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I've been a "greenie" since I was a teenager in the 70's. The last time I heard of birds being used as an excuse to stop a wind farm was here in Australia. It was not the greens who objected but rather a right wing anti-environment minister who went "nuts" and cancelled a $200M wind farm because it would kill (on average) one orange-bellied parrot every 1000yrs.

As for Greenpeace I admired their stance on atmospheric testisng and a few other issues when they first formed but they have been infested with Ludites for at least the last decade or so and many of the original founders have subsequently quit in disgust.

Please stop conflating ludites with environmentalists even if they label themselves as such, it makes you appear just as ill-informed and foolish as Greenpeace's eco-warriors.

I have been a left-leaning "greenie" since I was a teenager in the 70's. The older I get the more I'm amazed at how easily people from all sides of politics can disengage their brain and drink their particular brand of ideological kool aid with gusto.

I applaud your willingness to put science before ideological dogma and find myself in total agreement with your "ultra-right-wing capitalist" post.

Let's not forget the late great Prof. Julius Sumner Miller. The clip from episode 11 will take a bit of explaining.

"This is an unfortunate shortcoming of science at the moment."

I agree with most of your post but disagree with your conclusion.

Contrary to the GP's claim there is no requirement in science for a "suggested mechanisim", the results of the experiment are far more important than the explaination. For example, nobody has yet explained gravity but few doubt it exists and that we can acurately predict it's behaviour via models.

However it is common practice for papers to offer (clearly labelled) speculation in the hope that "someone else" will look for evidence and cite your paper if they find it. A failure to understand the difference between clearly labeled speculation and repeatable experimental results is definitely a "shortcoming" but it is not a "shortcoming of science". Worse still the "shortcoming" of which you speak is often indistingushable from willfull ignorance.

"A tested result is rejected until there is a suggested mechanism" - This is simply false.

IMHO the "unfortunate shortcoming of science" is the apparent inability of it's philosophy to rate a mention in high school science classes. This is not due to a lack of trying, see: Sagan, Dawkins and Randi. My own SPECULATION as to why is it so, is that most people ( including the majority of educators ) simply want certainty and cannot accept a philosophy that shuns it, so the philosophy part is ignored and science becomes a library of factiods that are discovered via inspiration, rather than found via critical thinking.

"This is an unfortunate shortcoming of science at the moment."

I agree with most of your post but disagree with your conclusion.

Contrary to the GP's claim there is no requirement in science for a "suggested mechanisim", the results of the experiment are far more important than the explaination. For example, nobody has yet explained gravity but few doubt it exists and that we can acurately predict it's behaviour via models.

However it is common practice for papers to offer (clearly labelled) speculation in the hope that "someone else" will look for evidence and cite your paper if they find it. A failure to understand the difference between clearly labeled speculation and repeatable experimental results is definitely a "shortcoming" but it is not a "shortcoming of science". Worse still the "shortcoming" of which you speak is often indistingushable from willfull ignorance.

"A tested result is rejected until there is a suggested mechanism" - This is simply false.

IMHO the "unfortunate shortcoming of science" is the apparent inability of it's philosophy to rate a mention in high school science classes. This is not due to a lack of trying, see: Sagan, Dawkins and Randi. My own SPECULATION as to why is it so, is that most people ( including the majority of educators ) simply want certainty and cannot accept a philosophy that shuns it, so the philosophy part is ignored and science becomes a library of factiods that are discovered via inspiration, rather than found via critical thinking.

Triple J's Hack had a good comment on this today. "I have more friends on Facebook than some of these ISPs".

You fail
You're an idiot if you think Household debt is actual Federal Government debt. If I borrow money for a house, it's my debt and overall it contributes to national debt but it's not actual Federal Government debt. I bet if you check you'll find most Government debt is from the states, and guess which parties run those these days?

Awesome, maybe copper thieves will now stop stealing essential infrastructure.

It's Free! As part of the government's stimulus package, they're installed free up to $AU1.6K

As for the materials, use wool.

