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Okay, what you say is true:

There is no way to know whether two people can have identical fingerprints. Or even fingerprints not identical, but similar enough to fool a fingerprint expert. (Let's call this a "fingerprint collision" by analogy with a collision in a hash table, since we are all geeks here.)

However, in all the decades that police departments have been using fingerprints, there has not been fingerprint collision shown. Fingerprints have been taken literally millions of times and no fingerprint collisions have been found.

Even identical twins have different fingerprints!

If anyone, anywhere, could prove a fingerprint collision, defense lawyers everywhere would grab that and wave it in court if the only evidence against their client was fingerprint evidence. Why hasn't this ever happened?

Even if there were one fingerprint collision for every 1000 people, that would be a 99.9% success rate for fingerprints, and that would still be an awesome crime-solving tool. But since no collisions have been shown, I don't see how you can question this.

Fingerprints aren't perfect. If the evidence print is smeared, or if they only manage to grab a partial print, the police might not have enough of a print for a clear match. And fingerprints are interpreted by humans, who can make mistakes.

But in court, fingerprint experts don't testify "yeah, I guess it looks the same". They say something like "see this blowup of the evidence print, and see this blowup of the file print. Notice that I have circled ten different identical features (loop, whorl, arch, etc.) in ten different places and they all match. Therefore, by the standards, these fingerprints match."

It might be interesting to fund a study to determine just how many features need to match before it's confirmed. But I don't think anyone has been convicted on the basis of a single partial fingerprint with only two matching features.

For those of you not from the US of A, it guarantees freedom of expression in the most absolute terms. Short of something that incites violence (e.g. "let's kill him") or yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, it is OK.

Provided what you want to say is agreeable to the government, otherwise you might find yourself bannished to a free speech zone in a nice out of the way place.

Team America: World Police". Too rude to print here, it would probably get you put in jail in some countries.

If the way you handle accidently seeing a women's breast ( nice one at that) is any indication of how your nation reacts to "indecency" then maybe you should cover your own ass.

Iraq war body count (since 3/19/03) (min): 15,094

That number is way too small. Try this one instead.

Sometime back I read an item which argued that there is some evidence that the Black Death was not caused by bubonic plague at all but rather by an aids like virus. After I RTFA (in the /. item) it didn't seem to point out this possibility. Have a read of the ABC (Australian) Science article and note the bit about a village in England in the time of the Death, it was sealed off and food was passed in from outside, after some years(?) it was given the all clear. To this day the population has a high count of genes implicated in immunity to AIDS. The obvious implication being that rather than a bacterium the Black Death was a human to human virus. Which of course is probably still out there since the Black Death came back time and time again over the decades.

What next? Professional wrestling is scripted?

Pro wrestling is not generally scripted. The match finishes are set-up by "road agents," retired old wrestlers, on the basis that they are the hook which will keep the marks returning. Promos, the speeches wrestlers give, are sometimes scripted but this is avoided when possible as it usually comes off bad when performed live (wrestlers are not actors); usually the wrestlers are given bullet-points containing the essential issues the bookers (wrestling writers and planners) want advanced in that month's storyline.

For the most part, professional wrestling is improvised based on the structure of the match's finish as set up by road agents, and on the storyline points which are to be communicated. Within the framework established by the agents and bookers, the workers (wrestlers) are pretty much free to work spots (perform a sequence of moves) and create matches dynamically in accordance to the fluid reaction of the crowd. This is known in wrestling lingo as "psychology".

Professional wrestling has far more in common with olde improv comedy - or even, transcendentally, with pro-wrestling video games, than it does with a movie or any other modern 'scripted' analog.

PS - Most everything on TV is fraudulent to some degree, from the news to "reality" shows. Broadcast networks are run by Machiavellians. The bottom lines are ratings and brand-building; accuracy, honesty and integrity don't enter into it, except as they affect the bottom lines (i.e. PR).

