James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

Well the election campaign is starting to heat up, you can tell, because the opposition is actually starting to release policies instead of just doing the usual "We oppose it cos we can!".

You can also tell the election campaign is starting to get real when the parties start to get into the "I'm tougher than the other guy is" competitions.

This started earlier this year when the Government in it's poll driven wisdom decided to make Asylum seekers a real issue at the election by "suspending" the processing of Asylum seekers from either Afghanistan or Sri Lanka, purportedly based on "information received" that apparently led them to believe that everything was fine now and that the ponies and unicorns were looking after everyone. 

Of course the Opposition had to respond, they couldn't let the Government own their ground like that, so today Tony Abbott announced that, indeed, he could be a tougher person than Rudd. 

To summarise:

• Pacific solution to return
• Will turn the boats back (cos it's better if they drown in Indonesian waters?)
• The return of Temporary Protection Visas
• Refugees on TPV's will need to work for their support payments (slightly less than AusStudy). This is a nice double "get tough" touch for Abbott. Tough on refugees and tough on dole bludgers at the same time.

So basically we're going to return to the days where people were held in detention camps, run by the lowest bidder, on pacific islands you could spit across, until their claims are assessed and they are proven to be genuine. Once that happens of course they're going to be treated as second class people under the TPV's.

So now that the Opposition has upped the ante, will the Government wake up or will they continue the game of "Liberal Light"?

Okay here's a list of phrases that have been rolled out in the election campaign (whatever anyone else tells you, we're in election mode federally) so far that I think should be banned:

"In the nations interest"

This is a catchall phrase that seems to get tacked onto anything and everything lately. I assume the purpose is to make what ever it is referring to seem to be critical to the survival of the nation, be it gold batts in the ceiling, private health insurance or shamelessly playing the "bloody refo's" card. Soon I expect to see canteen reform being pushed through the local P and C "in the nations interest".

"Working families"

Sooo, the government is apparently only concerned with working families. So if you're single, unemployed, retired or disabled, sorry folks your bum out of luck. Next time you hear a politician use this phrase within ear shot, ask them why they don't care about the rest of the country.

"We'll release the policy closer to the election"

Okay I know enough about politics to know that this phrase will never go away. Party politics and the media has ensured that policy development isn't about long term benefits to the nation, but rather what's going to get you elected or re-elected. So the focus isn't on true policy debate, but rather carefully stage managed release cycles that minimise the amount of time a policy is in the public space, able to be deconstructed and examined. We get policy by sound bite.

"We want a mature debate"

Google has just announced that as of right now, they have ceased providing a specially filtered search service for the Chinese mainland, rather they are redirecting each request for google.cn to google.com.hk, where the requirement for filtering doesn't exist (AFAIK).

This is a big step for Google and it's going to have repercussions for other nations that seek to censor their internet feeds, such as Australia.

Think about it. If Google is ready to ditch a 35% share of the search market in China over filtering, the chance that they are going to meekly follow government directives in other, smaller markets is quite small, especially if all they need to do is redirect users to other search facilities in nations with more open internet regimes.

This should give Conroy and Co pause for thought. They've already admitted that their plan isn't actually going to be useful by any meaningful measure (it won't reduce the distribution of child pornography, it is trivially circumventable and there is massive public disquiet over the concept of a hidden list of sites and urls). Having Google (the company that everyone goes to for search) turn around and say "ya boo sucks to you" is just going to leave a whole heap more egg on the face.

You may not be a fan of Google, and they certainly didn't win any friends when they announced that they were going to censor the feed into china, this move is certainly a step in the right direction back towards the "Don't be evil" ideal that is often attributed to them.

[UPDATE]

The government has released the submissions into its consultation on "measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material".

Last night I finished watching a series called "From the earth to the moon". I think it was the first of Tom Hanks' forays into docu-drama (coming after the movie Apollo 13).

As you might guess from the title the series follows the events leading up to the first landing on the moon and afterwards to the final Apollo mission in 1972. As a series it is an excellent examination of the people involved in the American Space effort, from Astronauts to their wives, to the contractors and everyone else involved.

What it did for me was to bring home how far short we have fallen from the promise offered by the Apollo missions themselves. If the momentum had been maintained, Apollo could have been the stepping stone to the next wave of human exploration. By now we wouldn't be marvelling at the staying power of a couple of Rovers on Mars, but instead we'd be marvelling at the fact that the human species had set foot on another planet, not just our celestial partner, but a whole other world.

Today we are told that it's better to send probes and rovers to other worlds. Less of a risk, cheaper and so on. Feh I say. The USSR sent a probe to the moon, then the US sent two men to the moon, which is more inspiring? Which is more likely to stir the blood?

So yes, "From the earth to the moon" is an inspiring series, it details what can be done when there is the will to move forward and achieve something great. However it's also depressing to see where the evaporation of that will has left us.

Okay, Freeview (the group that represents all of the major Free to Air Networks, including commercial and government owned) has announced that it's going to be launching a new Electronic Programme Guide service in June, complete with new hardware and something they are calling an Online Catchup Service.

Apart from the Online Catchup Service (which I will be talking about shortly) the biggest selling point that Freeview seems to be pushing for this new service is the ability to record based not only on time blocks, but by genre and programme as well.

This is what 250 million dollars buys you these days?

