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Having just completed a Master of Interactive Multimedia we did quite a bit of study around the nature of Art, Art Theory, Semiotics and everything else. But on ABC TV last night I saw this on The 7:30 Report. It was an interview with the new Australia Council boss discussing how New Media is the next revolution ...

As other /.'ers have mentioned, art is by defition what you define it as. There are a fwe art prizes around and orgainsation that will take your work, eg http://www.siggraph.org/.

Well, I don't really think he says that they're responsible for all the monetary disasters in history. He certainly regards political meddling in the money supply as a very bad thing, and governments are inflationary creatures. It might be safer to think he'd say that bad monetary policy is the common factor behind monetary disasters, and that fiat currencies make bad monetary policy easy.

A fixed currency would be something of a remedy to this. But he regards an exchange rate, pegged directly to a commodity, to be unworkable... and there have certainly been monetary disasters in partial reserve systems.

Overall I feel safe in saying that he advocates (for large countries) floating exchange rates, at the other end of the spectrum entirely. The common factor is that the role of government is limited.

There's a nice summary in a 1998 interview:

[Friedman]: 'a floating exchange rate is one in which the government does not intervene in the exchange rate market but allows the market to set its own values. [Here you find] one very interesting historical phenomenon. No nation that has had a floating exchange rate has ever had external currency crisis in international finance.'

[...]

'And I have always argued that for a large country, like the U.S., Germany, France, Britain -- none of them are going to be willing to give up their independent central banks, and therefore, the best course for them to follow is to have a freely floating exchange rate determined in the market. But for small countries, they will on the whole do better if they peg their currency, unify their currency with a foreign currency, and avoid having an independent central bank -- provided that they do it with a country which is one of their major trading partners so that a lot of their business is being done in that currency anyway.'

[...]

'The lesson for Asia is; if you have a central bank, have a floating exchange rate; if you want to have a fixed exchange rate, abolish your central bank and adopt a currency board instead. Either extreme; a fixed exchange rate through a currency board, but no central bank, or a central bank plus truly floating exchange rates; either of those is a tenable arrangement. But a pegged exchange rate with a central bank is a recipe for trouble.'

[Gorimek]: I'm sorry that I let myself get dragged down to that level, and I appreciate you correcting it

For my part, I think I was a little harsh. But it wasn't clear from your short reply that you were not a crank yourself, merely invoking a name. No offense intended.

In Australia, I watch everything on the ABC and SBS (which recently won an international multicultural exposure award.

Sadly, the commercial stations do have The Sopranos, and Voyager & DS9, so I tape these (it's analogue I know, but hey).

But The Bill (greatest show in the world) in on the ABC ( :

He was an online panelist in a discussion of the hyped up sell off of com.au to MelbourneIT that was held by the Four Corners (current affairs) program on Auntie ABC (the national broadcaster in Australia).

Check out the forum comments.

And for a glimpse at his sense of humour, try RFC 1924. He really had me going!

The story is here

skribe

http://australianit.news.com.au/common/storyPage/0 ,3811,2085164%5E442,00.html

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/2001/06/06/ FFXHH7FZLNC.html

http://it.mycareer.com.au/breaking/2001/06/06/FFX7 G6FZLNC.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/telco/story/0,2000020 799,20227632,00.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/nat/newsnat-6j un2001-50.htm

http://www.whirlpool.net.au

http://www.a1h.com

Theres an existing interesting Thread on Wireplay (Telstra's gaming network) about it all. And also a petition you can sign to protest against the move. Furthermore the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) is already investigating the matter.

So why do we need to be able to fly from New York city to Tokyo in 2 hours anyway? Why can't people just learn to be hapy where they are?

Well it's less expensive because you don't need to bring liquid oxygen up with you. Normal jets burn fuel together with oxygen which needs to be compressed in order to be injected in the burning chamber. Because speeds are so high, the scramjet can simply take oxygen from outside because the pressure is allready high enough. The engine also doesn't need any rotors or moving parts because the need for a compressor is gone. On top of that, it's also faster. Wasn't technology supposed to increase comfort value?

See this scramjet tech explanation for more info.

See Reuters and ABC 7:30 report and slashdot

It is currently illegal to sell region-locked players in New Zealand. So they are not locked - so I am told, but I'm having trouble confirming this.

In Australia, all it takes is one court case to decide on prima-facie evidence that region locking reduces consumer choice and restricts competition, and any CE manufacturer importing region locked devices will be up for large fines. The vitamin industry was fined $AUD25.5m because of very similar behaviour, and the fines are relative the ability of the companies to pay. I'd love to see Sony, et al fined lots of $$$ because of their illegal players.

