Slashdot Mirror

Details here.

With a network like this - that trend is going to continue.

Each computer had two types of memory, erasable and fixed. The fixed memory contained the programs, constants and landmark coordinates using 36,864 terms or words, each of 15 bits length. That came to a grand total of 74 kilobytes of memory. The erasable memory, which was used to store variable data used in calculations or as registers for logic operations, had only 2,048 15-bit terms.

I remember reading elsewhere that the 36 Kwords of ROM were hard coded by hand threading the bit patterns with tiny wires and magnetic cores, and then they were sealed in a block of epoxy. Turnaround time to fix bugs took weeks.

In Australia, we have a Government-sponsored national youth radio station called TripleJ. This is how almost all "alternative" artists find an audience.

TripleJ is extremely influential, and is one of the largest radio stations in the country despite (or perhaps because of) it's focus on alternative music. Imagine college radio, but on a national scale (i.e. a bigger budget, more professionalism, much higher profile).

Once an artist gets a significant airplay on TripleJ, they often make the transition to commercial radio, and end up on top of the national album charts.

Perhaps college radio stations need to link up to form something similar in the USA. Getting alternative music on the radio, and into the public consciousness, is the first step to making a profit from it.

At the moment in Australia, we're enjoying Dr. Who weeknights at 6:00. The ABC (Our government run station), is showing them from the very first episodes. Great days for Australian 'Who' Geeks. It's great seeing the emergence of the Daleks and all your old fav's.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Welcome to the program.

Many Australians have been voicing their concern about this country's front-line role in the campaign to attack Iraq, but so far the Howard Government has stood firm.

So how will it deal with another Australian who's reportedly declared Government policy against Iraq is dumb and not worth the risk?

Well, not so easily, when that opinion comes from a senior analyst in the Office of National Assessment, Andrew Wilkie, and pinned to that is his resignation.

The Office of National Assessment gathers and interprets an enormous flow of global intelligence material and briefs the PM accordingly.

Andrew Wilkie is a Duntroon graduate, a former soldier, a lieutenant colonel and has dropped a bombshell in the national capital tonight with a stinging criticism of the Howard Government's policy on Iraq.

He joins me now from Canberra.

Andrew Wilkie, is it accurate to describe you as a senior analyst with the Office of National Assessment?

ANDREW WILKIE, FORMER ANALYST, OFFICE OF NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS: Yes, Kerry.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And you were originally seconded to work there from the army back in '99.

ANDREW WILKIE: That's right, '99 and 2000 I was seconded there as a strategic analyst in the strategic analysis branch.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And the Office of National Assessments more recently, have you been privy to top level intelligence on areas like terrorism issues and Afghanistan and Iraq?

ANDREW WILKIE: Over the last 15 months or so I've been working global terrorism and transnational issues.

Because I'm one of the very small number of ex-military people in the office, I keep across potential military problems and am called in to work in the national intelligence watch office when those crises blow up.

Hence I've worked on Afghanistan, Kosovo and I was on stand-by to work on Iraq.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Why have you resigned?

ANDREW WILKIE: Kerry, war must obviously be justified and it must obviously be the option of last resort.

I'm not satisfied that in this case it is either justified or it's been viewed as the option of last resort.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Was there a particular moment that pushed you over the edge on this decision, I mean it is a big decision.

You've walked away on a career.

ANDREW WILKIE: It's the biggest decision I think I've ever made in my life.

Frankly I don't know what tomorrow will bring for me.

Was there a particular point in time?

No it's been accumulating over many, many weeks, if not months.

Although there have been some particular incidents which stick in my mind as incidents which annoyed me very much at the time.

For example, when Colin Powell presented evidence to the Security Council some weeks ago now about links between Al Qaeda and Iraq and as far as I'm aware there was no hard evidence and there is still no hard evidence that there is any active cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But are you satisfied that you're really in a position to know that, to know that in the face of Colin Powell and all the credibility that he might muster?

ANDREW WILKIE: Yes, we are obviously privy to a substantial flow of intelligence, of hard intelligence from the US.

We haven't seen anything to prove that there is a link between the two organisations.

And, in fact, if you just approach it from first principles, there's a lot of good reasons why there wouldn't be a link.

Unless, of course, Saddam Hussein is pushed into establishing a relationship with Al Qaeda and that's one of the things that I worry about, if there is an invasion of Iraq that that will be just one of the sorts of forces that could push him towards a closer relationship with A

shane warne is a aussie cricket player who got in trouble when he sent some chicks lewd and embarrasing text messages... these chicks took it as sexual harrassment. He done this to more than one woman (link 1 - link 2)

Read about Scott Atran's Paper on the psychology of suicide bombers.

