From the monthly archives:

May 2009

Razer Prohibits Use of Its Mice with Multiple PCs

28 May 2009

I bought a AU$200 Razer Mamba mouse. Being inclined as I am, I decided to read through the legalese that accompanied the mouse, including the EULA for the driver software. ‘Razer™ grants you a … license to use one copy of the enclosed software … on one computer only … No other rights are granted.’

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What Conroy Meant by Voluntarily Mandatory

27 May 2009

Yesterday, Senator Conroy made statements in a Senates Estimates hearing suggesting that filtering could be implemented with a voluntary industry code. To explain what he (probably) meant, I have set out how filtering is governed by a voluntary industry code today, how this can be changed to make filtering mandatory, and what exactly is ‘voluntary’ about this industry code.

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How to Enable OpenType Ligatures in Word 2010

17 May 2009

No normal person would care, but Microsoft has finally added support for OpenType ligatures in Microsoft Word 2010 (Word 14). They’re not enabled by default, though. To enable OpenType ligatures, right-click on some text, select Font, select the Advanced tab, and select Standard Only from the Ligatures combo box.

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So What Exactly Is Prohibited Content?

16 May 2009

When three copies of the ACMA blacklist were posted on Wikileaks, people were surprised to find it included ordinary pornography, horror movie clips, anti-abortion sites, pro-euthanasia sites, and poker sites. I explain why the inclusion of these sites on the list was not the result of error.

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Restricted Access Systems Insufficient for Links

7 May 2009

After it came out that the Classification Board had classified the infamous AbortionTV page R 18+, a number of people have suggested that you could link to the page if you made the link subject to a restricted access system. But restricted access systems in relation to R 18+ require proof of age and, in any event, must apply to the content itself and not to the link to the content.

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Classification Board Classifies AbortionTV R 18+

5 May 2009

Today, ACMA issued EFA with a final link-deletion notice for linking to the blacklisted AbortionTV page. From the notice, it appears that the Classification Board has now actually classified the content, and that the classification it arrived at was R 18+. The AbortionTV page is now ‘prohibited content’ as opposed to ‘potential prohibited content’.

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TrueCrypt Volumes Still Undetectable

1 May 2009

Last week, Forensic Innovations Inc announced on its blog that it has a tool that can identify headerless encrypted data, such as TrueCrypt volumes. For the tool to work, it would have to be able to distinguish between random or pseudo-random data and the output of ciphers like AES. I ran a quick test to see whether it could. It can’t.

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