The Federal Government has confirmed its financial regulator has started requiring Australian Internet service providers to block websites suspected of providing fraudulent financial opportunities, in a move which appears to also open the door for other government agencies to unilaterally block sites they deem questionable in their own portfolios.
The news came tonight in a statement issued by the office of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, following a controversial event in April which saw some 1,200 websites wrongfully blocked by several of Australia’s major Internet service providers.
On 12 April, Melbourne publication the Melbourne Times Weekly reported that more than 1,200 websites, including one belonging to independent learning organisation Melbourne Free University, might have been blocked by the Australian Government
. At the time, Melbourne Free University was reportedly told by its ISP, Exetel, that the IP address hosting its website had been blocked by Australian authorities. The block lasted from 4 April until 12 April.
Subsequently, the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a media release linking the issue to the Labor Federal Government’s various Internet filtering initiatives, especially the voluntary filtering scheme currently implemented by a number of major ISPs including Telstra, Optus and Vodafone — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Leave it to Pinkamena Diane Pie to mop up your worries, real or imagined, with a smile. But if your troubles are with parasprites, she’ll also be needing a whole bunch of instruments to round them up. And no, you won’t be needing an equal number of Pinkie Pies or other musically inclined ponies for that matter as she can play them all by herself. As to how exactly she can pull that off, who knows? Just keep a lookout for stray parasprites like Gummy’s doing, or at least that’s what I think he’s doing.
The stand, figures, tuba and accordion are carved out of Philippine mahogany while the gears, banjo, tambourine, harmonica and parasprites are made from Narra hardwood. The Parasprite wings are made with lacquered tracing paper and the cymbals are from sheet metal. The figures are painted in enamel and protected by clear flat lacquer. Pinkie Pie stands at 5″ and measured as a whole including the stand and instruments is 8 1/4″ tall, 8 1/2″ long, and 4 1/4″ wide. The entire piece took 129 1/2 hours to complete — via Youtube
A man has been trampled to death by a herd of cows, police say.
The incident happened in a field in Turleigh, near Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, on Monday afternoon. The emergency services were called at about 12.30pm but the man, in his 60s, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Another man was seriously injured in the incident and airlifted to Frenchay hospital in Bristol by the Wiltshire air ambulance — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Measles cases in the Swansea epidemic have risen by 20 in the last five days to 1,094 as health chiefs warn the uptake of MMR is too low to eliminate the disease in Wales.
Public Health Wales (PHW) continues to warn that the outbreak may spread.
It said 95% uptake of MMR would prevent further outbreaks.
But vaccination rates remained low in Wales, especially among those aged 10 to 18 who are hardest hit.
In total, 1,257 people across Wales have now contracted the disease since last November, as the latest figures were released — via redwolf.newsvine.com
More than half of common plant species and a third of animals could see a serious decline in their habitat range because of climate change.
New research suggests that biodiversity around the globe will be significantly impacted if temperatures rise more than 2C.
But the scientists say that the losses can be reduced if rapid action is taken to curb greenhouse gases.
The paper is published in the journal, Nature Climate Change — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Amazon employees in Germany have staged their first ever strikes, in a dispute over pay and benefits with the vast US online retailer.
Employees at two huge distribution warehouses, in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig, launched the one-day strike, the giant services sector union Ver.di said.
Ver.di is demanding that Amazon’s 9,000 workers in Germany be paid according to a wage deal in place for the retail and mail-order industries. The head of Amazon Germany, Ralf Kleber, rejected these demands, arguing that the retailer’s staff were working in the logistics business, packing and dispatching parcels, rather than in the retail and mail-order sector.
Bad Hersfeld has a workforce of more than 3,000, while the Leipzig site employs around 2,000 people.
Amazon says it pays an hourly wage of €9.30 (£8) to employees in their first year, rising to €10 after that. Ver.di is demanding the minimum hourly retail wage of €10.66 for Leipzig; in Bad Hersfeld, the union wants staff to be paid the agreed sector rate, of just over €12 per hour, compared with the €9.83 Amazon currently offers — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Off into Space
— 1966 book cover design — via Wil Wheaton
Pinhead, The Female & Butterball, originally uploaded by capnbootle.
