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... uptick in young, male clients ...

Really! The usual meme is young females are having more sex because they don't have to be a 'good girl' in these modern times. It's probably the same old problem; the women fuck the attractive men and the rest get nothing. So it's time for the usual answer; prostitutes.

About 16 years ago, during the dot-com boom, the press in my country went ballistic when they discovered that IT businesses had corporate accounts at local brothels. They never articulated why a corporate perk was wrong (and failed to mention the onerous tax paid on corporate perks) when an employee could legally visit a brothel using his own money.

... complain about a variety of sexual challenges and issues.

As an Australian sex-ed documentary, Love and sex in the age of pornography explains, the unrestricted availability of pornography means young viewers are getting some twisted ideas about what constitutes good fucking.

Here is an article on the topic from 2014:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
From that article:
"Yowie has the only patent given by the US Food and Drug Administration for a chocolate-encased toy"

"But with the patent for Yowie's expiring in 2019, Kinder's strong brand awareness and deep marketing pockets could cause a melt-down for Yowie."

It's kind of stupid that something with so much prior art can be patented IMHO, but that's how it is at the moment.

> I'm only one person, I don't have time to debunk all this nonsense you keep posting.

Feel free to stop.

You don't know it, because you're actually the conspiracy theorist kook on this site, but most of the fake news comes from you. Like, you know, when you tried to argue the PizzaGate scandal was real and so on, so you'll actually be solving the goal you profess to solve which is good.

What you're really saying is that you're getting worn out being the only guy willing to prop up fake news and conspiracy theories. That's really not a loss to most of us if you stop that though you know?

The only people that have killed off the tech angle are people like you that are more interested in implying political opponents are paedophiles than actually having a decent rational discussion. If it upsets you that the site isn't what it used to be then all you have to do is stop being one of the key causes of that.

We really really don't want you to keep defending fake news and the fact you call this widespread issue a conspiracy theory is astounding. What, you really think all those Moldovan and Macedonian kids who admitted they make a fortune peddling it are CGI or paid to say that or something? If they were then that would in itself mean it was fake news, hence destroying your argument of it being a mere conspiracy theory anyway:

https://www.ft.com/content/333...

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/wo...

http://en.publika.md/moldova-s...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

http://www.pri.org/stories/201...

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11...

It doesn't matter what media left, or right, or what part of the world you look in - Serb or British, Macedonian or American, the problem is real. The fact you want to pretend fake news isn't real says all that needs to be said about you.

If you don't have time to keep trying to debunk the truth then you may want to consider that that's because the truth can't be debunked. You're fighting a battle you can't win, because you're fighting a battle against reality purely because you can't accept that you spent the last 6 months of your life riding Slashdot's ass to defend countless fake news stories and peddle them as fact. You were duped by a 16 year old Macedonian kid, so accept it and get the fuck on with your life if you can't cope with the pressure of trying to mask your own failings.

The DMV told Uber that if it had obtained a permit, the regulator would have given the green light to the self-driving pilot. DMV director Jean Shiomoto said in a letter sent to Uber that she would "personally help to ensure an expedited review and approval process", which she said could take less than three days.

So it's not like the city was trying to stop Uber.

Another 20 companies exploring self-driving cars — including Alphabet's Google, Tesla Motors and Ford Motor Co — have obtained California DMV permits for 130 cars.

It seems its not difficult for other companies either.

Its just that Uber doesn't want to play by the rules, even when the rules are being bent for their benefit. The Recode article in the fine summary said it would be $150 per vehicle so it's not like they were trying to kill them with fees either.

Either that, or Uber knows it's autonomous car program is not ready for prime time.

As noted in the link, examples of his conflicts of interest include:

1. His daughter Ivanka was present in a meeting with Shinzo Abe. She is looking to close a deal with a Japanese clothing giant whose largest shareholder is the state-owned Development Bank of Japan.

2. He accepted a phone call from the President of Taiwan. It turns out he is planning to build a luxury hotel in Taiwan. Is his position on Taiwan and the One China Policy influenced by his financial stake in this deal?

