log

From Angli­can Church wants school tri­al of ethics class­es scrapped:

Bish­op Davis said allow­ing a sec­u­lar organ­i­sa­tion to deliv­er its pro­gram at the same time as the cur­rent reli­gious teach­ings set a “dan­ger­ous prece­dent” if oth­er groups want­ed access to students.

Trans­la­tion: It’s ok to brain­wash stu­dents with their par­ents’ per­mis­sion if you’re a reli­gious organ­i­sa­tion, but not if you’re secular.

I won­der what the Angli­can Church’s reac­tion would be if the Sci­en­tol­ogy brigade gained access in that reli­gious time slot?

Tri­alling spe­cial ethics class­es was also a vote of “no con­fi­dence” in teach­ers, he said. Bish­op Davis said the Gov­ern­ment should realise that val­ues of truth and hon­esty were mod­elled each day by teach­ers in the class room.

“Is there such an eth­i­cal hole in the cur­rent sys­tem?” Bish­op Davis said.

Trans­la­tion: Hel­lo chil­dren how are you? All the truth are belong to us.

Is Bish­op Davis say­ing that reli­gious class­es don’t need to cov­er ethics or hon­esty? See, I can dou­ble­s­peak too. After remov­ing ethics, morals, truth and hon­esty from reli­gion we’re left with a fan­ci­ful sto­ry of a man who heard voic­es in his head and believed him­self God.

“If so, then teach it as a part of the cur­ricu­lum rather than allow­ing a non-reli­gious group to enter the realm of the spe­cial reli­gious edu­ca­tion system.”

My trans­la­tion: step off our turf.

I’d like to know what the ‘spe­cial reli­gious edu­ca­tion sys­tem’ entails, because it sounds par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty.

No thanks. I’m hard­ly the tar­get mar­ket for Chrome OS, but I fear (FEAR!) the pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty impli­ca­tions of mov­ing to a non-local-stor­age mod­el for every­thing I work on, espe­cial­ly when encryp­tion of my data has no long-term guar­an­tees what­so­ev­er.

I appre­ci­ate sci­ence fic­tion’s por­tray­al of the future as a ubiq­ui­tous info por­tal (Accelleran­do) but this stretch­es my trust beyond its lim­it regard­less of whether a com­pa­ny or gov­ern­ment is in charge of the buy-in.

Diver­si­fi­ca­tion is the only safe route here. I want to see a pletho­ra of phys­i­cal-body devices with unique, user-pro­gram­ma­ble, lay­ered encryp­tion sys­tems. I don’t want the data to be stored in a gener­ic inter­op­er­a­ble for­mat; design an inter­op­er­a­ble API instead. This abstrac­tion means I can dis­able API access and my data is phys­i­cal­ly protected.

Google and co have clear­ly deter­mined (I think cor­rect­ly) that the way to ensure long-term free­dom of the human race from tyran­ny is to enable unbro­ken com­mu­ni­ca­tion, access to infor­ma­tion and learn­ing resources, and demand us to be altru­is­tic and hon­est for fear of the greater trust-web being bro­ken. I seri­ous­ly think we’ll reach a point where the trust-web will be so impor­tant that it’ll become sacro­sanct, with vio­la­tors giv­en the future equiv­a­lent of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment: the denial of access to information.

We see the roots of this in our eco­nom­ic sys­tem, where the greater good is served by main­tain­ing faith in the val­ue of oth­ers. Note how many reg­u­la­tions we need to hold this sys­tem togeth­er against the mul­ti­tudes who want to cheat and scam for per­son­al ben­e­fit; when exposed their pun­ish­ment is the denial of fur­ther influ­ence upon the system.

Until we make a diety of the trust-web, secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy are the biggest con­cerns. We should always have an exit, an opt-out in the form of per­son­al encryp­tion and removal of our data from the pub­lic eye. I don’t trust cen­tralised systems.

mrlast­week sez: final­ly it’s dawned on hix­ie, HTML5 is sui­cide with­out the W3C. A bit­ter pill he has com­mis­sioned his under­lings to swal­low. bra­vo madge!

Mark Pil­grim: The ones that win are the ones that ship.

Take as you will.

This walled gar­den also has a lead dome and watchtowers.

From Synch or sing: Brit’s ‘fake’ defends singer:

Char­maine Aller­by, 24, who has a tick­et to Spears’s Syd­ney con­cert, prefers [that Brit­ney Spears lip-synch].

“I’d prob­a­bly be dis­ap­point­ed if she was singing because I know she does­n’t have a great voice,” she said. “So I’d rather that she did­n’t sing.”

Ms Aller­by spent more than $200 on a tick­et was to catch the spec­ta­cle of Spears’s first Aus­tralian tour.

From Pop stars could be forced to dis­close whether they lip-sync under new laws:

Con­sumer Action Law Cen­tre chief Car­olyn Bond said there could be an argu­ment that not dis­clos­ing lip-synch­ing in mar­ket­ing mate­r­i­al broke mis­lead­ing adver­tis­ing rules.

“Con­sumers should be pro­tect­ed, even those who go to a Brit­ney Spears con­cert,” Ms Bond said.