Try the ABC instead. Even as I'm typing this they're talking about it and noting it would remove the hostage issue from the recent happenings. There's bucket loads about it. You're just not looking in the right places. What are 9 showing? I Desparately Want To Be Rich?

• www.debunker.com
• Skeptical Inquirer
• If it's on TV, it must be true, right?
• Ah, the innocence of childhood

This place says that there is a company trying to make kits for cars to produce industrial diamonds in their exhaust with the addition of microwaves that would "zap" exhaust fumes. But how do you collect the diamonds? Let them run into the gutters. Hey, that would clean the shit out of the streets and the gutters. Interesting idea. No really, that has some appeal if you're working with cement. Well, if you wanted the streets to be polished like glass it would be cool. I"d be into it, but I can see some practical issues that could stand in the way of widespread adoption. Think of the lighting possibilities of glass smooth streets though!

And here's a whole different twist on it. Have your dearly departed loved ones turned into industrial diamonds?




an advertisement in 1988 in a Phoenix, Arizona, newspaper, the Sun City Daily News, exhorting customers to: turn the ashes of your beloved into a diamond'! It seemed we can reduce a dead husband or wife to an ornament in order to reproduce the sparkle in their eyes. ..

Ah, yes, Melbourne, one of the world's great cities. The restaurants on Lygon Street are fantastic. The Italian food is great, but don't forget the culinary contributions of the Thais, Indonesians, Malaysians, Turks, Indians, Greeks, and dare I say, Brits.

Australian and American cultures are similiar in many respects. They both honor self-reliance. They both have great literary traditions. However, the cultures differ in (at least) two fundamental ways. Australians are not as obsessed with money. Success is recognized in many forms. For example, the Wallabies is the Australian national rugy union team (rugby union as opposed to rugby league). This is a semi-pro team that boasts long, proud careers and garners international acclaim. Secondly, Australians are more inclusive and honor contributions to the community. A national motto is, "Everyone gets a fair go." Fred Hallows was a great Australian.

Notably, Australians have higher patronage rates of libraries, gallaries, museums, and stage productions. Here are some other bits and pieces:

• Dame Joan Sutherland, widely recognized as the 20th century's premier diva, is Australian.
• Architecture: Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
• JJJ, alternative music radio.
• The Australian Digger
• The literary offerings of David Malouf, Peter Carey, and Patrick White.
• Australian aborignal painting.
• Cinema, including Picnic at Hanging Rock, Walkabout, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, The Castle and even Mad Max.
• Comedy, including the D-gen, Roy and HG, and Dame Edna.
• The National Art Museum, with works by Marcel Duchamp and Jackson Pollack (purchased back in the seventies, probably when you but a gleam in your father's eye).
• Horse racing and camel racing (no less).
• Yacht racing, including the world famous Sydney to Hobart.
• And finally, a mentality that loves larrikinsm, improvisation, and good-natured humour in the face of adversity.

The list goes on and on. I suggest you're quite mistaken about the nature of Australian culture.

Oh yes, let's not forget that it was the Australian culture that gave us the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, arguably one of most memorable games of the modern Olympic movement.

In another sport, on the other side of the planet.. called Australian Rules Football. 3 years ago, radio stations down there (MMM, 3AW, and I believe JJJ) gave us int'l fans who couldn't afford to fly down there every week to watch a game, or turn on the TV, live RealAudio feeds of the game, including Ch. 7 (TV station) giving a live feed of the Grand Final. That was when the AFL found out "wow... there's money to be made in internet broadcasts!" So they started to offer it at a subscription price, and for AFL members only. Members and fans alike complained, and I believe they suffered a drop in membership, and are involved in a battle for Internet and broadcast rights, with the football clubs. clubs claim it's their property, since they're doing the playing, AFL believe it's theirs for it being their league.

This is still going on with the clubs and the AFL, but with MLB, it could get worse. Who will have the rights to the coverage? Remains to be seen.

BL.

Australia's ABC News has a report that the first pieces have started splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Australia's ABC News has a report that the first pieces have started splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

The ABC site says that the minister has dimissed these claims.

Let this discussion on the merits of australian law die.

• New copyright laws which came into effect today extend the same copyright protection to electronic forms of communication that applies to hard copy material.
• it would be difficult for most e-mails to be regarded as original enough to have a copyright placed on them.

• Looks like people have been jumping off the deepend.

  And btw I think Australia is a great place to live.

