Tony Abbott (our illustrious Fuckwit-in-Chief) has a problem. One could call it an addiction. He seems to find comfort in the Australian flag. The bigger the problem, the more heat he is feeling, the more flags appear. This story is much better explained in pictures.

On the 15-16th of December 2014, there was a siege in Martin Place, Sydney. Tony Abbott was quick to jump on it and call it a terrorist attack, but quickly started to back pedal when agencies ‘corrected’ him. Three other hostages and a police officer were injured by police gunfire during the raid. The inquest after the siege ended found “No shot fired by Mr Monis, other than the one that struck and killed Mr Johnson, struck anyone.” Whoops. Tony had to calm the nation - so that meant going on TV with the Australian flags for comfort.

Photo thanks to NY Post

On the 23rd Feb 2015, Tony was still on his terrorist war path. The headlines were bold, and the quotes even bolder. “Prime minister plans to name antiterrorism czar as part of crackdown on ‘hate preachers’” We then see Tony Abbott again addressing the nation at an Australian Federal Police media room. We know this is serious shit. SIX flags serious.

We forward a little more to recent times, and Tony has continued to put his foot in it. He’s exposed confidential documents while having a brainwave and holding a press conference while meeting with ASIO chiefs to combat terrorism at home. The cover up was swift - of course the documents were suddenly classified as ‘not confidential’. The diversion tactics went into overtime. Tony starts attacking the media regarding Q&A saying “Heads need to roll” (I covered this previously).

In all this frenzy - Tony is feeling the pressure. He wants to ram through laws in Parliament to cover what is seen as exposure in practices that may end up being overturned and ministers being spanked by the High Court - and rising talk of an early election.

Tony has to address the nation. This shit is serious.

Of course, with the internet being, well, the internet - people picked up on this.

Ahhh Tony, you might be a crappy Prime Minister, but at least you give us something to laugh at.

I’ve been a long time viewer of Q&A. It really is a unique show which puts public figures in the hot seat to face the general public. Depending on your beliefs, this can be good or bad - and every vary during the course of a single episode - however nobody can deny that this weeks Q&A failed to get tongues - and keyboards - wagging.

Things got really interesting when Zaky Mallah appeared. The topic had just turned to the proposal by the Liberal Party to remove due process and have a minister make executive decisions about the status of peoples citizenship. I won’t try to intrepret the discussion - its best viewed by yourself:

Now for a bit of background. Zaky was charged under new counter-terrorism laws - but acquitted in 2005 by a jury. Between being charged and being acquitted, he served 2 years in a maximum security prison. I’m not sure about you, but I’d be pretty pissed off at serving 2 years in a maximum security prison to only be acquitted and released.

Secondly, Zaky was born in Australia. The ministers both talk about ‘removing him from the country’ - however where exactly do they propose to remove him to? Has he committed a crime in another country that can have him deported? This commentary from two political leaders that are willing to state such a strong conviction on national television, yet have no idea on what the full story is.

With that in mind, we get to the really scary part - analysing the reactions from the politicians. Especially one - Grahame Morris actually appeared on national TV and stated that people “kick her to death” - referring to Australia’s first female Prime Minister - Julia Gillard.

I won’t get into the whole detail, nor will I get bogged down in that part any further - but I want to get one message across. Are you comfortable to have people like Grahame Morris have complete control over revoking citizenship of Australians? I know this thought scares the hell out of me.

Well, the politicians have done it again. Officially, its called “The Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015” - which passed through the senate 37-13. Unofficially, its a flawed document that breaks on just about every technical level.

In a nutshell, what it allows is that the “Rights Holders” can go to the courts and say “ZOMG, THIS SITE PIRATES OUR SHIZNIT!”. If the judge is able to check all the tickboxes required, the order will come out to ALL Australian ISPs to block access to the IP address hosting the site(s) in question. The ISPs comply and black-hole that specific IP address.

Now, the problem here is that a single IP address is normally used to host multiple web sites - so if you happen to use the same service provider as the judge orders to be dropped, then sorry, your site disappears as well. This has happened before when ASIC ordered the blocking of a small address range and killed around 250,000 web sites.

When laws like this pass, it shows that the people making these decisions have no basic understanding on how the itnernet works - nor have they been given the correct advice on the drastic consequences that can occur from what seem to be simple changes.

So what do we do about it? Bring this up with your local Members of Parliament and make your views known.

I’ve been getting involved with the whole concept of Road Safety as of late - as I’ve noticed that more and more drivers have been completely ignoring the road rules with complete disregard of other road users. In a 20 minute drive, I saw:

1) A car split through the bus lane on Mickleham Rd to avoid waiting with other traffic at the roundabout on Mickleham and Broadmeadows Rds

2) A car turn right from the middle lane of Mickleham Rd into Greenvale Drive through a red turning arrow - cutting off oncoming traffic

3) A male driver in a 4WD drive over all curbs into a parking space at the old Woolworths at Craigieburn Shopping Centre so that he didn’t have to wait for the other three cars in front of him to park - and in the process cut of a car reversing into the same spot.

Sadly, there is no excuse for this kind of behaviour on our roads. It isn’t an accident. It isn’t bad planning. Its pure arrogance to ignore the road rules that are designed to keep everyone safe. As a community - I’m not sure we should tolerate this behaviour from individuals.

An example of this senseless loss of life was recently covered in the news:

Well, hasn’t it been a long time since I’ve posted here!

Just a quick announcement that I’ve posted kernel 3.18.14-1 in the el6-testing repo with the aim to replace the current 3.14.x based kernels with 3.18.x.

Current testing shows a seemless upgrade and as of right now, no issues have been reported. As always, feedback is welcome!