Cheap Therapy

Reposted from Slashdot:

If you are an Australian, please take action:

1) Call Senator Conroy’s office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.

2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it’s between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn’t have to be formal, and doesn’t have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002

3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn’t matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media’s attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet. To find out who your local MP is click here

4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn’t know “Education Revolution” means censorship. Rudd’s address is:
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia . Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.

6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Evil Telstra; on this, we’re all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.

Don’t just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!

George W. Bush has signed the Pro-IP act into law, providing for harsher penalties for people who copy movies and music. How soon before Australia follows down that path? It’s hard to know, given that our government won’t publicly provide the text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

It seems that the Muppet show may be returning.

Meanwhile there’s another Muppet movie in the offing.

Has anyone seen “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”?

The other day I was reading the newspaper when I realised that I’d already heard about the story because it was a headline that spammers had picked up (presumably from an RSS feed somewhere) and were using it on a subject line on spam being sent to my inbox.

Welcome to Canberra!

Sporting chivalrous contest helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire.

At the first Olympic torchlighting ceremony, Berlin, 1936 - Adolf Hitler

More quality editing from news.com.au.

I was somewhat amused by the press release about the Bentley Technology Precinct (”It will be Australia’s Silicon Valley - but with soul” - Minister Fran Logan, which wouldn’t be hard, most people in Silicon Valley probably leave the deserted landscaped wasteland or their corporate campus enclaves go to San Francisco for soul :). Given that I’ve previously worked in Bentley Technology Park, I thought I had some observations to make.

“Cafes, bars and restaurants will become boardrooms and central, shared facilities will provide mentoring and support for companies at all stages of commercialisation. Sustainable transport options will be explored and pathways expanded for a pedestrian friendly location.”

Well, when I was there there was one cafe, which served any sort of quiche (or egg-and-bacon pie), and pretty poor coffee (although unsurprisingly faster than UniClub). Pretty much everyone took their internal combustion engine vehicles to Karawara shops or Vic Park for lunch. Sustainable transport options (ie buses) didn’t run when you had to still go to work but Curtin University was on student break. Anyway , we don’t really need to ‘explore’ sustainable transport options, we already know which ones aren’t sustainable (cars with one person in them!).

As far as shared facilities go, when I was working in Tech Park the State Government stopped providing internet access to everyone, so most people wound up getting their own fibre laid (thankyou Amcom).

Mr Logan said numerous ICT companies from around the world were looking to move into the precinct.

The US-based company Interzone, which develops online entertainment products, has already established its game development studio within the precinct.

Cos games companies are cool at the moment and other states have them too so we’d better mention ours

A blog site has been created to promote discussion and participation.  

Comments can be made at http://www.communityofminds.com.au 

Edit - I realised the other thing I forgot to mention was the power! For a tech park you’d think they’d have a decent power supply, but it seemed like there were constant interruptions to the mains. Whilst it’s bad for a computer company it’s not insurmountable, but the biotech companies and the pathology labs can’t afford to lose power at all. It wasn’t long before they started installing their own diesel generators.

Google Transit will provide public transport information for Australia, and they are trialling it for Perth initially. Hopefully this will be a nicer site than Transperth’s current offering (functional), and accessible from mobile devices.

The start of the week seems a long time ago.

• Students return and wander the halls looking lost.
• WAMUG AGM, I manage to not get elected President. Yay!
• Household is down a computer. Resurrection attempts unsucessful. Backup exists but should have been a bit more current. Reprioritise maintenance of backup system. Puggle is deprived of YouTube.
• More of the public transport and walking thing.
• Gary Gygax died. His legacy was and is lots of fun for millions of people. Vale.
• Beer at the Belgian Beer Cafe, where you can get charged $24.50 for a stein of Hoegarden plus $5 deposit for the glass. Or you can get charged the same amount for a pint if you’re not paying attention… Fortunately they refunded.
• Mulberry crumble (or as Puggle called it ‘crimble crumble’) from our tree. Powered by Puggle pee.
• Bilby sang the tune to Click Go The Shears after Puggle sang it.
• No beer at home. Rectified.

Fabulous last paragraph in this article about the new Iranian “Be alert, not alarmed” national security hotline. Or watch the video (requires Windows Media or Flip4Mac WMV plugins)