Not Suitable For Royalists

AN American photographer famed for showing celebrities naked or bathing in asses' milk chose a more traditional pose for Britain's Queen Elizabeth, but Annie Leibovitz's new work sharply divided critics today...

Washington Post culture critic Henry Allen was not amused, complaining that the portrait of the monarch sitting in the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace had "all the personality of a marble bust of George Washington." (News Limited)

Others were quite happy with the portrait's traditionalism. Not me - I agree with Henry Allen - we're entitled to expect something a little more exciting from Leibovitz. Something like this, maybe:

Denial of Service

According to the ABC:

Internet registration for the Do Not Call Register starts today, with companies banned from phoning people on the list from the end of the month.

...

Communications Minister Helen Coonan expects Australians will want to register up to 1 million phone numbers in the first week.

I had a quick word with Zeppo Bakunin about registering our phone number with the register - he told me that he'd already registered his parents' phone - on-line - a couple of months ago. But he'd forgotten whether our number was registered.

So I decided to check. Here's a screen shot of my browser, connected to the Do Not Call register home page. It was taken at 9:54am today.

That's one hell of an achievement for Helen Coonan - she's probably the first Communications Minister, anywhere in the world, to organise - however inadvertently - a denial of service attack on one of her government's own web-sites.

Cross posted at Larvatus Prodeo.

Starry, starry, sleepless night