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Write to Conway directly. If he cops enough backlash from enough people, and from a wide enough cross section of the community, then he's going to have to reconsider his position.

The ABC has an article up about it now, and a lot of people have vented on it http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/24/2399876.htm . Contact details for Conway's office is there. It's also suggested that you write to your Federal Member. The more people the better.

Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Ministerial office
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
Tel: 03 9650 1188
Fax: 03 9650 3251
minister@dbcde.gov.au
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/contact

Slap a bit of paint on them; good as new!

A couple of months ago there was a story about a university using shipping containers for student housing.

So, how many Americans exactly have exercised their right to bear arms to protect themselves against the litany of civil rights curtailments instituted by their Government? Seems like a fairly empty right to me.

Besides, this content filter has no way of working: that 16-year-old who cracked the porn filter has had over a year to hone his elite skills; he's probably preparing a press release already.

Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.

source
They'll be hard pressed to find any house or school that is free of pornography. So Australian kids have nothing to fear. Nobody's taking their porn away.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/16/2392534.htm

"Air safety investigators say they will look into claims signals from a naval communications base near Exmouth in Western Australia's north may have caused last week's Qantas mid-air emergency."

"The communications base was originally used by the US Navy."

I wouldn't mind owning some of Apples products. I readily admit they by far outdo almost anything out there.

But, these are sexy machines, too:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/14/2391134.htm

http://www.mobilewhack.com/reviews/flybook_vm_laptop.html

http://gizmodo.com/5043374/samsung-x360-laptop-is-super-skinny

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2008/2388008.htm Ken McKraken, an aussie scientist, said that this would happen.

The echidna (a monotreme mammal, related to the platypus) forms conga-lines for sex.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/scribblygum/June2000/default.htm

To further amaze and/or impress you, the male echidna has a four-headed penis. Two of them become erect at a time and are both used during mating. The pairs of active penis heads alternate in subsequent matings.

Mind you, I bet their sex lives are pestered horribly by grad students wielding research grants and expensive cameras.

"Stargazers in Sudan may have also heard the asteroid collide with the atmosphere, making a wooshing or humming sound." (from here)

Hello APOLOGIST. I suppose you blame the prosecution of simple possession. But possession exist in order to consume. I doubt someone keeps hash just to look at it....

And when it gets consumed and abused it is SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN that it DAMAGES THE BRAIN. And I am talking just about hash wich is one of the lightest drugs out there.

Of course I want to emphatize the fact that it is proven by scientists working on facts rather than some pot smoking retard glorifying the miracles of his marijuana crap on a personal website or blog.

So when consumption it's done on a mass scale you get a society made up of amotivated morons with reduced mental capabilities. Isn't that more harmful than allowing piracy?

Stop making stupid examples.

Sources:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/03/2264063.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mental-health/dn14047-heavy-cannabis-use-linked-to-smaller-brain-parts.html
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/65/6/694
http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW044791.html

No, but perhaps asparagus

The Gemini Electric Motor is up to twice as efficient as a regular electric motor.

Saw that episode ages ago and just googled it now. Can't believe they've left it up on their website.

It seemed rather familiar to me, so a quick google search came up with a similar article from last year.
Additionally, there is an Australian company that is marketing a SolarCube, which looks like it uses conventional lenses to produce the same effect. The initial design was featured on the New Inventors in 2005

It seemed rather familiar to me, so a quick google search came up with a similar article from last year.
Additionally, there is an Australian company that is marketing a SolarCube, which looks like it uses conventional lenses to produce the same effect. The initial design was featured on the New Inventors in 2005

" Man sexually attracted to children, court told "

"A Canberra court has heard an O'Connor man who has been charged with downloading child pornography from the internet finds young children sexually attractive."

So he must have done it! Police never try to set up unpopular members of society.

Presumably he'll get a longer sentence as a result of admitting that he's attracted to children.

If you say so. I've always heard that they break down very quickly when exposed to sunlight, and I know from personal experience that those plastic bags, even ones that have been sitting in my basement, basically fall apart after only a few years... the old bags aren't worth trying to use, because they're breaking down.

