Australian ISP's to start Internet Censoring, July 2011

Well it's about to start. Telstra and Optus will start off the internet censoring next month (July 2011). This has been kept very quiet, off the radar you might say. It just goes to show that our Labor Government knows that the majority is against this, and has been from the start. The Government it trying to pass this censoring off as keeping the kids safe, but I'm sure most people know that this is not true. Little by little we are slowing having choices taken away from us. There is a very good article about this in The Herald Sun, not hidden away, but in the technology section, not in the main stream.

MOST Australian internet users will have their web access censored next month after the country's two largest internet providers agreed to voluntarily block more than 500 websites from view. Herald Sun.

There is also an article about the filter in News.com.au there are (at the moment) 143 comments.



There is also a very funny video about Australia's Internet Filter, this has a lot of bad language in it, so I didn't put it on my blog, mainly because I do have friends kids that may click onto this site. If you would like a bit of a laugh and don't mind the language, you can watch the video here.

Update
Well now the plot thickens, no wonder Telstra and Optus are doing the Governments bidding.

Business leaders have warned Labor that the National Broadband Network could choke off competition after it was revealed Telstra had agreed it would not promote wireless internet services as a substitute for the $36 billion fibre network for the next 20 years, under an agreement with the government.

He said the deals with Optus and Telstra were inequitable for other internet service providers, such as iiNet, AAPT and TPG, as they were not going to be paid the same compensation for moving customers onto the NBN. Read more in The Australian.

Is Your ISP Ready For The New IPv6?

For those that are not sure what IPv6 is, I wrote about it in my blog not that long ago
 (see here).
It was World IPv6 day on the 8th June, when there was a trail run of IPv6 around the world, this turned out to be very successful and over a period of time web sites will start to switch over to IPv6. At the moment we are on IPv4.

Some web sites have already switched over, if your ISP has not got the new IPv6 function you will not be able to view these web sites. You can test to see if you have this function, link below. I'm in Australia and most of our ISP's do not have this function at all, my ISP is with Telstra Bigpond, and I do not have the new IPv6 function, some others in Australia that don't have this is, Optus, iiNet, and believe it or not the new NBN, the list goes on. For the full list of Australia's ISP's that do support or don't support the new IPv6 have a look here in Computerworld.
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For those that would like to do the test to check, they have a test site on the
Internet Society web page, I did this test and it took about 30secs, of course it came back 0 support.

Airport Security:- Holograms and Sniffer Mice. (Video)

Sniffer Mice.

Forget sniffer dogs, crack teams of mice are being trained to detect bombers and drugs couriers at airports.
The sniffer rodents are then hidden in airport scanners, ready to raise the alarm.
The detector has been built by Israeli researchers who say it is more accurate than using dogs, pat downs and x-ray machines.

It looks like a metal detector or full-body scanner, but one side of it houses three concealed cartridges, each containing eight specially trained mice.
The animals work four-hour shifts, milling around in an allocated cartridge while sniffing air pumped in from outside.
When they pick up traces of explosives or drugs, they flee to a side chamber, triggering an alarm, New Scientist reports.
To avoid false positives, more than one mouse must run away. Courier Mail.

Yes you read right, sniffer rodents, I mean really. I admit I know nothing about rodents, but this does seem up there with the ridiculous. Security expert Bruce Schneier told New Scientist: "Animals" noses are always a good solution, and the mice don"t see you naked." Well there is an up side, but still it just seems a bit beyond it, and there is the side of animal cruelty as well, as far as radiation is concerned.

Holograms.

Passengers at England's Manchester Airport will be greeted by holograms of staff from next week in a bid to reduce security check queues.
The images of the customer service workers were created using the same cutting edge technology which is used in the music industry by bands such as the Gorillaz.
It is being trialled at terminal one where passengers are being met by holograms of real-life employees John Walsh and Julie Capper.
The digital illusions will greet travellers before they go into the security search area, explaining liquid restrictions and reminding customers about boarding cards. Bigpond News
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This I think is not that bad an idea, but still there is always the argument that someone has lost a job over this, or that people who could of been employed misses out on a job. With the world's population of course getting bigger, there needs to be more jobs created not less. I have often wondered about new technologies, and a lot do take away jobs that could of been, but still I feel we will see a lot more of this type of thing in the future.



You may also like to see:-
Future Tourism:- Robot Sex-Airship Hotels. (Video Included)

"Sleepbox" A Great Idea for the Airport (Video Included)

No More IP Addresses Left

The global warehouse for internet addresses has run dry.

The non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) doled out its last five batches of IP numbers that identify destinations for digital traffic.
"A pool of more than 4 billion internet addresses has been emptied this morning," ICANN chief Rod Beckstrom said. "It is completely depleted. There are no more."
The touted solution to the problem is a switch to an IPv6 format which allows trillions of internet addresses, while the current IPv4 standard provides a meagre 4 billion or so.

Some people might need to update routers or modems that connect computers to the internet.
Full story in the ABC News.

Explanation of the IPv6 here in Wikipedia.

I'm not computer literate at all, and they do say in the article that nobody will even notice the difference, but what about the people that have to change routers or modems? Does this mean one day you will turn on your computer and it just won't work? Does this apply to only those that have older style modems? I don't know the answer to any of the questions, are there even any answers to these questions. If you google IPv6 modems or IPv6 routers there are thousands of web sites about these, I admit I only read a couple, but useless going any further, as I had a hard time trying to understand it all. Simply all I really wanted to know was do I need to get a new modem, or can I just sit back and not worry about it at all, seemed like such a simple question.