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Rupert Murdoch doesn't own ALL Newspapers. There's also Fairfax Media. For a list of some of there Newspapers check this site out: http://www.fairfax.com.au/index.ac This involves a lot of issues with the most important one being, government regulation over the internet. The internet is a wierd thing. You start visiting websites and almost expect to get everything for free. If you dont like something, you can complain that the author sucks and then move on to the next free thing so your still happy. Business has been trying to profit on the Internet but failing for two reasons: Online Ads (Google?) have virtually made the maximum price of any website as little as the cost to what advertisers will pay for it; Secondly, current web navigation tends not to promote user-distribution but rather heavy globalisation / monopolies where 80% of 'normal' people still use only around 10% of the entire internet. Effectively, this makes tonnes of websites ineffective and forces the value of content down considerably to where its virtually worthless. Subscription based websites are harder and nearly impossible to run unless your a really huge monopoly, and information isnt really worth your time to research and develop. Not only does this hurt the Technology Industry by reducing effective income/value/growth but it will probably hurt anybody who relies upon 'information' as income to exist. This becomes more than just an Information Technology problem but spills into other industries as well, hurting Journalists, Scientists, Universities and Programmers etc. Someone will say, 'Oh but... good programmers still get paid!'. There's no doubt that this can be true but in general, someone gets filthy rich short-term while everyone world-wide gets devalued in the long term. I think its inevidable that the Internet is going to come under pressure at some point in the future as Government questions these concerns and discusses whether it needs to protect information or regulate it. Even IF, a single Country only regulated their own information and communications, the motivation to do so would come in the form of protected information, growing industry and more jobs. So I'd imagine the motivation would exist (if they could enforce it?). Im not saying Im for/against this, rather Im more the observer on the sidelines. Technology changes and if this was a prediction, it would seem kind of logical. In the end, I think this is going to come down to whether the Internet should be Regulated/Censored/Copyrighted or Not-Regulated/Un-censored/No property rights. I think Rupert Murdoch is hoping he can speed up the persuasion process. If he changes peoples point of view, maybe others will start take notice? Perhaps other Business and maybe even Government might discuss the problem? Regardless, Government cant ignore that No Intellectual Property Rights has great consequences (as does anarchy) that go beyond Newspapers, Pirate Bay and Google Books etc. Governments at some point will be forced to face this problem and all it will take is for a single Company to go that little bit too far. While Google holding almost a pure monopoloy on the Internet may seem harmless, tracking all of a countries websites, recording a countries search queries, tracking surfing habits through adsense, storing peoples records etc. There are some Countries which would not only consider this downright dangerous, but a National Security Risk. Its a good thing we have trust in our beloved Google. Technically, Copyright and Computer Laws partially do exist but have never really been worth the paper they're written on. They simply haven't been enforced so people couldnt care less about them. The odd person is unlucky to get caught but majority do whatever they want. It'll be very interesting to see what happens with this... I suspect some of these issues will be causing a few people a great deal of headaches in a not too distant future. Decisions might have to be made.

I totally agree. The Great Mosque of Djenné, uses thick mud walls as a heat sink. They also open vents in the roof to let the hot air out at night and let the cool air in. Other traditional buildings in tropical or hot desert areas typically have large overhangs/balconies to keep the sun off windows, high ceilings, etc, to minimise passive solar heating.

Also, ground-source heat pumps would enable the heat in the building to be distributed into the ground surrounding it. For example, about 80% of the residents of Coober Pedy, SA, Australia live underground, a rather extreme variation.

There's unquestionably room in the market, especially in highly urbanised countries where fuel is expensive, for tiny funky city cars like these. I'd buy one. But the Smarts, despite being a Mercedes co-production (which would lead you to think it'd be nice but have lousy quality control...), are just lousy to drive and too expensive, according to all reports. The reviews (Review 1, Review 2) have been so lousy that I ruled out even ever test driving one; if the things cost $AU5000 then that'd be another matter, but they're really quite expensive here, and the US pricing would seem to be similarly inflated, compared with the lower pricing of regular cars in the States.