They may be breaking down, but they still leave a huge mess behind and when let loose on the environment, a lot of animals end up eating them, or they end up on the side of the road or on river banks where they take years and years to break down - where a paper bag would decompose very quickly and pose very little to no harm to animals.

In any case, you're also ignoring my other point, which is that plastic bags are currently one of the easiest things to reuse and recycle (other than maybe aluminum cans), and thus by banning them you're basically stopping tons of people from doing any reusing and recycling at all.

The commonly available thin shopping bags are really not all that reusable in my opinion. Typically after only one use they have holes in them, so you're lucky if you can reuse them as trash bags. They're not worth anything so very few people recycle them (unlike aluminum cans which are very valuable). Finding places to recycle plastic bags is also much more difficult than recycling cans or bottles or paper.

Interesting tidbit in this article: According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, less than 1% of plastic bags used in Australia are reused, however 82.6% of Australian households say that they reuse plastic bags.

Wanting the "save the planet" does not give you the right to tell other people how to live their lives. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that the environmental movement is about the most un-American aspect of the US today.

When one's needless, wasteful and thoughtless actions result in a reduction in the quality of life for others and simple alternatives exist but people refuse to change their behaviour because it may save them a few bucks or just don't give a damn, then yes, that requires regulation. Or do you forget that you share this planet with billions of other people?

The Coup back in 2006 was to remove corrupt Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who has since been indicted for corruption regarding the abuse of his position to get the tax free sale of his families share of SingTel this amounted to roughly 1.4 Billion US dollars

How is that a problem? According to a law passed during his predecessor's administration (Chuan Leekpai), capital gains from stock sales are tax exempt. Whether the transaction was ethical is a question, but not its legality. The Securities and Exchange Commission investigated and didn't find any wrongdoing: "The investigation concluded that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his daughter Pinthongta are clear from all wrongdoing"-- http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2006/02/23/1577084.htm. I don't know what "abuse of his position" you're referring to--I could sell stock tax-free too (if I had any, that is), and I'm nobody in particular.

BTW, the transaction in question is his sale of his shares of Shin Corp, the company he founded, not SingTel. They were sold to Temasek Holdings, the parent holding company of SingTel.

Monogamy actually appears in a number of different animal species.

Not so much. The idea that many animals "mate for life" seems to be romantic wish fulfillment on the part of scientists. It's being contradicted more and more by DNA evidence which shows that, for example, the Papa Bird that Mama Bird shares the nest with, is often not the Baby Bird Daddy.

As researcher David Barash explains:

...the only animal species I know of in which we can be really confident that monogamy is a lifelong activity, is a peculiar flatworm that lives as a parasite in the intestines of fish. And in this one particular species, the two individuals meet while they are still adolescent, and their bodies literally fuse together, and from then on of course they remain altogether true to each other, until death do they not part. But the reality is that as we look at other species, the more we look at them, the more it is revealed that they do engage in what we call 'extra pair copulations'.

Here's an impartial count: abc.net.au

United States 987 gold, 774 silver, 664 bronze

Frankly, yes. America, as a 'World Super-Power' (whether or not this term should still apply is debatable, especially since it's the only classical superpower left)has it's fingers in plenty of pies. Particularly those surrounding (not necessarily physically only) those nations that it views as competitors and/or threats. Like Russia/ Former Soviet Union, and China (there are others as well, but listing them all is not adding anything useful). This, while not being something that those countries, or the world generally might appreciate is really a fairly comprehensible behaviour, in itself not 'evil', although one might wish that America could go about it in a way that stepped on less people's toes.

In this case however, it could be argued that the undoubtedly well-meaning interference has had a rather more negative effect. The situation here, particularly because it involves the Chinese (who really do love intrigue and political games, having a hefty history in it) is rather delicate (in the way that nitro-glycerine is delicate; note that the Dalai Lama himself is subject to controversy, not to mention that there are 'radical' Buddhists who may also be causing trouble).

