Category Archives: Australia

Australia

ENOKOGAN – Kogan Agora is dead (for now)

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Oh well, so much for the dream, this was on the Kogan blog this afternoon:

I’m disappointed to have to tell you that the Kogan Agora has to be delayed indefinitely. This delay comes due to potential future interoperability issues.

Sounds like this was partly due to wanting to keep the device compatible with future Android versions needing better screens:

One of the potential issues is the screen size and resolution. It seems developers will be creating applications that are a higher resolution than the Agora is currently capable of handling. […] In order to fully appreciate the feature-rich applications Android developers will be creating in coming months and years, the Agora must be redesigned.

I hope that whatever they come up with still has a real keyboard..

Redacted NSA Cold War History Released

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Via Bruce Schneier, a redacted version of the NSA’s “American Cryptology during the Cold War, (1945-1989)“ has been released thank to a request from the George Washington Universities National Security Archive project.

It includes a rather interesting section (book 1, pages 18 and 19) on how, in 1947, the UK foreign intelligence agency, SIS, decrypted some KGB messages from Canberra that turned out to include classified UK intelligence military estimates. This caused the US to break off crypto intelligence sharing with Australia putting the British in an awkward situation; as Clement Attlee put it:

The intermingling of American and British knowledge in all these fields is so great that to be certain of of denying American classified information to the Australians, we should have to deny them the greater part of our own reports. We should thus be placed in a disagreeable dilemma of having to choose between cutting of relations with the United States in defence questions or cutting off relations with Australia.

It took 5 years, the establishment of ASIO and a change in government from Chifley to Menzies before the US would reestablish full resumption of cryptologic exchanges with Australia and the author of the history concludes that this has a very bad effect on early American intelligence efforts against China.

The cause of the original leak to the KGB ? Two “leftists” in the Australian diplomatic service…

Australian Android Phone

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Kogan, an Australian company who usually specialise in LCD’s, are making a mobile handset (the Agora) for Google Android (which uses the Linux kernel) with 3G, quad band GSM, GPS, wifi, Bluetooth, etc… It’s due to start shipping at the end of January and I’ve just pre-ordered mine to hopefully provide a more functional open source phone and let me hack more with my OpenMoko phone without having to worry about not having a working phone.

Kogan Agora Pro mobile phone

How Depressing

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So the Labor Party has decided to set a measly 5% reduction in emissions by 2020. How pathetic. They say that they will consider going to 15% if everyone else cuts their emissions but given that we are one of the worst emitters per head of population that’s just not good enough.

What with this on top of their crazy Great Firewall of Australia internet censorship scheme I don’t think I’ll be able to vote for these people at the next election (and no, I’m not going to vote for the even worse opposition coalition).

Bah humbug..

Go Anne!

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Here’s some good news, our good friend Anne McDonald has won the Personal Achievement Award in the 2008 Australian National Disability Awards! She was at the awards ceremony at the Federal Parliament in Canberra on the International Day of People with Disability to hear who’d won. The press release says:

Anne was born with cerebral palsy and at age of three was admitted to the St Nicholas Hospital state institution, unable to walk, talk or feed herself. Eventually Anne learnt to communicate by pointing to letters on an alphabet board and at 18 years old went to court to win her freedom from St Nicholas. She has since written a bestselling book, graduated from university with a Humanities degree and dedicated her life to advocating for the rights of people who can not talk.

But they don’t mention bungee jumping, Mona Lisa or a wicked sense of humour.. Well done Anne! 🙂

Cartoon of Anne McDonald as Mona Lisa from her website.

First Australians

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Just wrote an email to an old friend in the UK and this is what I wrote about the SBS docco “First Australians” that has just finished. If you’ve not watched it already please go and watch it on the SBS website or pick up the DVD when it hits the SBS shop in December.

There’s been a really good series on TV here called “First Australians“, it gives the indigenous point of view of their history since the British landed and it’s been pretty heavy stuff. Whilst I knew a bit about the colonisation, killings, poisonings, repression, racism and the Stolen Generation the sheer scale of what was done is still shocking. Donna has been telling me that in school they were never taught at all about the sort of things that happened, just really skipped over the whole issue.

This is really the first time it’s been so publicly presented and I think it’s shocked a lot of people about what has been done by non-indigenous Australia. To their credit SBS (which is sort of like Channel 4 back there) has put it up on the ‘net and allows people to comment on it and it’s interesting, inspiring and depressing to see the various reactions it has had from disbelief and sadness through to denial, revisionism and anger.

I’ve ended up with tears in my eyes after most shows, it’s really quite affected me as I have to acknowledge that I come from the country that was responsible for this. There are stories of resilience, strength, solidarity, courage and dignity in it and also some rare examples of colonists who have seen indigenous people as people and who have stood besides them in mutual respect.

Hmm, that’s all a bit heavy, sorry! That’s because we’ve just watched the final episode about Mabo vs Queensland, the case that finally extinguished the doctrine of Terra Nullis – the myth that Australia was unpopulated before the English arrived because the indigenous people didn’t count and laid the way for indigenous land rights claims. That was only in 1992 when we were both in Aberystwyth! It’s crazy, they were only allowed to vote in federal elections in 1962 and were only really counted as citizens in 1967 after a referendum to change the constitution.. 🙁

Here is what my wife, Donna, wrote about this series.

Ka-ching!

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Now this is a monopoly lock in at work..

MICROSOFT will rip an estimated $70 million out of the aged care sector’s IT budget over the next 18 months as it forces users to pay full commercial rates for previously discounted software. Aged care providers are shocked by Microsoft’s decision to revoke their not-for-profit status, which gave them access to its products at a heavily discounted rate. As a result, Microsoft’s Office, Sharepoint and SQL server products are firmly entrenched in the sector’s IT infrastructure.

D’oh!