Here in Sydney, Australia, I see a Smart tooling around every now and then, but every single one I've seen has been a corporate promotional vehicle, not a private car. There's no reason at all for a private citizen to buy one of these expensive, annoying little things, when perfectly good four-seat Japanese subcompacts are available for the same money. Korean ones cost rather less.

There's unquestionably room in the market, especially in highly urbanised countries where fuel is expensive, for tiny funky city cars like these. I'd buy one. But the Smarts, despite being a Mercedes co-production (which would lead you to think it'd be nice but have lousy quality control...), are just lousy to drive and too expensive, according to all reports. The reviews (Review 1, Review 2) have been so lousy that I ruled out even ever test driving one; if the things cost $AU5000 then that'd be another matter, but they're really quite expensive here, and the US pricing would seem to be similarly inflated, compared with the lower pricing of regular cars in the States.

Here in Sydney, Australia, I see a Smart tooling around every now and then, but every single one I've seen has been a corporate promotional vehicle, not a private car. There's no reason at all for a private citizen to buy one of these expensive, annoying little things, when perfectly good four-seat Japanese subcompacts are available for the same money. Korean ones cost rather less.

Here.

OK, after looking at the interview again, the picture seems to show the gate length as 30nm, not the gate dielectric thickness as mentioned in the original article. Still, it doesn't seem as small as the Berkeley transistor.

-Jason

Oops.. Wrong Link.. This is the correct link..

Meanwhile, a Monash University study says a $25 million injection is needed for IT subjects.

bread and circuses..... So if you want a good job, lazy lifestyle, come on down.... There's not much competition !!!


"The reason I was speeding is.....

Instead of worrying about who we're going to endorse and vote on, shouldn't we be making sure that ICANN's at-large membership is truly representative of the Internet community? According to the e-mail I recieved from ICANN, only some 158,000 Internet users signed up to be members

However, according to this article, the total number of Internet users will reach 375 MILLION (!) sometime during this year. The last time I checked, 158,000 out of 378 million is only 0.000421 % representation of the entire community. Obviously, this is a case of a minority making decisions for the entire community, something which history has almost always proved a Very Bad Idea(TM).

The only reason American democracy can (used to) work is because a majority of the voters choose to make their opinions count. Unfortunately, in the last national election in America, only 45% of voters voted, so we're approaching the same fate here in the USA. In the Constitution it is called a quorum, by which more than half the members of either house of Congress must be present for any action to be taken at all.

Of course, getting half of all the Internet users to sign up for ICANN's at-large membership is, in my opinion, a pipe-dream of the most grandoise sort, but there should be at least 1% representation before any action is taken. 3.75 million members wouldn't be that hard to find, would they?

Therefore, I would like to propose a massive e-mail campaign to urge ICANN to not take any action on this election until a much larger percentage of Internet users will be represented in the final results.

Please e-mail ICANN and tell them that you demand the membership drive be re-opened! The future of the free Internet depends on it!

David Boyes, a consultant who works with the S/390, managed to boot 41,500 Linux servers on one mainframe. Although he notes that you may not be able to run that many in real life. ;) (if someone can find an actual link for this, please post it)

The story on NetworkWorldFusion News

The story on Fairfax IT

A reprint of the story from LinuxPlanet

I used to live in Wellington, New Zealand. And that's a nice city - but small, only 400K.

At the start of last year, I moved across the Tasman, to Melbourne. Melbourne is just a really nice place to live - great culture, night life, and the job scene seems to be going strongly.

I've found it pretty easy to settle in here, and meet people. There is always something to do. As for jobs.. try these sites:

IT Jobs site by Fairfax
Seek
Monster


As for other sites of interest, check out:
Immigration site
Autralian Taxation Office
Domain a great place to search for share accomodation
The Age newspaper

Umm.. I don't have links for what's on around the city, but some great stuff happens, apart from the good club scene - there's the formula 1 grand prix, if you like noisy loud things that go fast, moonlight cinema is a good thing in summer - outdoor movies. It's just really kind of relaxing and nice.