Americans, especially those who are visiting China, possibly with a view to genuinely enjoy the Olympics, or to protest on behalf of a Free Tibet, should understand that it is the Chinese people's view that Tibet has been a part of China for quite a while. Whether this is valid or not is a matter of contention, although the 'third-party' (International) view seems to support this. Because of this, Tibet will not willingly (as in they will fight tooth and nail and spill large amounts of their own and everyone else's blood) be acknowledged by China as a sovereign nation. It would be much the same reaction for the USA as if Hawaii or Alaska had suddenly (unilaterally) declared independence. Basically, don't be surprised if 'Free Tibet' protesters get a rather frosty reception from the local populace. They may or may not agree with their government's other policies, but this is a point on which it's probable that they do agree.

Back to the earlier point about the delicate situation of Tibet, it is not impossible, and may even be a favoured solution both for the Tibetan leadership and the Chinese government for Tibet to become an autonomous region within China, as it has been historically (depending on the point-of-view) even if independence is out of the question (because having a nation in that position in relation to the border that is subject to foreign influences is thoroughly uncomfortable for the Chinese nation). However, it won't happen with the spotlight still so comprehensively focused on the area. Conceding anything now would be a loss of face, and that is intolerable. The Chinese government cannot be seen as weak, and to be seen (or rather, noticed) conceding here would certainly been seen as weak.

In any case, the outrage being generated by (not only the Americans, or the West) protesters is somewhat counter-productive, making the Chinese government dig their heels in further, so to speak. Leaving off the interference (also remember, the Chinese people have little to trust or love the West for) may actually be more effective on the issue at this point in time.

Guess my point is, don't put it past the IOC to have this pulled for its content both political and copyright. IMHO if they can get a major aussie network to break a contract, it's going to be no different for youtube.

They tried that in Australia with the Aboriginal population. The result - lower life expectancies, alcoholism in the communities, poverty.

And if they didn't go to boarding school, it was worse. The kids now are worse off than their grandparents, who at least can read & write.

See the recent ABC doco "Educating Kimberly":
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2273093.htm

Japanese whaling considered culturally insensitive by almost everywhere else.

And those who don't think whales have culture need to check today's news report from Tasmania.

Tasmanian scientists are examining the teeth of 100 whales and believe their research shows whaling impacts the mental health of other whales in the pod.

Any culture that wants to be above criticism surely should not be.

Putin is Russia. Putin does not appear to concerned with modernizing his country nearly as much as he is with controlling the media(2004!), or markets, or government, or... oh I give up. In Soviet Russia, the people control Putin.

Given you mentioned the ABC in there, but just to point out Triple-J radio are the only station brave enough to host the real stories.

I was traveling down under when they lifted the water ban. happy happy day

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/08/05/2324476.htm

Wild untouched forests store three times more carbon dioxide than previously estimated and 60% more than plantation forests, a world-first study of "green carbon" and its role in climate change shows.

I'm no doctor but I heard this listening to one on the radio - there's programs from 1997 onwards here searchable by subject:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/

The radio program "Background Briefing" had a story titled "Plastic: A Serial Killer". You can find the transcript
at:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s809783.htm

One excerpt from the program:

"Whales are amongst the 100,000 marine mammals estimated by the US Coast Guard to be killed by plastic each year. For birds, the guesstimate is a million.

--karma

Yeah, this kind of gun is an accident just waiting to happen.

So much for "don't point your gun at something you don't intend to kill."

Like this?

You mean digital streaming radio. It's silly to call WCPE's 20 bps stream "HD".

My own favorite source of streams is the Aussie ABC network (90 bps!). Their "classical" channel is particularly refreshing because they define the term very broadly. Also a lot of good podcasts.

You mean digital streaming radio. It's silly to call WCPE's 20 bps stream "HD".

My own favorite source of streams is the Aussie ABC network (90 bps!). Their "classical" channel is particularly refreshing because they define the term very broadly. Also a lot of good podcasts.

