Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 11 March 2003
Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.
From: Peter
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Mystery providers join porn fight

Not a mystery really.  Which two ISPs would

1.  give the largest coverage?
2.  have close relationship with government over other issues?
3.  are generally secretive?

All this will achieve is that nefarious individuals will shift to
mini-ISPs




From: Max
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: usenet blocking, not the answer

While I naturally have to agree that there are images out
there that I don’t want to see, there are a few questions.
My main concern is if somebody is given the right, and the
ability to decide what I see, how will I know how far they
will go? Me, I don’t like a lot of the current music
videos, would that give me the right to ban them as I think
they are rotting our minds, I hope not!

As for the Usenet newsgroups, blocking them is something I
really don’t agree with. My main concern is that if you
block the groups with the names which are easy to
understand, and therefore avoid, the people just post there
pictures in other news groups and communicate with each
other which group is being used this week. Then all of a
sudden I can be looking in a completely unrelated news
group, and at a completely safe looking filename, and all
of a sudden, bang, I am staring at the type of stuff which
I don’t want to see, and wouldn’t have to see if the other
groups hadn’t been blocked.


Don’t take the easy approach and just block sites/groups,
or chase down consumers of the material, as this doesn’t
work. The producers just move their materials to other
sites, other groups, and there is even more chance of
people who don’t want to see the material running into it.

There are only two ways of fixing the problem. The first is
work on society, if society didn’t accept this behaviour,
it would be a lot harder for them to get away worth it. The
second method is good old leg work and investigation. Try
and find out who is producing this stuff and stop them. I
see lots of articles with various numbers of people,
sometimes even famous people, being caught with this
content, and the numbers are getting bigger and bigger, but
how many articles do you see where they actually catch/stop
a producer of it!

Sorry, but your working in the wrong direction guys :(




From: Matt
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Internet filtering...

Good discussion on Slashdot about NZ's nanny state and loss
of freedom:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/03/09/199243.shtml?tid=153




From: Kevin
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: R18 content availability re: minors

I noticed that Saturn started blocking R18 movies during
the day (up till 8:30pm?) last year. If using Sky, these
movies are available with your PIN




From: Dwayne
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: depleted means depleted

We all get the hebe-gebes when someone mentions uranium or
radioactive. However, lets remember that depleted uranium
is used in bombs precisely because it is safe to handle,
especially in the small quantities used in anti-tank
weapons. And being so heavy, any oxides produced by a
detonation wouldn't stay in the air for long. This effect
would be quite localised. The objective is penetration of
hard targets, not contamination of a wide area.

The army probably takes care not to use the shells unless
normal high explosive won't work (heavier shells mean more
expensive logistics). So the most common use for uranium
tipped shells would be with anti-tank weapons rather than
general use.

And lets get real. The same journalist who talks
about "30mm bullets" is trying to look like some kind of
expert. Actually the 30mm anti-tank ammo is a discarding-
sabot shell, and not a very powerful one; the projectile
(sabot) is smaller - hence the need for a shell that breaks
away after leaving the cannon muzzle. 30mm shells are used
by helo-gunships because aircraft need high rate of fire,
and a gun with higher muzzle velocity would push the
helicopter backwards. There are no bullets in the world as
big as 30mm -- probably the tungsten bullets in our navy's
20mm CIWS are as big as you will see.




From: Bob Baal
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: News article blocking

It will be interesting to see how they would handle off
shore servers.

Clearnet for example does not have a news server, it has a
news cache, the actual server is based in the USA and is
run by a crowd called Giganews.

Hence though you could detect an article to be removed the
local admins cant do anything other than pass the request
to the US admins who dont have to action it if they dont
feel like it.

A side effect is that the Clearnet news server is covered
by the DMCA

Other smaller ISP's dont even have a cache they just rent
space on a server in the US.




From: Bill
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Depleted..

Earlier Dwayne said
"There are no bullets in the world as big as 30mm --
probably the tungsten bullets in our navy's 20mm CIWS are
as big as you will see."

Well, even our army uses 105mm artillery rounds, and 155mm
is common in many Western armies.  By "bullets" does he
mean solid projectiles, ie without any explosive or
incendiary or illuminating filling?
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