At the moment there are more than 200 Finns and over 2000 Swedes missing and most likely all of them are dead. To see things in perspective: Finland has a population of 5.2 million, Sweden around 9 million. Everyone with basic math skills can calculate what that would mean if it had happened for tourists from US.

FYI, the US State Department is still looking for "several thousand" missing Americans. link.

According to another article (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1273 322.htm), the PDAs won't just have maps and common phrases, but will also have voice translation (in the english models), as well as free unlimited Internet access and free phone calls within Japan. These seem to me to be substantive services beyond just a flashy way to deliver basic, predefined information.

DG is fine, asshole.

Frankly, I'm surprised at this... isn't the 2000 SG 344 also due to hit Earth in 2030?

And then there's 1950DA which is a civilization killer

Please don't tell me that it's funded my Microsoft...

Bill Gates? That you? On a more serious note, an EU judge has upheld penalties against Microsoft.

Which indicated you are in australia, in the melbourne region.

Entirely correct.

Google search provided that the city has a chain of toll highways that is called citylink (more specifically the Mitchton-Frankston expressway), which was recently deprivitized, giving ownership (or partial ownership to macquarie's bank, and something referred to as connecteast, which is probably a consortium, which the bank is the head off...I could be wrong), which seemed to be set to making a huge profit off the road.

CityLink is indeed privatised and they are indeed making a fortune off it as their tollway provides a very quick (usually - when lanes are not closed) way around the CBD of the city.

However, the Mitcham-Frankston Tollway has not yet been built - ConnectEast is the name of the consortium recently awarded the contract to build and operate the freeway. Transurban - the owners of CityLink - are a separate company who were outbid to build the new toll road.

BTW. Photo of citylink looked cool. The one with the circular beam 'roof'.

That's the "sound tunnel" designed to reduce the noise of the road (which is elevated at that point) reaching the Ministry of Housing apartments 100m or so away from the tollway.

My guess is the citylink would be the only one ripping people off in the region, as one is expected to do when the deprivatization took place within past 7 years or so.

Full marks for resourcefulness. If you lived in Australia, you would have incurred a penalty for your reference to a tollway not yet built. (see the South East Integrated Transport Authority web site for more information on this road, which has it's own controvosy surrounding it) however the two would indeed look very similar according to Google...

In Australia, the government is going to sell Telstra, the national telco, subject to there being a sufficient standard of service in rural areas. I think Telstra should be divided into its core services ie. the national network, owned by the government, and its non-core services like adsl, expensive premium phone services and suspect expansions into Asia. At the moment, Telstra is (almost) the only provider of adsl, and it charges competing companies as much or more for wholesale adsl as it charges customers retail.

Back on to topic: a nationally owned core-network company would have no problem sending out landlines, especially to a community of fifteen houses. In comparison, when cable television was belatedly introduced in Australia, two competing companies strung up their cables in many places in Melbourne until they ran out of money. So there is a duplicated service in many places (especially now the two programming providers have merged and are showing the same thing), and no service in many places. If I answer one of the fliers in my mail advertising Foxtel TV, and give my inner-city medium density housing address, I'm told that "the satellite service is available to your address, Sir". The objectives of a private company are to make a profit and provide service, wheras a public company should provide service and then (perhaps) make a profit.

Check out Brush with Extinction . We were apparently down to several thousand individuals about 70,000 years ago.

We have low genetic diversity, and no longer need to adapt to extreme changes in our environment (thanks to our 'intelligence').

How long before a disease wipes us out?

Can medical technology ever advance to the point of actually helping a species with such low diversity?

Will spreading to other planets really help?

Clio Cresswell is a great ambassador for science, not least because she's so attractive. She also has an amazing gift for public speaking, and uses this not only in the university lecture theatre but also on television, on the radio and now in print. Her radio spots range from short grabs on popular stations to more in-depth (but still accessible) analysis on Australia's public broadcaster. Read some of these here, here, here and here. There's also a short interview about the book here.

