myself, when it comes to tendering you have to apply the same rules to everyone. If the Government had accepted Telstra's tender, even though it did not comply with the requirements in the RFT (and this was well publicised, they would have left themselves open for all sorts of problems, e.g. being sued by other applicants.

Optus was right to say that Telstra's submission was a joke: a 12 page letter to the Minister in lieu of a serious tender for a $4.7bn project is brinkmanship of the worst sort and the Government was right to call their bluff.

The Media

Submission + - Why iiNet will probably lose the piracy lawsuit (apcmag.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: apcmag.com — "As you probably know by now, iiNet has been sued by a number of movie studios and Channel 7 for allowing piracy to occur on its network — specifically BitTorrent piracy of movies and TV shows. A look at the Copyright Act suggests the movie and TV industry have an unfortunately strong case against iiNet.
PLUS: Read the court documents yourself."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - GASP! Wireless iPod headphones cause Qantas plunge (apcmag.com)

Submitted by
danwarne
danwarne writes: "EXCLUSIVE!! GASP!! Noise cancelling iPod headphones reportedly forced Qantas jet into terrifying plunge, leaving passengers with spinal injuries. Or not. The reporting around what may have caused a Qantas jet en route from Singpore to Australia to suddenly ascend 300 feet then drop 100 has been nothing short of irresponsible, with publications worldwide suggesting passenger use of a laptop was to blame. APC Magazine has looked at some these ridiculous reports and thoroughly debunked them — in a story designed to suck in the same clickers who've read the fabricated reports from other outlets: "Speculation Qantas plunge caused by wireless iPod headphones"

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