A cynical observer might say he is using the presidency as a vehicle to advance his business empire, and out of the other proferred explanation this one best matches his seemingly bizarre behaviour.

By models:

At the center of the Sun, fusion power is estimated by models to be about 276.5 watts/m3.[1] Despite its intense temperature, the peak power generating density of the core overall is similar to an active compost heap, and is lower than the power density produced by the metabolism of an adult human. The Sun is much hotter than a compost heap due to the Sun's enormous volume.[2]

Ref [1] here.
Ref [2] this page, which is not very good; and a simple model here.

i'm not an expert, neither are you, but

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.abc.net.au/religion...

for those that are, apparently, the probability is that it is more likely that there was a historical jesus than not.

perused a bit, seems like you could liken the "christ myth theory" as a splinter theory that the majority of scholars of the subject dismiss. and that the two points widely accepted as being historic in jesus' life are the crucifixion, and baptism by john the baptist. everything else is argued over. the first because some roman scholar mentioned that the "christus" was executed by pontius pilate, and spoke dismissively about christianity. - later scholarship would probably remove that part, etc etc it was confirmed by some jewish scholar too. and the john the baptist baptism wouldn't stay in if they made it up for some purpose later on. because it implies that jesus had sins to wash away, and it positioned john the baptist as someone capable of washing away the sins of christ.

"If we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned."

apparently, study of ancient history falls apart if we require the kind of proof that you're looking for for a historical jesus.

There is no such thing as a safe threshold.

And there is such a thing as a completely unsubstantiated statement too.

Sorry, I think you're a blathering idiot who has no idea what he is talking about and for some reason just wants to have nuclear energy with a reckless disregard and a blind eye for the dangers that it entails.
Let me refer you to the Australian National Academy of Sciences:
"According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation. Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual's risk for the development of cancer."
Good, I think I've had it with you.
Goodbye.

I don't mean to criticise, but at 6-8 hours you are pretty much in 'maintenance mode'. That's just about enough to stave off the worst of the chronic problems that arise from our sedentary lifestyles and will burn some calories, but as you note, not enough to make a significant difference to weight. For me, the exercise is more about managing my mental state and that makes it easier to maintain a healthy diet.

The University of QLD conducted a study that concluded that the WHO recommendations for exercise were about 5 times too small. Their recommendation ends up being in line with your current levels (6-8 hours).

It's hard to find time to fit more in - especially when you need a solid block of time for some exercises (esp. cardio) to be effective. Worse, as you get better at it, the same level/amount of exercise is less beneficial. You become more efficient. You then have to increase the duration or intensity. Or keep switching exercise around.

I find that I don't really see any benefit from exercise until I'm over 4 sessions of 1.5-2 hours a week. 3-4 sessions and I plateau. Less and I regress - my mental state is harder to maintain, cravings and appetite are harder to control.

I apologise if I seem to be preaching. I sympathise with your situation and struggle to 'exercise enough' myself and so may be projecting. If you can find a way to increase it (or increase the intensity), you may find that you start to see benefits beyond just burning calories.

Here here, Australia does a much better job of this.

Here is an interesting article from the ABC on supplements in Australia. Not directly related to this /. story, but may be of interest, and discusses the ethics of pharmacists selling supplements.

Absolutely off topic, but produced by the same excellent reporting team, this is what Australia thinks about the F-35.

Here here, Australia does a much better job of this.

Here is an interesting article from the ABC on supplements in Australia. Not directly related to this /. story, but may be of interest, and discusses the ethics of pharmacists selling supplements.

Absolutely off topic, but produced by the same excellent reporting team, this is what Australia thinks about the F-35.

Remember the recent total blackout of South Australia? If you want clean air from blackouts, renewables are for you, and they will be coming to California and the UK soon enough. Personally, I would rather choose a reliable clean energy source with a small environmental footprint, that can actually deliver at scale.