• New copyright laws which came into effect today extend the same copyright protection to electronic forms of communication that applies to hard copy material.
• it would be difficult for most e-mails to be regarded as original enough to have a copyright placed on them.

• Looks like people have been jumping off the deepend.

  And btw I think Australia is a great place to live.

Australia's ABC is government funded. Its charter, however, includes a provision that the ABC remain independent of the government. It often is quite critical of the current political party in power, and evenhandedly, it often criticises policies which the opposition party advocates (for the next election).
--

Speaking of which: http://www.abc.net.au/specials/shiva/shiva.htm

Yikes, what an extraordinary piece of communist literature that is!

For anyone inclined to believe this statement:

Seems this wonderful technology is causing farmers to go bankrupt, commit suicide, sell off their kidneys to survive

I encourage you to follow the above link and read it. That level of hatred of capitalism and free markets thrives in this world, and it's scary. It's scary because the people with all that hatred exaggerate the extent of the problems and their causes. It's scary because the only solutions that these people offer are the dismantling of capitalism and free markets, and a dramatic shift toward communism.

Communism failed, people. Despite tremendous opportunities around the world, communism totally and utterly failed. Why oh why are people still making excuses for it and trying to sell it to us again in a new shiny box?

Seems this wonderful technology is causing farmers to go bankrupt, commit suicide, sell off their kidneys to survive, not to mention the idea is to make a Wonderful Perfect Monoculture. Can we say 'incredibly, criminally stupid'? I would love to think that people can learn to associate focus-group tested spiffy names like 'golden rice' with the reality that this is a straight-out power grab that will _wreck_ large portions of the world, sabotage their economies and make them slaves to Monsanto, the 'benevolent provider' of the wonderful 'golden rice'. Read the article, "assistance" means video trucks sent into villages to convince farmers to switch over wholesale to the new crop- first one's free kid! and this spells the death of the farmer. Read the article!

I'm sorry, in many ways I think this is more genuinely evil than anything that (for instance) Microsoft has done. MS tries to leech off rich yuppies and control what you think and how you communicate. Monsanto is _killing_ poor farmers by conning and lying to them.

Now moderate me down, because I chose not to 'moderate' my opinion this time and say 'but gee, I'm sure they're all good people'. There's a limit.

Check it out --> TripleJ

This is rather like the robot snake, and indeed similar 'robots' can transform (This one by Xerox). Not exactly orignial, and the miniturisation seems to be little more than hype at the moment.

-----
"Almost isn't good enough - but it's almost good enough."

Note that previous page of that site mentions that weathering of silicate rocks uses carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Also, the geological carbon cycle has 1,800 times more carbon than the atmosphere. Our climate has a lot more variation than our last thousand years. Well, maybe you'd rather just look at the last 300 years, if the Little Ice Age messes up your statistics. Or the last 30 years, as some have used, because the 1960s had an unusually cold winter and so makes "warmer" easier to show. And please do ignore that we've stopped the prairie fires that used to cover the central plains of North America.

Note that the main greenhouse gas is water vapor which is just a wee bit hard to measure and control. And we can only hope that we don't see another Iceball Earth.

To wit, the censorship regime was first introduced when the government was trying to garner the support of a moral conservative in the Senate (Brian Harradine) for a controversial piece of tax legislation. Coincidence? Hardly. (The senator in question just said "Thank you very much" and voted against said tax legislation anyway.)

Similarly, the new digital broadcasting regime is simply an attempt to appease the most powerful television mogul in the country (who also happens to be the richest man in the country), Kerry Packer. (There was an excellent piece on the ABC's Four Corners program about this, but I don't know whether there's a transcript online.)

And the underfunding of universities is simply another facet of the conservative "privatise everything that isn't nailed down" ideology that's rampant in this country right now.

In short, don't blame malice when utter, total stupidity will do.

Here is the link to the sotry for those who could not reach it. The link was bad for me so I searched for it.

Nope,that URL has a space in it. It's actually here.

For those afraid of goats:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/space/2000/12/i tem20001221103834_1.htm

Beer in space, at ABC.


How every version of MICROS~1 Windows(TM) comes to exist.

Also, the story refers to an original article in New Scientist magazine, which can be found here, although for some reason the link is down for me right now.

W
-------------------

Isn't public broadcasting wonderful?

Isn't public broadcasting wonderful?

Well, this is gonna be a pain in the rear end.

