Net neutrality is on the agenda. BIG TIME!
ISPs are already making decisions in their daily practices that completely go against the principle of net neutrality. For a couple of years now they have been throttling torrent and other P2P traffic. And I can almost understand their point of view. Internet piracy is rampant, and the amount of traffic from P2P apps must be very large indeed and overloading their networks. But ISPs generally charge people for a fixed amount of data per month, and why should they interfere in how we as use that data? Why do they think they have a right to control our use of the Internet. It’s not really their job is it…
The basis principle of net neutrality is that ‘Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet.’ It’s the one thing that makes the Internet free. We can choose our own content. It’s the only antidote to the corporatisation of the Internet. And it’s a free choice. As it is, Surfer A can hang out at MSN, Facebook and eBay, while surfer B can visit torrent sites, alternative media sites and blogs. If someone wants to expose themselves to corporate sites and mass advertising, well go for it. Personally I’m more interested in what Joe Blog has to say, as opposed to what the corporate world is trying to sell me, but that’s my perogative and freedom.
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If you haven’t seen him on your television yet, you ain’t watching.
The Ruddster, a.ka. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has been on a whirlwind world tour, meeting every leader that will shake his hand. This is his first major overseas trip as Prime Minister, and he has a lot of re-positioning to do after a decade of John Howard’s brand of global engagement.
Labor has only been in power in Australia for just over 100 days or so, so it’s still very early days yet, but the signs are good. The Liberals are reduced to complaining about everything they can, and looking the fools for it. The most ridiculous one this week was them complaining about the salute to George Bush, which earned The Ruddster a rebuke from the Libs from not being prime ministerial enough. Get real guys. You really will have to do a little better…
He’s looking good in my eyes. He’s eloquent, intelligent, very ready to engage, diplomatic, realistic and visionary. OK, maybe he’s not the most exciting Prime Minister I have ever seen, but after having lived through a decade of John Howard, I’d prefer intelligent and visionary over exciting anyday.
His deputy, Julia Gillard, looks frighteningly capable. Maybe she will, in about ten years, become Australia’s first female Prime Minister. We just have to give the Ruddster three terms first. I’m sure he’ll hand over then… 
Hmm. was it all a dream? No, my blog is looking weird, it’s not a dream. It all started with a very strange email I got the other day from someone going by the title Anonymous Security Specialist. There was no reply email path, and it looked like spam, but after reading it, it had me unsure. Normally I am very good with spam and that sort of thing, but I couldn’t see the payoff in this one. Basically it was an email warning me that my version of Wordpress (then 2.3) was vulnerable to some sort of SQL blind fishing attack and that he could tell my blog was already compromised, and was linking to some very dubious websites etc… I had a look and couldn’t see any sign of this but after a look on google and a rational think through, I decided to upgrade the blog anyway, since this was something I had been planning for a long while. So, upgrade to Wordpres 2.5. Don’t follow the short guide on the wordpress site. It sucks! Do your homework. This is a good place to start. Anyway, I backed up my database and did the upgrade, and of course there were problems. Something to do it seems with my choice of template. Which brings me to K2. I uninstalled it and the blog came good, but now I’m having trouble with reinstalling it. The header won’t load and there are lots of small issues. I’ll get there. But what is most strange to me is this. After my blog was upgraded, but BEFORE the front page would work, I got an email saying I’d had a comment at the blog. I quickly looked and posted at the end of a post called Upgrade or Die (which has to do with cameras, not blogs, but nonetheless) there was a short comment which simply said, “well done, dude.” Was this the mysterious security consultant again? Or was this instead a nasty hacker who tricked me into upgrading, and waited all the while to grab control and do something dastardly? As I know nothing about hacking, I’ll have to hope it was the ASS (almost a suitable acronym). At the end of the day I have upgraded my blog. I still need to fix it, but I suppose that forces me to learn a little more about bloody wordpress…. Oh, and if anyone knows of a better template that looks really cool and has similar functionality to K2, I’d love a tip.
Joomla is a CMS (Content Management System) that I’ve known about for over a year but never really explored. Until the weekend. I downloaded the latest version (1.5) and within an hour or so had installed all the neccesary components for an offline installation and got my first web site up and running. Cool. Configuring the design seems to be the part that’s not straight forward, but I’m sure I’ll get my head around it in time. I love the basic idea, although coming from a guy whose first introduction to web design was hand coding a html document, this is taking things a long way from home. But productivity is king, and this collection of technologies (Joomla, MySQL, Php etc) serves up one amazing little database driven website in a hurry. AND it’s open source!
It’s not for absolute amateurs, but for anyone with a grounding in web design, wanting to take the next step, this is likely to be it. Check it out!
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