Never piss off the sysadmin 27 Oct 200818 Sep 2017 Users, or Lusers as they are known, learn early not to piss off the sysadmin, who is God. Federal minister Stephen Conroy’s ham-fisted attempt to gag critics of his stupid paternalistic and ultimately failure-ridden net filter scheme has managed to piss off the whole lot of them. This could be fun. Anyone got the popcorn? I have the beer… This, by the way, puts Australia in the company of such civil liberties havens as China, North Korea, and Burma. Yay us. Censorship Internet filtering Politics Technology
Administrative More roundup 15 Sep 2008 Mohan Matthen, a philosopher of biology, has a very nice takedown of Thomas Nagel’s qualified support for teaching creationism on his blog. Hat tip Leiter. Richard Losick has an excellent piece on the problems of using cultured lab strains when studying microbes, at Small Things Considered. A new blog on… Read More
Politics Haneef again 31 Jul 2007 Sorry to bother you all with internal Australian politics, but this has to be discussed. Now the minister for immigration is saying that the Australian Federal Police intercepted a chat room conversation in which Haneef was told to leave Australia by (they say) his cousins before his knowledge of the… Read More
Politics Obama still making the right secular noises 19 Jun 2009 From today’s “prayer breakfast” press release: We can begin by giving thanks for the legacy that allows us to come together. For it was the genius of America’s Founders to protect the freedom of all religion, and those who practice no religion at all. So as we join in prayer,… Read More
Lovely. I know some people from SAGE-AU and I hope they put up a hell of a fight. In addition to keeping everything running, sysadmins have a professional and ethical responsibility to ensure that technology is used in a responsible manner. That a member of a government would try to stifle a knowledgable professional from commenting on proposed policy implies that the policy is all about paternalistic authoritarian censorship and government overreach rather than serving Australia’s internet users. I give SAGE-AU credit for being able to get its name and views publicized and for taking a principled stance against what appears to be another bluenosed censor that can bear neither scrutiny nor criticism.
Hmm. “Mark Newton” is this admin’s name. That’s an anagram of “Network Man”. I wonder if this Mr Newton actually exists, or is a made up fiction by a group of admins who wish to vent complaints about being pressured to implement the filter, but not be named publicly?
Hmm. “Mark Newton” is this admin’s name. That’s an anagram of “Network Man”. I wonder if this Mr Newton actually exists, or is a made up fiction by a group of admins who wish to vent complaints about being pressured to implement the filter, but not be named publicly?
Yes, anagram or not, I actually exist. The nature of my name was discovered back in the early ’90s when a FidoNet guy called Andrew Clayton ran my name through an anagram generator that had won one of the International Obfuscated C Code Contests. I nearly fell off my chair laughing.