Rudd caused the issues in the Liberal Party, although at the same time, Turnbull was stupid enough to take the bait. By constantly hammering away at the Liberal Party, Rudd forced Turnbull to negotiate on the ETS, knowing full well what would eventually happen.

I may not like Rudd, but by god he’s a clever politician, and credit where due.

Turnbull should resign, not simply because he tried to railroad ETS support through the Liberal Party room, but because he even decided to negotiate to begin with.

Everyone knew there was divisions, and the stated policy previously was that the Libs would wait until after Copenhagen. But Turnbull couldn’t stand even the most basic pressure in the media from Rudd to force his hand, and caved quickly.

Despite his previous role as the head of the ARM, I don’t actually dislike Turnbull as a potential PM. He is most definitely smart, and well qualified to handle the finances of the country. But as a politician he has failed once again, and nothing will save him now.

The question though is can the Libs save anything coming into the next election?

I remember when Hockey was the NSW Young Liberal President (long term readers will know that I’m a former Liberal.) He would sell his sole for power then, and I have no doubt that he will now.

Tony Abbott…well, the positive is that he’s a man of his convictions, and although I don’t support all his convictions, I’d rather a leader or PM who stands by what he believes in vs sell them out at the drop of a hat.

But likewise Abbott suffers the same affliction that some in the NSW Right suffer: a contradiction between their economic and social policy. They believe in the market and small Government (well in theory, the only difference between Howard and Rudd on socialism is who gets the money, as opposed to not spending a lot of it at all), but likewise they seek to impose a Christian right view point on morals.

Of course the Liberal left is the rank opposite: they believe and support the nanny state, but likewise have a more libertarian view on social policy.

My problem has always been that I fit neither, and it was one of the reasons I was happy to quit the Liberal Party many years ago. I support the right on economics, but I support the left on social policy.

I shouldn’t have to make that choice, because both wings of the Liberal Party contradict each other. If you are for free markets, you should be for liberal social policy (because the idea of small Government should extend all policies.) If you believe in socialism, then perhaps you should believe in interfering in social policy.

There have been some smaller parties challenging the norm. The LDP, who I’ll always happily vote for, unfortunately seem destined to never gain a seat in Australia. The Pirate Party (of which I’m a provisional member) is a two issue party, but both issues fit nicely with my libertarian view of the world. Even the Sex Party is getting there…well, aside from their ridiculous policy that 50% of all seats in parliament should be for women. Don’t get me wrong, if 90% of parliament were women, I’d have no problem, but imposing quotas based on sex vs merit = epic fail and is indeed sexism in itself.

I’m nearly at the point that I might not take my next vote seriously. I’d say I’d dummy vote except that saying that is illegal in Australia (another travesty in itself.) All I see is gray when what we need is something better.

I don’t want to revisit again what happened, but suffice to say we had our worst day since maybe month 2…and the first week of the month (and September in general, but not as bad) was epic fail.

Now on Rackspace so benchmarking load times, and doing everything I can to make the site as quick as possible.

As I type this, the front page loads in 9.57 seconds, and give or take the time its loaded it’s sometimes faster, sometimes a little slower. The bulk of the readable content though is up <6 seconds, and that’s a huge improvement.

Posts are an issue. Content is up <7 seconds but the full page is way too long (18s). The biggest problem is JS-Kit, and loading icons for each comment, for example hits to FriendFeed for icons can add 5-10 seconds to load time. I’ve asked them for the option to cut the icons out, crossing fingers.

With both pre-loaded (so cache in play) I tried to benchmark the load times against Mashable and TC
Mashable: front: 32.63 page: 24.69
TC: 16:56 page: one page 8 seconds then hang, the next 11.25 then hang with half sidebar missing.

The choice of the two was important because both are on Rackspace…and we beat them, despite less resources. We can do better though, and we will

We’re offering five blogging positions in a range of roles. Details on Darren Rowse’s Problogger here.

They’re hard to describe, and using the term entry level in the title for this post might be slightly disingenous, but likewise it’s something close to that. They’re something like an internship/ entry level position, and they share some qualities such as experience, exposure etc. But likewise we’re paying for them, be it not at the top of the market, but given dozens of networks including some of the big players hire “interns” like there is no tomorrow and pay them zilch, the positions offer some money. Compared to what I’m hearing from bloggers writing for content sites offering rev shares at the moment the rate is actually fairly high as well given what they are getting.