Germany is still burning coal and relying on their neighbors ample hydro resources to balance their grid. Their carbon emissions are still terrible, and their energy prices are even worse. If they had chosen nuclear instead, they would be done already and at a small fraction of the cost. Unfortunately, their choices will continue pushing their meager carbon targets decades into the future, giving them abundant time to reflect.

When imagination is incompatible with reality, that is called fantasy, and it is a distraction from workable solutions, no matter how well-meaning. If you really care about future generations, educate yourself so that you may wade through the sea of lies that renewable advocates spew in order to make informed decisions. I will provide two hints: 1) meaningful comparisons must be made with actual units of energy produced and not peak capacity or record days, etc., and 2) compare the land area and raw resource inputs required for various generation sources.

Everywhere is "at sea" by some definition, and that is the one you must to use to support your claim. Otherwise, have a look at the experiences of the United Kingdom and Australia for a dose of reality. Perhaps a few days without heat in the dead of winter would correct your propensity for lying.

All over the world, there are extended periods where wind generates zero power. Even if you have a super-grid on the scale of the world, there is just as much guarantee that the wind isn't blowing somewhere. For this reason, and the fact that prime locations are chosen first, the marginal effectiveness of wind and solar is reduced at larger scales. The inescapable fact, is that wind and solar need massive overbuild, interconnection, and storage on a scale that is completely impractical. Clearly you have not done or even looked at the math.

Respect. Australia is still getting shafted...

I have worked for over 2 decades now in an actual working mine on underground physics projects in SNOlab.

That's nice. Maybe you should come out of that hole in the ground and look around and see what other people are doing. They're a lot smarter than you, Coward.

The closest things we have are huge tunnelling machines (as shown in a post above)

Not the closest. This is a mining machine, built for the express purpose of strip-mining in vast quantities. Turning it into a robot is fairly simple, given that on Mars, your code doesn't have to keep track of things like property lines, power lines, roads, or basically anything. Plunk down some beacons, code it to stay within the beacons, and you're done. The automation required for the dump trucks that accept what it produces already exists here on Earth. That mine has 69 mine dump trucks running around entirely autonomously.

Mining robots are already starting to exist. I'm quite certain that same mine will fully automate its excavators in the next few years. The automation is not the hard part of mining on Mars. Building machines that can operate reliably in a soft vacuum is the hard part.

If by "winning" you mean values of "winning" which actually ignore the voting intent of more than half of your constituents so that you completely miss the fact that you are losing then sure.

Where did you find a model that runs on Lithium batteries?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

She's got Goldman Sachs and most of corporate America paying her.

Unlike Trump who is fighting man of the people!! and - oh wait.

She's outspending Trump by a ridiculous amount and it's not making a difference.

Want to know why Trumps campaign is broke and Clintons is rolling in the dough? Because Trump is so inept he cannot even hold the Republican base let alone win the swing states that any Republican candidate MUST win to win the electoral college. All this blather about emails is making no difference where it counts, in the states that should be in play, but aren't because Clinton is too far ahead. The Republicans have thrown Trump to the wolves, because he stunk up their house and they couldn't stand it no more. At no point has Trump looked likely to win, and he never looked less likely to win than he does right now. So nobody is giving his campaign any money because why throw money at a loser?

Let me share something of how the rest of us see things differently to what you do as a loyal Trump lapdog and shill. In the recent debate Trump promised to put Clinton in jail if he won the election. He said that, and his supporters cheered because they thought it made him look like a straight talker and a tough man, an alpha dog, the strong man. Like Duterte and his jokes about missing opportunities to gang rape a woman and boasting about the number of people he has killed, or Recep Tayyip Erdogan: although old Tayyip is too smart to publically say he is going to jail his political opponents , he prefers to do that sort of thing in private. Which is why he gets to be president, and Trump never will.

This implication did not escape the notice of many, those of us from functioning democracies, and not lost either on those Americans who long for healthy democracy, who long for a better place where you can say what you want without being threatened by punishment. Trump has just demonstrated, emphatically, that he will never be the leader who will take them to that better place.

There just aren't enough Americans who are charmed by his tough man Duterte-lite act to win the election. And he has left it too late to pivot toward the moderates, without whom he cannot win.

