Slashdot Mirror

MOD *INTERESTING*!! Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

Russian scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion near Tugunska river, Siberia. On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

I posted this information in the earlier (less specific) story about the FTA's impact on Australian software development, but we really need to take action to let the media and politicians know that this is a big issue.

One of the best tactics is to send letters to newspapers. The FTA is a hot topic in the news right now, so there's a good chance that letters relating to it will be accepted. You can send letters to the editor at the following addresses:
The Australian
Sydney Morning Herald
The Age

You can also let your feeling be known to the shadow minister for the Arts, Sport and Information Technology (Senator Kate Lundy). Her contact details are here. Be sure to mention that this issue will affect your vote.

The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts have so far brushed off any suggestion that Australia's software industry will be harmed by the FTA, and really do not seem to understand the issues. However, you can contact them here, and the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts here. Once again, be sure to mention that this will affect your vote.

You can also find out which electorate you are in, if you don't already know, and send your local federal MP a message about how disappointed you are over the FTA's impact on the IT industry.

...this event has graved itself into the national psyche...

It's been in the news a lot over the last month. Here I thought everyone was using the "Dingo's got my baby" quote because they were keeping up with the news, but instead they were just refering to some old movie. That's Slashdot for you. :)

Read about it at:
The Australian
ABC

According to our (Oz's) glorious leader (Howard)the proposed Labour ammendment "would discourage innovation and the creation of new ideas, which are precisely the things that this country ought to be encouraging rather than discouraging".

Maybe someone should send him this article.

The ammendment is likely to be passed though, so it seems that the only reason goverment had this debate was to see who could speak more like an Aussie for the US Press (I think Latham won).

Interesting article from Crikey gets a bit more down and dirty with the issue.

I think that all Aussies with an interest in being able to use their computers unencumbered should really make their frustration over this deal known now. While it may be too late to stop the FTA, we still might be able to make a difference. Hopefully if we make enough noise the media and politicians will stop ignoring the IP aspects of the FTA.

So, start sending letters to newspapers. The FTA is a hot topic in the news right now, so there's a good chance it will be accepted (see letter second from the bottom).

You can send letters to the editor at the following addresses:
The Australian
Sydney Morning Herald
The Age

If US Slashdotters are keen, they could even send a "letter to the editor" detailing the problems with the DMCA and software patents that Australia will now face.

You can also let your feeling be known to the shadow minister for the Arts, Sport and Information Technology (Senator Kate Lundy). Her contact details are here. Be sure to mention that this issue will affect your vote.

You can also find out what electorate you are in, if you don't already know, and send your local federal MP a message about how disappointed you are over the FTA's impact on the IT industry.

While the timing of the posting of this story on Slashdot wasn't ideal (most Aussie Slashdotters won't be awake for another 5 or 6 hours), hopefully a reasonable number will read this in the morning and take action.

I think that all Aussies with an interest in being able to use their computers unencumbered should really make their frustration over this deal known now. While it may be too late to stop the FTA, we still might be able to make a difference. Hopefully if we make enough noise the media and politicians will stop ignoring the IP aspects of the FTA.

So, start sending letters to newspapers. The FTA is a hot topic in the news right now, so there's a good chance it will be accepted (see letter second from the bottom).

You can send letters to the editor at the following addresses:
The Australian
Sydney Morning Herald
The Age

If US Slashdotters are keen, they could even send a "letter to the editor" detailing the problems with the DMCA and software patents that Australia will now face.

You can also let your feeling be known to the shadow minister for the Arts, Sport and Information Technology (Senator Kate Lundy). Her contact details are here. Be sure to mention that this issue will affect your vote.

You can also find out what electorate you are in, if you don't already know, and send your local federal MP a message about how disappointed you are over the FTA's impact on the IT industry.

While the timing of the posting of this story on Slashdot wasn't ideal (most Aussie Slashdotters won't be awake for another 5 or 6 hours), hopefully a reasonable number will read this in the morning and take action.

no way, tel$tra has a long way to rise to get to the level of scum .....

to see just how totally fscked internet access is here just look at this

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10 273820%5E15318%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html

sure prices have finally started to drop but, as they drop so does the quality, and yes while it may be hard to believe, the "service" can get worse, although not sure how far it can fall

from personal pain, the tel$tra cable service is third rate, and thats on one of the rare good days

so far today its dropped out 14 times, then comes the mail server which I have been unable to talk to for over 2 years

not forgeting the news server which all of a sudden will not even resolve

call the helldesk, to be told "you need to use a supported OS, before we can sort your problem", er hello, I am using a Mac, but no thats not enough seems I have to downgrade OSX to 10.2 before they will talk to me

After 18 years in the IT business (data comms, infrastructure design etc), I should know whats happening, but no, some trained monkey with zero experience and a single digit IQ, tells me they he knows its my problem, even after I proved them wrong every time I have had a problem in the past.

these are the same idiots who told me "I would be able to ping the mail server if I ran outlook", yes really!

and no, I cannot change ISP, all down to my only voice line being pair gained, which rules out ADSL and even a dialup if speeds >28K are wanted. And just guess who owns the local loop, yes tel$tra.

While it would be nice to think that a similar service might be implemented here in New Zealand, the chances are virtually zero for one reason:

Copyright.

The TV broadcasters consider their program listings to be their intellectual property and that they're protected by copyright.

Similar copyright cases (both here and in Australia) have been won by the companies which publish other collections of data such as telephone directories (example)

Anyone who attempts to publish TV program schedules without the permission of the broadcaster (and they charge like wounded bulls for giving such permission) will be set upon by multiple teams of corporate lawyers.