As we drive forward to 3 million page views a month (we did 1 million at 2pm on the 8th this month, our best week and a bit on record) we’re looking for ways to grow even more, so I see these positions offering benefits for us and each blogger. We obviously get more content, different views and hopefully interesting posts, and in return each successful candidate gets experience at the top end (while these aren’t I’ll hold your hand jobs, I’ll certainly be taking an active role in guidance), some extra money, and either a top level job with us one day (may not happen, but it’s an option depending on performance and our finances as a result) or a stepping stone onto something better.

We treat all our bloggers equally irrespective of their pay rate, seniority, experience or what not, and these positions will be no different, although they do come with lower posting requirements.

If we fill these spots our regular posting compliment rises to 10, and add another 3 on top for occasional guest/ CPM spots.

Of course that’s bollocks. Anyone who has ever been around a football club of any code knows that these problems are evident in all, and you only have to go through the record of the AFL and see players there mucking up.

But what if the problem was one of sport, or male team sport in particular?

Consider this: DUIs the biggest off-field problem for NFL

The drinking problem is happening in the US as well. The difference in the US perhaps is that group sex wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

I won’t do a huge stats post this month. Short version: 2.34m page views, just over February’s previous record of 2.31m I also managed to screw up the GAnalytics code this month, so there’s a day and a half missing in the total count. I’m guessing the total was around 2.45m.

Technorati out to 235. Weird month. We got in as close as 120 at one stage, then out to over 300. The six months prior was a growth time, so we’re not getting as many links as we’re losing, but not by much.

Finances were down CPM off March, which isn’t surprising given March was a strong month. The counter was more traffic in April which means while we made less this month, it wasn’t as big a drop as it might have been. We’re also ahead of Jan/ Feb on a CPM basis, so although it’s disappointing to see a drop, it’s not as bad as it once was. Overheads are up in April with the addition of two CPM based writers, which will be bigger again in May with Paul Short being made permanent.

Yes, $43 billion is expensive. As Duncan Riley calculated, that?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s around $5000 per household. But we?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re creating brand new infrastructure to completely replace a copper network that was built across more than half a century. This is an investment on similar time scale.

The problem with that statement is two fold. One, we’re not replacing the copper network. Telstra owns the copper network, and I haven’t heard that they’re about to rip it out. It still does a fine job at delivering my ADSL 2+

Second, we’re not creating brand new infrastructure: in large parts of capital cities, we’re duplicating it, because Telstra and to a lesser extent Optus (and a couple of bit players around the place) already have fibre in the ground. The point may be one of semantics: the NBN cables will be “new,” but the context is one that suggests its new because it doesn’t currently exist.

The last point to me is a key one. Instead of forcing Telstra’s hand, or using legal means to use the infrastructure currently in place, the Government is spending $43 billion on a network that will duplicate some of what’s already there.

Lets presume you put Telstra’s network into the mix, but the Government still wants everyone else to get fibre. I can’t find a definite figure on Telstra’s current network, but the figure in Melbourne alone was “1 million customers.” One figure I saw suggested Telstra was aiming for 6m customers, but I don’t believe that figure. Lets say it’s 3 million Australia wide.

There are 8.296m households. Each one costs $5,063 to service. 3m = $15.2 billion in NBN costs.

Telstra has a market cap of $41.6b. How much would it cost to buy Telstra’s cable network, presuming you didn’t want to force Telstra’s hand by other measures? Even if it cost $10b to acquire, you get a network in the ground now that needs maybe $1 billion in upgrades (the Melb upgrade is priced at $300m) and you save $4.2billion. But here’s where it’s even better: because you’d also cut the rollout time from 8 years to maybe 5 by not having to roll out fibre to those places that already have it.

See what I mean now about duplication and waste?

Lots of waffling.

Takeaways

Conroy: If an Australian website has material that is deemed to be refused classification – a number of other classifications also – they’re issued with what’s called a take-down notice – for the overseas websites at the moment all ACMA can do if they’re identified is write to the overseas server and ask them to not do it – which means nothing, in effect.

Actually, the same program had a site owner who’s site had been added to the blacklist who didn’t know his site was added to the blacklist. If they’d received a takedown notice, they would have know.