Unless we take the time to understand and remove preconceived moral notions we put ourselves at a disadvantage vis a vis solving the problem by fixing the underlaying issues

Spend a few minutes at that site and lighten your day. I kind of like the idea my old data fades away. God knows I'm never going to convert those old Word Perfect documents store on 'lifetime guarantee' disks to something more modern. Hell, I'm not even going to put them in my floppy drive... (which itself is still in the orginal packing box that my laptop arrived in, might have thrown it out....).

Anything really important I bestow to the old favorite storage medium, paper. I particularly like the patent free imaging system called photography, and I've found an ink pen or graphite pencil to work in some pretty tough situtions (not to mention in letters to lovers), and can generally be ready without loading a new kernel module (though I hear XML is pretty cool, because it describes itself (ha, as if anyone's self opinion is likely to be accurate)).

RG

Bundling MSIE as a means of breaking Netscape was at the heart of the anti-trust actions in which Microsoft was found guilty of using illegal methods to maintain it's desktop monopoly. And in case you slept through the last few years, Microsoft was still guilty after appeal.

Bundling meant that all new Wintels purchase automatically had MSIE. But if that and the federal court's decision is not enough for you, recall that installing early versions of MSIE broke Netscape.

IMNSHO, Triple J (the J's) is easily the best radio station in Australia. Being a part of the ABC, it's government funded. So the only 'ads' are promos for their own stuff and are nowhere near as frequent as commercial stations anyway. Their presenters are unique and entertaining, not your usual annoying radio dickheads. (btw, Wil Andersons 'bio' is always a hoot). Their schedule has enough variety to keep most people happy, with lots of Aussie and independant artists. The only time I hear trash from the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Scraguleara, or any of the unlimited boy/girl groups nowadays is on commercial TV.

More importantly, Unearthed discovers fresh new bands each year and gives them air play and (I think) a record deal. The annual Triple J Hottest 100 "competition" gives everyone a chance to vote for their favourite songs of the year. The Hottest 100 CD's are great because the music "lasts longer" than most other artificial (or biased) compilations. Honestly, who wants to listen to Britneys' old "I can sing and dance and I'm blonde!" garbage two years from now? The oldest copy of the Hottest 100 I have is from 1997 (#5) and the music on that is still playable. Not great or new, but still certainly playable.

Well, I hope I've provided enough links there to keep everyone happy. You can catch it online in RealAudio or WMA streaming formats.

IMNSHO, Triple J (the J's) is easily the best radio station in Australia. Being a part of the ABC, it's government funded. So the only 'ads' are promos for their own stuff and are nowhere near as frequent as commercial stations anyway. Their presenters are unique and entertaining, not your usual annoying radio dickheads. (btw, Wil Andersons 'bio' is always a hoot). Their schedule has enough variety to keep most people happy, with lots of Aussie and independant artists. The only time I hear trash from the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Scraguleara, or any of the unlimited boy/girl groups nowadays is on commercial TV.

More importantly, Unearthed discovers fresh new bands each year and gives them air play and (I think) a record deal. The annual Triple J Hottest 100 "competition" gives everyone a chance to vote for their favourite songs of the year. The Hottest 100 CD's are great because the music "lasts longer" than most other artificial (or biased) compilations. Honestly, who wants to listen to Britneys' old "I can sing and dance and I'm blonde!" garbage two years from now? The oldest copy of the Hottest 100 I have is from 1997 (#5) and the music on that is still playable. Not great or new, but still certainly playable.

Well, I hope I've provided enough links there to keep everyone happy. You can catch it online in RealAudio or WMA streaming formats.

IMNSHO, Triple J (the J's) is easily the best radio station in Australia. Being a part of the ABC, it's government funded. So the only 'ads' are promos for their own stuff and are nowhere near as frequent as commercial stations anyway. Their presenters are unique and entertaining, not your usual annoying radio dickheads. (btw, Wil Andersons 'bio' is always a hoot). Their schedule has enough variety to keep most people happy, with lots of Aussie and independant artists. The only time I hear trash from the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Scraguleara, or any of the unlimited boy/girl groups nowadays is on commercial TV.

More importantly, Unearthed discovers fresh new bands each year and gives them air play and (I think) a record deal. The annual Triple J Hottest 100 "competition" gives everyone a chance to vote for their favourite songs of the year. The Hottest 100 CD's are great because the music "lasts longer" than most other artificial (or biased) compilations. Honestly, who wants to listen to Britneys' old "I can sing and dance and I'm blonde!" garbage two years from now? The oldest copy of the Hottest 100 I have is from 1997 (#5) and the music on that is still playable. Not great or new, but still certainly playable.