This last year at the sydney olympics net radio stations were shut down here in .au, the reason being that they were broadcasting simulcast with AM/FM and the good old USA (MSNBC/AOL/TimeWarner in disguse) didnt want its slaves to be able to listen in on live broadcasts so that it could continue its enslaving consumer propaganda machine. Now where I work is in a basement in a building on the side of a hill, well out of line of sight of the local radio transmission towers, so I regularly listen to the local aunty ABC streaming radio ( http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/ http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/ ) These radios were forced to stop streaming. I had no hope of listening in to see how my friend was doing in the swimming, I never expected him to win, I just wanted to cheer him on and remember that when we were kids I beat him in the swimming pool. The fact that I couldnt leave my mission critical workstation and walk up the hill and sit with an old trannie for an hour pissed me orrrf. The IOC, just like other international .orgs, are influenced way to heavily by the imperialistic views of the USA.

You lost the per/capita medal count anyway, SEPPOS.

Well, this is gonna be a pain in the rear end.

This last year at the sydney olympics net radio stations were shut down here in .au, the reason being that they were broadcasting simulcast with AM/FM and the good old USA (MSNBC/AOL/TimeWarner in disguse) didnt want its slaves to be able to listen in on live broadcasts so that it could continue its enslaving consumer propaganda machine. Now where I work is in a basement in a building on the side of a hill, well out of line of sight of the local radio transmission towers, so I regularly listen to the local aunty ABC streaming radio ( http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/ http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/ ) These radios were forced to stop streaming. I had no hope of listening in to see how my friend was doing in the swimming, I never expected him to win, I just wanted to cheer him on and remember that when we were kids I beat him in the swimming pool. The fact that I couldnt leave my mission critical workstation and walk up the hill and sit with an old trannie for an hour pissed me orrrf. The IOC, just like other international .orgs, are influenced way to heavily by the imperialistic views of the USA.

You lost the per/capita medal count anyway, SEPPOS.

Try this as a little do it at home experiment. Go construct some headware that, using mirrors, inverts your image of the world. Walk around with them on for a couple weeks- eventually you'll wake up one day and the world will be right side up again. Unfortunately there's a similar learning curve for learning to see the world correctly with the glasses off...
Here's a link to an old documentary which contains some more detailed information.

When I went to S11, one of the speakers at the Sunday protest was Dr Vandana Shiva who spoke about this "new" Golden Rice. (She an Indian Eco-Feminist.) The amount of Vitamin A is delivers to the body is much, much smaller then what other forms of food can provide.

In short, it was a con by the company who developed the product to use the WTO and health reasons to take over the market of locally grown rice for a profit.

You can read all about it here.

One interesting point is that the problems caused by the cut cable were nothing compared to the problems Telstra had on the night due to other factors. As this outage notice states, they had routing loops form within their network when the cable went down.

Also, an electricity substation supplying power to the main Telstra internet POP in Sydney exploded around the same time, cutting power to all of their routers. Power wasn't restored until the following morning.

More here, here and here (check the graphs).

For those who don't know (i.e. anyone outside australia), Andrew Olle was a journalist with the abc (the government new agency), who died suddenly from a brain tumor.

The Australian alternative radio station Triple J does a netcast 24/7, but IIRC they killed that for the two weeks the olympics were on, because people in other countries would have heard news on the Sydney Olympics before their local IOC licensee got to it, and that would have raised hell.

I really think they are waiting to see what happens to the RIAA before making noise. Australia seems to follow the US fairly closely when it comes to technology issues (encryption etc). I'm not sure why (probably some treaty), and I can tell you I get *very* frustrated that we aren't more proactive in these things.

Better stop before I start ranting :)

It's because of this, that I'm unable to listen to Triple J in the states, because this Australian station may talk about the olympics during parts of it's broadcast, and also has minor olympic coverage. So therefore, for their safety from the IOC, they stop their broadcasts 24/7 until the Olympics are over. This applies to some other .au stations as well...

It's also kinda pathetic that because of this, no one can broadcast any live video of the olympics... so in the states, you're forced to watch NBC, and you can't watch any other station broadcasting anywhere in the world... assuming you don't have satellite. Kinda has pissed me off, as I stream my video, as I don't have a television. Therefore, I have not seen any Olympics this year.


_________

A science broadcaster on the Australian radio station Triple J is running a study where he asks listeners to donate their belly-button lint.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2

http://www.abc .net.au/news/politics/2000/09/item20000908085054_1 .htm

A National Party senator (Sandy MacDonald) is planning to lobby the Federal Government to legislate for DNA profiles to be taken from all babies at birth for use in a national database.

The NSW senator, Sandy MacDonald, says it should be part of a bill before the Parliament, which would allow samples to be taken from some convicted criminals.

