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 You can’t have proper human relationships unless you are a Christian 4 Apr 201018 Sep 2017 … according to Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney, who seems to think that prior to Jesus nobody ever had a decent human relationship. A secular society is right out, brother. The idea that secularism suggests that people might form relationships without the scaffolding of the church seems to worry him… Read More
Politics Affirmative Atheism 21 Mar 2010 There is a lot of noise made about “New” Atheists, “militant” atheists, “fundamentalist” atheists and “angry” atheists. All of these are, in my agnostic opinion, prejudicial and false. Atheism as being proposed int he media is neither new, nor militant, definitely not fundamentalist and having just had a lovely time… 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.