Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Time to unload the browser again. And I have some great stuff for you all this week. Starting with some geek humour as well as some new toys and news.

Geeks are Sexy post a YouTube video of the Big Bang Theory and Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock, their use of the extended version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Check it out!

HP has suddenly become an Excel Tips website! These three pages were linked in their last newsletter.

• Go chart crazy with Excel 2007
• Excel tip: make printing easier
• Excel tip: Data entry made easy with AutoFill

Some great news on the Windows Live front.

First of all A note about Hotmail, SkyDrive and Photos storage space from LiveSide advising that there is now a massive 50GB o free space online available to you as follows:

Following is the letter I wrote to Mr Stephen Conroy today. He is a Federal Senator. Senator Conroy was appointed Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy on 3 December 2007.

He is proposing a “clean feed”. The current webpage for this policy at the ALP is “offline”. Here is the plan for cyber safety that has on page 2 the intention to provide a mandatory clean feed.

And here is the EFA Australia’s analysis of the plan and why it wont work.

In light of the furore that has erupted around the nets with this proposal I have written a letter to Mr Conroy.

I have written before at length about the stupidity of the government in attempting to filter the internet against pornography, or illegal content or in fact anything at all.

The subject of internet filtering and censorship has raised its ugly head here in Australia again. The internet and media has been buzzing in the last few days with the Rudd government’s minister for Telecommunications Stephen Conroy announcing mandatory internet filters.

This article from ZDNet with interviews from the leaders of three of Australia's largest internet service providers - Telstra Media's Justin Milne, iiNet's Michael Malone and Internode's Simon Hackett - summarises the technical legal and ethical arguments the best I have read so far.

There is a huge public discussion on internet pornography. Whether we realise it or not, porn is a very large (read profitable) part of the internet. Censorship is being considered and lots of organisations are calling for governments to variously protect children, filter porn, provide regulation etc.
Worthwhile organisations like the Australian Family Association have posted articles calling for an urgent mandatory filtering of pornography at a national ISP level and make statements like this Every Australian has a fundamental right to access the internet free from pornography and extreme violence.
While I completely agree with the intention behind these statements, they fall short in a number of areas.
The first area where these ideas fall down is the actual concept of censorship and responsibility.