Nobody doubts the amazing success of MasterChef Australia for Network Ten. A lot of people – myself NOT included – were clearly very interested in the show.
Not content with the amazing ratings, we got hit with Celebrity MasterChef Australia – *yawn* – and Junior MasterChef Australia is expected to air in 2010, along with a new series of the main program.
Talk about flogging a horse until it is dead. Then I saw this:
Why not milk some more money out of it with this? The sad thing is, people will almost certainly buy it. Time to give it a rest?
Although pretty corny (really), here’s another classic snippet I’ve recovered out of my old video collection.
On the Wednesday evening after the 1993 AFL Premiership win, here is captain Mark Thompson becoming the “Mayor of Essendon” for the day.
Also included is some great footage of the boys lining up for the official team portrait. Great stuff.
I run my own mail server, behind my own router and firewall in my own home. My filters work perfectly, and I get no spam. Some of the stuff my filters catch is hilarious. For example:
Dear user of the michaelwyres.com mailing service!We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (xxxxxx@michaelwyres.com) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link [removed] Best regards, michaelwyres.com Technical Support.
Remember of course that I process my own email. I don’t seem to remember doing a “security upgrade”. I also don’t have my own “Technical Support” department.
I don’t live in Poland – the removed link pointed to a .pl domain name – but I must pay more attention to my mailbox settings, in case I do any more security upgrades while I am sleep walking!
I’m still laughing.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been digging through my old video collection, and found this little gem. I used to snap up the Seven Nightly News sports reports from Wednesday through Sunday of each year’s Bathurst week for posterity – knowing that there’s always little bits of footage and information you don’t get to see during the live broadcasts over the weekend.
Rare stuff in this video includes the in-car footage from a smoking Allan Moffat Falcon (driven by Charlie O’Brien), with no footage from this car used during the race at all, and Larry Perkins blowing an engine and spinning in his own oil at The Chase on Thursday – this the only place I ever saw this particular footage. The same is true of the #T23 car driven by Joachim Winklehock – the spare fifth car from the Frank Gardner Benson and Hedges/Diet Coca-Cola stable. This car is seen spinning exiting The Dipper, and appears in the standard BMW Motorsport livery, rather than either of the race liveries used by the team at the time.
Hard to comprehend that this was over 16 years ago now – just doesn’t seem that long!
With the move of Triple 8 to Holden for 2010, the new V8 season is getting warmed up, and the internet forums are alive with chatter and predictions.
Bring it on!
Telstra has long argued that the structural separation of the wholesale and retail arms of their business was not in their best interest. That it would represent an unreasonable burden upon itself and its shareholders.
Telstra have applied their virtual monopoly over the copper network in Australia since the day copper was first laid in this country. If anyone wants access to it – and therefore access into every home and business in the country – Telstra can pretty much charge what it wants. There is no other option for inbound/outbound services supplied by copper line, and everyone has to play the Telstra game. Having worked for a couple of different ISPs, I know exactly how their price-gouging mechanisms work in regards to access into their copper network.
At first glance however, exactly why they have been vehemently against the separation of their retail and wholesale businesses is still a strange question. Even if the wholesale arm was separate, it would still be the only owner of the network, and they could continue to use the charges they enforce on other ISPs to subsidise their wholly owned Bigpond concern – who they, strangely enough, charge a substantially smaller amount for access to the core copper network.
The bottom line is that what they are really worried about is the forthcoming fibre-to-the-home (FttH) network proposed under the National Broadband Network (NBN). Their copper will become obsolete as people move from the antiquated copper systems, to the faster and more reliable optical fibre systems. More importantly, Telstra won’t own it, so they can’t gouge any more – access to the local loop will finally become a level-playing field for all service providers, internet or otherwise.
Which makes a recent reversal of Telstra’s position interesting:
“There is now an agreement on a preferred model… that will see a progressive transition from Telstra’s copper access network to a fibre to premise National Broadband Network – and agreement that there needs to be an acceptable solution to the use of ducts and backhaul infrastructure that will deliver structural separation.”
Oh really? Seems a lot can happen in two months! At least they are finally seeing the bigger picture. Now, if we can only get rid of this mandatory filtering plan…
Senator Conroy, speaking on the Sky News program “Sunday Business”, is under the illusion that because Telstra, Optus, and Primus hold 80% of the internet customers in Australia, and that they support his ridiculous internet filter, that 80% of Australian people support it?
