Quite a good read.

Encyclopedia Dramatica is Wikipedia’s evil twin. It’s a site where almost every article is biased, offensive, unsourced, and without the faintest trace of political correctness. A search through its archives will reveal animated images of people committing suicide, articles glorifying extreme racism and sexism, and a seemingly endless supply of twisted, shocking views on just about every major human tragedy in history.

Edit:

I liked his response to this :

How do you defend publishing articles on Encyclopedia Dramatica like "Trinity Bates"?

I didn't write that article and I have no specific comment on it, but my distaste for what some people might say does not outweigh my distaste for censorship.

That is a good response to that question on Bates.

I'm surprised they published that.

Slow news day? The internet has offensive s*** on it, film at 11.
Are they going to interview somethingawful.com and ebaumsworld.com next?

That is an amazing interview, if only all net-denziens could conduct themselves so well.

Do you think police will be able to catch those responsible for the vandalism of the tribute pages?

Doubtful. The IT muscle of Australia leaves a lot to be desired. This is a country that took $80 million to develop a filtering proxy, something which has already been done more effectively (http://www.squid-cache.org/) for free. Literally, squid did regex-based filtering, and not list-based filtering a decade ago. In addition, it can speed up web traffic instead of slow it down like the Australian filter. ISPs that push more traffic than the entirety of Australia's internet usage have already implemented squid at cost in the hundred thousand range (which includes all hardware and development costs).

f***ING GOLD!

I love this guy. He should hook up with Mark Newton like the power rangers robot and lay some serious smack down on Kruddler and Conroy.

I wonder if it was a live interview, if so it was pretty awesome of him to cite some of those references and bible passages on the fly. Although somehow I don't think it was.

This is a country that took $80 million to develop a filtering proxy, something which has already been done more effectively (http://www.squid-cache.org/) for free. Literally, squid did regex-based filtering, and not list-based filtering a decade ago. In addition, it can speed up web traffic instead of slow it down like the Australian filter. ISPs that push more traffic than the entirety of Australia's internet usage have already implemented squid at cost in the hundred thousand range (which includes all hardware and development costs).

Is that true? Coming from a guy who runs that site, can we trust the accuracy of these sorts of statements? (Genuine questions)

Brilliant article and great responses.

What a great interview and hats off to NineMSN for not spinning it so they guy looks like one of those internet crazies. I love this line;

If Christ were here again today he'd probably start a website and people would be crying for its censorship.

Billy - in a nutshell what he is saying is true. Squid can do regex filtering in addition to list based filtering and would provide the same level of filtering that any other filtering software ($80mil government one or not) can do.

Is that true? Coming from a guy who runs that site, can we trust the accuracy of these sorts of statements? (Genuine questions)

Technically I think its a bit of a simplistic view to say they could have just used a squid proxy, and I doubt the Several hundred thousand dollar cost.

Bluecoat, who make dedicated hardware filter boxes would charge a few hundred thousand for a single box that wouldnt handle anywhere near the traffic to australia.

For example, the place I work just spent about 200k on an IBM blade centre (WIth 6 Dual Quad core Xeon Servers) and EMC san. If you double that for harware and software setup costs with free squid proxy software, you would end up with a kick ass proxy, but now where near the size need for all Of australia.

not on $999 worth of hardware it wouldnt :)

Bluecoat, who make dedicated hardware filter boxes would charge a few hundred thousand for a single box that wouldnt handle anywhere near the traffic to australia.

From what I know of Bluecoat, they're over-priced annoying pieces of poo. (edit: but, y'know, i could be wrong)

For example, the place I work just spent about 200k on an IBM blade centre (WIth 6 Dual Quad core Xeon Servers) and EMC san.

Orly? For whom do you work and what's the serial number of the emc array pls :P

That is quite interesting, I dunno if this interview was done in person or whether the guy had time to look stuff up before he answered, but he sounds like a smart motherf***er and a real internet veteran. It's good to know, because I thought it was mostly newb 10 year olds with no idea on those kinda sites.

