clachere.b

Week 7:

For week 7's lecture we had Stephen Stockwell as a lecturer and he talked about politics and the internet.

Cyberpolitics: the politics that exist on the internet. This includes discussions of politics or political activties that occur on or between bloggers, gamers, etc.

E-Domocracy: is the intervention and contribution of the internet on "real world" politics that exists off the internet. Political campaiging to minster's use of twitter and youtube (or other media genres) all coexisst under the umberella of e-domocracy as it is the governement's use of the internet.

Stephen spoke about the media and the "public sphere" and also about free speech and censorship.

ISPs give clean feed filter a technical green-light
David Ramli 24 July, 2009 15:51:00

The majority of Internet filter trial participants report no slowdowns or accidental blockings despite ISP filtering.
More than half of the Internet service providers (ISPs) taking part in the Federal Government’s ISP filtering trial have reported minimal speed disruptions or technology problems.
Of the nine participating ISPs, iPrimus, Netforce, Webshield, Nelson Bay Online and OMNIconnect told ARN they had seen no slowdowns in Internet speeds or problems with the filtering solutions in place.
Of the remaining four ISPs, Tech2U and Highway1 were unable to respond by time of publication while Unwired and Optus refused to comment.
iPrimus Australia CEO, Ravi Bhatia, said his company’s ISP filtering trial, which must be opted into by its customers, had “probably involved a few thousand users”.
“The users have not experienced any problems, they haven’t experienced any service degradation so it’s been a pretty good experience,” he said.
The results would be finalised by next week, Bhatia said.
Webshield managing director, Anthony Pillion, said his entire customer base of a few thousand end-users experienced no slow-down in Internet speeds whatsoever.
“From a technical perspective we’re more than confident that if the government decided to roll out a mandatory Internet filter based on or around an Australian Communications and Media Authority [ACMA] blacklist or subset thereof, then it can be done without any impact whatsoever to the speed of the Internet,” he said.
Although OMNIconnect’s managing director, Peter Hutton, received no complaints about slowed speeds or technical problems after the filtering hardware was in place, he said the blacklist provided by ACMA had banned legitimate websites and caused customer dissatisfaction.
“Some of the customers complained because the block list really hadn’t been moderated well enough,” OMNIconnect chief technician, Graeme Lee, said. “One in particular was a site called Redtube.com. The whole site had been blocked and it was just a standard pornography site,” Hutton said.
“Relating to that particular site we did have complaints that people couldn’t get through to it. They opted out of the trial straight away. It was a very embarrassing experience.”
ACMA refused to confirm or deny the website's legality or if it was currently on the blacklist and advised users to read its guidelines for rating internet content.
One common issue with most of the ISPs was the lack of voluntary participants, especially with companies using an opt-in system.
Managing director of Nelson Bay Online, Patrick Sayer, said only 1 per cent of his entire customer base decided to opt-into the system, resulting in just 15 users.
When asked if he believed the trials provided a fair representative study, Hutton’s answer was an unequivocal “no”.
“That’s why we’ve asked for an extension to continue the trial till the end of this month and I understand a number of other ISPs have done the same thing,” he said.
The results come on the back of earlier comments from the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy that the current trial’s success or failure would help form much of the government’s opinions on mandatory nation-wide ISP filtering.
“We'll be guided by that trial. We've always said, consistently, we'll be guided by the trial,” the Minister said on the ABC’s Q&A program.

From my understading, Kevin Rudd wants to turn Australia's internet into communist China. This is pretty much impossible because it takes away the rights we have as Australian citizens. We have the right to free speech and the internet is medium of communication and by blocking and censoring the internet is taking away a form of expression. The filters will slow down the already slow connection we have in Australia. On top of this, internet savy people (mostly the reason why the clean feed will be put into place) will be creating proxy servers to get around the censorship and leaving the rest of us to suffer with the concequences of their internet behaviour. Why should the general Australian public suffer while it is a small minority group that has encouraged this type of censorship.

In the way of censorship, this can dictate what we can access and view on the internet. Someone might decide that youtube is offencive and block the site; then what happens to those who use the site to promote their videos gain access to the public domain?

Yes can see why the clean feed sounds like a good idea. To prevent sex acts on the internet and terrorism and what not, but what happens to the "Australia is a free country! We are democratic not communist",this just happens to fly out the window. Australian internet, say hello to China.

Week 10's lecture was about gaming. How exciting. I hate games with a passion. They bore me and I seriously do not have any inclination to play them. From a personal view I think they are a complete waste of time and a waste of important brain cells which could be doing way more important things, like possible making friends or doings something to benefit the real world, not a computerised relatity.

Josh was talking about how there are different mediums and generes of games. I have herd from my gaming nerd brother about first person shooter and other genres of games that he plays, for example counter strike and world of war craft (compeletly pointless if you ask me). Console games are not as bad, although they are highly addicitve. Console games carry less of a social stigma because games like gutiar hero are actually semi-cool.

No matter what it comes to a point where gaming is taken overboard and a prime example of this is my brother. He is year 12 and spends every waking hour (other than the time he is at school) on the computer playing online games. He has no job and spends no joke possible about 30 hours over the weekend on the games. He sits in his bedroom on the computer all day everyday and only comes out for necessity then (I am not joking) runs back to the computer. I has come to the point where I think his interaction with real people is affected. He doesn't think about anything else except for the games he plays and does not hang out with his friends other then when he sees them at school. It's really sad because he constantly upgrades his computer and has made our parents fork out $300+ for a wireless gaming internet modem and also 80 bucks a month for faster internet connection so it doesn't "lag" his computer.

Personally I think games have ruined the lives and future prospects of many people.
SAY NO TO GAMING.

Week 9

This weeks task is to post artworks that we have created. During my five years at high school I actually studied art for all those years (although I don't think I was very good). Here is a few examples of what have produced.

The first is a life drawing piece which I managed to draw in 10 minutes. It was weird because the lady was naked.... and a hippy and maybe she was French, I need say no more. I think this was in 2007.

The next is an extension of this class. I used the outline and collaged either the inner or outter with small images.

This piece is a gaint box and you were supposed to stand inside. The topic was senses and the walls were reflective. I made this after seeing an artwork by Yayoi Kusama at GoMA, which uses the concept of infinity by the use of reflections through mirrors. (2007)

The last one I would like to share was something I made last year in year 12. It is made out of stockings painted with fluro paint to glow under UV lights. It took me almost three hours to attach about 30 stockings to the roof of the art gallery at school.

LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVES

The Federal member for Gold Coast is Ronald Boswell.

THE LAST TIME MY MEMBER SPOKE IN PARLIAMENT

Today Barack Obama is on the David Letterman show! David Letterman didn't sleep with all his co-workers... wait or maybe he did?

"I was actually black before the election" - Barack Obama

CONTACT YOUR LOCAL MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT

In ways of contacting Alex Douglas I found his website and sent him an email stating the following about his speech:

Dear Mr Douglas,

As a student at Griffith University and also a resident of your electorate I would like to say I do agree with your support your speech of the Personal Property Securities (Commonwealth Power) Bill. I believe you adressed the issues of differing state legistations and I do agree with a blanket bill that clearly states the legistation equalling this out between the states.

Kind Regards,

Clachere Beard

I also found by perusing his site that he also has a twitter and facebook account.

"THE CLEAN FEED"

Once typing "clean feed australia" into google the top sites seem to be anti clean feed.

So is the clean feed?

The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access.

Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is determined to force this filter into your home.

On this site I also found the blog for the anti clean feed, so enjoy!