It even flagged http://abc.net.au/ which is the website for Australia's Public TV Broadcaster ... the only risk from that site is being bored to somnolence ...
but not the sponsored links ... gotta keep them revenues rolling in!

Yes, it is.
Please explain how it is not.

Let's see. Uranium mining which is usually done in indigenous communities, and who usually opposes [.doc] the mining, is dirty. The Navajo found about that. The nuclear power plants themselve require vast amounts of concrete and steel. Portland cement, which is used to make concrete, requires limestone to be heated to 1450C in a kiln. That takes a lot of energy. And like concrete steel requires a lot of energy as well. Then there's the waste. The amount of waste can be reduced if it's reprocessed however that makes the remaining waste even hotter. Reprocessing also leaves a lot of toxic chemicals. Lastly once a power plant has reached it's lifespan, the land isn't useful for much if anything. It might be possible to dispose of the waste by drilling into a subduction zone but no demonstration has been done showing it can safely be done.

Falcon

Then again, some single cell organisms are pretty smart.

Seriously though, I don't think AI has yet reached the point of being as smart as your typical animal (which means low-level mammal I'm assuming). Not without substantial loans of intelligence on the part of the AI operator/designer.

Different societies have different value systems, and so different countries regulate different media in different ways.

What's important is that games get treated fairly against other media and regulated for what they are, not what scared, ignorant people worry they might be. The problem is that governments and legislators don't yet "get" games, and so fear and ignorance reign supreme.

As an example, in Australia, the government has a Classification Board that rates books, TV, movies and games. The Board is supposed to represent the values of the community and it generally does a pretty good job. Very few movies are refused classification (eg: banned).

Not so with video games. Games are regularly refused classification in Australia, largely because the highest classification for games is MA15+ - so if a game is considered only suitable for adults, then it can't be classified.

Yes, this is ludicrous and there's been a huge response from the local industry and a lot of local gamers. You can read more about it here if you are interested.

The point I'm trying to make, though, is that games are not treated on the same level as other forms of media in Australia, because they're poorly understood by government as a medium - mainly because the people in government didn't grow up playing games. I'd bet there are similar issues to varying degrees in other countries.

Give it a decade or so and things will be different. Until then, we're going to have to keep putting up with emotive comments and costly ineffective legislation from politicians looking for cheap popularity amongst their ignorant and fearful dull-eyed constituents.

No, right now it's just Australia's time to be hit by the heat.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2460274.htm

Check out the links, but not that different from the US. For many Chinese it was their first chance ever to buy property, so they borrowed to invest in condominium developments that developers were knocking up everywhere. The concept that prices can go down is unknown to them so they borrowed big. Trouble was, there was oversupply and the developers ran into financial difficulties, so started sharply discounting apartments in complexes they hadn't started building. Imagine investing $200K for a condo not even built yet, to see another the same for $165K the next month. People actually rioted. BTW great analysis of the American bubble: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2387463.htm

It is also the alcohol. Low to Moderate amounts of alcohol can have healthy effects as well; http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/10/1974569.htm. As long as you're not alcohol intolerant of course.

You don't see lots of British farmers sons going on killing sprees.

Yeah, the Brits don't have any problems at all with youth violence.

its the attitude that a massively out of date law creates in many Americans minds

I think the problem is the attitude of those that would give up an inalienable right because they deem it to be "out of date", but what do I know....

Although it's pedantic, it is probably worth noting that although it was TFN's, it wasn't the ATO - it was the "GST Start-up Office" within Treasury - which is a different department (it's easy to understand the confusion though, since it was related to GST, of which is administered by the ATO).

I don't know for certain, but I would hazard a guess that the GST Start-Up Office was more of a policy / analysis / program office during the implementation of the GST and associated laws - instead of the ATO, which collects the cash and administers it all.

That said, it was still the Australian Government - and our taxpayer dollars at work!

Poster CDMA_Demo provides a link to an abc report in a post below.

The present of the show indicates

KERRY O'BRIEN: And the Tax Office spokesman was quite correct, it was not a Tax Office Web site; it was a Treasury Web site just round the corner.

