Phillbo’s Blog Site

I played in a tennis grand final, and it was very close all the way through. I was the only person in my team to win all three sets, however I wouldn’t say I was the reason behind the glorious victory either. In my first set, I played well, and Ross and I drew first blood. Our other two team members lost their first set.

Then comes the set of Mason and I. Mason is a lef hand player, who usually plays like an absolute champ, but the finals nerves got to him, and he hardly moved. I managed to get into over drive, and we won that set comfortably. Ross and Anthony managed to loose the set on the other court.

Then comes to the final two sets. Ross and Mason narrowly lost the first set, and Anthony and I pulled of a miracle 6-3 win. The whole point is, the nerves got to me, and I lost two service games. By my third and final service game, I was down 0-30, and then I pulled of a nice sliding ace, and two magnificent kicker servers, that the opposition had no hope of returning. One of them bounced that high, that even Andre Agassi would have problem returning it. It was a total fluke, but it got us the set. But then, as you have it, both teams are tied on sets and games, so Anthony and I had to play a tie break. We won it quite comfortably, even though I thumbled the easiest of volleys of all time. I did a nice server to polish it off, and the championship was now in the hands of my team, and Hadfield Tennis Club has another premiership flag to add to their collection.

A few beers were had afterwards, and later on, Chris and I went out for our final last supper. We went to Stalactites, had some mixed dips, and a massive souvlaki. It was supreme, however my imaginary wallet is a little lighter now.

The big move is happening for me this weekend also, as eviction day from my current house is on June 15. I plan to move out a little earlier. I will be staying at a friends place until I find a place that I really want. But life is changing for me, and I will keep walking along.

Some of you may know, some may not, however I’ve been working in the domain name industry for quite some time. I think more than three hair cuts ago, and I haven’t had my hair cut in over a year. I will wait until it gets warmer before I consider getting it cut.

Working for an EU Accreditted registrar, we are required to follow rules for registration purposes. These rules must be ahered to; simply so we do not loose our accreditation. One of these rules is that, each registrar can only have one connection to the registry’s EPP server at any given time.

Now all law abiding registrars follow these rules, well strictly speaking they do. In fact, you have to otherwise your IP address will be banned by the registry, or worse yet, loose your accreditaton altogether.

But welcome to the .EU name space. Almost 2 million registered .EU domain names over the past four months, the majority being registered on April 7 to April 8 when the .EU landrush began. On April 1, there was about 500+ .EU registrars, by April 7, there was over 1000 .EU registrars.

Well tonight was significant, because around 100,000+ common/generic/failed sunrise .EU domain name applications were released for registration. At 11am Brussells time, 1000+ registrars started submitting these domains to the EURid registry. The odds of getitng a domain name are like 1 in every thousand applications. Not good by any stretch of means. But here is the scam… there is a shit load of accreditted .EU registrars, that have no trading presence, nor do they even have a web site. They’re simply a “registered entity” — and accreditted by EURid, just so they can use additional ports to the registry during busy periods. Consequently, legimitate registrars have a decreased chance of securing domain names for their customers.

Now if EURid were really concerned about the accreditation process, why would they allow this type of business practice. Maybe its just a case of a not-for-profit orginisation profiting too much. You see, money can even influence the attitude of not-for-profit orginisations. Well that is my rant.

Well some of you know that I support the ideal of privacy, but it is almost ironic to think that I’d post such a thing here. But then again, I blog what I want to blog about, and somethings about my life go unmentioned at my discretion. But today is just one of those days I guess.

Back in 1986, the Labor Government of the Bob Hawke era proposed the idea of the Australian Card. This could be described as the ID card for all Australians. It was proposed that all Australians carry this national identity card to prevent illegal immigrants working, to trade (to reduce money laundering), and it could also be used for other purposes. It would also regulate employment, ensuring tighter control on how funds and tax data were to be collected. It was inevitably shot down in flames, and it never got through the houses in federal parliament; all due to privacy concerns.

Needless to say, shortly after, every Australian 16 years and over needed to have a non-compulsory Tax File Number if they wanted to avoid paying the maximum tax rate for any income earned, regardless of how small amount of income was earned. Hence, privacy was “gladly” given up by the masses of Australians to reduce their taxable liability.

Now little Johnnie, and his mad crew of co-elected cow-workers have devised a new defacto Australia card. It is designed to prevent welfare fraud, replace a variety of welfare/medical or government issued cards, and of course it can be used for counter terrorism measures, by ensuring citizens can be tracked to an inch of their existance. It would also contain personal details, medical history (a database to save your life from known conditions), and in the long run could be expanded to just about replace any card in your wallet.

Then again, mobile phones, ATM cards, and other technological advancements have been doing this for a while.

This new card is just a new technological advancement. But I think it simply illustrates that what is left of privacy is now going out the window altogether.

Maybe this whole concept will be “marketed” on the idea of convenience, maybe it will even strike the heartd of people, living with the “fear of terror”, which has been bombared to them through the media and political propoganda. But fear not, for this card is not compulsory, unless of course you require welfare, medicare service/public health treatments, run a business?, or well.. think of something else… as this innovative technology can stretch to the boundaries of the sky and beyond.

Maybe we should learn a lesson from Bob Hawke, he was that proud of the country that he represented, that he sold out the trade union, and invested his dollars overseas. It only goes to show really… maybe Bob is right, I should do the same! It looks like the ultra right wants to “control” and observe the eroded rights of its citizens.

I may be a little fiery tonight, but hey.. reading the newspaper got me started.. I had to elaborate my speel. Loosing my wallet also got me thinking; I have enough points ID in there for someone to assume my identity.

But we have a few questions, that should be answered. Even with rampant political nepotism, will the politicans get one of these cards too? Surely they should get it, but I doubt it. If they did, it would only take a week before a german hacker cracked the “uncrackable” smartchip technology, and gave figure heads a criminal record, or got them deported to Antarctica.

I know, it is the fictional Douglas Adams theory of the ID Easy card, but hey… someone has to do it. I think I’ve rambled too much… but it was bound to happen one day, wasn’t it? Maybe this “unbreakbale” technology will help **cough** **cough** with identity fraud too. Only time will tell I guess.