Melbourne is just really livable and has a good public transport system Victrip

Hope this helps.. and don't forget, I'm a kiwi saying this about Melbourne :)

From the article: Other scientists also came to the same conclusion at about the same time.

There have been so many instances of a scientist not receiving due credit for his developments. I'm glad to see this isn't the case with Mr. Davies. (However, it would be neat to see who else worked on the same concept at the time.)

--
"Give him head?" ... "Be a beacon?"

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft Ad

Background info is available from this Salon article (the second of two parts; the first part gives an overview of Hotline). For the latest news in the case, try here or here.

Hotline is what got me much of my MP3 collection, but the company's actions caused me to think twice. Napster doesn't present such a moral quandry.

Background info is available from this Salon article (the second of two parts; the first part gives an overview of Hotline). For the latest news in the case, try here or here.

Hotline is what got me much of my MP3 collection, but the company's actions caused me to think twice. Napster doesn't present such a moral quandry.

Is that a real picture?
If so is there a good story behind it?

Linux Today pointed to Fairfax IT's brief mention and link to the photo.

I was literally ROTFLMAO. &nbsp Need to make it my .sig!

A high-profile BSOD

Regarding "brain drain" I was looking for an article about the sledging Bryan Gaensler, the Young Australian of the Year, gave the govt on Science and education policy before thumbing his nose and heading for a postdoc in .edu.us. The closest I can get is this which gives this extract:

Government 'has driven science to crisis'
The Young Australian of the Year, Dr Bryan Gaensler, said yesterday he would be ``absolutely insane to come back to Australia" and work. Dr Gaensler, 25, an astronomer who is now on a scholarship in the United States, launched a scathing attack on t ...
Sydney Morning Herald, Nov 1999 (358 words)

So to any expat aussies thinking about return (as I did) the lifestyle issues would have to be overwhelming.

More information available from ;

http://wp.bpc-users.org
http://24.192.20.40/survey.htm
http://bpa.boxen.dhs.org/
http://www.itnews.com.au/story.cfm?id=632
http://www.it.fai rfax.com.au/breaking/19991201/A10364-1999Dec1.html
http://www.newswire.com.au/9912/bighike.h tm
http://www.smh.com.au/news/991 2/02/bizcom/bizcom2.html

It only takes a moment to email your disgust at these laws to the papers. These are a couple of addresses for the guys in Melbourne...

The Age

The Australian

• a Sunday Age (Melborne) article which describes the discovery of a 52 year old computer found in a dusty warehouse weighing in at 2,000 kilograms.

• Because the tunes were first played between 1951 and 1953, Doornbusch is confident it was probably the first computer music anywhere.

• In 1948 he, with Maston Beard, commenced the design of a stored program electronic computer. This machine, the CSIR Mark I, was developed largely independently of work then underway in Britain and the US.

• http://www.pearcey.org.au/
• 
  http://www.pearcey.org.au/obituary.html

Not only was CSIRAC the 4th stored program computer in the world, and oldest surviving, it was also probably the first computer to generate music

While the article extols the financial advantages of using OpenSource/GNU software for cash-strapped startups without a VC fund and tons of hype behind them, there's also other advantages. A recent article pointed out that ... copyright was less of an issue as many programmers wrote for Microsoft platforms which had their own Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In effect, much of the intellectual property was de facto handed over to Microsoft in these instances and it was only the integration of business objects - ready-made slabs of programming code ready-to-run - that mattered. So it comes down to how you see your role, as a architect creating new forms or as a building constructor knocking prefabs into shape. The rather interesting factor is that like all professionals and artists, there is that inner urge to "show off" to peers which means ideas are circulated. Much like a Jazz band, structures and improvised, creating unique on-the-spot music rather than repetitive pop tunes.