He's not Hillary Clinton, and for nearly half of American voters that's all he needs.

Where "nearly half" means "not anywhere near enough voters to win the presidency"

Have you seen how slow Mars rovers move and how carefully they have to weigh each action, in an environment where if you mess up, there's nobody there to rescue / repair you? Have you seen how much maintenance and consumables is involved in mining?

Do these look like Mar's rovers to you?

The concept that "robots will do everything" is simply not realistic.

Show a little imagination and optimism. With this technology, we could avoid all of the downsides of sending humans to Mars at all. You get your minerals, and nobody is condemned to a miserable life on a frigid, lifeless, airless, irradiated ghetto. How is that not a good outcome for everyone?

Do robots do everything for the astronauts on the ISS? Of course not; the astronauts there are basically glorified construction workers and lab techs. Why?

The ISS is just floating there doing nothing. Meanwhile, robots are exploring the outer reaches of the solar system. Landing on Titan. Snapping pictures of Pluto. lassooing comets. Why do we send robots instead of humans? Because they are better.

It's certainly an arguable point as to whether it's worth the cost sending humans in the first place - but once they're there, there's no debate at all about whether it's cheaper to use their labour or to engineer, build, and send robots to do the same task.

No that's right, there is no debate - robots win every time.

If such an invention, whatever it will be, that really cures all (or even merely most) illnesses, ever comes to fruition, why should it not be treated as Uber et al are treated today?

That is, why wouldn't Mark and Priscilla be asked pointed questions about doctors and nurses who — despite spending years and thousands of dollars on education and certification — will become obsolete? What of the hospitals and other health-care infrastructure, that is no longer necessary?

Will we be expected to sympathize with the struggling medical personnel beating up staff of whatever corporation/organization is set up to make the new method and burn their vehicles? Will we have "insightful" comments on Slashdot demanding "level playing field" between this hypothetical new method and the old ones?

Will the FDA meekly disband itself, or will they keep fighting for relevance (and their cushy jobs) the way cities' "Taxis and Limousine" commissions do today?

You're not special enough to get a free pass.

I guess I'm not a "protected class" with special privileges.

Are you also going to say that transsexual women shouldn't use the women's washroom because that's a "special privilege"? That would also require transsexual mentlike these to use the same bathroom as women and girls. Do you really want to go up to any of these guys and say they're just women who had their boobs cut off? Or that they have to pee in the women's bathroom?

Some of them still have vaginas, which just goes to show that sex is more than what's between the legs.

It's not even a question of "protected class." Go up to any woman and keep addressing her as a man, using male names and pronouns. Or vice versa for any man. Everyone has the right not to be subject to your brand of harassment, whether they're transsexual or not.

you have a gut revulsion to all transsexuals

True enough, as I'm sure most men do when they're not being politically correct. What percentage of men do you think would date or marry a transsexual?

Many men would, many men do. They aren't acting out of political correctness. Plus, you can't always tell that someone's a transsexual. As in the movie "transamerica" where one character said "We walk among you." It's a real hoot to watch men make fools of themselves dissing Caitlyn Jenner to someone they always knew as a woman and didn't know she used to be a man.

There's also the phenomenon of "trans-fans" - ,en who chase after women because they are transsexuals, and that makes them exotic. Plus, no worry about getting her pregnant.

you have a gut revulsion to all transsexuals

True enough, as I'm sure most men do when they're not being politically correct. What percentage of men do you think would date or marry a transsexual?

You also have a fear of castration (many men do, you're not that special), and transsexuals are a problem for you.

Castration is especially repulsive, yes, but guys dressing up as women is also repulsive

You would have been a riot in Shakespearean times, where all roles, including female, were played by male actors. People didn't find it repulsive then, and it was only when the moral majority started their attacks that things changed.

Despite what you want to believe, nobody gets a free pass interfering with another's fundamental constitutional rights.

Like my constitutional rights to free speech? Thanks, I'm glad you're so concerned.