Perhaps you should read the article first.

The animals have been blamed for the decline in population of the rare orange-bellied parrot on the island.

The cats are not native to the island, are feral, and the parrot in question isn't only rare - it's an endangered species, with only 100 to 200 in existence.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Armed with binoculars, the Environment Minister led a trek through the scrub to the grassy roosting site of the orange-bellied parrot. None were spotted.

(to Ian Campbell) Do you feel a special affinity for this bird?

IAN CAMPBELL: Nothing particularly special. But quite frankly, if you look at the bare numbers that are associated with it, you know, 50 breeding pairs, if you see 18 on one day, you've seen a large chunk of the species.

More info here

Efforts to save this rare bird from extinction are being made by the State Governments of South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, The Commonwealth Government, Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) and World Wildlife Fund (Australia).

Australia's Orange-bellied Parrot can be ranked with the Giant Panda, Whooping Crane and Siberian Tiger as amongst the rarest and most endangered of the Wildlife. Only 100 to 200 individuals still exist.

Concern for the plight of the Orange-bellied Parrot is so great that the State Governments of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, the Commonwealth Government, the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union and the World Wildlife Fund have joined forces in an effort to build up its numbers and save it from extinction.

Don't you think your foot would be better directed at the behinds of the people who let their cats loose?

Hmmmmm.....the invasion of Canada vote!!!! Prepare thyself, Oh Canada!!

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/gruentransfer/thepitch.htm

I'm upside down here in backwards little 'ol NZ, hoping that it is just a joke.

I throw away hardware better than that!

It depends what you call better. If by 'better' you mean 'bigger' I take it you'd think that this is better than this.

And 128 MB is plenty. Sure in the wonderful of bloated modern PC software where the simplest e-mail client hogs up 40 MB of RAM it might not seem like much but there's little you can't do with 128 MB by designing software properly that can't be done with 2 GB. Just to put in perspective how 128 MB is a lot, the Playstation 2 only had 32 MB of RAM, which was obviously enough to run Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.

It may have shrinkage, but Mercury has a 2.5 million km long tail. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/03/03/2178111.htm Wait, atavism is a good thing, right?

So, there's some big mystery about Strads that makes them sound better than other violins? Or do people just think they sound better, because a single Strad goes for millions of dollars? Jon Rose adheres to the second theory:

As any honest violin dealer will tell you (and there are a few) the sound of a violin can be priced in a range from $50 (bad, but playable), to $10,000 (good-sounding) to $20,000 (extremely good tone and projection) to $100,000 (simply over-priced). The rest is snotty-nosed hubris. As has been proven on a number of occasions, most notably by the BBC in 1975, a well-made, top modern violin can sound just as good if not better than the prized golden age models. In a recording studio, behind a screen, the violins of Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman and Charles Beare were played back to them. The instruments were a Strad, a Guarneri del Gesu, a Vuillaume, and a Ronald Praill (a modern instrument less than a year old). None of the esteemed violin experts really had a clue which violin was which. Furthermore, two of them couldn't even tell which was their own instrument. They were left mumbling platitudes about the personal relationship between fiddle and player — bloody obvious if you spend most years of your life playing the violin.

His full rant here.

The "video wallpaper" remark reminds me of a show that ran from midight to dawn on Friday and Sat night's in Melbourne Australia circa 1978 onwards. A group of us (16-19yo) would congregate in a bungalow and get pissed/stoned while it played in the background. I remeber MTV as 'special' because it was the first station dedicated to music. Australia didn't get cable until the 90's but those type of shows recieved a huge boost from the success of MTV and all the stations started doing it.

Luckily I'm only 49 so I don't watch that much TV but I still occasionally enjoy watching Rage on the ABC. The thing I like about the show is that all the clips are picked by the guest presenter(s) and all the presenters are musicians of one flavour or another so you get clips of everything from eminem to elvis. I found from watching the show that just because a kid is in a "boy/girl band" and has an ego the size of a blimp, does not mean the same person is clueless when it comes to picking video clips.

