Donor funding of multilateral aid agencies : determining factors and revealed burden sharing

This paper reports an empirical study of the factors affecting burden sharing among OECD's 22 DAC members in 'bankrolling' the multilateral aid agencies. Annual data over 1970–2000, pooled across the donor countries, form the basis for the empirical estimation of each donor's share in the ODA aid receipts for each multilateral agency. Our findings suggest the existence of reverse exploitation, i.e., the financial burden of the agencies is disproportionally carried by the smaller donors. The study also finds that factors such as inherent donor generosity, donor concern for domestic egalitarianism, and the extent to which donors are pro-poor in their bilateral aid policies have an impact on their readiness to support multilateral agencies financially. Size of the donor government and its budgetary balance positively influence burden sharing of contributions to other multilateral agencies. But neither the phase of economic cycle nor the rate of economic growth affects the burden-sharing responsibility of donors. It was also observed that contributions by EU members to the EC do not appear to crowd-out their contributions to other multilateral aid agencies and that right-wing donor governments are generally more parsimonious with regard to financial assistance to multilateral aid agencies. The preferred alternative, particularly among EU member countries, appears to be the EC.

Distinguishing DDoS attacks from flash crowds using probability metrics

Both Flash crowds and DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks have very similar properties in terms of internet traffic, however Flash crowds are legitimate flows and DDoS attacks are illegitimate flows, and DDoS attacks have been a serious threat to internet security and stability. In this paper we propose a set of novel methods using probability metrics to distinguish DDoS attacks from Flash crowds effectively, and our simulations show that the proposed methods work well. In particular, these mathods can not only distinguish DDoS attacks from Flash crowds clearly, but also can distinguish the anomaly flow being DDoS attacks flow or being Flash crowd flow from Normal network flow effectively. Furthermore, we show our proposed hybrid probability metrics can greatly reduce both false positive and false negative rates in detection.

A cultural battlefront in the total war : theatre in Australian internment camps

In 1943, at the Berlin Sportspalast, Joseph Goebbels made his infamous speech on 'total war', appealing to the crowd to represent Germany as a nation and asking them whether they wanted a war 'more total and radical' than had been previously imagined. In Australia in 1944, the idea of this 'total war' struck a resonance with German civilians interned in Tatura, Victoria. Writing to protest a planned release of internees, these Camp 3 internees claimed an involvement in the 'total war', arguing that any release from the camp would necessitate working towards the 'total destruction of the political, economical and cultural existence of the German Reich and the German nation.' A curious, and important, part of their argument was that such a release would mean that their 'cultural life would be endangered.' It is precisely this 'cultural life' within internment that I wish to examine in this paper.

The ‘flow of Asia’ — vocabularies of engagement : a cultural history

The article reviews the history of Australian representations of Asia from the mid-19th century to the present. It argues that there are instructive continuities between recent references to ‘Asia literacy’ and to injunctions to know Asia that date from the late 19th century. It examines representations of Asia that stress fluidity and unpredictability, and argues that fluid Asia has been assigned characteristics not unlike those attributed to women and the crowd. The implications of this analysis for recent discussions of the threat posed by political Islam are also referred to. In such discussions ‘the proper treatment of women’ is commonly represented as both an established Australian value and one now under threat. The article ends by suggesting that the Howard government sought to marginalise ‘Asia literacy’, replacing it with ‘Australia literacy’.

Soccer stinger (suspense) SFX

A sound designed stinger featuring a suspense heartbeat to a penalty kick with a goal and crowd cheers with vuvuzelas.

Football Stinger SFX

A sound designed stinger featuring a penalty kick with a goal and crowd cheers with vuvuzelas.

Audience clapping SFX (dry)

A sound recording and post-production design of audience clapping. It has been left dry for your own editing purposes.

Audience laughing

Audience Laughing is a sound effect of an audience laughing.

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) detection by traffic pattern analysis

In this paper, we propose a behavior-based detection that can discriminate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack traffic from legitimated traffic regardless to various types of the attack packets and methods. Current DDoS attacks are carried out by attack tools, worms and botnets using different packet-transmission rates and packet forms to beat defense systems. These various attack strategies lead to defense systems requiring various detection methods in order to identify the attacks. Moreover, DDoS attacks can craft the traffics like flash crowd events and fly under the radar through the victim. We notice that DDoS attacks have features of repeatable patterns which are different from legitimate flash crowd traffics. In this paper, we propose a comparable detection methods based on the Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Our methods can extract the repeatable features from the packet arrivals in the DDoS traffics but not in flash crowd traffics. The extensive simulations were tested for the optimization of the detection methods. We then performed experiments with several datasets and our results affirm that the proposed methods can differentiate DDoS attacks from legitimate traffics.