In 2000: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s146760.htm

perhaps you should try http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/. its a radio station that doesnt play too much (any?) of the top 40

Triple J does play a little of the top 40 - before it's in the top 40. As a government funded indie broadcaster, they sink a huge amount of their funding into finding and nurturing new music and musicians. One of the few times I'm truly proud of something my country funds.

But I still wish radio didn't suck so much.

perhaps you should try http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/. its a radio station that doesnt play too much (any?) of the top 40, no commercials, and streams over t3h n3tz0rz. while i'm out of their demographic at 37, and dont like all the music, i love the fact there is "no fricken ads"

It's interesting that the submitter didn't think that the radio show that aired the story was worth mentioning. (Weekend Edition Sunday, which I used to listen to a lot before the podcast glut took over my headphones.) Apparently NPR now has a lot of listeners who only know them through their podcasts.

That's beginning to include me, even though I've been listening to NPR since most of you were still in grade school. I used to be fanatical about their content. They seemed to cater to people with more intelligence and longer attention spans than a lot of competing media. But now, public radio networks in Australia, Canada, and the UK have gotten into podcasting in a big way, and their product actually makes NPR look just a little lame. The Aussies in particular excel at science reporting and serious audio documentaries, two kinds of reporting that NPR doesn't really care for.

Qualification: NPR does have some good science reporters, but they rarely get enough air time to cover anything in depth. And they also have some really bad ones.

I'd probably listen to more NPR podcasts if they had more. They've strongly resisted podcasting complete shows, afraid of antagonizing the member stations who pay the bills. Of the shows I listen to, only Fresh Air offers a complete podcast, and that one is not carefully edited for online consumption, and material is often missing. (Some of this may be for copyright reasons, but I think it's mostly sloppiness.)

What podcasts they do offer are mostly except shows, like the Shuffle Podcast. They do have an interesting new feature that allows you to mix your own keyword-driven podcast.

Not to mention the claim about aluminum being "hard to get".

Then again, given what the last order of aluminum pipes that were SUPPOSED to go towards rebuilding the greenhouses the Palestinians themselves destroyed were instead used for, I'm not too surprised about this one.

Internet filters won't work: ISP
Don't bother clicking unless you want to hear audio.

Two of the country's major internet providers say the Government appears unlikely to meet its own deadline for trials of mandatory internet filtering.

The Government planned to begin the trials before Christmas, but iiNet and Optus say they have not heard back from the Government about their applications to take part.

iiNet's chief operating officer Mark White has told Radio National he is sceptical about plans to filter the net.

"We absolutely endorse their intention, but don't agree with their proposed solution. We believe it's not going to work. It's as simple as that," he said.

"There are a whole range of techniques, rather than just looking at URLs, that people can use. Rotating IP addresses, a whole range of things, so it's really not going to solve the problem."

but tires on wheels can sometimes be bought for $8.00 on half-price day at the junk yard, and dismounting them isn't that difficult if they're not those low-profile or large rim types. I'd imagine that you'd put the gasoline into the tire while it's on the ground, then lift it up and on, then toss a match or two into it.

Low-profile tyres won't hold as much petrol as a normal road tyre.

In Australia they are on tripods and sit at the hight of most number plates, this makes them east to run over.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200409/s1202381.htm

Liechtenstein?

How is that a threat?

Follow the cash, dude: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/02/2177472.htm

Coincidentally, Germany is pissed off at Liechtenstein for the same reason that they are pissed off about Scientology. Taxes.

Scary yes, scarring no.

I'm not saying the kid won't have nighmares if they come across tubgirl, I'm sure many adults do, but it won't leave a scar any worse than rubbing capsicum juice into their eyes (as one of mine did).

A parent should know their kid well enough to spot an "unhealthy" obsession and show some trust and encouragement for "healty" obsessions. How parents judge what is "healthy" and how much they trust their kids varies widely, the root of many a 'scar' is when that judgement is too far our of whack with reality, society, and in many cases yesterday's judgement of what was/is "healthy".