... Senator McCain but he is probably the most independent Republican in the Senate.

How is this a good thing? Or is it my lack of knowledge of American politics? In Australia, if a member of a party distanced themselves by saying this, they would not last too long in that party. If you don't have the support of your party there'll be big problems from day one in being able to form a government, let alone being able to run that government effectively.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/

Cardboard box cartel?

Yep!

Crazy Aussies ;)

That we are.

Just remember: you must conserve and use less power than someone from the 1700's, but the Al Gore doesn't have to.

Also, make sure to keep a track of how much you breath so you can pay your carbon tax, you planet warming CO2 exhaler...

...is being developed by Prof Bill Mitchell at MIT. This link is to a radio interview with him in March.

it is in the best interest of the government to have a working population at maximum productivity. If part of the population starts considering acceptable losing 7%- to 12% of brain volume because of pot this would be a major problem and the effects of drugs on productivity are already showing in the charts of USA against the rest of the world (Specially ASIA)

This is a scientific study that proves how bad is smoking pot:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/04/2264668.htm

Now deal with it, stop taking drugs and most important stop whining...

Rudd withdraws troops

Contemporary sources:

Opinion polls indicate opposition to war

Thousands protest across Australia

Opposition to war in Iraq grows

I agree and I can explain the motivation for the bias displayed by "crazed pro-pot fanatics". What I can't explain is the motivation for the opposite bias displayed by the far larger group of "crazed prohibitionists", particularly the sub-group of "crazed prohibitionists" who regularly (ab)use tobacco and/or alcohol.

These so called rational and drug free individuals who are the 'pillars of society' are anything but rational when it comes to the drug trade. And it's not just the US, my country's federal police have been recently accused of deliberately allowing young Aussie drug mules to fly to Indonesia and tipping off the authorities on the other side. They now face the very real possibility of execution by firing squad. The original accuser is the farther of one of the mules who tipped off the cops several days before the flight in order to stop his son leaving the country for "dada means death" land.

As for the study in question it doesn't take a genius to recognise that dope can fuck with a head of a heavy user, particularly if the head belongs to a teenager, a glutton (5 J's/day!!!), or someone who is already battling to remain 'sane'.

Let us use the scientific method to decide the matter:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greenhouse_calc.htm

I know parent is modded funny, but amazingly these days sometimes the 'little guy' can make advances in lighting technology where multimillion dollar companies have not.

Here is a husband-and-wife team in Australia who have developed a more efficient electroluminescent panel in their home workshop. They dispayed their technology on the 'New Inventors' TV show a few weeks ago. Their advancement is in the layering of the phosphor for brighter output:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2225333.htm

10 cents might be more like 1 cent if the banks guess correctly. There might be a sudden growth in the ball licking business in teh US soonish.

Or even better, instead of having massive plants with a huge footprint make use of smaller pup nuclear reactors - about the size used in a naval ship. One of those could be placed where the power substations are now and pick up the slack that the solar panels can't fulfill. They wouldn't present any real contamination danger as once their fuel was spent after 30 years or so you truck out the entire unit and refurbish (i.e. refuel) it under controlled conditions in a remote area - while in service the internals of the thing aren't opened up.

Now effective solar panels and batteries to go with them would allow us to move to a more decentralized model.

Why don't we just use our homes to munch up our waste products and convert them to gas to run fuel cells that make electricity or process the at an urban level for gasses and pass that waste product further - for example why can't we use sewage water with a lot of nutrients to soak up carbon from our underground freeways or power stations with algae and produce bio-diesel. Given that the process would have inefficiencies, but who cares - they were waste products anyway, and after the inefficiencies you rightly point out in the grid anyway how much energy do we throw away after we have used it?

Actually, I never found Howard anything like fresh air. He pretty much started his regime with the stink of corruption, nepotism and the National Textiles bailout.

But yeah, Rudd's lot are just starting, but it's almost funny seeing them go through their election promises like they were a checklist. They've even started on this one. Courageous or crazy?