Clio Cresswell is a great ambassador for science, not least because she's so attractive. She also has an amazing gift for public speaking, and uses this not only in the university lecture theatre but also on television, on the radio and now in print. Her radio spots range from short grabs on popular stations to more in-depth (but still accessible) analysis on Australia's public broadcaster. Read some of these here, here, here and here. There's also a short interview about the book here.

Clio Cresswell is a great ambassador for science, not least because she's so attractive. She also has an amazing gift for public speaking, and uses this not only in the university lecture theatre but also on television, on the radio and now in print. Her radio spots range from short grabs on popular stations to more in-depth (but still accessible) analysis on Australia's public broadcaster. Read some of these here, here, here and here. There's also a short interview about the book here.

Clio Cresswell is a great ambassador for science, not least because she's so attractive. She also has an amazing gift for public speaking, and uses this not only in the university lecture theatre but also on television, on the radio and now in print. Her radio spots range from short grabs on popular stations to more in-depth (but still accessible) analysis on Australia's public broadcaster. Read some of these here, here, here and here. There's also a short interview about the book here.

Clio Cresswell is a great ambassador for science, not least because she's so attractive. She also has an amazing gift for public speaking, and uses this not only in the university lecture theatre but also on television, on the radio and now in print. Her radio spots range from short grabs on popular stations to more in-depth (but still accessible) analysis on Australia's public broadcaster. Read some of these here, here, here and here. There's also a short interview about the book here.

Reading from the Kama Sutra, Chapter 1

Oh beautiful maiden with beaming eyes, tell me, since you understand the method of inversion, what number multiplied by 3, then increased by three-quarters of the product, then divided by 7, then diminished by one-third of the result, then multiplied by itself, then diminished by 52, whose square root is then extracted before 8 is added and then divided by 10, gives the final result of 2?

This excerpt came up in an interview with this book's author which you can read here

To those of you who have actually managed to reproduce:

By the time you are getting around to worrying about hot laptops, the damage may already be done. Disposable nappies have been shown to increase scrotum temperature to 1 degree above body temp - and a scrotum should be BELOW body temp. This article in the Australian ABC news site from the same wire story references the problem. I know it's a small scall study, but think about it: a few hours a week with a hot laptop on your lap, compared to two to three YEARS locked inside a plastic bag, during a vital developmental stage. On report I saw pointed out that the decline in male sperm counts coincides with the introduction of disposable nappies.

My 6 month old boy is kept almost entirely in washable nappies, of the type made by Happy Hienys, Fuzzi Bunz, etc. They are as convenient as disposables to put on, much neater than the terry squares you would traditionally associate with washable nappies, and they just work.

Now the shameless plug: We have been so impressed with these nappies that my wife is setting up to sell them at babyaloo.com. The site isn't up yet, but it will be in a couple of days.

There are some studies that link brain lateralization to personality in birds and mamals, which provides an explanation of the survival benefits of having both left and right handed members in a species: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1139554.ht m/ (Ask yourself - who do the marmosets remind you of??) Someone else did a game theory analysis of how predation could lead to lateral specialisation in prey as a survival strategy, but I don't have the link. For the profoundly right lateralized(~LH), you might appreciate these marmosets also: http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/

The Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has some interesting designs using waterproofed paper tubes - they are really beautiful. See Paper Architecture, A Case Study: Cardboard Shelters, Kobe Earthquake January 1995, Time's Innovators article on him, and a Google Images search of his work

Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, today reiterated her claim that the AIDS virus was a deliberately created biological agent.

"Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that.

"Us black people are dying more than any other people in this planet," Ms Maathai told a press conference in Nairobi a day after winning the prize for her work in human rights and reversing deforestation across Africa.

"It's true that there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq," she said.

"We invaded Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had made, or was in the process of creating agents of biological warfare," said Ms Maathai.

"In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare," she added.

"Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious," Ms Maathai said.

Africa accounts for 25 million out of the estimated 38 million across the world infected with HIV, and the vast majority of infected Africans are women, according to UNAIDS estimates.