A scar is something that last a life time, major trauma or extended abuse would do it, but not the temporary shock/neusea the average human feels when confronted with shocking images, the images are shocking to adults because most of us don't like to be reminded we are organic, we have a what seems a reflex response to grimmace and turn away, but it's a largely learned response that's pretty much set in place by about age seven. To a kid (under 7) everything is new and they go through phases of being delighted and scared by new things according to their recent experiences with "new things" and their parents/sibling reaction to them.

I not a doctor but at 50 I have seen my share of daily horror. Smell is what gets more more than any other sense, but for people who find sight is their most sensitive sense of repulsion it takes a strong stomach to watch this documentary on autopsy. Tubgirl and autopy images may burn your retinas but thay are not going to cause a lasting 'sacr' to a kid unless they already have serious problems.

Every parent has their own problems and the vast majority of the (custodial) parents really belive they are bringing their kids up "right", so my question is - who is responsible for breeding the arseholes I keep chasing off my lawn?

Maybe it was a DoS attack or something.

I'll quote this from ABC earlier on as it shows a different tack:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the decision to exclude Telstra from bidding to build the national broadband network was made at arm's length from the Federal Government.
Telstra submitted a brief proposal instead of a full bid because it was not satisfied there was enough detail from the Government on regulatory requirements.
Telstra says it has been excluded because it did not say how it would include small and medium businesses in the network's construction.
The telco has accused the Government of using a peripheral issue to block it from winning the tender.

But Mr Rudd has said the decision was made by an independent panel assessing all of the bids and the project is still on track.

"We've regarded this as a necessary investment in the nation's infrastructure and we would do so on the basis of a competitive tender process," he said.
"That panel that's been at work has been full at arm's length from Government and has reached its own conclusions.

*snip*

Still optimistic
However Telstra remains hopeful it still has a chance to build the national broadband network despite being excluded from formal consideration.
A media analyst from stockbroker BBY, Mark McDonnell, has told ABC Radio's The World Today the exclusion is a dramatic development for the telco.
"It potentially spells the end of Telstra's aspirations for re-eingineering its network to provide high-speed broadband," he said.
But in a briefing with analysts, Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo has argued it is not the end of the road for the company.
He says the Government may decide to reengage with Telstra if the other three national bids are inadequate.
Mr McDonnell says there could be more to the Government's decision than has been publicly disclosed.
"The question then is whether this is really part of some sort of gaming process, trying to soften up Telstra with a plan to ultimately reengage with them," he said.
"That is probably the most optimistic view you could take from a Telstra perspective on this, or in fact whether there is some other agenda."
Telstra shares have fallen more than 7 per cent in an overall strong day for the market.

This was earlier on and has fallen out of the RSS feeds.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/15/2446644.htm

I loathe Conroy, and everything national internet filtering involves, but in this case, it's more than just a technicality.

Whereas all the other major contenders submitted official proposals in the tender process, Telstra instead submitted an "informal" proposal that lacked significant details that the other official proposals had, not to mention vague estimations on things as minor as "network coverage". Further, many of these estimations fell far short of the government requirements in the first place. Add in the fact that Telstra wanted their flawed and half-baked proposal to be considered with the same standing as the detailed official tenders their rivals had submitted, and you being to realise that Telstra is just a joke.

Today it emerged that they didn't submit details on how they intended to liase with and include small business in the construction and development process; which is oh-so-fitting keeping in mind this is a giant telecom monopoly.

These articles better explain how absurd Telstra's position and conduct regarding the tender process has been to date. I challenge you to read them and not agree that they should have been kicked out of the evaluation process. Frankly, I'd have kicked them out some time ago.

Telstra bends the rules on internet bid

Telstra excluded from broadband network tender

.

A crowd of several hundred gathered at Stirling Gardens in Perth today to rally against the Australian Government's plans for mandatory censorship of the Internet. A Facebook page titled, Perth Australians against Internet Censorship, Say No to Mandatory Internet Filtering states that the Australian government was 'quietly going ahead with plans to filter all Australian's access to the internet in a manner similar to the People's Republic of China and Iran.' Protestors rally against internet censorship

A rally to protest against the Federal Government's plans to filter the internet is underway in Brisbane. About 200 people are at Brisbane Square in the CBD for the rally which is part of a national day of protest. They say the Government's proposals are internet censorship and will make the net slower. Brisbane protesters rally against web filter plans

I've seen bigger crowds line up to drop coins in the kettle for the Salvation Army.

