Someone sent me an email which asked what to do since: one of my external hard drives, the one with EVERYTHING I REALLY, REALLY WANT on it has died

An friend of mine who lives in China recently wrote to me and said “guess what.. the great firewall of China seems to be gone…” My friend advised that you can read anything you like. An example of this is the UK BBC news site, who a few months ago reported that their English site is available inside China for first time in a decade; but the point of interest is that the BBC Chinese site is also available for use within China.

I just started reading Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother using one of his ebooks he has relesed under the Creative Commons license. I have to admit that I had never heard of Cory of BoingBoing fame, or his books until I read about them via CelticBear. As a ‘paranoid’ geeked I’m hooked on Little Brother, and if you like tech, geek and drama you should check it out as well. Update: I went to buy a copy from a local bookstore, but it is not released in Australia yet.

Alexander Downer spent 11 years as the foreign minister of Australia. During his tenure, had he been visiting Melbourne he would have had his cars, his people and arrangements for venues visited. Now it’s a bit different. This morning I almost bumped into him on Collins Street in Melbourne. You can’t miss a public figure. The funny thing was that some man in the street was hurling abuse at him, but didn’t realise he was no longer foreign minister.