Climate Change Reports, Kaspersky, Freeforms and Reviews

[tcpip]

Last Sunday gave an address at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on Land Rights and Responsibilities: The Carbon Tax Debate, which was the most well-attended gathering at said institution this year. The importance of the issue gained some momentum this week with announcements of Western Australia's critical loss of water, CSIRO's Climate Change Report and the national Climate Commissioner's first report. The State government however is not helping; Ballieu has announced thta it will abandon the previous Labor government's plans to replace Hazelwood, the most polluting coal-station in Australia, and has backed away from a committment to cut Victoria's emissions by 20 percent now labelling the target as "aspirational". Environment Victoria is tracking such announcements at their 'blog which is worthy of reading.

On Wednesday attended the NICTA lecture with Eugence Kaspersky, whose company is one of the largest providers of anti-malware software. His talk was extremely high level, accessible to everyone and useful to no-one and included some frankly silly errors, such as suggesting that major operating systems are equivalent in their suspectibility to malware. But what I found particularly objectionable was his recommendations for enforceable online identities through an "Internet passport", owner registration of hardware, and, of course, promotion of his own "digital signatures". Of course, he tried to assure those present that this was not a "big brother" approach, but rather just providing the world's policing forces better tools in order to catch cyber-criminals. I found these statements extraordinary given the importance of social networking technologies in recent changes in the Middle East, and even more so from a Russian. These, and other matters, are included in an open-letter.

Thursday night had several guests over for a dinner party/freeform roleplay with a 1930s setting and a narrative mixing socialites, real-estate agents, and mobsters - and a murder of course. The fictional "Pierre's: Melbourne's Best French Restaurant", offered a real menu of petite crêpes épinards et tranche, coq au vin, et gâteau au fromage for the evening. On a related topic my reviews on the Open Game Table Anthology of Roleplaying Blogs have been published on RPG.net; volume 1 and volume 2. Next will be a retro-review; Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 1st edition.

EDIT: Almost forgot to mention events of last Saturday; a small but useful quarterly meeting for the Isocracy Network and attendance at the LUV-Beginners Workshop on that afternoon. Coupled with meetings of Drupal Melbourne, the third Saturday of the month is becoming quite a serious gathering with circa 30 techheads in attendance.

Comments

[zen-cat.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I'd worry if I was in the anti-virus business. Current free options like MS Security Essentials seem to be pretty good on windows, and viruses aren't exactly at the forefront of mac and linux user's minds. The winds of change seem to be blowing more towards net-enabled appliances, like tablets, and away from PCs. I guess antivirus companies like Kaspersky have to reinvent themselves before the mainstream work out that they don't need to pay for their software anymore, but I'd prefer if they didn't do that by inventing new problems.

[fluffyblanket.livejournal.com]

"Western Australia's critical loss of water" surprised me after the recent catastrophic flooding in Queensland in the east. Couldn't the excess water there be purified and pumped to the west ? Or am I being naïve ?
The banquet sounds absolument formidable !

WA-ter!

[ferret-otaku.livejournal.com]

One issue of the good old "West Australian" had an article about the "need" to increase Western Australia's population by immigration.
The facing page was about how Western Australia was struggling to meet its water needs, both now and in the future.
Some people cannot see the woods for the dehydrating trees!