Australia's sugar industry is not subsidised, they use waste that was previously burnt off before harvest to power the mills, they want to expand to other forms of waste and use their generatoer all year round but as always there are arguments over what should be considered "waste".

Overclocked Remix for all your videogame remix needs.

Triple J archives, and new music for mp3 downloads, plus plenty more streaming goodness available on the site.

Overclocked Remix for all your videogame remix needs.

Triple J archives, and new music for mp3 downloads, plus plenty more streaming goodness available on the site.

That's why they banned PS2s in Japan in 2000 (for a short time I think) -> http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s119754.htm

A recent study by a Australian university claims that intensive use of marijuana reduces brain size up to 20% (that's missing neurons).

...

I have to post as AC because most modders dislike this opinions (drug addition problems) and rate them as flamebait.
 

You don't HAVE to post a AC, you just did because you don't have the courage to stand up for your convictions.

A quick read of the article you linked to pointed out some problems with the "study":

1) The person conducting the study is "Professor Jon Currie [who] is the director of addiction medicine at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne". A professor of "addiction medicine" who wants people to stop doing drugs can hardly be considered an unbiased researcher.

2) The study size was only 15 which is considered way too small. Also, I doubt the sample was randomly selected, so most likely there is some selection bias going on. Did the people studied only include White people? Were any Black, Asian or Hispanics also studied? If not then the sample is definitely suffering from selection bias.

3) It does not sound like any MRIs were taken on those being studied before the study began. Without measuring the brains of those studied beforehand how can you state without a doubt that those studied had suffered from any brain shrinkage at all? Maybe those selected had shrunken brains before the study began and their brain sizes did not change very much if at all during the period in question.

4) If there was brain shrinkage how can you say it was due to cannabis? Did the 15 people studied also drink alcohol? Smoked tobacco products? Did cocaine? Did crystal meth? Did LSD? Did ecstasy? Abused prescription drugs? The article does not mention MRIs being taking on a non-drug-using control group either.

5) And last but not least, we have Slashdot mantra #1: CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION! This study may provide some correlation but that is about it. You cannot say there is any causation until similar studies show similar correlations. Even then if the supporting studies use small samples suffering from selection bias and no control groups then they would be just as useless as this study seems to be.

You should study a little statistics and examine these kinds of issues before you validate any studies that try to use statistics to "prove" anything...

I have to disagree.

No amount of taxation (limited to) DRUGS will be enought to make up to the massive loss of productivity of drug addicts.

A recent study by a Australian university claims that intensive use of marijuana reduces brain size up to 20% (that's missing neurons).

Now if you have to tax drugs based on impact on society you have to make up also for the loss of productivity, the social problems and of course the added burden for the health system (hoping that Obama really gets the US corporation out of it).

I have to post as AC because most modders dislike this opinions (drug addition problems) and rate them as flamebait.

The main problem I see with that explanation is that no other animal "evolved" any kind of behavior that could reasonably be termed "religious". No animal has ever been observed in what could be described as prayer or worship.

To get organised religion, one would need language/communication. Animals might have some sort of spirituality or religion, but absent the level of language needed to make organised religion it would have to be on the level of personal belief. So how would one detect if an animal has some sort of personal belief or not? Keep in mind that prayer and worship are human expressions of religious belief. If an animal has some sort of religious feeling or belief in a larger power outside itself, how would it show this and how would we recognize it? I think you are asking for something that would be very hard to detect. Even if we detect it, it would be inconclusive and open to interpretation.

I am reminded that elephants show behaviour that looks suspiciously like mourning their dead. If this can be taken as a display of religious belief or not is obviously a question of interpretation.

Everything than humans do, animals have also been observed doing, of course on a vastly lower level. If you can name any other activity that man does, that is not at all found to some degree in some animals, please do so.