It is the rounded-corners fisher price generation we should really be afraid of. Growing up during the post September 11 bulls***, whilst singing along with Hi-5, falling onto soft rubber pellets, idolising Miley Cyrus, and never ever having seen a good cartoon. Scary generation man, they're gonna get weirder and weirder.

last edited by thermite at 10:31:12 12/Mar/10

From what I know of Bluecoat, they're over-priced annoying pieces of poo. (edit: but, y'know, i could be wrong)

Yeah no doubt, but they are pretty big in the Filtering sector and would have good sales people who would sell it to the government.

The government wouldnt have even considered doing something like sourcing its own hardware and developing a solution around using squid.

I think we just started using Bluecoat at work for filtering. That name rings a bell.

if you had 200 x $1000 machines, you could pretty effectively run a squid farm that could potentially filter a few gigabits of internet traffic
I think the figure is a bit low too, but he is probably not taking into account anything but the actual hardware that squid runs on (so no networking costs, routing etc)

I've never heard of them, sounds like one of the usual overpriced does everything in box-o-mystery security appliances running on squid

The company I work for uses Bluecoat filtering. Even does MSN stuff. For example, we can't paste URLs into conversations or transfer files... Interestingly, they like to record all conversations and recently when the msn client started encrypting its traffic, they disabled staff from using it altogther, and have since implemented OCS. Which is a pain in the ass as we often used msn to talk to people outside the company.

Thankfully though, I'm usually off-site and have real internet connections to play with.

Sounds like my workplace what the lovely trusting place to be

Oh well I suppose they're jsut worried about IP and security and whatever. They even go to the extent of disabling access to USB storage devices for contractors. Yeah, because there's no chance they'll copy that importand company info via email... ftp... http... dropbox... gmail...

Oh well I suppose they're jsut worried about IP and security and whatever. They even go to the extent of disabling access to USB storage devices for contractors. Yeah, because there's no chance they'll copy that importand company info via email... ftp... http... dropbox... gmail...

heh we now have a client on all of our work machines that scans all inbound and outbound traffic for "sensitive" information

yer my old work locked out USB on ALL workstations.

it was a nazi regime but it worked

It is thoroughly annoying when you've got three computers on three physically and logically separate networks and the only way to get files between them is via USB.

We can't have computers we use for experiments connected to a network or the internet (can affect millisecond timings)... nor can we have virus software for the same reason.... as a result, people are forced to use USB keys only which inevitably leads to constant virus issues which we can't fix easily because of no virus software.

Technically I think its a bit of a simplistic view to say they could have just used a squid proxy, and I doubt the Several hundred thousand dollar cost.

I disagree. It's a perfectly simple solution to a perfectly simple problem.

Having run squid proxies in large ISP environments I don't think his math for cost would be too far off. If each ISP ran a squid farm ( and lets face it most of them already do with transparent proxying ) then it would be a simple matter of ACL'ing based off the contents of a a few files of blacklist urls / regex patterns.

Even if it's not all the way there it goes to show you don't need to spend $80 Million and still be getting nowhere. Boggles the mind where all that money went. Although now my gf has a government job I can see how 90% of what they do is just waste money and not get anything done. If my gf does anything... if she even has a 2 minute conversation with another employee at work, she has to then spend time filling in paperwork explaining the nature of their conversation and how long it took etc... oh and every minute of the day has to be accounted for. I imagine the paperwork mostly says "filled in paperwork". And hers is really not the kind of job where she should be wasting time filling in paperwork at all, but that is mostly what happens. That, and all the free f***ing food and seminars.

We can't have computers we use for experiments connected to a network or the internet (can affect millisecond timings)... nor can we have virus software for the same reason.... as a result, people are forced to use USB keys only which inevitably leads to constant virus issues which we can't fix easily because of no virus software.

Hahah oh dear. That's terribad!

Q: Do you think that the authors of the article "Aboriginal" were defending free speech or just being racist bullies?

A: Bullying is when someone gets beaten. Satire is when an article gets written on an Internet comedy website.

haha, I like this guy.

Although now my gf has a government job I can see how 90% of what they do is just waste money and not get anything done. If my gf does anything...

yer, i learnt that ages ago, all my mates got government jobs, i got private sector

they all flex, take meetings, do pretty much anything, except real work

how has the system become so bad!?

