NEWS.com.au has a story on the premium Australian’s pay for products.
Having come over from Europe, I am certainly acutely aware of differences. For example the australian Internet and Telecommunications products and services are all hugely inflated compared to EU.
Having lived in England though I am also aware of the media mentality of scandiliingly pointing out what is cheaper on the other side of the channel, but ignoring what is cheaper at home.
Middlesbrough is a small town in the North East of England. In what seems like a tribute to George Orwell, the council have just installed CCTV cameras fitted with speakers. As the enthusiastic press manager tells us, it will greatly help create a safer Middlesbrough:
“For example, if an operative now sees someone dropping litter, they can tell them to pick it up”
The press release continues, detailing how it will drastically reduce instances of Thoughtcrime.
Récemment j’ai lu quelque philosophie en francais et je pense que je devais essayer d’écrire en francais. Peut-etre ceci m’aidera a me rappeler. Nous verrons.
C’est vraiment une belle langue. Je suis tres triste que je l’ai oublié. Tant pis!
Princeton university has conducted tests on US electronic voting machines that were used in the last two elections (Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine), and found them to be (extremely) vulnerable to viruses and vote maniplulation software.
This should be absolutely no surprise what-so-ever. These machines are effectively PCs, and show less security precaution than the average Internet café computer. They are set to boot from flash memory, and presumably were not provided with malware/virus checking tools at the toll this would take on voter trust. (ie accepting the possibility of viruses is opening a can of worms).
In the Princeton demonstration video the demonstrator is careful to emphasise the criminality of the virus loader, and also the fact that what we are watching is a simulated election, but I think this is a pointed comment. I get the impression they are understating the importance of this research for interlectual impact – the audience realises themselves how easy it would be to apply this to a real election.
A collaboration with Maja Baska (and her fisheye Lomo) to produce a kitchy peace project. It’s fun, but deals with issues of Western Culture and idealism, shopping therapy, etc.
I am having a mockup ring-bound (continuation of circular motif) booklet printed. I need to try and source cheap printing as this Kinkos print is costing nearly $20!
Check out the Flickr set for fun pictures.
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