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Geelong Cats AFL player Simon Hogan has been bravely fighting a battle with depression for some time. Depression is a terrible affliction that will affect most people at some time in their lives.
There was a nice write up about his struggle on the Geelong Advertiser website this morning:
| Hogan Gives Insight Into Mental Illness Battle |
Except for the Freudian Slip:
Simon Hogan, or Paul Hogan? Throw another Geelong Cat on the barbie perhaps?
Oopsies!
Over recent months, much of the debate surrounding the National Broadband Network (NBN) has revolved around what it will be used for. What will it provide to Australians, that current broadband infrastructure cannot?
That depends very much on how you look at it – on a macro and/or micro level.
Can the current systems deliver internet to homes and businesses? Yes. Can they deliver video streams such as IPTV and video-conferencing? Yes. Can they deliver just about anything you could possibly package up and send over a data connection? Yes, of course, absolutely.
Two way interactive services? Not so much – but why build the NBN when we can do most of it already? We can, but that’s a very narrow view of the project. There are many social and economic benefits of the network.
Using the current infrastructure everything would be delivered to you over a single logical connection, all competing for the limited bandwidth available.
If everyone in the family is online at the same time, trying to use bandwidth intensive applications, the competition for the bandwidth amongst all the devices trying to access it will most likely make it a crappy experience for everyone.
In our house, it only takes two people watching a YouTube video, and it’s stop/start all the way.
So with the initial offer of up to 100Mbps for most people, raw internet bandwidth will be massively improved – and for many people, that will be enough.
However, the NBN will allow multiple distinct data services to be provisioned into your premises, over the single piece of fibre – two voice services, and four data services.
The next product offering from NBN Co after basic data and telephony will be for IPTV services – in lay terms, television over an “internet” connection.
I deliberately put quotes around “internet” because such connections might not be – (and most likely would not be) – actual internet connections. They would be connections to an IPTV provider, which might not necessarily require actual internet connectivity.
It might not even be the same company who provides your basic internet data connection to you over the fibre. It could someone completely different, such is the flexibility that the NBN provides.
That’s why the government is now calling them “RSPs” – (Retail Service Providers) – instead of “ISPs” – (Internet Service Providers) – because it is not just about internet any more.
One of the major complaints that many people have about subscription television services that companies like Foxtel and Austar provide is that they might be paying $100 per month for a particular package of channels – maybe 100 or more – but only ever watch 10 or 15 different channels.
You “have” to do it though to get the particular channels you REALLY want, even if you never watch most of the other channels.
What if you could pay a base fee for an IPTV service to be connected as a second service over your NBN fibre, and then go a-la-carte and pay a small fee for each of the channels you want, and ONLY the channels you want?
Say, for a single dollar a channel per month?
If I went through the entire list of channels available on the Foxtel platform, and picked out only the channels we regularly watch in our house, that number would come to about 25 out of that entire list.
What if an IPTV provider did a deal with Foxtel to have all channels available to customers, it charged us a base fee of $30.00 to have the service over our NBN fibre, and then one dollar for each of the 25 channels we ever really watch? That’s $55.00 a month – about $35.00 a month less than we’re paying now, and we’re only getting the channels we actually watch.
Win. And you may or may not need a set top box to watch them.
What if they did deals with other suppliers, in addition to Foxtel, to get access to channels that Foxtel doesn’t have? They could offer channels/channel packages that Foxtel could not.
More win.
Overall, it would still be good for Foxtel. They might end up with less “full service” customers over their existing satellite or cable platforms, but people who have avoided subscription television in the past, fearing the cost, might now consider it a more valuable proposition – and that would equate to new revenue streams.
IPTV technology is mature and very available, and I am currently working with such a system. Services like Netflix in the US provide streaming content to the public for less than $10.00 per month.
Traditional broadcast television is already becoming less important to many people, and tailored packages such as would be made possible by the NBN are going to become the rule, rather than the exception.
It will take time, but it will happen.
Multiple services into each home will provide more revenues to NBN Co, further reducing the financial risk the project entails. NBN Co’s business plan projects their desired outcomes with around 70% uptake.
If everyone has two connections, that’s 140% uptake.
Folks, the future is here, and it is time to embrace the possibilities.
Over the last few years, people constantly complain about the amount of advertising the Seven Network puts on during its motor racing telecasts. I don’t actually think it’s too bad, and have shown here and here that the amount is not really all that different than it was 25 years ago, or at any time in between.
Midst the 2010 broadcast of the Bathurst 1000, Seven did controversially “time slip” the coverage to show more of the race. While they did achieve that, it was the wrong thing to do, and some broadcasting rules were changed to stop them from doing it again.
