dingoatemybaby

Every Australia day I have one minute's silence for Azaria Chamberlain. Then I go to a nouveau cuisine restaurant and dine on 3 plates of dingo meat.

I am sorry to say it but I see an evil omen for all Saints fans. Here in Australia we had our aussie rules grand final. It was between two teams - the cats and the saints. The saints lost. It does not bode well for the saints. The cosmic energies of sporting kisma connect the planet.

I knew it. I have just done the "wet paint". lol. OK. Virtual machine. Maybe Linux as well could be a good idea. And sandboxing. But I'm not touching it with anything.

I have been sent the same - word for word with my user name put in. I strongly urge people NOT to click on any links. I also urge people who run this whole site to check for compromised security. I have Kaspersky and a truckload of anti-virus gear. The chances of me having any virus or malware are very small. Mannin black should also be banned from the forum unless he or she is an innocent victim of a hacked account.

OK. Anyone used Wide VPN? They look good. One great feature of them is that with one account you can tunnel your VPN to ANY country. So, if I went US and din't like it then it's no sweat to go Holland, UK or anywhere.

Actually a number of us have thrown that around - there will be a greater demand for VPNs of this stupid policy becomes a reality. I am not exagerrating. It is a really bad policy. I've met with people who work for ISPs in Australia. When I explained this policy to a person who does "takedown" notices for sites he said "that policy is f*&^(d". Yeah. The blacklist did end up on Wikileaks twice last year. It included a dentist, an astrology site that I have visited many times, a dog kennel business and other innocent examples of who knows what agenda. To get the blacklist put away the balaclava; all technical experts agree that simple ping-style reverse engineering is all that's needed. And then you have the most sordid collection of sites free for anyone to peruse. What a laughable way to see the very agenda - supposedly to end child pron - left in tatters.

A VPN seems best from people's responses. Eeven though it s$%#s me that I have to pay money because the Australian governhment wants to suck up to lunatics called the Australian Christian Lobby. OK. Which country? I add that I just do normal internet surfing. I am not trying to get Hulu, poker sites etc believe it or not. I am a student of computer programming; ironically I study by distance through O'Reilly Media in the US. Also, I have a dual booted computer - Windows 7/Ubuntu 9.10 - so is it better to put the VPN on the Windows or the Linux? Thanks for the help. You are entitled to gloat - whatever country you are in.

Point taken that I should see what is to be censored first. However at the very least I know that there is going to be overblocking - a lot of overblocking. The Australian government did its propaganda technical "report" about 3 months ago. Beneath the governement spin it shocks a shocking policy. Thus to "know" what is going to be censoored isn't really the point; as bad as that is the overblocking is the real point for me. Thus even if I have no interest in looking at explicit stuff [and I could of course go to Freenet anyway] I am still hampered. Worse, I will not know if I have been blocked in any search; it will just be a 404 or whatever. I add that for anyone interested the best sites that discuss this ludicrous plan are libertus.net or the forum whirlpool.

Australia, to quote our national anthem land of the "young and free", is going to introduce mandatory internet censorship, the bill being introduced on Feb 2 this year, and if passed coming into full effect in late 2011. I need not insult your intelligence by saying that this is a pea-brained policy. What should I use to evade this stupidity and see what I want on the internet? Proxy? Tor? VPN? Something else? I add that I not much of a geek so keep it simple please.

What about middle-aged latecomers to the computer world? Like me? Anyone who left school when I did [1992] missed out on computer education big time. 95% of people finishing high school did not know how to cut and paste in the early 90s. The teaching philosophy of computers in that era was "computer equals typewriter". It was pathetic. So bear in mind that many people like me have to learn computers in spite of a school education so bad that I may as well have used cardboard boxes with painted buttons. Worse still, school never mentioned the internet. Computer technology came to an absolute halt in 1992, never to get better. I first heard of the internet in 1992 and first used it in 1999 - seven years after leaving school.

Actually I was thinking of posting a new thread with almost the same OP. I am almost 35 as well. I have a background in maths not that that seems to help with anything in computers! Anyway, about two years ago I first got into computers seriously. And by seriously I mean: I am prepared to spend any amount of time or effort to learn something. If I have to wreck something in the learning process, fine. If I have to fiddle around with conf files then, fine. Nothing is too painstaking. I am studying a mixture of .NET, web programming and graphics design. So, ultimately I am heading towards a convergence - probably web design for a living. Thus, I would like to learn what I call "defensive web hacking". That is, I learn how to bolt down the weaknesses of a web site so it's hard to hack. I know that it's never a perfect world; if someone wants badly enough to hack into your website then there's nothing that you can do. But that does not mean that you don't try. I have no desire whatsoever to actually hack into anyone else's system. If you choose to scoff at that, then you are too cynical for your own good. My main web technology is Ruby on Rails. I have a dual-booted Win 7/ubuntu PC and have put rails on both. So far I haven't created an actual website/production environment. Here in Australia it is very hard to find any "defensive web hacking" courses. Mainly I learn from Google and tutorials. Any thoughts on any of the above would be appreciated.

I guess that it is a matter of priorities. For me security is number one, followed by convenient features and then speed. So I like FF and use it daily. I love the security addons.