Well, I hope I've provided enough links there to keep everyone happy. You can catch it online in RealAudio or WMA streaming formats.

IMNSHO, Triple J (the J's) is easily the best radio station in Australia. Being a part of the ABC, it's government funded. So the only 'ads' are promos for their own stuff and are nowhere near as frequent as commercial stations anyway. Their presenters are unique and entertaining, not your usual annoying radio dickheads. (btw, Wil Andersons 'bio' is always a hoot). Their schedule has enough variety to keep most people happy, with lots of Aussie and independant artists. The only time I hear trash from the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Scraguleara, or any of the unlimited boy/girl groups nowadays is on commercial TV.

More importantly, Unearthed discovers fresh new bands each year and gives them air play and (I think) a record deal. The annual Triple J Hottest 100 "competition" gives everyone a chance to vote for their favourite songs of the year. The Hottest 100 CD's are great because the music "lasts longer" than most other artificial (or biased) compilations. Honestly, who wants to listen to Britneys' old "I can sing and dance and I'm blonde!" garbage two years from now? The oldest copy of the Hottest 100 I have is from 1997 (#5) and the music on that is still playable. Not great or new, but still certainly playable.

Well, I hope I've provided enough links there to keep everyone happy. You can catch it online in RealAudio or WMA streaming formats.

IMNSHO, Triple J (the J's) is easily the best radio station in Australia. Being a part of the ABC, it's government funded. So the only 'ads' are promos for their own stuff and are nowhere near as frequent as commercial stations anyway. Their presenters are unique and entertaining, not your usual annoying radio dickheads. (btw, Wil Andersons 'bio' is always a hoot). Their schedule has enough variety to keep most people happy, with lots of Aussie and independant artists. The only time I hear trash from the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Scraguleara, or any of the unlimited boy/girl groups nowadays is on commercial TV.

More importantly, Unearthed discovers fresh new bands each year and gives them air play and (I think) a record deal. The annual Triple J Hottest 100 "competition" gives everyone a chance to vote for their favourite songs of the year. The Hottest 100 CD's are great because the music "lasts longer" than most other artificial (or biased) compilations. Honestly, who wants to listen to Britneys' old "I can sing and dance and I'm blonde!" garbage two years from now? The oldest copy of the Hottest 100 I have is from 1997 (#5) and the music on that is still playable. Not great or new, but still certainly playable.

Well, I hope I've provided enough links there to keep everyone happy. You can catch it online in RealAudio or WMA streaming formats.

IMNSHO, Triple J (the J's) is easily the best radio station in Australia. Being a part of the ABC, it's government funded. So the only 'ads' are promos for their own stuff and are nowhere near as frequent as commercial stations anyway. Their presenters are unique and entertaining, not your usual annoying radio dickheads. (btw, Wil Andersons 'bio' is always a hoot). Their schedule has enough variety to keep most people happy, with lots of Aussie and independant artists. The only time I hear trash from the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Scraguleara, or any of the unlimited boy/girl groups nowadays is on commercial TV.

More importantly, Unearthed discovers fresh new bands each year and gives them air play and (I think) a record deal. The annual Triple J Hottest 100 "competition" gives everyone a chance to vote for their favourite songs of the year. The Hottest 100 CD's are great because the music "lasts longer" than most other artificial (or biased) compilations. Honestly, who wants to listen to Britneys' old "I can sing and dance and I'm blonde!" garbage two years from now? The oldest copy of the Hottest 100 I have is from 1997 (#5) and the music on that is still playable. Not great or new, but still certainly playable.

Well, I hope I've provided enough links there to keep everyone happy. You can catch it online in RealAudio or WMA streaming formats.

IMNSHO, Triple J (the J's) is easily the best radio station in Australia. Being a part of the ABC, it's government funded. So the only 'ads' are promos for their own stuff and are nowhere near as frequent as commercial stations anyway. Their presenters are unique and entertaining, not your usual annoying radio dickheads. (btw, Wil Andersons 'bio' is always a hoot). Their schedule has enough variety to keep most people happy, with lots of Aussie and independant artists. The only time I hear trash from the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Scraguleara, or any of the unlimited boy/girl groups nowadays is on commercial TV.