Huh? Did Telstra, Optus, and Primus ask every single one of their subscribers?
Today’s Sky News Australia poll must have surveyed a different 80% of the Australian population. Or actually, 82%. Those 82% have clearly voted against his plan.
Who are you trying to convince Mr Conroy – us? Or yourself?
The ongoing legal battle between iiNet and AFACT over the enforcement of AFACT’s copyright infringement notices is awaiting for verdict to be delivered in January. However, I have stumbled across an interesting comment in regards to this by the poster “netizen” in the comments of the following article:
I don’t hold a passport I have no international obligations to honour. I am concerned that my communications with others are going to find their way into the public domain. I have no trusted relationship with AFACT as it does not honour foundation Australian principles of equity or transparency.
I purchase my movies, and they are offered for sale, not license by proprietors’. The receipts clearly define the relationship. If I choose the convert and use the content in a more practical method it is a private matter, the position I have to allow some other person or entity to know anything beyond the scope of my lawful purchase is intrusive and unlawful.
If when I am out, I choose to communicate with a file server using a protocol I have deemed fit for purpose, so that I can use my lawfully purchased content it should not be subjected to surveillance or control. In fact AFACT must be constrained from having monitoring relationship as I have not established a relationship with their association, nor would I. So the attempt to enforce this relationship on any Australian is unconstitutional and probably unlawful.
My ISP is required respect my right to choose who I enter into a relationship with. I expect iiNET to respect that the packet’s travelling are indeed telecommunication, and no corporation or association has the right to impede or inhibit my right to communicate freely with others. I also argue that my choice to store content lawfully purchased in any format I choose. I also argue that my operating system already insures that only one copy of the file is accessible at anytime, whilst some fragments have higher time to live this is not copyright infringement.
While I do not necessarily agree with the poster’s assertion that he/she has no international obligations – it is an interesting side point that if you used a protocol such as BitTorrent (or any other) to make your own files remotely available to yourself, would not an organisation like AFACT need to demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that the files were made available with the INTENT of public consumption? If I make my own personal software library available on the internet for my own access when I am away from home, and someone stumbles upon their existence, and makes use of that access – how would AFACT (or anyone) prove that I intended to make those files available to anyone other than myself?
If I was stupid enough not to password secure that access – that does not prove intent. In any way. Interesting.
Well, it looks like the Krudd Government is set to try and introduce their ridiculous, anti-democratic net “filtering” plan. Despite public outrage. Despite reports that it doesn’t work, and cannot work. Despite reports that it will be completely ineffective in stopping people from getting to the “banned” sites anyway. Despite reports that it will slow down “legitimate” internet access.
The proponents of this legislative change will say something like – “well, they went to the election with this policy, and you still voted for it!” – but they forget that the 2007 election was fought primarily on the issue of workplace relations, that the result of the election hinged on that debate, and not on the debate over this “mandatory” solution to appease the Australian Christian Lobby.
The resources that will go towards setting this up would be far better placed into the battle to have this rubbish taken down, rather than ruin the internet experience for the 99.9999999% of people who are not interested in the banned material anyway!
This is not democracy Rudd and Conroy. You actively placed criticism at the feet of the Chinese Government for their censorship activities before the Beijing Olympics, when all the while, you were devising your devious scheme to apply the same technology to the internet in Australia.
Shame.
I get a lot of pleasure when looking at my email inbox, as through the implementation of my own email filtering solution – (Project Odyssey) – I never actually receive any spam at all. Every single last piece of spam is neatly quarantined for me to check out.
I got a real laugh out of one I found trapped this morning entitled – “Your VISA card 4XXX XXXX XXXX XXXX: possible fraudulent transaction”. Now, we’ve all seen how when referring to your credit card number online, the REPUTABLE agencies block out everything except the last three or four digits, so you can see that you are using the correct credit card information they have recorded for you.
The giggle coming from this spam message is that they show the first digit – 4 – and blank out the rest. Hello! All VISA cards start with 4! So, that’s a match for every VISA card in existence – so the spammers are once again preying on the less astute to say – “holy shit, that’s right, that’s how my card number starts!”.
What is less funny is that far too many people will fall for it, which is why a new way of attacking the spam problem needs to be found and agreed upon in the internet community as a whole, to remove the threat of online credit card fraud, and other privacy invasions. There are ways to do it, but only with a 100% buy-in into attacking it. Every ISP and domain registrar needs to be in on it. It can be done.