Indeed, the 2011 race remained completely live throughout.
Many of the complainers say that Network Ten – (who held the rights between 1997 and 2006) – should get them back again, because they “never did anything like that”.
Oh really? So what did they do here in their 1997 broadcast of the then Primus Bathurst 1000 Classic?
Well, clearly before the commercial break shown in this footage, the Tomas Mezera car was already deeply bunkered in the sand trap at the bottom of The Chase. As the network threw to the break, they were on lap 27 of the race.
Cue three and a half minute commercial break. Back from the break, we have a minute and a half of race update. So it is at least five minutes since the incident, and still they haven’t shown it, and we are up to lap 30.
So how long had the car actually been in the sand trap?
After 14 years, it is difficult to say precisely, but according to the official lap chart of the race from the Dorian timing system, the last lap the 47 car completed was lap 25.
So it actually happened on lap 26 – four laps before they actually showed it.
The sole leader throughout this period was Peter Brock, with laps of 2:14.1457, 2:13.9709, 2:13.5204, 2:14.2344, and 2:13.6238 between laps 26 and 30 – a total of 11 minutes and 7 seconds – give or take one lap depending on exactly where on the lap Mezera was in comparison to Brock when the accident occurred.
Eleven minutes?
One of the most iconic and most often replayed incidents in the fifty year history of the race – and they missed it by eleven minutes? And pretended that it was live?
Don’t be so sure about just how good a job Channel Ten used to do!
Earlier this year I speculated that the National Classification Review, set up by the federal government via the Attorney-General’s (AG) department and the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) might become a vehicle for a tactical retreat on the mandatory internet filtering policy.
Certainly, the government has been noticeably quiet on the issue in recent months while this review has been under way, but we are starting to hear a few new noises.
Notably, yet another discussion paper on the review was issued about three weeks ago, and late last week news came to light that Telstra are claiming that they have had 84,000 hits against a cut-down “voluntary” version of the filter.
This is a number I feel is quite dubious, and of course this version of the filter is anything but voluntary. Telstra users do not get to choose whether or not their connection is filtered. A number of other ISPs – including Optus – are part of this “voluntary” trial also.
Interestingly, both Telstra and Optus have recently signed big-ticket deals to join the government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) project – so they wouldn’t be looking to give the government good press about their filter, would they?
(WARNING: Previous sentence may have contained traces of sarcasm).
So we’re seeing “good press” about the “voluntary” filter and its variants hitting the media, just as the classification review, which came about because of and directly relates to the mandatory filtering plan, comes out.
Convenient.
With the noise starting up again, expect the issue to start becoming more prevalent in the media again.
The government’s primary concern in choosing to seek the introduction of a mandatory filter is to block child pornography and other questionable material from being accessed within Australia.
Opponents of the filter have long argued that the filter – which will be trivial to bypass, not illegal to bypass, and ineffective against encrypted or VPN-based connections – is just a waste of money, because people who want to access this material will be able to do so using these methods.
It will not stop people – and now comes this:
| Anonymous Hackers Take Down Child Porn Websites, Leak Users Names |
This article quite clearly demonstrates that the child porn websites the government seek to block people from, aren’t even on the open internet, and are accessed through mechanisms they openly admit the filter will not address!
The same can be said of sites with other kinds of questionable material on them.
This is just another demonstration of why the filtering policy is a waste of resources – (money, effort, etc) – and why we don’t need a censorship mechanism in place.
A mechanism which may one day creep away from the initial goals of the filter – (which won’t be met anyway) – and provide a facility by which a current or future government may filter other content.
The filter protects us from nothing. Spend the money on finding the people who produce the content, not on a wasted effort of nothingness.
Their intentions might be noble, but they have no understanding of how irrelevant it will be to the people seeking such access.
Completely irrelevant.
The second day of the Gold Coast 600 was controversial, with the kerb hopping detection system – (effectively a timing loop embedded in the kerbs) – copping the flack for being apparently inaccurate.
A number of drivers were clearly jumping kerbs and not being penalised, while others who didn’t seem to be jumping them were being penalised.
Most notable was the Holden Racing Team car number one, which was ordered in for a penalty under huge protest from the team, who were insistent that driver Darren Turner was not jumping the kerbs.
So what did THAT email say? (Click for larger view).
“I cannot complain more vehemently about this .. the cars in front are doing the same as our driver and they are not getting triggers .. the systems operation is very questionable and this decision will destroy our race .. we will comply .. but under extreme protest…”
Of course, Race Control responded with:
“Penalty stands or the car will be excluded.”