More importantly, Unearthed discovers fresh new bands each year and gives them air play and (I think) a record deal. The annual Triple J Hottest 100 "competition" gives everyone a chance to vote for their favourite songs of the year. The Hottest 100 CD's are great because the music "lasts longer" than most other artificial (or biased) compilations. Honestly, who wants to listen to Britneys' old "I can sing and dance and I'm blonde!" garbage two years from now? The oldest copy of the Hottest 100 I have is from 1997 (#5) and the music on that is still playable. Not great or new, but still certainly playable.

Well, I hope I've provided enough links there to keep everyone happy. You can catch it online in RealAudio or WMA streaming formats.

IMNSHO, Triple J (the J's) is easily the best radio station in Australia. Being a part of the ABC, it's government funded. So the only 'ads' are promos for their own stuff and are nowhere near as frequent as commercial stations anyway. Their presenters are unique and entertaining, not your usual annoying radio dickheads. (btw, Wil Andersons 'bio' is always a hoot). Their schedule has enough variety to keep most people happy, with lots of Aussie and independant artists. The only time I hear trash from the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Scraguleara, or any of the unlimited boy/girl groups nowadays is on commercial TV.

More importantly, Unearthed discovers fresh new bands each year and gives them air play and (I think) a record deal. The annual Triple J Hottest 100 "competition" gives everyone a chance to vote for their favourite songs of the year. The Hottest 100 CD's are great because the music "lasts longer" than most other artificial (or biased) compilations. Honestly, who wants to listen to Britneys' old "I can sing and dance and I'm blonde!" garbage two years from now? The oldest copy of the Hottest 100 I have is from 1997 (#5) and the music on that is still playable. Not great or new, but still certainly playable.

Well, I hope I've provided enough links there to keep everyone happy. You can catch it online in RealAudio or WMA streaming formats.

Same here.

I personally listen to NewsRadio (webcast availiable) down here (Australia) which tends to break news a long time before you hear it on the web or TV. They also offload to the BBC and .....NPR some times. I especially like the science programs at 11pm Sat and Sunday nights.

And I hate music over radio too. I can't stand it.

Longhorn's are cows. Cows produce two things in copious quantities:

1) Gas, AKA cow farts.
2) Cow pies, AKA shit.

So, just what is Microsoft trying to tell us???

Don't tell that to Iceland

Of course, the news just came through that we're giving our 50,000 lost sheep to Eritrea.

It's nice to know that we're able to give them away to a country who probably needs them. Last I recalled, Eritrea was one of the poorest countries in the world.

"He says Christmas Island will take the lead while Cocos will play a supporting role."

It's good to see the islands supporting our rural industries and pastimes!

In as much as Al Quada achieved most of its long held goals, including getting USia out of Saudi Arabia, bankrupting the USA, whipping up fear and loathing of it all across the Islamic world, and as a special bonus, seeing Bush use 9/11 as a pretext to take out a secular regime that both he and bin Laden have always hated. As for Afghanistan, heh, sure, we sure stablised the hell out of that, didn't we?

The asshats who carried out 9/11 were cretinous murdering pawns, sure, but their masters achieved most of their goals.

Now that we've established that terrorism works, we can get back to the debate.

Try exercising your trolling skills a bit less obviously...

And check out this for a (very conservative) estimate of the number of civilian Iraqi caualties, or this for a less conservative one.

I wonder if the esteemed Dr M believes that it is another Jewish conspiracy.

The riddle's already been solved!

First furniture porn, now ancient stone porn... what's next?

no really... what's next? I want in!!

And the $8.5 billion budgeted for US military space programs is for what exactly? Buzz Lightyear toys?

That's more than four times the entire Chinese space budget.

Get real, if there is one country hell bent on the militarisation of space, it's the United States.

Best wishes,
Mike.

September 2000...

The world's richest man has taken a swipe at the speed of broadband Internet network roll-out in Australia, suggesting that Australians are paying far too much for access on that cable that was put in by Telstra and Optus.

Bill Gates raised subtle questions over the power Telstra has had over cable and broadband technologies in Australia.

Click here for the full "story".

The ACCC does have some teeth, but their history in enforcing compliance is patchy. In the past, they've made a lot of noise, but not necessarily achieved much. For example, their investigation into fuel pricing involved a lot of media publicity, but no other result. Even when they have been successful on their terms, they haven't necessarily had much impact. For example, they managed to force the record companies to allow parallel importing of CDs. Somehow, this hasn't worked out and prices didn't really drop. They have some quick successes though - e.g. they managed to force Telstra to stop some of their more misleading advertisements for ADSL.

The ACCC was recently appointed a new head: Graeme Samuel. He was initially criticized by some states as being too strongly oriented towards big business and therefore not appropriate for the job. He has rejected this fairly loudly. If we're lucky, maybe he'll see this investigation as an another opportunity to prove himself.

after seeing a bbc horizon television report on shuttle design flaws ... spam in a can.