The United States on Friday congratulated Ms Maathai on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but tempered its praise over her claims about AIDS.

"She said (HIV/AIDS) was invented as a bio-weapon in some laboratory in the West," a senior State Department official said.

"We don't agree with that."

The official pointed to a report of those comments published in August in Kenya's daily Standard newspaper, in which Ms Maathai was quoted as saying that HIV/AIDS was created by scientists for the purpose of mass extermination.

Journalists go out and find out what's going on, they (hopefully) check their sources out and get confirmation and input from both sides and then report on it.

While this is what good journalists do, the media publishers often put a spin on articles to suit their needs (entertainment, destabilising government etc). Consider the stated corporate goals of companies like Fox (entertainment). In Oz, we have this great little 15-minute TV show called Media Watch that points out inconsistencies and spin on articles purporting to be news. You would be amazed at some of the inconsistencies they uncover.

My point: news reported by the mass media is just as tainted by commentary and spin as that reported in blogs.

Imagine a people who found it so important to know the reliability of information given to them, that they created two past tenses to be able to tell the difference...

The Tariana language does this, and more. When stating a fact you must specify as part of the grammar whether you know it because you saw it yourself, or because somebody told you, or you deduced it from other evidence, or you know it as a general principle.

Yes, it would have interesting an effect on political debates.

...laura who will stick to Russian verb aspects for now

Especially as recently Dutch Supreme Court ruled Kazaa legal

Let's see what happens in this Sydney court case.
"Unlike pending copyright-infringement cases brought against Sharman in the United States, the suit asserts additional claims for misrepresentation to the public, unconscionable conduct and civil conspiracy to inflict harm".

Don't know how this will affet Kazaa, but it could hurt Sharman...

I know that nuke plants aren't maintenance free. I felt that was a given ;). But I felt that I needed to mention that solar plants still require maintenance.

The previously features christmas tree sized low maintenance reactor
Well, the nuclear portion is maintenance free, at least.

My estimate of costs came from comparing the build costs for an australian mirror plant with the south african pebble bed. And I assumed linear, as in it takes x plants at y dollars each to reach the USA's annual production.
PBMR: $100 million per 110 MegaWatt "Module" (.9mil per MW)
Solar 1:$2.1 Million for 180 Kilowatts (11mil per MW for an admittably small plant)
Solar 2:$3 Million per Megawatt?

Well, it's not exactly "order of magnitude", but a factor of three is still quite a difference.

more than a month using its solar cells to refuel and recharge its batteries before it could take off again."

This may well be a feature. Conventional wisdom, when fishing or hunting, is it pays not to move around too much.

Easily tested on earth too.

A really big one might help with moon mining as proposed here. Of course it would literally have to hop as wings are useless on the moon. Low gravity may make the concept practical and gas could be 'waste' from the He3 extraction.

Imagine a whole mining-processing plant hopping about the moon.

The nerve bundles do, according to my Neurologist, regenerate over time. "Time"being" being years and decades. Supplements of Zinc are thought to help.

In four years, I've gone from smelling the same thing (burning blood, oh so wonderful) to faintly sensing almost everything. Part of it is probably brain re-training, and part of it is nerve regeneration.

Unfortunately, I don't think that this technology will function in the manner you hope. The Glands of Bowman and olfactory bulb that function as our sense of smell are screamingly complicated electro-chemical analytic systems. You'd have to cart around a full chemical assay lab on your back to equal these amazing biological systems. I believe that our best hope is for superior nervous tissue regeneration, which currently has its best hopes in the highly politicized "Stem Cell" arena.

Good luck, I know what you're feeling, and 'smell ya later'.

If we had to wait for one to go off in our direct neighbourhood chances are we'd be fried. The galaxy is transparent to radiation of that energy so a burst would be seen no matter where. And it better be far since the energies involved are such that one of the theories of dinosaur extinction is that they were wiped out by a gamma-ray burst within our galaxy! Here's the short story on that, and if you like the number crunching version better that's here .

