An outdated blogroll makes baby Jesus cry

I know it takes a while to open up the site admin and update the link to someone on your blogroll (say to change anonymouslefty.blogspot.com to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com) - but here's the thing: it makes everything better. Try it - you might be surprised by how good it makes you feel.

This community service announcement brought to you by ICBHMPSLHIOTNS* (TM).

*I can't believe how many people still link here instead of the new site.

Please update your bookmarks/blogroll to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com

Yup, the move to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com has gone better than anyone could've hoped or expected.

It's definitely a much better place to hang around than here. (Looks around in disgust.)

If you missed the call on the weekend - please update your bookmarks/blogroll.

WordPress wins An Onymous Lefty

Introducing:

anonymouslefty.wordpress.com

You know how everyone's been grumbling about the many flaws of Disqus? How it's slow, and the comment box is - ludicrously - at the TOP of the thread instead of after the last comment, and how it just generally makes commenting here awkward and unpleasant?

And how I haven't been able to find an alternative, since Haloscan is dying, JS-Kit won't install, and Blogspot's comments are just completely inflexible?

Well, how about this solution - we move. We all pick up our stuff, and wander over to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com. It's alright, you can leave your comments here, they won't be going anywhere, and the old posts will remain right where they are, too. But if we all totter over to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com, you might be pleasantly surprised by what you'll find.

Yes, it's this blog with a marginally different format AND FUNCTIONING COMMENTS!

Hurrah.

Please update your bookmarks.

Queenslander wins Queensland election

Oh well. Better luck next time, guys.

I'll second that

The Age editorialises that Lynne Kosky should go. I don't think any Victorian would disagree.

Sure, she's not at the level of a Stephen Conroy, who combines malice, dishonesty and determination to do evil all in one complete package of fucktardetry - but she's spent almost two and a half years honing her own unique mix of incompetence, laziness* and general responsibility-avoiding bloody mindedness while a matter of great practical importance to Victorians was left to collapse in her unwilling hands.

I mean - increasing numbers of commuters are now collapsing on the service, while Kosky's department plays funny buggers with media and refuses to supply public documents unless they go through the whole time-consuming FoI process.

Seriously, how much worse could a trained circus animal have done? I reckon this elephant with a paintbrush would've actually done better - at least it appears to be able to respond to the people talking to it.

Brumby - please sack her. And permit her replacement to actually fix the mess.

*And how can someone be that lazy when they've got an entire Department to which they can delegate?

Site News - Grrr

To those who complain that Disqus was a poor replacement for Haloscan - I just spent an unrewarding hour trying to move comments either back to Haloscan (although that's pointless; Haloscan's a few months away from being deleted) or to the company that took it over, JS-Kit. No matter what I do, it absolutely refuses to work. Comments do not appear. Meanwhile, Blogger's comment administration is even more limited than Disqus, and free WordPress neither gives you full control over the template html nor lets you ban IPs. And I can't even get any help uninstalling Disqus - simply deleting the references to disqus in the template doesn't work, and their support forum doesn't even have a search function.

So - I'm sorry. I'd love to move to some kind of competent commenting system, but there don't seem to be any available, and I can't seem to get rid of this one.

(PS Scott: first warning in advance.)

ACMA - Protecting Australians from Linkers

Sad Good news. I am taking this blog offline to avoid being fined and prosecuted under ACMA's ludicrous strong and entirely appropriate new online censorship community protection policy.

You see, I have in the past linked to articles on a site called "Wikipedia". On each of those articles there's a search bar in which someone could type "Wikileaks". Following that link would lead someone - possibly an IMPRESSIONABLE AND VULNERABLE CHILD WHO NEEDS PROTECTING - to wikileaks.org the site in question. Then they'd be able to click on the link to Denmark's or Australia's alleged list of banned sites, and if they then cut and pasted some of those URLs into their web browser then they'd find CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.

In other words, I linked to someone who linked to someone who linked to someone who linked to someone who hosted "prohibited content", and have therefore - under ACMA's new principle of GUILT BY LINKING - ruined the Australian internet.

You're all going to have to take your sites down, too. Sorry.

UPDATE: Oh, to hell with it. Let's do it in one link.

Is that a knock I hear on my door?

According to Conroy's logic, Kevin Bacon's a child pornographer

Only four degrees of separation, too. Kevin Bacon has used Google, which links to Wikileaks, which links to Denmark's list of banned sites, which includes the URLs of child pornographers. Shame on you, Kevin Bacon.

And to think I used to like his movies.

Hyperlink here while you still can

I look forward to seeing the first such prosecution appealed all the way to the High Court:

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

Say this were upheld - say the High Court decided it had been wrong to imply a right to "freedom of political communication" in the Constitution - that would get the issue of a Bill of Rights back on the agenda pretty quickly, wouldn't it?

UPDATE: The leaked list of websites that ACMA would block is ridiculous. No wonder they want to block the site that hosts it.

UPDATE #2: Conroy denies that the list is the real one. But of course he hasn't leaked the real list for us to compare because - and he reportedly said this with a straight face - the URLs would somehow threaten "cyber safety".

Moreover, the now notorious bully is issuing heavy-handed threats:

Conroy also took the chance to slam the unknown party which leaked the list of URLs, saying they could be the target of criminal prosecution.

"ACMA is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution," Conroy said.

Conroy is an authoritarian menace. He is a threat to Australians' civil liberties. What a miserable choice we have - we have the Liberals with their extended detention without charge, and we have the ALP with its destruction of free speech. Thank God we can at least vote for the Greens.

Meanwhile, he's threatening to prosecute you for linking to a list he says is fictional anyway. The guy is mad.

Not alone

You, too?