Oakland County [detnews.com] [detnews.com]

Mount Vernon [komotv.com] [komotv.com]

English garden, (possible). [thisislincolnshire.co.uk] [thisislincolnshire.co.uk]

New Orleans [nola.com] [nola.com]

And of course, India [abc.net.au] [abc.net.au] two days ago.

Fireball.

-FL

Oakland County [detnews.com]

Mount Vernon [komotv.com]

English garden, (possible). [thisislincolnshire.co.uk]

New Orleans [nola.com]

And of course, India [abc.net.au] two days ago.

-FL

Yes, I know there are also articles claiming that sapiens and neandertalis didn't interbreed, people seem to need them every few years to reassure themselves that all of those hybrid skeletons are just phantasms. The last page above references several articles which address this very issue.

Oakland County
Mount Vernon
English garden, (possible).
New Orleans
And of course, India two days ago.

-FL

Well, Condolezza Rice said Hussein is an evil man. If being an evil man was our primary invasion criterion, by God there are not boots on the earth sufficient to go after all the rat bastard "leaders" out there.

Now, if you can make it worth a few bucks...

Source: here

During Soviet era russians never admitted that it had happened (at least in the Soviet Union)

I also always thought that it was just a rumour until I found out that my dad knew his dad

The ABC in Australia is currently replaying the entire Dr Who. All of it. It's on Monday-Thursday at 6pm. It started playing on the 15th of September, and should continue for years :-)

- proton

His latest statement is here, where he claims that after Microsoft's closure of its chatrooms, more scrutiny will be placed on those of other ISPs

Microsoft's chat service closure was less to do with protecting children than it was a chance to start strangling their IM competition. The child protection thing was just pulling the wool over the public's eyes.

Alston would like nothing more than to have every unmoderated chat service shut down.

I've actually heard another version of the Original Myrphy's law... "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way". The reference is here.

Does anyone know the validity of this version?

The sydney morning herald is not known for original reporting, everything is duplicated in the Melbourne Age for starters...

Loop:

Slashdot reports story, smh reports story, slashdot reports smh reporting (slashdot story), smh reports story again (cos Slashdot did).

Repeat until servers full.

Today on a road I used to drive nearly every had had someone shot. This is very odd for Australia and the hand gun used was found at the scene. I wonder if it was road rage. Considering there are about 100,000 clueless drivers driving that road every day, it wouldn't surprise me. Its a top quailty road and over 95% of the people are driving under the speed limit of 100km an hour. Its a road safty experts wet dream and its only 4 times more deadly than any highway like it anywhere in the world. Nothing like people driving on the highway at 1/2 the speed limit to keep things moving smoothly.

Of course, natural decay of the shells would release the CO2 in any case.

Wow, you sure put a lot of effort into that reply. It must burn you to know that Karl S. Kruszelnicki Pty Ltd had the gall to blatantly plagiarise it and copyright it, no less.

So it doesn't work, won't help, and might even end up hurting more that a few people, but it's going to enhance passport security?

And Apparently OZ thinks it's a good idea too? "We now have an international standard established, which is the adoption of facial recognition as the international biometric, and that has left us well placed to move to implementation."

Real media is a sick, sick dog that people just aren't willing to put to sleep.

My friend used to use windows media player as his mp3 player. He stopped using it after we made fun of him.

Ahhhhh, elitist peer pressure, feels so good.

Anyways, back on tangent (cough). Australia Broadcasting Corporation also uses realmedia. They allow you to watch their shows here.

Australia's fantastic Media Watch TV program did an investigative piece on all the stories about mobile phones blowing up at gas pumps. They found that all stories were based on urban legend, and that journalists had fed off other hoax stories published. Gas companies had even published brochures (that they later withdrew) citing cases where poor motorists had been burned to a crisp while using their mobile phone at the gas pump. The fact of the matter was there simply were NO cases worldwide where a mobile phone had triggered an explosion. Here's a transcript of the story.

Australia's fantastic Media Watch TV program did an investigative piece on all the stories about mobile phones blowing up at gas pumps. They found that all stories were based on urban legend, and that journalists had fed off other hoax stories published. Gas companies had even published brochures (that they later withdrew) citing cases where poor motorists had been burned to a crisp while using their mobile phone at the gas pump. The fact of the matter was there simply were NO cases worldwide where a mobile phone had triggered an explosion. Here's a transcript of the story.

Little Johnny took to the streets of America recently in order to strengthen his name.


(right hand side, apologies for realplayer video)