John Linton .......is it just me or has Krudd's political stunt of an 'NBN2' begun to acquire a truly dangerous set of connotations?
I read this earlier this morning which cheered me up:
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/154249,nbn-useless-without-subsea-investment.aspx#comments
because I regard the chances of Krudd even starting to build an 'NBN2' are below 50% (I don't count Tasmania - that is a State initiative with Federal funding) and the chances of an 'NBN2' actually ever delivering any services to more than a tiny fraction of the population in the non capital cities are zero. To have the concept of a NATIONAL (I think that word has a clear meaning that it stops at the nation in question's geographic boundaries) network being extended to the West Coast of the USA in terms of IP content is ludicrous.
I shouldn't waste any more words on commenting on this cheap political stunt - and that's all it is - and it has worked spectacularly well in making people forget that Krudd promised as part of his election that an NBN1 (costing 5 billion) would already be built and now he has managed to deflect the dumb electorate and the even dumber media in to talking about 8 years in to the future when he will, unless God is truly a cruel god, have long gone. All the papers submitted seem to show is the overt greed of a bunch of companies, large and small, attempting to get their snout in the trough of taxpayer's dollars that wil be frittered away on this exercise in political unscrupulousness.
When will those morons who elected Krudd and the even stupider media who write about his total non-policies as if they were real, realise that Krudd is one of God's cruel jokes - or perhaps just another version of the that old droll Dane's "Emperor's New Clothes" parable? Oh well.
The thought of having any National government controlling the internet feed into any country is a nightmare. The current 'filtering trials' being conducted by Stupid Stephen have been buried under the weight of media squawking about the 'NBN2' Trojan horse. A government that is seeking to impose, via forcing ISPs to meet some operating requirements, draws immense amounts of media words to the contrary (though it's hard to know whether that represents what the majority of Australians feel or simply the obnoxious know it alls getting easy media access. However, just how dangerous would it be for a government not to need the co-operation of anybody but themselves to decide what is allowed to be delivered to Australia.
Anyway, despite the headline of that article and the 'paper' it was quoting the whole thing is even more ludicrous than the actual, back of the proverbial bus ticket, "design/costing" of the pointless 'NBN2'. There never has been a question of there not being enough fibre available to provide whatever level of data the aggregate of all Australian demand has ever been. The only thing that the occasional idiot suggests is that it isn't provided at a low enough cost due to "lack of competition". How anyone could believe that a government owned monopoly on IP accessability would produce a lower cost simply beggars the imagination.
Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that there never will be an 'NBN2' - is this stunt pulled by Krudd to get him off the hook for breaking a ridiculous election winning promise beginning to morph into something quite unthinkable - a government owned and controlled ISP industry with all the questions of what that means (a la the PRC, Saudi etc). A government owned 'national network' that decides it will provide its own IP (something as I've pointed out above has never been mentioned by Krudd so far) and a current government that is insistent that it wants IP traffic 'filtered' seems to me to be a 1984 style nightmare for the remnants of democracy that remain in this poor country.
For the government to own, or control in any reguatory way, the national infrastructure that delivers data to Australians and that also has a 'filtering' mandate is something that outside an Orwellian hellish vision of the planet has never been contemplated outside, possibly, some of the more repressive political regimes around the world. Irrespective of controlling the international IP feeds the ability to control, either by policy or by act of parliament what is delivered over such a network is not something that can be allowed to happen.
Back to reality - the fact that there never will be an 'NBN2' - it just goes to show you that when you let a vacuous clown run the country solely based on the whims of his own ego you can get to a situation where Krudd's hubris and pathological lying becomes really dangerous.
Is Krudd in fact a latter day "Manchurian Candidate"? - his metronomic (speaking clock cadence) public delivery of everything from a eulogy to the tabling of expense account figures gives the growing impression of a zombie/robot under the control of a third party.....but which third party?