A couple of years ago, the government changed the rules so that families on $150,000 a year or more wouldn’t be eligible to receive family payments. There were the predictable cries of class warfare
, but there were also claims that $150,000 in Australia leaves you struggling to make ends meet. The Daily Telegraph found a couple on $150k who said you can survive on $150,000 but you definitely aren’t doing well
, while in The Australian, a couple on $200,000 said the government are making it bloody hard.
I don’t think most people have much of a sense of what the typical Australian’s income is. Research backs this up — low income earners tend to overestimate their own position in the income distribution, while high-income earners tend to underestimate theirs. In short, we all think we’re middle class.
The chart below shows this quite starkly. It compares the actual income distribution, in which 10% of people are in each decile of income, with the results of a survey that asked people to place themselves into income deciles.
The Australian income distribution: perception and reality
Source: Saunders and Wong (2011).
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
On Sunday, 7 April, four Asiatic Lion cubs were born to parents Zulu, the father, and Tia, the mother, at the Emmen Zoo in Holland. The night house den had been cleared of other Lions so Tia could spend the critical first days and weeks bonding with her babies behind the scenes. Through the use of a live webcam, keepers have been able to keep a close eye on the little family, and have observed the four avidly nursing, and growing bigger and livelier by the day under Tia’s excellent care. The sex of the cubs has not yet been determined — via ZooBorns
There is a weak copyright monopoly reform bill happening in the United States Congress at the moment.
This bill is not about the copyright monopoly at all, and at the same time, about everything that the monopoly actually is. It is the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013.
The bill, which was presented to the US Congress three days ago, makes it legal to unlock devices such as phones that you own, and do what you like with them. Let’s take that again, because it is jaw-dropping: the bill reforms the copyright monopoly to make it legal to tinker with objects that you own. It has nothing to do with BitTorrent, MKVs, streaming, or what we normally associate with the activity of sharing culture outside of the copyright monopoly distributions.
The bill is about your ability to take your phone to a different wireless operator. Your own phone, that you bought and paid for. Your legal ability to bring your own property wherever you like, without breaching criminal law and risking jail. How on Odin’s green Earth did this come to have to do with the copyright monopoly?
Few contemporary discussions put the spotlight like this one on how the copyright monopoly is not about rewarding artists, but is a political war on property — on our ability to own the things we paid for. (I won’t say bought
, as that implies we actually own them.) The copyright monopoly is dividing the population into a corporate class who gets to control what objects may be used for what purpose, and a subservient consumer class that don’t get to buy or own anything — they just get to think they own things that can only be used in a predefined way, for a steep, monopolised, fixed price, or risk having the police sent after them — via redwolf.newsvine.com
As part of Project:Redecorate I’m going to share a pillow tutorial so you can see how easy it was to make these modern quilted pillows. And no, I’m not turning into a quilter since Sewvivor. However that challenge did give me an appreciation for quilting technique, and I’m happy to employ it here as I’ve decided that for the new pillows I want to focus on texture over prints. There will be more textured pillows coming up in future posts in this series. As soon as I get them made — via Melly Sews
Telecoms regulator Ofcom has just published a study into the state of online copyright infringement in the UK, with some very interesting conclusions. The researchers found that 10% of the country’;s most prolific infringers are responsible for almost 80% of all infringements carried out online, but with a bonus. These plus an additional 10% of infringers spend 300% more than ‘honest’ consumers who don’t infringe copyright at all — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Yesterday the torrent world lit up with news that Demonoid had somehow been resurrected under the new domain D2.vu. However, the site was quickly taken offline by its host in the US who claimed that it was serving up malware. With the site now back online with a new host, TorrentFreak caught up with its admins who tell us they have no malicious intent and simply want to bring a community back to together. While there is still uncertainty, one thing is absolutely clear — they do have the old Demonoid database — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Romain Jacquet-Lagreze’s Vertical Horizon
series is a photo essay — and book — exploring the rapid vertical expansion of one of the densest cities in the world. While images of Hong Kong’s skyline are common enough, Jacquet-Lagreze’s almost abstract photos of the city’s buildings, taken from an unerringly vertical, worm’s eye perspective, show an oppressive man-made environment — notably devoid of actual humans—that easily crowds the view of the camera lens, leaving only a small patch of sky visible in the middle of each composition — via Architizer
Staff at Nordens Ark in Sweden finally got a glimpse of their newest residents, three Wolverine pups. The pups, born on 21 February, recently emerged from their mother’s den; where they spent the first six weeks of their lives completely dependent on their mother — via ZooBorns
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