Humans have an abundance of language, culture, dance, creative expression in many forms, the capability of abstract thought, high self-awareness. While you also can find some of this to a small degree in animals, I believe there is a threshold one has to get above before one sees behaviour that we humans would recognize as some sort of organised religious belief.

Nobody has ever explained to me how the "wasting" of resources and energy on religious activity, collectively or individually, makes humans more "fit" to survive. If anything, NOT spending time and effort building cathedrals, churches, synagogues and mosques, as well as engaging in other religious trappings, such as embarking on long weary, dangerous pilgrimages to distant places, should be an evolutionary advantage to those groups and individuals who avoid all that.

Building expensive places of worship and going on hazardous pilgrimages is a very recent thing, on an evolutionary scale. You are talking about fairly recent displays of worship; and displays of surplus at that. More common human displays of worship and spirituality on an evolutionary relevant scale would be things like cave paintings and covering a dead tribal elder with flowers and putting a walking stick in his grave to aid him on the journey in the afterlife.

When it comes to what advantages religion would have for early man, there is lots.

Remember that most religions in those days (from what we can gather from what artefacts they left behind, and of what can be learned from isolated tribes today) were animist. As such, they attribute a "soul" or some sort of intelligence or purpose to plants, animals and natural phenomena. In short, nature becomes a person/force/deity that the human mind can attribute cause and will to. Apply some lore and an oral tradition, and you have a framework where tribes of early man can gather and remember information that is important for survival. ("When the god in the sky turn the heavens grey and the daughters of Ibis take to their wings and fly to their father Mountain, then we must travel down to the river. Ibis is alone from watching eyes, so this is when Antelope will bring his children to visit her. We will wait for them at the ford")

In short, religion fill the needs for group cohesion, enforcement of mores and collection of information useful for survival. We see lots of evidence for this even in "modern" religion; the Bible and other religious texts from the same era has a fairly small volume of text spent on genesis or creat

I don't base it on "nothing". I base it on living here. The closest we've ever had to a protest against the banning of books, films and other media is when Margaret Pomeranz from The Movie Show attempted to screen a DVD that had been refused classification and the police intervened, and she complied. The protest subsequently fizzled. That's it. That's the most successful protesting that has been done regarding film censorship in this country. It's pretty obvious that people either don't care or are in support of the legislation.

It's been seeing a bit of press. Both the ABC and Sydney Morning Herald have had articles. The issue set a record in the ABC's comments section. It was the first time a story with any serious number of comments (100+) had not received a single dissenting comment. Every single commenter was against the filtering proposal. Also see the No Clean Feed website.

Sounds like super awesome fun.
Wonder why no-one has thought of that before?

As a matter of fact, fingerprints are different between identical twins. Source. Source. Source. Source.

Steven Fielding was elected in 2004 not by the people (he only received 2% of the vote), but by a c*ckup by the major political parties. Essentially Labor tried to engineer a preference swap with Family First to protect its third candidate, which backfired and elected Fielding. From wikipedia:

Fielding was elected to represent Victoria in the Senate at the 2004 federal election. He is the first representative of Family First to be elected to the Federal Parliament. Since he polled less than 2% of the popular vote, Fielding's election was not expected. Like many Senators he gained a quota under the Senate's proportional representation system by receiving preferences from other parties (see Australian electoral system). The Australian Democrats and the Australian Labor Party agreed to swap preferences with Family First. But Fielding benefited from the larger-than-expected surplus of Liberal preferences, and stayed in the count long enough to receive Democrat and Labor preferences, defeating the Australian Greens' candidate David Risstrom for the last Senate place in Victoria.

Anthony Green gives a more detailed analysis.

Mark Newton (of Internode, not the same mob as this story is about) has an opinion piece on the ABC (which I submitted to Slashdot, but still pending...), entitled Filter advocates need to check their facts.

In my observation, it's obvious that the debate has polarised into two camps. One of them is largely populated by people who know what they're talking about and who mostly oppose the ALP's censorship plan;

The other camp includes people who just make lots of mistakes; including Senator Conroy, who claimed that Sweden, the UK, Canada and New Zealand all have similar filter systems as are being proposed.