From abc.net.au:

Do this with a computer that has barely 5,000 primitive integrated circuits, weighs 30 kg and costs over $150,000. In order to store your software, the computer doesn't have a disk drive, only 74 kilobytes of memory that has been literally hard-wired, and all of 4 Kb of something that is sort of like RAM.

NASA explains it a little better, noting that the 74KB is actually 37KW, using 16-bit words:

• Hardware

  The guidance computer is a general-purpose digital machine with a basic word length, in parallel operations, of 15 bits with an added bit for parity checks. The instruction code includes subroutines for double and triple operations. Memory cycle time is 11.7 microseconds with a single addition time of 23.4 microseconds. The 'core rope', used for the fixed memory, has a capacity of about 36,864 words with an erasable memory (of ferrite core planes) of 2,048 words. The processor is formed from integrated circuits (ICs). The total computer weight is 29.5 kg. The fixed memory contains programmes, routines, constants, star and landmark co-ordinates and other pertinent data. The erasable memory acts as an intermediate store for results of computations, auxiliary programme information, and variable data supplied by the G&N and other systems of the spacecraft.

According to ABC Australia, Microsoft doesn't believe people want tabbed browsing. This seems to indicate they're waiting for users to tell them what they want. This is the kind of attitude that will cost them more than any onslaught of viruses and security gaffes. If you're not looking to exceed your customer's expectations, somebody else will come along and do it for you. Of course nobody thought to ask Microsoft for tabbed browsing, if it was obviously needed it wouldn't be an "innovation".

The AP article can be found here, on CNN.

Just how often do we have to "solve" the mystery of Atlantis? When will the media accept that not every sunken city Atlantis, and that it probably isn't the last time that someone will find a site sunken by volcanic activity. Most of these discoveries are occuring in an area with large amounts of Volcanic activity, so doesn't it just make sense that these cities are there?

Be your own savant for a little while... with magnets. Really! Maybe.

The article comes across as a bit of a puff peice. Expect more of these as the *olympics* draws near.

Before we rejoice the *technical prowess* of China it help to consider how China addresses problems that will cripple any attempts to modernise.

• Rural poverty: '... sixty million Chinese living in rural and remote areas eke out a miserable existence on a meagre $90 a year ...' (China - Black River: 11/6/1996 Reporter: Jane Hutcheon)
• Pollution: '... total destruction of the Huai river - around which 1/10th of China's population live ... Seven million tonnes of untreated affluent are dumped into it every year. A sludge so toxic that it is not merely entering the food chain - it is killing aquatic life and crops outright ...' (China - Qinghai Province 7/7/1998 Reporter: Jane Hutcheon)
• Human rights: (China - China Workers: 15/07/2003 Reporter: Eric Campbell)'...It wasn't so long ago that the West saw Communist China as a brutal, cold war adversary.... The Communists have wholeheartedly embraced capitalism. Last November, China even joined the global capitalist club, the World Trade Organisation.... But what's often been ignored in the rush to do business with China is the price being paid by many farmers and State workers. ... Untold millions have lost their livelihood as officials, and factory managers have grown rich from corruption. Any attempt by workers to form trade unions to defend their rights has been crushed without mercy. ...'

The article comes across as a bit of a puff peice. Expect more of these as the *olympics* draws near.

Before we rejoice the *technical prowess* of China it help to consider how China addresses problems that will cripple any attempts to modernise.

• Rural poverty: '... sixty million Chinese living in rural and remote areas eke out a miserable existence on a meagre $90 a year ...' (China - Black River: 11/6/1996 Reporter: Jane Hutcheon)
• Pollution: '... total destruction of the Huai river - around which 1/10th of China's population live ... Seven million tonnes of untreated affluent are dumped into it every year. A sludge so toxic that it is not merely entering the food chain - it is killing aquatic life and crops outright ...' (China - Qinghai Province 7/7/1998 Reporter: Jane Hutcheon)
• Human rights: (China - China Workers: 15/07/2003 Reporter: Eric Campbell)'...It wasn't so long ago that the West saw Communist China as a brutal, cold war adversary.... The Communists have wholeheartedly embraced capitalism. Last November, China even joined the global capitalist club, the World Trade Organisation.... But what's often been ignored in the rush to do business with China is the price being paid by many farmers and State workers. ... Untold millions have lost their livelihood as officials, and factory managers have grown rich from corruption. Any attempt by workers to form trade unions to defend their rights has been crushed without mercy. ...'