From the article and the reading around that I've done, it appears that the Free To Air Television industry (somewhat bizzarley aided by the ABC, an organisation that has proven time and again that it knows where the future lies) has decided that the best way to tackle the threat of extinction is to re-arrange the deck chairs on the titanic. People have had the ability to record programmes based on genre and programme titles, episode titles and so on for a few years now. If they haven't been building their own PVR's via projects like MythTV (my personal favourite), they've been using off the shelf solutions such as TiVO. It's not new people, it's old and people have been doing it for a long time now.

Hell I was there when digital came to a certain regional television network, I helped setup their first EPG generator and I can tell you that the Standard of the day, derived from the European DVB-T EPG stuff required genre information to be sent out.

Today while out with the family, we decided to purchase a treat for the kids. So we headed for the nearby donut place to purchase the required sickeningly sweet treat.

Turns out they didn't have enough of the particular sweet my son wanted, so he picked what looked like an iced donut with chocolate flakes on it. Except it wasn't called a donut, rather it was called a Yeast Ring.

This naturally caught my eye as being a somewhat risky name to give a ring of dough, so after the kids had consumed their various sweets, I thought I would get a photo of the Yeasty Rings to follow up the tweet I had already made.

Not thinking much of it, I went up to the counter and used my camera to take a couple of what turned out to be uselessly blurred photos. Gave it up as a lost effort and then went off to complete the rest of the tasks we had at the time.

45 minutes later as we exited the shopping centre a security guard approached me and asked me if I had taken any photos around the donut place earlier on. Specifically he asked if I had taken photos of a young girl  who had apparently been standing close to the Yeast Rings display. Apparently the girls mother had registered a complaint, accusing me of taking photos of her girl. The guard didn't mention why this would be a problem, but the obvious implication is that I was taking photos for nefarious purposes.

It took me but a minute to explain to the guard that no, I hadn't taken photos of the girl, I hadn't even seen the girl standing there, focused as I was, on the Yeast Rings. The guard explained that they had to follow up the complaint both to calm the apparently distressed mother and for reasons of terrorism (my jaw dropped I'm sure at this one). However while I was finishing up with the guard, a police car pulled up in a nearby spot, and I was informed by the guard that I would need to talk to the officer.

Right.

Hey here's an idea to combat the rash of idiotic facebook page "hacks" (leaving your facebook page open to all is not a hack by the way). Let's set up an Online Content Ombudsman, who shall have the power to... umm... complain to overseas companies.

Um.

Originally suggested by South Australian independent Senator Nick Xenaphon, it's been picked up by the Government to show how "pro-active" they are when it comes to dealing "Teh Evil Interwebs".

Considering that companies like Facebook and MySpace have absolutely zero Australian presence, I don't see how any Ombudsman can have any affect on their operations, unless, and this is a very scary, scary thought. The Ombudsman has the power to attach web sites to the Filter. Anything less than threatening to ban the site within the country is going to have all the persuasive power of a damp tissue.

I would love to be able to sit down with Kevin Rudd and Senator Nick, away from the cameras and explain to them how the internet works. If not me, then please can someone else do it?

 We've both played Enemies of the State.

Seriously, according to this article the IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance) has requested that the US Trade Representative place countries that mandate, or (and here's the kicker) even suggest the use of Open Source software be placed on a special list of countries that have lax intellectual property regimes (read Pirate Havens).

Note that this is not just a case of sneaking in the Open Source thing amongst a number of other reasons, the IIPA is explicitly claiming that even thinking about using Open Source software in Government is tantamount to destroying the global software industry, letting the Goths into Rome and scheduling a 7 day, 24 hour run of Home and Away on every single channel.

So according to the IIPA, I as a purveyor of Open Source solutions am leading to the delinquency of governments world wide, using my awesome "Powahs! (tm)" to drive poor innocent multi-nationals to the wall.

Sigh.

I was pondering the supposed reason behind the recent fee rebate the Government is giving to the TV networks, that Australian Content needs to be developed and played on our air waves, when a question arose.

How much "Australian Content" is generated online? If you took the podcasts, blog posts, music and videos generated by Australians for online consumption, how would they stack up against the "Traditional Media"?

Does anyone know if any studies have been done on this?

Oh and I've added the spam module and turned off comment moderation, let's see how this goes.

Let me ask you a question.

Which is worse:

A minister who oversees an infrastructure programme that relies upon State standards bodies to police the work (building codes being State responsibilities). Under this programme there have been a number of deaths (3) and faulty installations (houses burning down) due to participants not working to minimum standards.

A minister who meets with the head of one of the very large and wealthy companies directly affected by his ministry (whilst on holidays, so not part of his official duties). Soon after this meeting, said minister announces between $250 and $500 million dollars in rebates for the industry (depending on how well said industry performs gross revenue wise).

To be honest I'm not sure which one is worse.

Peter Garrett has been copping a shelacking this week over the three deaths and numerous house fires that have occured as a result of the shoddy work practices of some of those taking part in the Home Insulation Programme (yes it is HIP to be square). Tony Abbott went so far as to accuse Garrett of "industrial manslaughter", a charge normally brought against company directors who knowingly encourage work practices that lead to death in the workplace.

However what no one seems to have been doing is asking the State bodies responsible for policing building and construction practices. It is their direct responsibility to ensure that their rules and regulations are followed, not the federal governments. So while Garrett can legitimately be hauled over the coals for not including regular and random checks and audits (which should have been considered over and above the State requirements), ultimately the responsibility for these tragic events lie with the businesses and State regulatory bodies.