Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or outside Australia) you’re likely well aware of the Australian Government’s plan to censor the Web. They want to force a compulsory ISP-side filter on every Australian in the name of the often used “won’t someone think of the children!” argument.

There are two ways in which they are protecting children by implementing a Web filter. The first is by blocking access to child pornography, the second is by preventing children from accidentally stumbling across inappropriate material.

Blocking access to child pornography

Simply put this is not possible. As suprising as this may sound, there is no official paedophile Web site out there. You can’t download images of child pornography by Googling “child porn” or going to childporn.com. All a Web filter is going to do is block access to certain Web sites, but what if the offending material isn’t on a Web site? The Web makes up only part of the Internet, there are dozens of other ways to transmit and share images. FTP, DCC via IRC and BitTorrent are just a few examples. Even if there were some inappropriate Web sites that should be blocked, bypassing any Web filter is insanely easy. Using a proxy, an SSH tunnel or an encrypted connection are all relatively easy ways to accomplish this.

Preventing children from accidentally stumbling across inappropriate material

Again, this sounds like a perfectly valid reason for implementing a Web filter. But why should the Web be filtered for every single Australian just to prevent kids from stumbling across something that they shouldn’t see? Surely an opt-in ISP-side filter, or a client-side filter installed by concerned parents, would accomplish this. Why doesn’t the Government simply require all ISPs to offer a free content filter for those who request it? And what ever happened to good old parental supervision? If you’re worried that your kids may, accidentally or not, stumble across something that’s inappropriate, keep an eye on them when they’re surfing. Put the family computer in an open location. Most kids are likely more technologically literate than their parents anyway, so bypassing the filter if they choose isn’t likely to be an issue: I remember using a proxy to bypass the draconian filters in high school when I was thirteen.

Web filters are not going to solve any problems and anyone who thinks they will are kidding themselves and have absolutely no idea how the Internet or World Wide Web work. So please, Misters Rudd and Conroy, abandon this pointless plan to filter my Web, I will just bypass it out of principle anyway.

Google is starting to remind me of the evil flying brains from Futurama: once Google has collected and organized all the world’s information in their datacentre they will destroy Earth so that no new information can be created.

It started with Google Earth: we could view satellite images of the entire planet, with enough detail to see the tops of people’s heads. Then there was the slightly creepier Street View, which allowed us to see straight down people’s driveways and look at others as they walked down the street. The latest venture seems to be sorting and organizing prescriptions.

What does everyone else think: a harmless company looking to make information easily accessible for all, or an alien race of super intelligent brains intent on learning everything until they destroy the Earth?

Recently I purchased myself a shiny new Sony Vaio Z series notebook. My main reason for choosing the Vaio Z was the size weight: it’s a reasonably powerful 13.1″ laptop at 1.5kg including the battery, a weight which rivals a lot of the 10″ netbooks out there. The model I purchased, the Z16 (Australia has different model numbers to the USA) was one of the lower specced models, however it still features a respectable Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor (2.4GHz) and 2 gigabytes of DDR3 RAM (I added a second 2GB module a few weeks after purchasing the laptop).
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The beta version of Google’s own Web browser, dubbed ‘Google Chrome’, was released today. Ten minutes ago I installed it.
As with most things Google, the user interface is very minimal and clean. There are no menu bars and the address bar also serves as the search box and history bar which is a nice idea. All settings (saved passwords, bookmarks, etc.) can be imported from other browsers such as Firefox or IE which makes for an easy transition.
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Last week Microsoft released the second beta of Internet Explorer 8. This new version of IE is at last a step in the right direction for Microsoft, as compliance with CSS standards is now a major priority.

I downloaded the new beta and started the installation, only to be met with the message

A previous build of Internet Explorer 8 is already installed on your computer. You must remove it before installing the latest version of Internet Explorer 8.

Apparently upgrading the previously installed version was too big an ask. Never mind, I thought, I’ll just uninstall the older version of IE8. But wait, it’s not listed with all my other programs in ‘Uninstall or change a program’ (or ‘Add/Remove programs’ if you’re running Windows XP).

It took me a few minutes to figure out, but Internet Explorer 8 is actually listed under the ‘view installed updates’ list rather than the list of installed programs. Great, now I can go ahead and install the new version!

Today I stumbled across the Cuil (pronounced “cool”) search engine, which claims to have indexed more pages than any other search engine: 121 billion. Developed by former Google employees, Cuil features an incredibly attractive interface complete with search suggestions and thumbnail images alongside some search results.
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Today is supposedly the official release date of Firefox 3. Over a 24 hour period, Firefox is attempting to set a Guinness World Records for the most software downloads. The release of Firefox 3 is scheduled for 10am USA PDT on the 17th of June, so get ready to download!

For those who may not know, Firefox is a Web browser. If you are using Internet Explorer, you should go and download Firefox right now. Firefox is faster, more secure and easier to use. Oh yeah, and it’s much more friendly to Web developers than Internet Explorer.

Anyone with experience with Web hosting will likely know about a web control panel - the web-based interface used for configuring and monitoring your sites. There are hundreds of different control panels out there, some of them free and others cost hundreds of dollars per year. I have experimented with several different control panels (cPanel, DirectAdmin, Ravencore, VHCS and H-Sphere are some I am very familiar with) but ultimately found each lacking in some respect.
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I have decided to stop using my custom coded PHP scripts and have moved this site over to WordPress. My own scripts have done the job for over a year, but it’s time for a change. With WordPress I should be able to better manage this site and will hopefully start posting some blog entries about whatever I feel like.

I also hope to have some new templates up soon: more on that later.