James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE]

You know something, there are a lot of us working to try and educate and inform our family, friends and communities about the dangers and inadequacies of the proposed mandatory ISP filtering scheme. We're actually talking to people, explaining the issues as they stand and answering questions.

We're also trying to get the media to move away from the over-simplistic "It's all about the Child Porn" angle to look at the real problems with the scheme.

All that work however is being hampered by the kind of activities conducted today by a group of people calling themselves Anonymous. In their wisdom, they decided that they needed to take more direct action. So, in the spirit of attacking censorship on the internet they declared they would be attempting a Denial of Service attack on a number of Government web sites, and at the same time conducting a "blackfax" campaign and other activities of a similar type against various Government offices.

In essence they were going to declare to the Australian government that any attempt to bring regulation  to the internet would be met with attacks on government infrastructure. 

This sort of short sighted ill thought out protest annoys me on a couple of levels. Firstly it cuts the ground out from under those of us who have been working for a long time to try and change this policy. By acting in such an irresponsible manner, Anonymous has given the media a sensational angle which has and will be used to counter the more cogent and reasoned arguments against the filter. Now, along side the infamous "If you're against the filter you must be for Child Porn" we'll have "Opponents against the filter are evil hackers only concerned with getting access to porn".

 Well, here's my first Android App. Essentially it's a recreation of my Google Wave Robot - OpenAusBot, well at least the House of Reps member search.

Right now, it just does basic member searches based on Federal Seat, returning name, party and date elected. Still working on the ImageView.

Further plans are to build postcode search and geo-search.

What I don't have (yet) is a real android phone, so if anyone wants to download the apk attached to this post and make sure it works (it uses the Android 2.0 SDK), that would be great, thanks.

Well it's the end of day one of linux.conf.au here in Wellington and I have to say it's been a pretty good start to the event.

Breakfast, or so it claimed:

I left sleepy Dapto at 4am yesterday morning to make it up to Sydney for my 8:45 flight. Everything went well, and I met up with other lca attendees (Melissa Draper, Michael and Brett Morgan). Check in was fine and we were soon boarding. I took out my copy of LotR and the trip commenced.

Everything was fine, it was reasonably clear so got a good view of the ocean out of the window. Then they announced breakfast. "Hrmm" I thought, "I am a little hungry, I shall partake of their offerings."

Mistake.

When the flight attendants reached my row they had run out of the "cold breakfast". Instead they claimed they had scrambled eggs so I said "not a problem" and received my pre-heated meal. On taking the wrapper off the meal I was presented with what looked like a small mound of oatmeal (which I was to find was in fact meant to be a hash brown), what appeared to be a piece of leather (bacon) and something approaching scrambled eggs. This "delightful" meal was finished off by the presence of some mysterious red liquid with lumps in it (baked beans). Yum

Arriving in UnZud

Well I survived the meal and we finally arrived in Wellington. I have to say the approach to Wellington is very impressive from what I could see. It really did drive home the idea that New Zealand is a landscape still developing and growing as opposed to Australia, a land known for its deserts and plains in which the last million years has passed with nary a change.

This time next week, I'll be 30,000 feet over the tasman sea, winging my way to New Zealand for this years linux.conf.au.

I'm going to be presenting two talks at the Google Wave miniconf:

• Building the Independent Wave
• Harnessing the Wave

On Tuesday I'm going to be flitting between the Open and the Public Sector (yay scheduling changes has removed that particular conflict) and the Multimedia miniconfs.

During the conference proper the first talk I'm going to definitely hit is going to be Bdales talk on Flying Rockets with Free Hardware and Software.

Thursdays stand out for me is Drupal - Under the hood. Mind you I'm then conflicted. Do I want to catch half of Silvia Pfeiffers HTML 5 Video talk and then switch over to Jon Oxers FOSS In Spaaaaaace presentation? Decisions, decisions.

Fridays fun project would have to be FOSS Fun with the Wiimote by Rusty Russell. Of course this occures at exactly the same time the Open Source Assistive Tech which is an area I've recently become interested in.

All in all it's going to be a great conference by the looks of things.

If you hadn't noticed already, the elections for the 2010 Linux Australia Council have been open for a little while. You may also notice that I've been nominated for the role of Vice President (well got one nomination so far, just need another one :)).

I've decided to return to the arena for a couple of reasons:

Firstly the time off over the last couple of years has allowed me to rebuild the passion that I once had for topics FOSSy. After two years on the then Committee I needed a break to concentrate on getting my head on straight on building up my business.

Secondly I think Linux Australia has sort of lost its way. We seem to have lost that passion and drive that put us in the middle of the issues such as the copyright fight. Now we face a whole new raft of challenges and opportunities, and we need to be able to get up there and reclaim the right to represent our community.