What I find interesting from the email HRT sent to the stewards, they didn’t say they hadn’t jumped the kerbs, just that “the cars in front are doing the same”.
They are of course right in saying that they shouldn’t have been penalised if everyone else isn’t.
Time to get the kerb hopping sensors sorted out, before rubbish like this happens again.
Just noticed a rather interesting wardrobe selection on ABC News 24.
Is this ABC News 1924?
In the last couple of days, the strangest looking wind turbine has been erected in North Geelong.
Or is that a sub-space transmitter?
Tapping away at my keyboard at work just now, I looked up to the other screen on my desk – (showing some of the outputs of an IPTV solution I am dealing with at the moment) – and I noticed a live prime ministerial press conference on Sky News Australia.
It is circled in red below:
Note that ABC News 24 – (circled in blue) – is running a story about an old fella restoring planes. The next story shown included scenes from Sesame Street.
News?
Fail.
If you want to be a 24-hour news channel that covers the news, umm, cover the news. How about it, ABC?
Some interesting numbers have emerged in the last couple of days in regards to the the “voluntary” filter applied to internet connections by four of Australia’s biggest service providers – in this instance from Telstra, the nation’s largest.
| Telstra Logs 84,000 Filter Redirects |
“Telstra has redirected internet users that try to access child abuse materials more than 84,000 times since a voluntary filter program was enacted in July.”
Straight up, I call bullshit on this statement. I believe it will actually be more accurate to say that there have been 84,000 hits against the blacklist – not attempts to “access child abuse materials”.
The concept of “hits” is an interesting one. When you visit a webpage, you initially hit open the source code of that page.
One hit.
As your browser parses the information it finds in that source code, it discovers that it needs to load an image file.
Another hit.
Then another image file. Another hit.
Then an embedded script. Another hit. That script file parses as well, and it generates a bunch more hits. Hit. Hit. Hit. Hit.
Now it’s back to the original source file, and more images need to be loaded. Hit. Hit. Hit.
You’re getting the idea, right?
For example, visiting my terms and conditions page generates at least 31 hits, after all the images, scripts, and other bits and pieces are loaded.
Visiting The Age main page generates a couple of hundred hits each time.
Traditionally, porn sites are riddled with advertising, tracking scripts, and of course – images. Don’t be surprised if a typical single page is responsible for at least 200 hits being generated against the site.
If that site is on the “worst of the worst” list being used for this “voluntary” filter, every single one of those hits might well be counted towards this mythical number of 84,000.
Doing some simple mathematics, I will be generous and say the average typical porn page generates 150 hits. We take 84,000, and divide by those 150 hits.
That’s 560 – and therefore I believe maybe only as few as 560 pages requested. Since July. Spread over how many Telstra users? Thousands and thousands, and very few per user.
Now – I can already hear people jumping up and down and saying “if the filter blocks the original page, then the rest of the hits would never happen”.
They would be absolutely correct.
However, cross-site embedding of images – (where images hosted by one site, are loaded from another and often called “deep linking”) – is common amongst such sites, so if the original source page is not blocked – (and it is trivial and very low cost to register a new domain name, and have a blocked site back up and running within minutes) – images from blocked sites may still be attempted to be loaded, generating blocked requests against the filter.
The bottom line is that it is really hard to tell EXACTLY what’s going on, as there are so many different technical possibilities, but the number will NOT be 84,000.
Stephen Conroy will of course latch onto it to demonstrate how “successful” this filter has been.
Ultimately, even if the number is as high as 84,000, it is probably only a drop in the ocean of total number of requests for this material – given the filter is trivial to bypass.
The knuckle-dragging perverts who want to access this deplorable material are doing exactly that – completely bypassing it.
The 84,000 are probably from people who have inadvertently clicked on something, or more likely, been browser jacked.
A filter does nothing to stop the people who want to access this material from accessing it, and it certainly does not stop children from being abused in its production. Most of this material is not even distributed via websites, and therefore have nothing to do with the filter anyway.
So why is the government proposing to spend millions of dollars a year implementing it on a national level? The answer is that most people don’t understand the technical realities, and they are just playing popular politics.
Child porn and the websites and other internet services that distribute it are disgusting, but what is even more disgusting is that we’re going to spend a whole bunch of money on it, it won’t achieve a thing, and the government would have you believe that they’ve done something about it.
That’s the most disgusting part of it all.
Had a bit of a chuckle this evening at this response from Foursquare, while checking into the local McDonald’s for the birthday party of a school friend of our daughter Hannah.
If this was my SECOND time checking into this location, why is it the first McDonald’s I’ve checked into, and the first fast food restaurant I’ve checked into?
Lulz – but I’ll take the nine points!