Ah yes, the last refuge of the freetard libertarians. Your right to free speech isn't absolute. Many forms of speech are illegal. For example, start making death threats, even to a third party. Start sexually harassing someone with lewd comments. Start passing child pornography around. False advertising. Try sending threats through the mail. Saying you have a bomb and are going to blow yourself up. Even copyright infringerment isn't protected, though people sure tried.

Now, lets get down to you. If you treat a transsexual at work the same way you have said you would treat Manning, even if it's only limited to not using their legal name, you can be fired for cause. There's plenty of speech that isn't protected by the second amendment, which is one reason why you would be well advised NOT

concrete structures survived well.

Before, after.

I was just watching a show last night about exactly this. You can train most dogs to find you keys or phone with about 2 weeks of training. http://iview.abc.net.au/progra...

Provocative line: “The US is the only developed nation on Earth which allows pharmaceutical companies to set their own prices.” Of those 18 provocative words, the most egregious is “allows.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... That presumes government owns all property, real and intellectual, in which it magnanimously “allows” us a share, but only as it, government, please. That further presumes that government itself is not the cause of the problem in the first place. Both of those presumptions are wrong, to our great harm. To make this simple, I lay the matter out in clear terms below. That way we can begin discussions wherever it is that you first disagree. Free markets work best to allocate scarce resources. For free markets to work, certain premises are required: many small, independent agents; free flow of information; no distortions such as tariffs, barriers, monopolies The proper role of government is to ensure those premises. Instead, government chooses to meddle directly, and inevitably makes things worse. This is known as iatrogenic disease. In particular, private monopolies are not an issue today. All private monopolies fail: someone always cheats, or defects; substitutes arise; technology advances; fashions change. And if a monopoly should arise, we have a vast apparatus in the US, between the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. (Not that those folks have a good track record, viz. AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon Indeed when he was six, my son asked a challenging question, “how can it be a monopoly if it’s something you don’t need?” I wonder.) Today, private monopolies cannot arise. With modern technology, international trade and global markets, they are simply infeasible. No, the only durable monopolies are those imposed by government, because government first holds the monopoly on violence. Now some government monopolies are good, and temporary. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents are in the US Constitution. Others, not so much. That latter includes all the frauds amongst cronies and politicos. That category is the worst violation of free market premises ever, and the one most perpetrated. Cronyism has done orders of magnitude more damage to the US economy than any other violation, including insider trading. As to patents, a primer on the economics. Invention, like any other good or service, must be rewarded in order for it to be produced. Unlike goods and services, intellectual property is peculiarly subject to theft. So government gives inventors standing (term limited) to protect their property with civil remedies. That patent is like a lottery ticket. The inventor tried 10 things. Lost his investment of time, effort, and cash in nine of them. The tenth thing seems to work. Now he must make enough on that tenth thing not only to reward that effort, but to recompense him for the other nine as well. Say the 10 ventures cost $100,000 each. That means the tenth winner must return AT LEAST $1 million. Quite a bit more, in fact, because government comes around to seize its taxes first, and after that, the inventor must do more than break even. That’s the social contract. Before the fact, the politico promises the productive person if he takes risk and makes something that works, he can cash in that lottery ticket.” But after the fact, the politico hypocritically turns all populist and say “I don’t feel that $1,000,000 is merited. I feel $500,000 is more than enough” Who the (trigger warning) is that politico to decide market value? How dare that politico feel it’s up to him to “allow” one price rather than another? Is the patent valid? Then do not violate the terms of the deal. Is there no other competition? Then tell the (trigger warning) FDA to do its job. Is the IP such that people really do need it, as my son asked?

Coal already gets massive subsidies http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind... http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... http://www.climatechangenews.c... and that doesn't count the huge cost to health care and lost worker productivity: http://www.fastcompany.com/172...

DOE did a study on savings to date through the Clean Air Act (passed through Congress without a single vote against it!) which found the Act had a *net benefit* to the economy for that reason. Nuclear sucks too, but Coal kills more than Nuclear https://www.newscientist.com/a... If someone can get alternative up to coal and nuclear then all the more power to them! :-)

Environmental policy used to be bipartisan https://www.washingtonpost.com... Fuck partisanship!

