I’ve long been a fan of the Melbourne Coffee Review blog but it’s always hard to remember what’s good where when you’re away from a ‘net connection! So I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they’re going to be releasing “Melbourne Coffee Review :The Guide 2010” in the (hopefully) near future! You can even apparently pre-order it on another site.
Category Archives: Australia
Anti-immigrant Facebook group
The ABC is reporting the depressing, but not entirely unsurprising, fact that 65,000 people have joined an anti-immigration Facebook group.
I’d like to make a suggestion to all that groups members – given that you want immigrants to leave Australia perhaps you would do the rest of us the honour of going first given that your ancestors arrived here with the last 1% of the inhabited time of this continent ?
Thank you for your understanding..
Mandatory Detetion Powers for Australian Government over H1N1 Outbreak
An interesting titbit from the ABC:
The Federal Government has enacted powers to allow for mandatory detention of people in Australia suspected of having swine flu, if the situation was to worsen.
Whilst these are scary powers I suspect it will be necessary in the case of the current outbreak becoming a lethal pandemic, given many peoples inability to to complete a course of drugs for an illness, and thus vastly increasing its risk of becoming resistant. It’s just evolution in action..
Microsoft Guilty of Patent Infringement (again)
A patent infringement battle that’s been going on in the US for 6 years between Uniloc and Microsoft over an Australian invention that lies behind the product activation used in Windows and MS Office, etc has been resolved – and Microsoft has lost to the tune of a cool US$388 million – that’s over half a billion Australian dollars…
On Wednesday, the jury found Microsoft wilfully infringed the patent.
Wilful infringement means that Microsoft knew about it and didn’t care, rather than just not knowing it had been patented. Microsoft tried to argue that the patent was invalid, but the jury didn’t buy that argument. All rather ironic after the Tom-Tom issue (they settled as Microsoft were about to get their imports to the US blocked prior to any judgement on whether or not it was a real issue)..
There’s an interview with the CEO of Uniloc, Brad Gibson, about the verdict on the ABC website.
Connex Code Broken!
After my experiences this morning I think I can confidently say I’ve broken Connex’s secret code – see what they really mean when their website says:
All services are running normally.
is this:
- No overhead power working for trains
- No trackside power for the signalling system
- Trains replaced by buses
- Not enough qualified running staff at the station where the buses terminate to drive the train that’s waiting to take people to the city
Silly me, there was I thinking it meant that I could get into work in just one hour, rather than two..
Earth Hour
Well apparently yesterday was Earth Hour, but sadly I didn’t find out until today, hey ho! 🙁
iiNet pulls out of Australian censorship pilot
I know iiNet always said they were only going to participate to show that this couldn’t work, but now they’ve decided it’s not even worth doing that given recent developments..
“It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the Government simply describes as ‘unwanted material’ without an explanation of what that includes.” “Everyone is repulsed by, and opposed to, child pornography but this trial and policy is not the solution or even about that.”
Hooray..
Random thought
Whilst talking to a friend of mine who’s now in the UK working for BetFair, who have just had a surprise..
I wonder if they fine people who talk to people who work for companies on the ACMA blacklist ?
I hope not.. 😉
This is completely nuts
Excuse me – but can someone unbreak Australia ? (…and no, that’s not an invitation to the Liberal/National party, you introduced this in the first place and would just screw it up even more).
On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media Authority added Wikileaks to their blacklist, and threatened anyone linking to the site with $AU11,000-a-day fines. The site will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme is implemented as planned.
You’ve got to wonder what sort of blacklist has the website of a Queensland dentist on it – I know people are afraid of dentists but this is taking it a bit far..
Apparently you can get fined $11,000 a day for linking to a page that you’re not allowed to know is banned, it makes the EU’s secret ban on tennis racquets (ok, blunt instruments) on planes seem almost tame..
For useful insights see Brendan Scott’s blog on the topic, and this one on the leaking…
Another Melbourne Earthquake (Updated)
I missed this one (unlike the last one), but according to Geoscience Australia there was a magnitude 4.6 quake, again around Korumburra (USGS info here).
There’s an ABC news story just been created about it, and also a Geoscience Australia seismograph for it (cached locally as the version on the server disappears after 90 days).
Ironically this occurred during a talk at a conference in the Melbourne Docklands (V21) about the use of new media during the last earthquake.. 😉