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Showing posts with label black outs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black outs. Show all posts

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Join The Great Australian Internet Blackout


The Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste millions of dollars and won’t make anyone safer.
1.
It won’t protect children: The filter isn’t a “cyber safety” measure to stop kids seeing inappropriate content such as R and X rated websites. It is not even designed to prevent the spread of illegal material where it is most often found (chat rooms, peer-to-peer file sharing).
2.
We will all pay for this ineffective solution: Under this policy, ISPs will be forced to charge more for consumer and business broadband. Several hundred thousand dollars has already been spent to test the filter – without considering high-speed services such as the National Broadband Network!
3.
A dangerous precedent: We stand to join a small club of countries which impose centralised Internet censorship such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The secret blacklist may be limited to “Refused Classification” content for now, but what might a future Australian Government choose to block?
Help turn the lights out on the proposed Internet filter by joining the Great Australian Internet Blackout.
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Thursday, September 13, 2007

Fleet of Toyota Prius to Power Neighbourhoods?

As we head into the summer season here in South Australia and the potential for more all too frequent blackouts, the hybrid car may have a use as a backup energy supply for your home. Recently, when tropical storms resulted in a power outage in Florida, enterprising hybrid owners plugged the car into the backup uninterruptible power supply in their homes to get the electricity up and running. As long as the car has fuel, it can produce about three kilowatts of continuous power, enough to keep the refrigerator running and the lights on in the average house.

Useful. Gotta keep that beer fridge running. I wonder how efficient that would be as a means of generating power. It also looks a lot easier than this, a peddle powered washing machine.