So what would I like to see happen in 2010?

Okay here's a first draft of the letter I'm planning on sending to my local member:

I am writing to you concerning the proposed introduction of a mandatory ISP filtering scheme by the Australian Federal Government.

I have several concerns regarding this scheme, both as an adult and as a parent.

Firstly, while the report released by Senator Conroy on the effectiveness of the Live ISP Filtering trial indicates “!00% Accuracy” with little to no network impact, it also highlights several glaring problems with the Filtering scheme which to my mind render it essentially useless as a tool to prevent the consumption of RC material.

These range from simply changing which servers your computer uses to find out the addresses of web sites, to the utilisation of common technologies which are free and are used every day by hundreds of thousands of people in the course of their work. The report also points out that the filtering scheme cannot filter either chat rooms or peer to peer software.

This leads me to question the validity of spending the proposed $180 million dollars on a scheme which is so full of holes. Would education of parents not be the better option when it comes to protecting children from the dark side of the internet.

During last weeks Broadband Future event the focus was on the future, what changes would the NBN bring to this country, how would it change the delivery of medical services, media production and so on and so forth. People were excited and looking forward to the new challenges.

However during these discussions no one was really willing to tackle the elephant in the room. The Governments proposed mandatory ISP filtering programme. Perhaps we thought that a government that was forward thinking enough to develop the NBN would finally recognise the futility of what they were proposing.

Turns out we were wrong. Yesterday Senator Conroy finally released the report of the Live ISP filtering trial claiming that it proved the claim that it was possible to filter with "100% accuracy" while at the same time offering little to no impact on network performance. Based on this he declared that he was going to move forward with plans to submit legislation to the house to require ISP's to implement the mandatory filtering programme.

Sigh.

There are two problems with the programme that Conroy is proposing:

Suitability For Task:

The report is explicit in declaring that the filtering trial worked only when strict conditions were met.

• The content being filtered was being delivered by HTTP
• The site being filtered was not a high traffic site (apparantly sites such as Youtube will crash the filtering service)
• The user being filtered only uses their ISPs DNS servers

The report is also explicit in declaring that the filtering service cannot filter the following:

As if to prove that the Labor party is as capable of self destructive behaviour on a scale rarely seen as the Liberal party, the NSW Labor party last night threw out Nathan Rees and installed Kristine Keneally, just two weeks after Nathan Rees had requested and recieved extraordinary (for a Labor premier anyway) powers to actually select his own cabinet.

So now we have a State being ruled by its fourth Premier in as many years. It's fair to say that of the past three leaders, the people of NSW have actually managed to elect just one of them.

Sigh, at a time when people are calling out for more participatory democracy, we have a Government that seems to be determined to keep the decision making out of the hands of the voters and firmly within the hands of a small group at the top of the pile.

So now that the Government has the trigger and the ammunition for a Double Dissolution election, what does that mean for the rest of us?

First off let's be clear what a Double Dissolution election actually entails:

• Every seat is vacated, this means everyone is up for election including ALL Senators (whereas in a normal election only half the Senate is up for election).
• This means that the required quota of votes to be elected to the Senate is effectively halved (House of Reps voting remains unchanged).
• Once the election is concluded, then there is a joint sitting of both houses of parliament to vote on the bills that were rejected. This special sitting aggregates the votes of both houses (ie both the House of Reps and Senate votes are added together) to determine the result.

Let's have a look at what this means for each of the players:

Labor:

The Labor party is obviously going to have a lot at stake in the Double Dissolution election, however they have been handed a couple of very good weapons going into the fight. Firstly, the last couple of weeks has shown a Liberal party at war with itself. The election of Tony Abbott will not heal any of the wounds within the party, especially considering his placement firmly within the Howard school of conservative politics. Secondly while people may be wary of anything that looks like a tax, at least the Labor party has the start of a plan to handle climate change, while the Coalition is frantically trying to sort out what exactly it believes in.

Liberals:

Well true to their word, the Coalition has voted down the CPRS for the second time in the Senate and has handed the Government a Double Dissolution trigger.

Politically this is an interesting move. The Liberals have managed to completely muddy the waters with regards to their policy on Climate Change (are they serious about dealing with it? Is climate change scepticism now party policy? Are they just playing to political gain?), while at the same time demonstrating that their party is in no position to be governing itself, let alone the country. This is what they will be bringing to any early election.

To top it off, rather than go with a leader who has positive public profile across a broad base, the Liberals have chosen Tony Abbott, a man who once described himself as the idealogical love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop (thus inflicting a mental imagery on the nation that will take years to scrub away).

There is an ancient Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". Right now, if the Liberals got any more interesting they would explode.