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
Politics Christian soldiers 30 May 2009 When George Bush Shrubbery announced the invasion of Iraq, he called it a “crusade”, to the chagrin and horror of Muslims inside the US and out. The White House quickly backed down, but it now looks very like that is exactly how the US military has been pursuing the war…. Read More
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Punish the obsessive 5 Aug 20094 Oct 2017 John Wesley wrote, commenting on Acts 5:28: “They make laws and interdicts at their pleasure, which those who obey God cannot but break; and then take occasion thereby to censure and punish the innocent, as guilty.” It matters not that he was talking about the Sanhedrin; any authority will do… Read More
Politics People or classes? 10 Oct 2007 It seems that almost nobody can mention Jews without making an inadvertent or deliberate ass of themselves. Most recently, Richard Dawkins put his foot in it in this Guardian article. He said: When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less… 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.