Spammers last week got on the wrong side of the wrong man, and quickly found themselves with a taste of their own medicine. The man? Deputy Communications Minister Andrei Korotkov. Tired of the endless spate of unsolicited messages that clog e-mail systems everywhere, an audio message was volleyed non-stop to the telephone numbers listed in the spam
Safecom has released the photographs from the Children Overboard scandal that the public were not allowed to see, in keeping with the brief issued by Operation Relex’ Canberra Command Centre — at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet‘s office — which stipulated explicitly to ‘not humanise the asylum seekers’
The federal government intends to introduce legislation later this year that will ban unsolicited commercial e-mail. But a member of the advisory group charged with helping develop the new anti-spam legislation does not feel the final document goes far enough in punishing people found guilty of spamming
Derek Wyatt MP, Chair of the All Party Internet Group, has set up a Web site to encourage consumers to fight back against spam email. EndSpam, includes advice about how consumers can complain to their ISP about unsolicited commercial email or complain to their MP about the issue of spam in general
Where an enlightened post-Soviet era government believes the Internet is essential for life in the 21st century and backs that up with legislation declaring Internet access is a human right. Estonia is a country where hot, running water was a luxury a decade ago. It’s now a place where farmers have broadband Internet, 80% of the people use online banking, Internet usage and broadband penetration rates are comparable to Western Europe, and the government conducts most business virtually through a system of networked computers. Not bad for a country that only ten years ago was a crumbling, bankrupt mess with a network infrastructure to match
Speaking days after the case against a multiple sclerosis sufferer accused of supplying cannabis was abandoned, Lord Prosser, a former High Court judge in Scotland, said the current laws on the Class B drug were unenforceable and should be scrapped. He has called for cannabis to be legalised and the drug supplied in the same way as alcohol and tobacco
Serious doubts about whether Iraq was developing nuclear weapons were communicated to Australia months before John Howard repeated the claims in parliament, according to Greg Theilmann, a former senior United States official with the State Department
All new Victorian homes will have to have solar hot water or rainwater tanks under building regulation changes. The changes are part of the State Government’s mandatory five-star energy standards to come into full force in July 2005
Australian federal politicians will soon debate proposed legislation that will make open-source software the first choice for Commonwealth departments and agencies. Australian Democrats senator Brian Greig has announced his intention to introduce a private members’ bill into the Senate that may see federal agencies forced to justify their expenditure on proprietary software
BBC World last week showed a documentary on Israel’s nuclear arsenal and its alleged biological warfare program, contrasting the international treatment of Israel with that of other states seeking weapons of mass destruction. Of course, Israel cries anti-Semitism, you can’t have it both ways
All Australian schools would stick to the same curriculum, children would start school at the same age and sit the same leaving exam under a federal government plan unveiled Thursday
Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, will have aggressive new powers from today to detain for an unlimited period citizens suspected of having information about terrorist offences, which raises the spectre of agency abuse
Noam Chomsky discusses the recent US policies in Iraq and the real goal behind the war
The protest against music discs with copy-control technology has now reached the corridors of political power, with a resident of Manly writing to the Federal Member for the area, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott
Lunatic fringe Senator Orrin Hatch has suggested that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official web site, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes
During a discussion of methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Senator Orrin Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Like that law would ever be used legitimately
Phillip Knightley, an ex-pat journalist was who worked for Frank Packer’s Consolidated Press and Keith Murdoch’s Herald, asks; is the media, particularly TV, in the business of the mass-production of ignorance?
George Monbiot launches the Chartist movement of the 21st Century: a manifesto for a world in which every individual would have an equal say
The Orica Report
, suppressed for over a year, has finally been released due to an FOI application from the Greens, and pressure from the EPA. The report reveals a problem of lead pollution in Homebush Bay, and a reluctance on the part of the developer to admit the fact and responsibility for a cleanup
South Australia has caused eyebrows at the Initiative for Software Choice to be raised in concern, with the organisation writing to Premier Mike Rann to demand that a proposed open-source software bill be dropped
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