ZDNet Australia Interviews Richard Alston 138
ynotds writes "ZDNet Australia has an interview with notorious Australian IT Minister Senator Richard Alston which could even be read as suggesting that he, like some others in the Australian government, has learned a little about his portfolio during his 7 years at the helm. He responds openly about his censorhip regime, lack of action against spam and his antipathy towards Electronic Frontiers Australia but refuses to get into details on cyberterrorism response and security expenditure."
amazing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the drivel Alston normally comes up with, this interview seemed to be quite good. Anyone involved in the Australian IT and/or telecommunications industry would be honestly shocked and amazed that Senator Alston even knew what 'spam' was! (even if he still doesn't read his own email)
No action against spam .... ??? (Score:2, Insightful)
National Office of Information Economy,
The Spam Problem and How it can be Countered - Interim Report, Aug 2002,
[pdf] [noie.gov.au]
While it is tempting to legislate Unsolicited Bulk Email out of existance (e.g. EU eCommerce directives), I think it might be better in the long-term for the governments to recognise the quasi-tribunal measures the private sector is establishing (SPEWS, RBL, etc). There's a test case in Perth at the moment (http://t3-v-mcnicol.org) which the government could take note of and if it gets to the appeal stage, might lead to de jure recognition of SPEWS and other abatement measures.
LL
Re:mirror (Score:2, Insightful)
(1) The site is ZDNet *Australia*, so there's going to be a delay getting their pages.
(2) If you're going to post the contents of another web page here, make sure you include the *formatting*, otherwise you might as well have hammered your keyboard randomly for 10 minutes.
Quick summary (Score:2, Insightful)
Alston's opinion on broadband in Australia seems to be "we're doing better than other places". That's not necessarily a good thing. People aren't going to start taking advantage of it until it gets cheap and ubiquitous, and it's not going to get cheap and ubiquitous until lots of people start using it.
Many ISP's is better than one big ISP. (Score:3, Insightful)
Q. Why isn't there a single successful Australian IT company competing and shining on the world stage? Can you name one?
A. I think that's a bit misleading in some ways. I don't know if you should put all your eggs in one basket. In many ways it's better to have a series of smaller companies coming through.
... That is truncated. I agree with that statement. The net was probably better off in the US when there were many small ISP's (rather than just AOL, AT&T, etc).
Re:Alston's an Idiot (Score:1, Insightful)
Now who has ever heard of free taxes? I want some of those.
Re:Alston's an Idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
Free electricity? Nope.
Free telephones? Nope.
Free air conditioning? Nope.
Nothing is free; it all has to be paid for somewhere. All the things you mentioned are paid for, by the taxpayer. The only people clamouring for anything "free" are the ones who have made the deliberate decision that taxpayer-funding will result in them getting more from the system than they have contributed, i.e. they want their personal luxuries to be subsidized by other people's work.
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
I would certainly agree that politician may be above child pornographer in the Australian list of professions, but not by much. I mean there are political scandals in every country, and incompetent politicians too (who can even be elected president) but the problem of disrespect seems particularly high in Australia.
£29 unlimited broadband (Score:2, Insightful)
While a lot of slashdot readers won't appreciate this, I read that article over my £29 unlimited broadband connection. That's not cheap for England, nor is it unusual.
To even start to pretend that Australia's broadband is better than what is available in England is a load of rubbish. For less than the price of a full-priced computer game or a full priced DVD i have unlimited broadband. The same price in Australia gives me access to a continually failing service with a 3gig cap. If i want to download more than 3gig on the major provider i'm looking at a bill four times the monthly cost. Pretending that 'purchasing power' has something to do with the perceived value of broadband is a load of rubbish. Not only is the broadband deal in England far superior than in Australia on a 'purchasing power' basis but it's far better when just doing a direct currency conversion.