Well do ya think this one’s caused storm of controversy at my home.
Firstly I am anti drugs so that’s a no brainer, but I also anti government intrusion.
So no doubt my pc is being monitored, or at least a request from the Australian government is being processed to see what can be done about assessing my pc to monitor its opinion.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26319890-2682,00.html
So just in case e you think I am fooling here is link that doesn’t work anymore as far as the normal internet is concerned.
Again fairly harmless report but one that begs many questions into police procedures and the manner they are allowed to operate within our society.
To sum this up all I can say is lucky Howe’s isn’t being extradited to Australia because by the time it reported in the papers he will dead, nasty accident of course.
Ya right.

I'm having trouble submitting a new discussion topic.

When I first attempted to submit it I encountered a server error. So I went back, and tried again.

On the second try I encountered a message, 'Error. This thread has already been created. You cannot post it again.'. On going back to the posting pane I noticed a message at the top of the preview window asking me to review the content of the post.

This I did, ensuring that it was not in excess of the word limit. It should not have been by my count (I did not encounter any word-limit warning), and the post only contained one relatively short link. There was no profanity. Am I doing something wrong, or has the post in fact been received and awaiting moderator review before going up as a new topic?




Its proposed title was 'Public apology to Klaas Woldring'.





I reported the server error in a Twitter @reply to GrahamY when it first occurred at around Nov110547K.

Don't know where I stand re submission of this new topic.

Forrest Gumpp: "he was still running the old Gutsy Gibbon, Ubuntu 7.10, on which the automatic updates had long ago been disabled."

Forrest, how daringly naughty of you!

On a more serious note, here is something for the tin foil hat brigade - or the floppy cloth hat brigade even.

A few years ago WA Transport introduced a new ticketing system that covers all public transport - buses, trains, etc, etc called "SmartRider". Sort of like our "govia" toll card but for personal travel. It works in much the same way. You send in your name, address, birthday, credit card and 1/2 a pound of flesh and you get a SmartRider card which you then have to swipe every time you get on and off public transport. Apparently it all works very well, and it even has its own Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartRider

Here is a quote from that page: "The police have the potential to use SmartRider card data as an investigative tool"

How does that work? Well every time you use the card it gets sent back in real time to WA Transport. Since the card is uniquely tied to you, this means WA Transport knows everywhere you go, and when. In fact everyone with access to that database knows everywhere you went, and when.

The only problem with the Wikipedia page is it is a little out of date. The police already use the database to track people:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/6475151/police-using-smartrider-to-track-people/

In fact the clever little blighter's have even figured out a way do that even if you don't use a SmartRider card. You see, every place you can use a normal ticket has a camera focused on the user. A normal ticket also has a unique ID, which is transmitted back to base on every use. So once they have found you once, if you use a weekly they know you entire weeks movements.

Aren't today's computer systems just neat?