MARK NEWTON: Or it can be X-18-plus, which is legal for adults to buy and view everywhere in Australia. Or it can be R-18-plus and not behind a restricted access system. R-18-plus material is legal to view in public cinemas – any adult can walk into a cinema and see R-18-plus movies but they are prohibited content on the internet in Australia and then the most outrageous one which is also the most recent addition which came into force in January this year ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú sorry – last year – prohibited content on the internet in Australia includes material which is MA-15-plus sold for profit and not behind restricted access systems. This is material which is legal to view on free-to-air television which is prohibited on the internet.

Conroy: This is one of the great furphies that people have wanted to engage in to try and create a scare campaign about what we’re actually proposal. I on have only ever identified refused classification in terms of child porn, bestiality, rape, incest sites – those sorts of things. For adults who want to be able to watch the other material we’re not proposing to do that – we’ve never proposed to do that.

Actually, prohibited content does include what Mark Newton details, even ACMA confirms it.

STEPHEN CONROY: Refused classification and there’s a legitimate debate – I think Mark wants to have a debate about what – there are different categories within refused classification. There are always marginal issues about some material, whether it falls in or falls out.

Actually, no there’s not. RC is still RC, even if there is different criteria in getting to the point, unless Conroy is proposing new RC sub-categories.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Conroy claims that the Blacklist won’t be used in the censorship regime

FIONA PATTEN: Currently, currently it says X-rated material, R-rated without age verification, anything that’s refused classification. So, I mean, I’m very pleased to hear that X-rated will no longer be on the black list. It’s currently on it. Certainly there are – I mean, I have members who have sites who are currently on the black list. Again, they didn’t know that they were on the black list until it was leaked. And it hasn’t ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú

STEPHEN CONROY: This is the – people, again, keep confusing between what we’re proposing and what is on the existing black list. These were categories created by the former government and they are the current law.

or maybe not?

FIONA PATTEN: We’ve actually never heard that existing black list prohibited content and was going to change, that you were actually going to relax that. This is the first I’ve heard that this list is going to – the proposal is going to be very different from the existing black list that we have of ISPs.

JENNY BROCKIE: And is that right? Can you clarify that ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú that your proposal would not be like that black list.

STEPHEN CONROY: Look, as I said, the existing black list was passed by the Parliament. Now the Senate has 39 votes. The Liberal Party introduced this and they’ve got 37 and Steve Fielding is elected Family First Senator and he’s got strong views in this area. That’s 38. You cannot repeal this. Even if the Labor Party decided it wanted to try and change this, it actually won’t pass the Senate.

So the blacklist, which is currently law, can’t be overturned. But wasn’t Conroy not using it???

Previously: “It is possible to support a blacklist and support free speech.”

Also the trail of filtering…uses the blacklist. See Optus here.

Deny deny deny

MARK NEWTON: We’re getting away just for a moment from the fact that you also voted in favour of those changes – it’s a bit rich to disclaim them now. The existing definition of refused classification doesn’t only contain all of this extreme pornography stuff that we have spent most of the night talking about so far – the existing ACMA list also includes – because it was refused classification and you know this because you testified in the Senate about it – it also includes an anti-abortion website and it also include the peaceful kill.

STEPHEN CONROY: That’s not correct, Mark.

But it did. We know it did. Conroy and ACMA have admitted that a page on the site was blocked.

Waffle waffle waffle

Question then, if it won’t stop child porn, why do it at all?

After all, it was Conroy who continually said that the filter was all about child porn.

“Black lists are needed to combat child pornography” Conroy (The West)

On the overall policy: “It also focuses on managing current threats through technical mechanisms such as ISP-level filtering of illegal material including child pornography.” Conroy (speech)

“Central to the Government?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s plan to make the internet a safer place for children is the introduction of Internet Service Provider (ISP) level filtering of material such as child pornography.” Conroy (media release)

“Conroy told the media that it would censor online child pornography and other ?¢‚Ǩ?ìinappropriate material”" WSWS

“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.” Conroy (ABC)

“We are not building the Great Wall of China. We are going after the filth – like child pornography. Its been done around the world and it can be done here.” Conroy (IT News)

The last quote is important: Conroy now claims that the filter isn’t a silver bullet, but said that the filter was all about blocking child porn, which he now says it won’t stop.

So what is it then?

Time to go Senator Conroy, if you keep up these backflips you’ll end up with a broken back.

One last quote out of the UK, which I think fits here
BT admitted that the UK’s “Cleanfeed” scheme was “intended to prevent users inadvertently accessing illegal material, rather than to stop hardened paedophiles.” ZDNet

Sort of sums up Conroy’s policy doesn’t it.