Internet users in Australia will have to take out licences from the next financial year else they will not be allowed to use the web, official sources told iTWire today.

Ruslan Kogan is, it's arguably fair to say, something of a tech geek, and has been for some time. I sat down with Ruslan Kogan at the MediaConnect Kickstart Conference in Queensland today to discuss Netbooks, building in China and what the future holds for his upstart and brash company.

...one Melbourne-based open source company has prepared a plan that could meet the promise, and yet cut costs by a substantial amount.
"It's a simple proposition; we've prepared an open solution which delivers the best-possible value to education for netbook or laptop roll-outs," says Con Zymaris, CEO of long-running Linux firm Cybersource.

In case any readers would like to give Australia's Minister for web censorship their views on the subject, a link to his blog appears here. Note that Conroy intends to censor other matters than kiddie porn, but refuses to say what they are.

"Community advocacy group GetUp is running a new campaign against Australian Federal Government plans to censor what we view on the internet. The ‘Save the Net’ campaign is gaining momentum, with over 55,000 Australians having already signed a petition to Communications Minister Senator Conroy voicing their outrage over the Government’s ill-considered ideas..."

AUSTRALIA'S mandatory internet filter is being primed to block 10,000 websites as part of a blacklist of unspecified "unwanted content", Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy revealed in Federal Parliament.

Renewed action against the spread of software patents seems to be surging so suddenly

When a genre of software is estimated to account for 15 percent of the total revenue generated by a given sector of the IT industry and that total is $A3.5 billion, then it is time to sit up and take notice. Which is what the government of the Australian state of Queensland has done.