That 14,000 abandoned wind turbine claim is bullshit: They are old ones which were decommissioned and replaced, so it's like claiming the automobile is a failed idea because there are so many cars have gone to the wreckers. Just more Nimby bullshit. http://skeptics.stackexchange.... http://www.wind-works.org/cms/...

However, the actual reason for it (hydrogen peroxide being dumped in it) was only revealed today everywhere.

It was in our news on the weekend: http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

China knows it is totally surrounded by US, UK listening stations and has been for decades. The NSA, GCHQ used mil and civilian ships, sat, manned and unmanned over flights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., regional bases to try and collect everything. Tai Mo Shan, Little Sai Wan sites could not be hidden...
China really had a different policy against such expensive and total collection methods. Flood the local gov and mil with random electronic chatter about big projects, massive support needs that might or might not have ever existed. Any real work would be done on site with no outside chatter.
The West got everything e.g. what followed Canyon (satellite) like systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... but it was all useless. The exact mil/gov communications from an East Germany or Soviet Union who only used their very expensive new communications networks for very official work everyday was great...
China flooded its networks with junk mil/gov grade messages and the West had to just collect it and try and work out it was all fake...
Creativity and imagination fooled the most advanced and expensive US and UK collection systems ever created for decades.
China even managed to get its own cleared local workers into UK collection sites in the region. Onsite chatting up low paid UK experts on their first international posting. The stress of a very low wage, top skills but not getting promoted, away from the UK, nice to just have a chat..
Spy networks in and around all US and UK regional bases was extensive. The US and UK ability to protect against such cleared staff contact was often very lacking.
The West got so unhappy with the total lack of any useful any product it had to resort to risky collection methods from within China's embassies. Video and voice was recorded. (8 Nov 2013) "The Chinese Embassy bugging controversy" http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

So the next step is key distribution:
An endless one time pad for any length of message needed in real time globally. No embassy will ever run out of the ability to communicate back to China given any local event or vast data set. The US/UK will know an embassy sent a message but like with a classic one time pad, contents could be anything.

No. People have until the 23rd of September to complete the census and you won't be fined if you didn't complete the census on the night.

No. People have until the 23rd of September to complete the census and you won't be fined if you didn't complete the census on the night.

According to their PR people that is apparently what they did.

This timeline of events suggests that the second DDOS (or "a significant increase in traffic") occurred at 11:46am local time.

At 11:50am local time they blocked all international traffic. This somehow lead to a "short system outage" (which I assume means the whole thing collapsed).

At 4:58pm there was another increase in traffic, "automatically defended by network fire walls". One must assume then that this was all local traffic if we assume that all international traffic was blocked - so either local DDOS impact, or, maybe, new demand from legitimate users.

At 7:30pm though is where things get interesting. There's another "significant" denial of service. This coincides with a lot of legitimate traffic as we enter Australian peak Internet hours. (Again, we can wonder if the DoS was actually just legitimate users smashing their application, but there's no data to decide one way or the other.)

But the fascinating part is that this incident was "significant" because their "geo-blocking service fell over". This apparently then caused a router failure.

First of all, what?! Secondly, from this description it sounds like they were using a server-side geoip mechanism to block the international traffic that was responsible for the DDOS. This will obviously not help in cases where the sheer volume of DDOS traffic is overwhelming the network (which, in Australia, is most of them).

So the question is: was their DDOS mitigation plan limited to simply blocking the DDOS on the server side? Did they not have a contingency to contact their upstream network providers and block entire international routes (which would have cut the impact of most DDOSs off at the knees)?

Sadly most of this information (I think) came from a non-technical press conference, so there's not a lot of hard technical information available yet.

I hope that the ABS will make a lot of their information public - not so that us nerds criticise this whole train wreck (though that will be fun too), but so everyone can learn from the mistakes that were made and we can build better infrastructure.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

Now they are saying it's not been attacked from overseas.