Senator MacDonald says a comprehensive database would save police time, with enormous advantages to the community.

"It's about providing, from day one when we're born, a DNA profile that would be of benefit to the community," she said.

"It would only be used to identify where we were at a certain time if it were necessary.

"It would also provide some assistance if necessary for things like perhaps tracing congenital diseases and things like that."

The guy who introduced these 'highly successful' (hehehe)anti-porn laws, Richard Alston (our esteemed Minister for Communications, information technology and the Arts) showed his true understanding of internet on the ABC's 7:30 report (in response to criticism of the Commonwealth Government's plans to ban internet gambling - which undoubtably will increase internet uptake even more!) by saying that people would not go offshore to gamble on the internet because they would not want to pay international call rates to access offshore sites. Anyone who believes this would probably also believe that internet is porn free thanks to Australia's oh-so-effective anti-porn laws!

I suspect there are several things that would help classify a computer as vintage.

I'm guessing the most importaint factor is that it has been abaondoned by its maker. Things like a Sun 3 are vintage while a sparcstation 1 isn't (yet). A PDP-11 and most vaxen are but the Microvax isn't yet at least till the end of the month.

I also expect that a minium of 5 years (or should it be 10) is needed. My web server is running on a Sparcstation 1 that is now over 11 years old and its not vintage yet so maybe 10 years should be the cut-off.

I do know the the first computer to do music that they are installing accross the street from my house counts as vintage since its now 50 years old.

Did anyone see the ABC's[1] satire The Games tonight, where Games Management Head of Administration, John Clarke, had to re-launch the Games website! These guys are right on the money when it comes to their material. Indeed, about a month ago, the satire made a point of possible delays at Sydney Airport, and within 24 hours there was a power blackout at the airport, with huge delays!

Where do their writers come from, and what do they think this week's lottery numbers are?

If you get a chance and you like satire, don't miss it, ABC[1], Monday 8pm, with repeats on now at 6pm M-F until the real Games start. But please, remember that it is a comedy, not a documentary!

[1] Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Did anyone see the ABC's[1] satire The Games tonight, where Games Management Head of Administration, John Clarke, had to re-launch the Games website! These guys are right on the money when it comes to their material. Indeed, about a month ago, the satire made a point of possible delays at Sydney Airport, and within 24 hours there was a power blackout at the airport, with huge delays!

Where do their writers come from, and what do they think this week's lottery numbers are?

If you get a chance and you like satire, don't miss it, ABC[1], Monday 8pm, with repeats on now at 6pm M-F until the real Games start. But please, remember that it is a comedy, not a documentary!

[1] Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The MPAA/RIAA look like they are playing a silly game. They look like they don't know what they are doing and have little hope of actually succeeding at defeating "online piracy". Take a look at the participant's list of the SDMI. Included in there is everyone needed to control digital music. You have number 60, the Fraunhofer Institute. They own the patents on the mpeg format. As early as tommorrow they could have every mp3 player declared illegal and pulled off the net, just look at the DeCSS if you have any doubts. Speaking of DeCSS, it doesn't really matter if the encryption Microsoft (number 106) puts on their latest streaming media format is easily crackable, it's illegal to do so. But who says Fraunhofer will be able to track down the owners of every mp3 player out there? After all, the most popular mp3 player (Winamp) is written by a bunch of "nihilistic media terrorists" at Nullsoft who we are told we should ph34r. I have to agree, especially seeing they are owned by AOL (number 10). Can the SDMI put the genie back in the bottle? If you asked me that last year I would have said (and did say) no way. My argument was the same as Martin Eberhard, the CEO of Nuvomedia: "It doesn't matter how good the cryptography is," Eberhard says. "Once [the music] is decrypted, you just bypass the cryptography and re-rip the music into an MP3." Which is all well and good, but what if you can't play said mp3's? What if owning an mp3 player (or the encoder) is a violation of patent law.

So what's my predictions for the future? Your favourite artists will start releasing music in the new SDMI format that you need Windows Media Player to play and you will pay per song. You will probably even have to be online to play the songs. Fraunhofer will reign in their patents and Winamp will silently disappear. That's when the story will break. Everyone will snap to attention around that point because cease and decist letters will be sent out to every web site that hosts an mp3 player. Go ahead and rip into mp3, there will be no players. Microsoft will break the sound playing dll's on Windows (probably to give some new feature to digital playback) and only the underground will still have players. The mainstream will buy their SDMI music and players and that whole nasty incident around the turn of the century where copyright was doubted by the few and ignored by the many will be stamped out of history.