I've joined the Great Australian Internet Blackout this Australia Day, because we believe in every Aussie's right to responsible freedom of speech.
The Rudd Government has said it will introduce a new law requiring Internet service providers to filter all Internet connections - including yours.
Follow this link and stand united against Internet censorship
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Bravo Google
In this blog I have criticised Google's earlier decision made in 2006 to censor itself in China.
In mid-December 2009 Google and at least twenty other large companies faced massive cyber attacks originated from China. Unexpectedly Google shared the information with broad audience and issued a statement on their official blog.
Google stated:
In mid-December 2009 Google and at least twenty other large companies faced massive cyber attacks originated from China. Unexpectedly Google shared the information with broad audience and issued a statement on their official blog.
Google stated:
"We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech.This is the Google we want to see, walking their talk don't be evil. This is what makes an organisation a giant. And this is how you make a difference in the history of humanity. Bravo Google.
...
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
...
The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences."
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The Year 2010
We all know the year 2010 is a random section across the eternal arrow of time, yet we think this is going to be a special episode to rewind our lives, start a healthy diet, quit smoking etc.
The year started with the news of a mass murder in Finland by an Albanian migrant, this is followed by routine suicide bombings in Pakistan and Iraq. Then cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and his granddaughter were attacked by a Somalian jihadist with an axe in his hand in Denmark, as usual dozens of people were killed in road accidents, even the legendary Sydney fireworks were not less boring than last year's.
The only spectacular exception to these depressive chain of events was of course the movie "Avatar". Avatar was the only human achievement worth to talk if you are obsessed with yearly summaries.
It is interesting that I started the year by reducing entropy that I have been responsible for. Stuff grew in my wardrobe drawer on their own in the last ten years or so. I have been able to find memorabilia such as a train ticket from year 2001, a never used hair brush that massages your scalp, various coins from different parts of the world, obsolete medicine prescriptions, obsolete medicine, business cards that I forgot where they came from, truckloads of dust mites and so on. It took me two hours to clean up the drawer. Then I went down to our garage and with a manic expression on my face I crushed and tore off dozens of empty card-boards that were saved in case they would be needed.
I am now beginning to understand desperate house wives and why they are so obsessed with cleaning. It gives you a false sense of achievement by re-ordering stuff. In fact all you have done is to reduce disorderliness accumulated in your environment because of you.
Where does this lead us? Well nowhere really. The earth is going to be warmer, more living species will become extinct due to us, there will be more suicide bombings, we will interpret return of 'the greed' as 'economic recovery' until we have another economic downturn in a decade or so, in nearly one in three of my age group some form of cancer time bomb will expire in the next decade or so, more misfortunes everywhere.
Or are these events really misfortunes? Like Seneca perhaps we should learn to accept misfortunes as being unavoidable parts of our lives rather than mere exceptions.
The year started with the news of a mass murder in Finland by an Albanian migrant, this is followed by routine suicide bombings in Pakistan and Iraq. Then cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and his granddaughter were attacked by a Somalian jihadist with an axe in his hand in Denmark, as usual dozens of people were killed in road accidents, even the legendary Sydney fireworks were not less boring than last year's.
The only spectacular exception to these depressive chain of events was of course the movie "Avatar". Avatar was the only human achievement worth to talk if you are obsessed with yearly summaries.
It is interesting that I started the year by reducing entropy that I have been responsible for. Stuff grew in my wardrobe drawer on their own in the last ten years or so. I have been able to find memorabilia such as a train ticket from year 2001, a never used hair brush that massages your scalp, various coins from different parts of the world, obsolete medicine prescriptions, obsolete medicine, business cards that I forgot where they came from, truckloads of dust mites and so on. It took me two hours to clean up the drawer. Then I went down to our garage and with a manic expression on my face I crushed and tore off dozens of empty card-boards that were saved in case they would be needed.
I am now beginning to understand desperate house wives and why they are so obsessed with cleaning. It gives you a false sense of achievement by re-ordering stuff. In fact all you have done is to reduce disorderliness accumulated in your environment because of you.
Where does this lead us? Well nowhere really. The earth is going to be warmer, more living species will become extinct due to us, there will be more suicide bombings, we will interpret return of 'the greed' as 'economic recovery' until we have another economic downturn in a decade or so, in nearly one in three of my age group some form of cancer time bomb will expire in the next decade or so, more misfortunes everywhere.
Or are these events really misfortunes? Like Seneca perhaps we should learn to accept misfortunes as being unavoidable parts of our lives rather than mere exceptions.
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