How hard would it have been to "do a Netflix" and block IP addresses based on location anyway? - That would at least stem the amount of foreign intelligence services from trying to hack the website which contains information on Australian citizens.

I read that they tested the system to 150% capacity, where 100% capacity was estimated to be 1 million forms processed per hour.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

That estimate was a gross underestimation of the numbers of sessions needed to handle an estimated 16 million households - all of whom most likely would have logged in during a 4-6 hour period in the evening. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to calculate that the system didn't have the capacity to deal with this spike in traffic.

The capacity should have been somewhere in a ball park of 5-10 million forms processed per hour, or more.
Couldn't have been cheap to have load balancers maxxed out trying to maintain that many accelerated SSL sessions.... but there you go.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

Now they are saying it's not been attacked from overseas.

How hard would it have been to "do a Netflix" and block IP addresses based on location anyway? - That would at least stem the amount of foreign intelligence services from trying to hack the website which contains information on Australian citizens.

I read that they tested the system to 150% capacity, where 100% capacity was estimated to be 1 million forms processed per hour.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

That estimate was a gross underestimation of the numbers of sessions needed to handle an estimated 16 million households - all of whom most likely would have logged in during a 4-6 hour period in the evening. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to calculate that the system didn't have the capacity to deal with this spike in traffic.

The capacity should have been somewhere in a ball park of 5-10 million forms processed per hour, or more.
Couldn't have been cheap to have load balancers maxxed out trying to maintain that many accelerated SSL sessions.... but there you go.

To be fair to IBM, Qld Health signed off every stage of the project, and:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

It was mostly the fault of the senior public servants involved.

My involvement with IBM in Queensland in the mid-to-late 1980s and early 90s taught me a few things:

1. IBM solutions cost a lot more than other peoples' solutions
2. IBM at its best was a thoroughly professional and competent group of people
3. IBM at its worst is still expensive

I know this is a US-centric site, but the allies of the USA are also upset with the F-35 program:

UK.

Canada.

Australia.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/...

I know, right.
Things have gotten so bad down here that the police have had to erect traffic signs with messages of "Don't drive and Pokemon".
Crash report here

As it turns out, just the BIC Cristal Pen sold one hundred billion by 2005 http://www.abc.net.au/radionat....

Small problem... the United States is not Australia... and you ignored a whole lot of history.

Australia did have a gun buy back, but no where near all newly illegal firearms were turned in, and the mass shootings that the ban was imposed in response to were abnormal blips, not part of a trend.

One fact that most pointing to Australia forget is that guns aren't actually illegal there, just a few types are, and as a result they are still very popular: http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

Again, assuming you successfully repeal the second amendment, how exactly are you going to round up guns from all of those unwilling to turn them over? How many police and civilians will die as a result of the door to door searches?

I really love listening to and making music.I find a lot of new music I like by listening to radio, streaming radio stations online (e.g di.fm, radiotunes.com, Ministry of Sound Radio, and even local radio stations that stream online like abc.net.au and novanation). The Apple Music Trial was a good way to also find songs but after the free trial was ended I decided to save my money and not keep going and find new music by streaming from free sites online.

As for buying music I buy most of mine from iTunes as I was an early adopter. I've bought a few tracks from Google Play because it's cheaper. I have a large collection of CD's which I've imported into iTunes. I sync my itunes library to an ipod and listen to this and a few radio stations in the car. I also have a few friends that buy me CD's for birthday's and Christmas which I listen to in the car. The CD's in the car sound way better as I only have an FM transmitter in my car. At home I listen to streamed music on my Apple TV or streaming radio stations.

Apparently these symbionts didn't adapt quickly enough; much of the coral is dead.

However, it's not unheard of for reefs to recover faster than expected, if the water quality is good enough, so there's still some hope that any remaining symbionts will be more resilient in future. Unless they get hammered again too quickly...

Australia briefly introduced a carbon tax, some of which went to the poor and elderly whose portion of daily living costs towards energy was so significant that their quality of live would be significantly effected. Carbon emissions went down and the economy was stimulated by R&D in high-tech renewable energy - solar, wind, nuclear, etc.