The other constraint is the choice of language/tools automatically limits your designs. While big companies can only tackle the average needs of their customers, OpenSource has the flexibility to satisfy the specialised demands of niches. This is particularly the case with scientific applications which though it likes big and cheap computing power, would be less than 1% of the total computing market. The shift away from tools to services (e.g. Zope) will add a further dynamic to the equation as the limitation then becomes skilled people capable of using the tools. The key to long-term success here is winning the fickle attention of the development crowd.

Oh well, if all you have is a penguin, then everything looks like a fish.

LL

Every few weeks an article or comment is posted to slashdot lamenting the "controversial" Australian internet censorship laws, and every time hundreds of slashdot readers post comments to slashdot explaining (to the altar boy) exactly why this is such a bad idea.

Why post to slashdot only? Almost everyone here agrees with you.

If you think that the internet censorship is bad and can say so with reasonable intelligence - then please copy your comments to:

The Age - Letters to the Editor (print) and
The Age - Internet Censorship Feedback (online)

and check out The Age's Censorship Online section.

The Age is a leading national newspaper in Australia and if they think there is enough public outrage, both in Aus. and overseas, then they will make it a dominant issue. Other news organisations are then guaranteed to follow suit.

If you're going to preach about internet censorship, then you may as well be preaching in a forum that educates those with a limitted understanding of the issues.

M@T.

Every few weeks an article or comment is posted to slashdot lamenting the "controversial" Australian internet censorship laws, and every time hundreds of slashdot readers post comments to slashdot explaining (to the altar boy) exactly why this is such a bad idea.

Why post to slashdot only? Almost everyone here agrees with you.

If you think that the internet censorship is bad and can say so with reasonable intelligence - then please copy your comments to:

The Age - Letters to the Editor (print) and
The Age - Internet Censorship Feedback (online)

and check out The Age's Censorship Online section.

The Age is a leading national newspaper in Australia and if they think there is enough public outrage, both in Aus. and overseas, then they will make it a dominant issue. Other news organisations are then guaranteed to follow suit.

If you're going to preach about internet censorship, then you may as well be preaching in a forum that educates those with a limitted understanding of the issues.

M@T.

Oh, yeah, check this out. Shamir is breaking 512-bit keys in days.

Breaking news....

"MICROSOFT co-founder Bill Gates has denied media reports that he is close to giving away his estimated $US90 billion fortune, Bloomberg reported today"

http://it.fairfax.com.au/breaking/19990803/A1664-1 999Aug2.html

Sorry.

Australia's biggest IT news website, FairfaxIT, has more info, here:

Australia's biggest IT news website, FairfaxIT, has more info, here:

According to this article in Fairfax IT , the main problem for windoze users will be that they can't use their current browsers. It is also a bit of a plug for Trumpet software, the company that first introduced the tcpip stack for windoze under ipv4, and has now introduced new stack for ipv6 for windoze. This is interesting as they have also have introduced a new OS called petrOS, which is meant to run windoze programs, but will run on a 486 with 2 Mb of ram.....

ahh i see we have an upper class twit. Here's a bit of tongue in cheek, the brit's have the worlds best cricket team.....

John Mashey (SGI, was MIPS, Bell Labs) has been lecturing recently on "Infrastress" which discusses the problem of computer architecture not keeping up with CPU speed. Not just a problem of slow disks, which can be raided to get parallel speed increases, but bus and net bandwidths, etc. He says: "It's as if cars suddenly became 10 times cheaper, but the roads didn't change." See articles: here and here.

Well, that was about right for Linux in the server market of '98. Linux in the desktop is at about 2.5%.

As for peoples' reluctence to change, consider the Giga survey last December and this FairFax poll. There are a lot of people out there sick and tired of using Microsoft, looking for a change.

Hey, come on and /. this one:

"Are you planning to replace Windows with Linux on the desktop?"
http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/

;-)

Hey, come on and /. this one:

"Are you planning to replace Windows with Linux on the desktop?"
http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/