Having run squid proxies in large ISP environments I don't think his math for cost would be too far off. If each ISP ran a squid farm ( and lets face it most of them already do with transparent proxying ) then it would be a simple matter of ACL'ing based off the contents of a a few files of blacklist urls / regex patterns.

A few hundred thousand to filter all of australis data is waaaaaaay off I think. Even a million is too low. I guarantee if you went out to tender for a project like that you wouldnt get any bids anywhere near 500k. And if the government did it themselves it would probably cost more, like it obviously has.

The 80millions costs seems a bit crazy though. I'd like to know how that costs actualy breaks down.

A Decent rackmount server is 10k, and you'd need at least 2 of them for redundancy, probably more like 4. Add in storage, UPS costs, racks, cooling etc. Saying 200x$1000 machines is a pretty silly way to think of it.

Are you going to have a room full of $1000 tower servers just stacked up on each other, are they just going to be running of a couple of wall outlets on extention cords?

Yes its just a squid proxy and you can install squid in like 10 mins and get it working in an hour. But setting one up for an ISP is always going to be more.

The costs becomes alot larger because you dont have single point that all the data goes through. Each ISP would have to have a Filter box.

A realy rough top of my head figure for the Smallest Box with squid setup ready to go for a small ISP would be about 20k, and youd probably want to have 2 of them.

A project to install Web filtering into a place like telstra would easily be a few million.

they all flex, take meetings, do pretty much anything, except real work

:D

Don't forget that the filter as talked about way back when was meant to actually filter all traffic (web traffic on all ports, ssl traffic, torrent traffic?), these are the things that were flung around. It was touted to protect us from all evils.

As we all agree, the reasons against it from doing what was claimed are many, but if you're going to talk about those sorts of things you've got to put up serious moneys just to get started. Sure, you can filter all internet traffic into Australia, but we're going to have to pay through the nose, both in money and freedom, for you do achieve that.

It's all a farce, and that comment points out just how farcicle it is, so I read the whole thing thinking "f***ING GOLD" as well, but it's not necessary to explore it literally to see the truth of it. What he says isn't that outlandish.

I've heard a lot less about the filter these days, I'm hoping it's lying in a shallow grave, or wearing cement shoes somewhere I'll never stumble across it again. I doubt it though, it's just the sort of thing that some kid is going to stumble across, or some fisherman will get caught up in his nets.

last edited by blahnana at 19:28:37 12/Mar/10

They're talking about this on JJJ at the moment.

Apparently the guys that run Encyclopedia Dramatica have been given legal advice not to come to Australia because they might get in trouble with the law. What the f***.

Apparently ED has been placed on the ACMA blacklist, and thus will be filtered if/when the filter comes into operation.

http://www.blog.encyclopediadramatica.com/?p=84 for more information.

Colin Jacobs from EFA was interviewed giving the usual good advice that you'd expect - basically "don't feed the trolls", and ignore things like ED that offend you. Internet 101 s***, really.

From the ED owners blog post:

Encyclopedia Dramatica will never be censored in any way. We will keep publishing this content and our Australian users will be able to view it up until the point that your God-forsaken government blocks it with their soon-to-be-implemented secret list of banned material. ACMA’s child pornography blacklist is only one half child pornography. The rest is religious and political speech. You really want Soviet-style communism as your future? I know some people that had to escape from the GDR. Many of your children will be in that position. The house of cards is about to come down, and they’re making sure your mouths are taped shut first. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My counsel has advised me that I can never under any circumstances visit my family in Sydney again, nor otherwise make any appearances on Australian soil. Here’s to the hidden cost of freedom.

What a f***ing load of bulls***. Hopefully I can land a job in a non-retarded country sometime in the near-ish future. I'm sick of the s*** in this f***ing country.

sites like ED being blocked are exactly the problem with filtered internets

Apparently ED has been placed on the ACMA blacklist, and thus will be filtered if/when the filter comes into operation.

I've heard that lolcats is going to be put on the ban list too...

i can fit 200 servers in 8 full size racks just fyi


where there's a will, there's a way