----

Anyway, if Conroy is the worst minister, that's pretty damn bad. After all, Richard Alston, Daryl Williams and Helen Coonan were all communications minister under Johny sticken Howard.

According to Wikipedia, Alston tried "to ban online gambling, and make email forwarding illegal, he was dubbed 'the world's biggest luddite'. [1]".

Maybe this "representative" thing isn't all it's cracked up to be? Anyone up for some Demarchy?

Just to correct everyone and say that Senator Conroy is completely wrong, New Zealand has NO, I repeat NO Government Filtering/Firewall system on our Internet Services. Yes New Zealand is thinking of having it added to stop downloads of Music and Movies, but the difference between New Zealand Government and Ozzie Government is Our Government listens to it's nation. Our country will only add these so called filters if Ozzie adds them, but then again if NZ wont have it then chances are the government wont add it.

Mark Newton (of Internode, not the same mob as this story is about) has an opinion piece on the ABC (which I submitted to Slashdot, but still pending...), entitled Filter advocates need to check their facts.

In my observation, it's obvious that the debate has polarised into two camps. One of them is largely populated by people who know what they're talking about and who mostly oppose the ALP's censorship plan;

The other camp includes people who just make lots of mistakes; including Senator Conroy, who claimed that Sweden, the UK, Canada and New Zealand all have similar filter systems as are being proposed.

----

Anyway, if Conroy is the worst minister, that's pretty damn bad. After all, Richard Alston, Daryl Williams and Helen Coonan were all communications minister under Johny sticken Howard.

According to Wikipedia, Alston tried "to ban online gambling, and make email forwarding illegal, he was dubbed 'the world's biggest luddite'. [1]".

Maybe this "representative" thing isn't all it's cracked up to be? Anyone up for some Demarchy?

"Research hasn't indicated harmful long-term effects of TFA on people. At this stage there's no evidence that non-stick cooking poses a safety risk.'" from Is Teflon safe?

It takes at least thousands, probably millions of years for species to actually adapt.

Not true. Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Island show adaption taking place in a single generation.

Umm, maybe you could switch to touch screens instead?

Or only use computer voting for those with special needs (people who can't see so well, so the machine can read the candidates name), and use machine readable ballot papers for everyone else.

Etc.

----

In NSW there were 79 candidates for the Senate in the last election. Australia has preferential voting. If you vote "below the line" for the Senate, you have to number every single box (from 1 to 79 in order of your preference). Most people vote "above the line" for a party, and the party distributes the preferences. Lazy bastards.
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/guide/howtovote.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/guide/snsw.htm
http://www.aec.gov.au/pdf/elections/2007/gvt/NSW_2007_gvt.pdf

I'm not sure how big the ballot papers were though. (I'm not from NSW, and I didn't vote anyway, so I didn't see a ballot paper.)

Umm, maybe you could switch to touch screens instead?

Or only use computer voting for those with special needs (people who can't see so well, so the machine can read the candidates name), and use machine readable ballot papers for everyone else.

Etc.

----

In NSW there were 79 candidates for the Senate in the last election. Australia has preferential voting. If you vote "below the line" for the Senate, you have to number every single box (from 1 to 79 in order of your preference). Most people vote "above the line" for a party, and the party distributes the preferences. Lazy bastards.
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/guide/howtovote.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/guide/snsw.htm
http://www.aec.gov.au/pdf/elections/2007/gvt/NSW_2007_gvt.pdf

I'm not sure how big the ballot papers were though. (I'm not from NSW, and I didn't vote anyway, so I didn't see a ballot paper.)

It isn't technology's problem if stupid people can't understand it. Especially in cases as this where a shit load of different websites don't end in .com.

I would suggest that you are being too harsh. Slashdot is .org, Wikipedia is .org, and so are many other big websites. Not to mention, everyone outside the US is constantly accessing non .com websites (abc.net.au). Oh and isn't del.icio.us a website?

Don't make the mistake of thinking everyone is stupid. Because most people aren't (though they may be ignorant).