CNNMoney has a background piece on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement [ACTA], Meet SOPA’s evil twin, ACTA.

The ABC notes the reaction in one country getting ready to sign ACTA: Poles protest against anti-piracy pact.

Note that the government of Poland had meetings with the media conglomerates, but not talk to Internet communities or the general public, just like the SOPA/PIPA debacle. The Senate may have dropped PIPA for the moment, but ACTA could pop up at any time for ratification.

The BBC on the latest corporate failure:

Symantec initially said there was no risk to users as the stolen code was six years old, advising simply to make sure the most recent version of the products had been downloaded.

But the updated advice said the stolen material had included blueprints for Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks (Norton Utilities and Norton GoBack) and pcAnywhere.

Of those products, only pcAnywhere is said to be at “increased risk”, and users of the other software packages should not be concerned.

Ah, yes, don’t worry, be happy … until they update their advice again.

This is a company that sells security products, and their system was hacked. They stored source code on a machine that was reached by the hackers. This is not good practice.

If it wasn’t for bad luck, Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister of Australia would have no luck at all.

The ABC headline reads: Riot police rescue Gillard, Abbott from protesters, but Gillard didn’t need rescuing.

She was at an Australia Day ceremony awarding medals to first responders, when the building was surrounded by protestors. In the rush to evacuate her, she lost a shoe, stumbled, and was caught on film clutching a security officer to regain her footing.

The thing is, the protest had nothing to do with her, or anything she had done.

The leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, had made an unbelievably stupid [well, stupid for anyone who wasn’t Abbott. for Abbott it was SOP] about the ‘tent embassy’, an Aboriginal protest that has occurred for over a half century on what many Aboriginals call ‘Invasion Day’. The protestors were mad at Abbott, who was in the same building.

Security should have hauled Abbott out [or just handed him over to the protestors 😈 ] and Ms Gillard could have gone about whatever she does as PM. Most of the photos of the incident are cropped so you don’t see Abbott who was just behind Gillard when she stumbled [or was tripped … no, he’s not that talented].

It’s not that there is no reason to protest the actions of Ms Gillard’s government, there are plenty, but this wasn’t one of them.

The anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip at Port Jackson in New South Wales on January 26^th, 1788.

Here’s the official site, and more information at Wikipedia.

It is going to be a very soggy celebration in New South Wales and Queensland – another heavy rain and flooding pattern has set in.

Celebrates the establishment of the Republic of India on January 26^th, 1950 when its new Constitution took effect.

The parade at New Delhi is, bar none, the most colorful military parade in the world.

Here’s the official site, and, as the Wikipedia entry is really pathetic, here is a tourist site with more information.