The article comes across as a bit of a puff peice. Expect more of these as the *olympics* draws near.

Before we rejoice the *technical prowess* of China it help to consider how China addresses problems that will cripple any attempts to modernise.

• Rural poverty: '... sixty million Chinese living in rural and remote areas eke out a miserable existence on a meagre $90 a year ...' (China - Black River: 11/6/1996 Reporter: Jane Hutcheon)
• Pollution: '... total destruction of the Huai river - around which 1/10th of China's population live ... Seven million tonnes of untreated affluent are dumped into it every year. A sludge so toxic that it is not merely entering the food chain - it is killing aquatic life and crops outright ...' (China - Qinghai Province 7/7/1998 Reporter: Jane Hutcheon)
• Human rights: (China - China Workers: 15/07/2003 Reporter: Eric Campbell)'...It wasn't so long ago that the West saw Communist China as a brutal, cold war adversary.... The Communists have wholeheartedly embraced capitalism. Last November, China even joined the global capitalist club, the World Trade Organisation.... But what's often been ignored in the rush to do business with China is the price being paid by many farmers and State workers. ... Untold millions have lost their livelihood as officials, and factory managers have grown rich from corruption. Any attempt by workers to form trade unions to defend their rights has been crushed without mercy. ...'

Fascinating. I didn't read the Red Herring article,
but did read this one. This article also explains why; for essentially the same reason; red/green color-blindness afflicts about 8 percent of Caucasian males, but about only 0.5 percent of Caucasian females.

Well, that's obviously not true. In fact, there will even be US election coverage on the AM band.

NewsRadio are promising coverage starting about 10am.

The ABC election website was really good during the (Australian) election too, it had a nice flash applet that allowed you to zoom in on electorates and switch the view from previous, estimated wins and switching seats.

The only thing that disappointed me were the results it showed :(

It makes me sad to think that many people seams to hardly care about those "collateral damages". I'll admit that even me, I forget about them, I need to fall on this kind of post to start feeling bad. I think that the fact that this is kind of a "taboo" subject to main stream media have something to do with it.

Sad :(

My question to supporters and non supporters of the war is: Do 100 000 civilians death is an acceptable price to pay to overthrow a dictator? (I am definitely more interested on the arguments than on the obvious position of each camp)

Freedom is messy.

Due to our nearness to Antarctica, we have an unlimited supply of penguins. I'm very excited.

Hey, is this you?

As an aussie, I took it to be a reverence to the current leader of the main opposition party referring to our current leader as an "Arse licker" in the way he deals with G.W.B. SMH article .

I understand he also said G.W.B. was the most dangerous and incompetent US president in living memory, but I can't be certain those were his exact words. ABC news item

I'm not much of a fan of Mark Latham myself. In fact, these two comments are about the only thing that makes me like him. Oh yeah, he was the best chance of getting rit of the lying rodent we have now. To bad he couldn't win the election.

Yahoo! cleared in Nazi case (Wednesday February 12, 2003)
Then in a separate legal attack, three different French Jewish groups launched a second action, accusing Yahoo!'s former president Tim Koogle of justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The court ruled yesterday that justifying war crimes meant glorifying, praising, or at least presenting the crimes in question favourably, and that Yahoo! manifestly did not fit that description.

US court overturns Yahoo Nazi memorabilia ruling (Thursday, August 26, 2004)
A United States appeals court has ruled that a lower tribunal had no right to decide on a case brought against US Internet giant Yahoo by two French groups trying to halt online sales of Nazi memorabilia.
...
Yahoo must wait for LICRA and UEJF to come to the United States to enforce the French judgment before it is able to raise its First Amendment claim. However it was not wrongful of the French organisations to place Yahoo in this position, wrote Judge Warren Ferguson.

