It was nice debating this with you. I take in everything that people discuss with me. Just because I use my own brain, doesn’t mean I don’t listen/read. I also listen to “authoritative sources” from all fronts, not just ones that agree with thoughts I had before hand.

Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Molly

And no I’m not suggesting that they put the filter on for everyone to test it. I’m saying that no bot-test will show what it does to my internet when it does come in. I want to stop this senseless waste of money before the money is completely gone.

I’m done discussing this with you. I’ve read your replies on other forums and the answers people give when you challenge why they are against the feed. You seem unwilling to listen to authoritative sources. You also seem to believe that the Govt. has nothing but the best intentions and is handling this in a consultative and open manner despite all evidence to the contrary. Normally I’d be happy to continue an open discussion, but your view will not be changed by me, when smarter people have tried and failed. I’d be happy if your rosy filtered world were possible, but it just isn’t. Until people accept that we’ll never move forward.

Again, the reason for bots is normally to try to simulate real world situations where real world testing isn’t possible or are you suggesting that they just put the filter on for everyone as the test?

Swings and roundabouts, swings and roundabouts.

And why should some casual internet user, who occasionally checks their email and photos of their grandkids be able to say what is acceptable for me? I could participate in their trial, but I’d rather protest what I see as a half-arsed attempt to do my parenting for me.

From what I read it seems the “not real people” part is only for testing the effect of adding more URL/IPs to the mix where they want to test high volumes. Without actually going totally live, I don’t see how this could be recreated without going for bots.

The problem here is that the Government isn’t asking. What hope do we have that they’ll listen, when people in the know are being ignored on technical issues that they understand better than anyone else?

As to “better ideas on how to achieve the goals” of the Government, the fact is the Government doesn’t know what it wants, and isn’t saying – one minute it’s “protecting the children”, the next it’s blocking “inappropriate” material. There IS no debate as far as Conroy is concerned, and the goals are murky and shallow. The whole thing comes across as a political manoeuvre to appease clueless parents, and show that the Govt. is “doing something”. In the end however, they’ll have done precisely nothing and wasted money, and given parents a false sense of security.

If you want a “solution”, you need to define the problem. If it’s stopping kids seeing porn, then you need to educate parents to better educate their kids. If it’s eradicating child porn, then you need to do what the police are doing and track down the perpetrators – hiding it away on the internet and pretending it isn’t there will not make it stop “in the real world”.

The geeks need to be listened to on this one. For once we have a debate that is solely within our territory, and we can tell people categorically that this filter will not achieve anything, because it is a stunt and not technically feasible. The problems it purports to tackle are social, and a technological solution will have little to no effect, and leave us worse off than when we started.

As to the idea that the testing methods are sound, well… I’m not certain how you define live trials, but a trial that doesn’t include real people is no live trial in my book. How will a trial such as this show us how a real person’s internet will be slowed or filtered? The real test will be when this cleanfeed is slapped on everyone, willing or unwilling, but by then it will be to late to register our protest. That is why we have to do it now, by pointing out every single ridiculous assertion by its advocates before this colossal mistake goes further.

Their methodology is not sound. They have no baseline with which to compare their results, no measures of success/failure, no controls and their “live” trial includes no “live” users. Their “closed” trials showed very problematic results with only 30 users.

I agree that iiNet’s stance is *almost* healthy, although without some measures of success, I worry that any results will be seen as success. With Telstra refusing to participate, Optus redefining the rules and iiNet playing Devil’s advocate, the government should be taking note that perhaps there is some validity to arguments against their current proposal.

I don’t buy that filtering is as bad as everyone makes out, but even if it is, I have issues with the use of the argument that the government will use it to block political debate. That really is just stupid!

And the other thing that I have wondered of recent times is that there is hundreds of brilliant people that are against the filter, but I haven’t seen many better ideas on how to achieve the goals that the government are trying to achieve. I seriously think that if they started to put some thought into how the government should fight this battle, it would be a win-win situation.

I don’t think there is an easy answer, but I don’t blame the government for taking it on. And it should be noted that there is two levels of the filtering that need to be considered and lot a lot of things, we tend to look at this from a “geek” level and normally find it hard to see it from the non-geek perspective. It has been shown that being able to do that is hard to do but hugely successful for those that can (look at Nintendo and the Wii. I remember when they first announced it and its controllers at E3 and the “geeks” laughed at them, now they dominate the game landscape).

I also think (from what I have read) whether what they purpose is the right solution, there testing methodologies seem quite sound. In the past it wouldn’t be suprising to see something like this just thrown into law. They have gone through one round of testing and want to go through more. I don’t see Telsta opting out of that pilot as a good thing. Its a bad thing. I think the provider that said they would do the test to show how its broken is a much more healthy attitude. I also hope they help to show other ways it could be better done.
JTMC (I seem to be rambling on )