The situation, of course, did not last long. Rupert Murdoch and his friends went hard against it in the media. When laws forced them to provide balanced points of view, social engineering was used - flooding the comments section with "anonymous" contrarian opinions and "misinformed" data. They got their preferred oil-interest backed party back into power, who, it seems, successfully argued that wind-mills are utterly offensive while coal is as good for humanity today, as it was at the start of the industrial revolution.

Carbon taxes are similar to other 'sin' taxes on things like tobacco and alcohol. The major difference being that EVERYBODY gets hit by a carbon tax. Everything from the cost of shipping food to your grocery store, to the cost of getting yourself to the store and back again to the cost of keeping your lights on and house cool/warm.

Sure, increasing the cost on something will lower usage. Let's also be honest though, governments around the world have almost zero interest in the curbing of emissions. The carrot for them is another means of taxing their people which means another level of wealth redistribution that they control and it's that control which has everyone lining up to support this 'solution'.

Australia briefly introduced a carbon tax, some of which went to the poor and elderly whose portion of daily living costs towards energy was so significant that their quality of live would be significantly effected. Carbon emissions went down and the economy was stimulated by R&D in high-tech renewable energy - solar, wind, nuclear, etc.

The situation, of course, did not last long. Rupert Murdoch and his friends went hard against it in the media. When laws forced them to provide balanced points of view, social engineering was used - flooding the comments section with "anonymous" contrarian opinions and "misinformed" data. They got their preferred oil-interest backed party back into power, who, it seems, successfully argued that wind-mills are utterly offensive while coal is as good for humanity today, as it was at the start of the industrial revolution.

That's ok, here in Queensland we're ripping up more trees than ever before, just to keep the balance.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

The myth that fossil fuel industries don't get industry-specific subsidies is the one that keeps getting repeated. Fossil fuel exploration and mining in particular are heavily subsidised, far beyond standard business expenses.

In AU for example, billions in fuel tax credits are freely given out to oil & coal mining companies - try getting those for your own business. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/...

In the US, there are tens of billions annually of tax write-offs, financing, and loan guarantee benefits specifically for fossil fuel producers. One single example:

The deduction for intangible drilling costs, worth $3.5 billion in 2013, provides a 100% tax deduction for costs that are not directly part of the final operating oil or gas well, including exploration expenses.

Good luck getting that one yourself. Plenty more in the US breakdown linked here: http://www.odi.org/publication...

Renewable subsidies are needed initially to build industry scale and solve the chicken & egg problem. Fossil fuel industries really don't have that problem - so why are they still getting such huge industry-specific subsidies?

I read a report a while ago that claimed the insides of hot-air hand dryers were a breeding ground for general bacteria in the bathroom environment. The insides are nearly impossible to clean (I assume the heat exchanger is a kind of radiator with finely-spaced fins) and they are warm, collect fluff and dust, and so are perfect for bacteria.

To solve that problem the hand dryer would have to have some kind of internal self-clean cycle, either based on a UV light, or running the heating element with no fan going to kill things off.

Here's a nice commentary from Dr Karl (Aussies would know him from Triple-J and other appearances) from way back in 2011 stating the exact same observations as TFA.

Win or lose, people are going to remember Trump.

That's a pretty low bar. You know who else people remember?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/ima...

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multi...

They weren't "bought and paid for" either.

Here is a good report on this from Australia's perspective.

This Australian ABC report is a good summary of why the USA's allies are getting screwed over on the F-35. Canada has made a great decision to go to tender on their attack place requirements.

There was just (March 6) a good documentary on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Background Briefing radio show about where the JSF was right plane for Australia. http://www.abc.net.au/radionat...

Quite the interesting show and it seems like there are lots of problems still with the plane. Like how it still doesn't like the heat so that the weapons bay doors have to be opened every ten minutes when it's hot out. On the ground or in flight! The problem with the weight of the helmet still hasn't been taken care of so pilots can still be killed. The training simulators that pilots have been using haven't actually been verified to be accurate.