Yahoo's legal battle over Nazi items continues (Thursday, 26 August, 2004)
At stake is Yahoo's claim that enforcement of the French court's judgment in the US violates Yahoo's First Amendment rights. This claim can be reviewed by any US court able to assert jurisdiction over French plaintiffs the UEJF and LICRA, he wrote. Jurisdiction can be obtained if LICRA and the UEJF ask a US district court to enforce the French judgment, but they have not yet done so, Ferguson wrote.

By some of the logic I see here, the Internet should operate according to the lowest common denominator of law - if it's legal *somewhere* it should be legal on everywhere the Internet. I just don't see how There should be no restrictions on international trade over the Internet + All software should be free can be reconciled with People in India shouldn't be allowed to do my job.

Attack ad version of this post: MarkTAW says if it's legal *somewhere* it should be legal on everywhere. Is this the kind of man you want posting to /. ?

People in Russia have armed militia groups on the streets with a lack of respect for law and people that makes Al Capone look like an infant. We all now from the recent terrorist attacks how much concern their government shows for the well-being of the anonymous taxpayer (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/07/putin. us/). They torture, rape, and subject to famine and diseases the troops who should help re-establish order even as we speak. (http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2004/s1224628.ht m, http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/04/27/armysuicide .shtml). You think MUSIC PIRACY is a what concerns the average citizen out there?? On their scale, such trivial discussions are laughable.

When I was a kid I used to watch Professor Julius Sumner Miller and his show "Why is it So?" Every episode was a short physics demonstration. I was fascinated by it (he had kind of a freaky voice) and watching his show introduced me to physics.

Fortunately, we still get Media Watch every Monday. It's arguably not quite the same since Stuart Littlemore QC stopped presenting the show, but it's still essential viewing. Their web site also has a streaming feed of each episode.

What does this have to do with Today Tonight? A few years ago, Today Tonight reported that they attempted to interview Christopher Skase, a businessman who fled Australia for Mallorca in Spain, but could not even approach his house by car because of constant police barricades. A keen viewer, having recognised that they were actually driving around Barcelone, wrote to Media Watch, who then blew the story open. Those of us who had previously doubted Today Tonight's credibility, and found this irrefutable and rather hilarious proof, still refer to them as Barcelona Tonight.

I tend to focus on ABC news and SBS news. Ten is barely acceptable, I mostly watch it because it's first at five. I tend to watch out for both technical and foreign issues to judge the different news services. SBS news is of course the best at the latter. Seven and especially Nine (nein!) are the worst in this catagory, at least from the little I've seen. Those stations both also have a lot of the cheap clip-style programs like America's/The worlds most dangerous/fastest/deadliest drivers/police-chases/snakes/sharks/animals. Nine especially seems to like the xenophobic angle with locally-made clip shows which seem to boil down to look at these whacky foreign television shows!.

Back to the news, ABC and SBS seem to do about the same on technical issues. For example, I remember a few years back one of the shuttles in orbit was having trouble with a fuel cell. Both ABC and SBS straight-out called it a fuel cell, adding a quick explaination like "...which generates onboard power and drinkable water". When I caught the bulletins on the other stations (7, 9, 10) they all dumbed it down into a generator or some equally incorrect term (from a technical perspective). SBS has also been pretty good recently with the reporting of the various windows worm/virus outbreaks. They will often explicitly say that only windows machines are affected. This is probably mainly due to the resurgence of popularity in Apple Macs, but it also helps the image of other non-windows OS's.

For me, my preference for news goes something like this:

1. SBS (best all-round, esp. world events)
2. ABC (a close second)
3. Ten (barely acceptable, I usually only watch the first 20 minutes)
4. Seven (rarely watch it)
5. Nine (just say nein!)