Cultural policy in Australia

 In early 2010, more than 15,000 people gathered on Bourke Street in front of Victoria’s Parliament building to register their protest against an unpopular government decision.1 The colourful crowd chanted and marched, sported placards and banners, and listened to speeches by local identities.

What were they protesting about? Climate change? Refugees? The war in Afghanistan?

No, they were protesting about a decision by Liquor Licensing Victoria to enforce onerous security requirements on live music venues in Melbourne. The new regulations had led to the closure of one of Melbourne’s best-loved rock venues, a Collingwood pub named The Tote. Many other venues were threatened with the same fate.

This was a protest about cultural policy.

Breaking up is hard to do : the economic impact of provisional funding contingent upon evidence development

Funding contingent upon evidence development (FED) has recently been the subject of some considerable debate in the literature but relatively little has been made of its economic impact. We argue that FED has the potential to shorten the lag between innovation and access but may also (i) crowd-out more valuable interventions in situations in which there is a fixed dedicated budget; or (ii) lead to a de facto increase in the funding threshold and increased expenditure growth in situations in which the programme budget is open-ended. Although FED would typically entail periodic review of provisional or interim listings, it may prove difficult to withdraw funding even at cost/QALY ratios well in excess of current listing thresholds. Further consideration of the design and implementation of FED processes is therefore required to ensure that its introduction yields net benefits over existing processes.

Raining blood and money

A fictocritical piece based on a fire in New York.
A girl jumps from the ninth floor of the Asch Building. People on the sidewalk are screaming for her not to jump. But she has to jump. As she stands on the ledge, her back against the open window, the fire is burning the clothes off her back. She has her head bent forward so her hair doesn't catch alight as she waves a handkerchief at the crowd. The windows on the floor beneath her start to explode. Tongues of flame lick at her feet. So she jumps. It's a definite jump, as she bends her knees before she leaps over the edge. It's not a graceful jump. Her arms begin to flail as she struggles to stay upright. There are gasps from the crowd, a few screams. Some people turn away. Others are transfixed, watching her as she falls. Suddenly, her dress catches on a hook jutting out of wall below and she is suspended in the air, mid-fall. But the ladders still can't reach her and so it is just a cruel pause in her inevitable death. She hangs there like a ragdoll until her dress burns itself free from her body and she resumes her fall. She lands on the pavement on the west - ward side of New York University building. Thud-dead...

Retake Melbourne : mobile application for re-photography and comparative imaging research

A project of interpretive and comparative re-photography, making use of the collection of Mark Strizic's images and the documents related to his career, held by the State Library, as a basis. Strizic died in 2012. It is now 50 years since his work began to illustrate the period of the 1960s when architecture of the Gold Rush era coexisted side-by-side with, and was being replaced by, curtain-glass high-rise office buildings. It is the position of the researchers that not sufficient attention has been given to Mark Strizic’s reaction to what he saw as a plague of ugliness pervading Australian city-scapes, developing a distinctive aesthetic that in turn made his work useful to commentators like Robin Boyd and David Saunders. Strizic operated from a unique perspective as a migrant with an architectural heritage from his father Zdenko, prominent architecture professor in Croatia, and visiting professor of architecture at Melbourne University in the 1960s. Precise re-photography alongside creative work will enable a comparison of Melbourne now with fifty years ago. The public will be able to participate in and contribute to the project via a crowd-funded custom-made app. Half a century has passed since Strizic made his photographs of Melbourne. In so many cases buildings have disappeared or altered, streetscapes have changed and the appearance of Melburnians have changed as have their habits of using the city. A selection of Strizic’s photographs of Melbourne locations can be rephotographed by the public using the methods devised by Mark Klett, assisted by the app software. This will provide a core of documentary imagery of benefit in framing and completing the rest of this project and to future research through comparisons over the time span. The app enables the location on a map of the site and orientation of photographs taken by Strizic. Photographs are downloaded onto users’ devices from the online SLV Strizic picture catalogue. They appear in the app as transparent templates so that users can line up their own re-photograph with accuracy. They will be able to upload their resultant images to a server and they will be available to the Library as an archive enabling direct comparison with the Strizic holdings. It is anticipated that involvement and participation of the public will elevate the profile of the project and publicise the SLV collections and encourage their increased usage and popularity.

Performance indicators and the deeper foundations of performance

Critics of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) argue that KPIs culture rewards the immediate production of tangible outcomes sometimes at the expense of social engagement and cooperative behaviour. The need to gain immediate outcomes in the current KPIs performance culture focuses many individuals onto forms of productivity that gain high KPIs but at what cost? What effect does this single minded focus have on developing organisational loyalties and commitments? Some scholars have suggested that a singular focus on performance indicator success may crowd out other positive social capital in institutions.