Watch this, very very cool

Slashdot reports on a media release by the Internet Industry Association a few weeks ago.

Said IIA chief executive, Peter Coroneos: “We can’t be sure if this is the government’s intent, or whether there has been a terrible oversight in the drafting of this Bill. Either way, the consequences for the average Australian family could be devastating.”

“As an example,” said Mr Coroneos, “a family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings ‘Happy Birthday’ in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1320. If they make a video recording of the event, they risk a further fine for the possession of a device for the purpose of making an infringing copy of a song. And if they go home and upload the clip to the internet where it can be accessed by others, they risk a further fine of up to $1320 for illegal distribution. All in all, possible fines of up to $3960 for this series of acts – and the new offences do not require knowledge or improper intent. Just the doing of the acts is enough to ground a legal liability under the new ‘strict liability’ offences.”

As I’ve written a few times, this bill is terrible.

Edit:
There are some risk matrices available for Families (PDF), Teenagers (PDF), Small-Business (PDF) and Industry (PDF).

Scary stuff, really.

The most desired keyboard ever goes on pre-order from December 12th, according to their blog.

No prices available yet, but guesstimates by others based on previous commentary by Art Lebdev (the folks making/designing it) puts it at around USD$400-500 - So probably AUD$550 to AUD$700.

Yes, it’s a keyboard. No, it’s not just a keyboard. Every Single Key can be reprogrammed to alter its function (and the display on the key-face too) upon a series of parameters: what application is running, whether you have shift, alt, or ctrl pressed.

For people who aren’t familiar with the key-combinations of their game or application - this can let them learn those key combos to make them faster. 

For those who are familiar with the key-combos, they can record macros (series of keystrokes or other actions) to rapidly fire off a series of events.

You can even re-assign those keys you don’t normally use, to something useful - eg: Photoshop, Firefox, Trillian, etc.

Very Very Very Cool.