"Subject: Australian Government's Content Filtering Pilot"

Today, I received an email from Unwired (my ISP) asking if I would like to be part of this pilot program. I'm going to say yes. I'm interested to see what they test for and what changes, if anything. Not quite sure what I feel strongly about yet but I feel this is a really important area of work that we should all be freaking out about just a little bit more otherwise it will be too late. After all, we won't know what we don't know. The People's Republic of China (I like that they have a long name) has blocked Twitter, Facebook, Blogger and Myspace. Other than being a nuisance to the exchange of views and opinions, it's totally un-fun. What a downer. Sheez I could never live there. I couldn't blog?!!! or tweet?

A while back I watched this episode of Insight on SBS where they were discussing the usefulness of a country wide content filter. There were those people who said:
- a filter is useless, the nerds will find a way to get around it
- it's bad; it's a slippery slope and it conflicts with freedom of speech
- it's a good idea citing examples of websites that celebrate/promote anorexia nervosa and child pornography websites

Other randomness from today

• Met a guy at a party who (seriously) called himself the Punisher and his friends called him Punny, as his nickname. He just went around all night saying, "hi, I'm the Punisher"... haha...
• Have taken a liking to black felt tip pens. Thanks Mark.
• Bought a t-shirt for Sean from T-Bar and wrapped it in white A3 paper from the photocopier and patterned the paper with one of those felt tip pens. It looks eh... like a true DIY job.
• Writing a feature(tte) for Platform should keep me busy.
• Faith in humanity restored - drinks at the Clock, Friday after work for those who feel like indulging me - SMS me if you decide to come too.
• Found a really cheap place to get foreign currency - it's in the Citibank building and is calleed KVB Kunlun. I thought it sounded dodgy too but I guess as long as they give you real money that works in the country you're travelling to and for a better rate, that's a good thing right? I'm not sure how they get a better rate which worries me a tad but meh - money is tight right now. Thanks Jo.