Of course someone intent on providing a scheduling service for a Tivo-like system could always try and buy the rights to publish those listings but I bet you any money you like that those rights would come with the caveat that ad-blocking was forbidden. After all, advertising revenues are the lifeblood of a free-to-air broadcaster so they're not about to allow someone to provide a service that cuts ads are they?

Personally I think someone should fight the broadcasters over their copyright claims -- after all, copyright is supposed to protect the presentation, wording and format of data, not the facts on which that data is based.

If I create listings from scratch and simply include the program title, genre, start and finish times then that information should not be covered by any form of copyright.

But, fighting the corporate sharks costs lots of money so I doubt we'll see a test-case here in NZ anytime soon.

Wouldn't do much good no matter how much of the available stock they bought -- Google is only offering a 9% stake in the company.

No no no.. now its:

In Soviet Russia flight attendants beat up you!

...as Communications Minister in the Australian government any day now

at least you aren't this guy

at least you aren't this guy

Didn't they arrest 500 people last month for running these scams? Ah, yes, here's the link:

Scammers arrested.

Basically he was told to point the camera at the test site and close his eyes for the flash.

What was done at these testings we now know to be attrocious. Planes were flying through nuclear clouds and after landing were scrubbed clean by soldiers wearing shorts and boots only. (The test were performed in desert like areas.) Hundreds of officers were ordered to stand there and watch the nuclear blasts. Nuclear clouds floated over and settled on the nearby major city (Adelaide pop of 800,000 or so at the time.).

Civilians were held on an oval 40 kilometers from the test site.

"When they went off there would be this almighty flash which could blind you and it was like a hot towel was being put on the back of your neck.

"After that we were actually told it was all right to turn around to look at them. The last one was hotter than the other two, that's how close we were."

Soon after the explosions, the Maralinga Village was hit by strong wind gusts which coated buildings and equipment with contaminated radioactive dust.

Soldiers toured the local test sites within hours of testing.

Unfortunately at the time very little was known about the dangers. Hence why they were testing. even after almost 50 years the sites have been through a complete cleanup (in the last 10 years) but are still radioactive.

Residents would picnic and visit the areas to watch the nuclear testing.

My friend's grandfather died of cancer. So did many who were at the testing with him. They were exposed to nuclear blasts with out any protections. The worst part is that both the British and Austrlian Governments refuse to have any inquiries into what our Nuclear Veterans suffered, nor will they offer any compensation those those or their families who suffered directly from Nuclear Testing.

Basically he was told to point the camera at the test site and close his eyes for the flash.

What was done at these testings we now know to be attrocious. Planes were flying through nuclear clouds and after landing were scrubbed clean by soldiers wearing shorts and boots only. (The test were performed in desert like areas.) Hundreds of officers were ordered to stand there and watch the nuclear blasts. Nuclear clouds floated over and settled on the nearby major city (Adelaide pop of 800,000 or so at the time.).

Civilians were held on an oval 40 kilometers from the test site.

"When they went off there would be this almighty flash which could blind you and it was like a hot towel was being put on the back of your neck.

"After that we were actually told it was all right to turn around to look at them. The last one was hotter than the other two, that's how close we were."

Soon after the explosions, the Maralinga Village was hit by strong wind gusts which coated buildings and equipment with contaminated radioactive dust.

Soldiers toured the local test sites within hours of testing.

Unfortunately at the time very little was known about the dangers. Hence why they were testing. even after almost 50 years the sites have been through a complete cleanup (in the last 10 years) but are still radioactive.

Residents would picnic and visit the areas to watch the nuclear testing.

My friend's grandfather died of cancer. So did many who were at the testing with him. They were exposed to nuclear blasts with out any protections. The worst part is that both the British and Austrlian Governments refuse to have any inquiries into what our Nuclear Veterans suffered, nor will they offer any compensation those those or their families who suffered directly from Nuclear Testing.

Basically he was told to point the camera at the test site and close his eyes for the flash.

What was done at these testings we now know to be attrocious. Planes were flying through nuclear clouds and after landing were scrubbed clean by soldiers wearing shorts and boots only. (The test were performed in desert like areas.) Hundreds of officers were ordered to stand there and watch the nuclear blasts. Nuclear clouds floated over and settled on the nearby major city (Adelaide pop of 800,000 or so at the time.).

Civilians were held on an oval 40 kilometers from the test site.

"When they went off there would be this almighty flash which could blind you and it was like a hot towel was being put on the back of your neck.

"After that we were actually told it was all right to turn around to look at them. The last one was hotter than the other two, that's how close we were."

Soon after the explosions, the Maralinga Village was hit by strong wind gusts which coated buildings and equipment with contaminated radioactive dust.

Soldiers toured the local test sites within hours of testing.

Unfortunately at the time very little was known about the dangers. Hence why they were testing. even after almost 50 years the sites have been through a complete cleanup (in the last 10 years) but are still radioactive.

Residents would picnic and visit the areas to watch the nuclear testing.

My friend's grandfather died of cancer. So did many who were at the testing with him. They were exposed to nuclear blasts with out any protections. The worst part is that both the British and Austrlian Governments refuse to have any inquiries into what our Nuclear Veterans suffered, nor will they offer any compensation those those or their families who suffered directly from Nuclear Testing.

Basically he was told to point the camera at the test site and close his eyes for the flash.

What was done at these testings we now know to be attrocious. Planes were flying through nuclear clouds and after landing were scrubbed clean by soldiers wearing shorts and boots only. (The test were performed in desert like areas.) Hundreds of officers were ordered to stand there and watch the nuclear blasts. Nuclear clouds floated over and settled on the nearby major city (Adelaide pop of 800,000 or so at the time.).

Civilians were held on an oval 40 kilometers from the test site.

"When they went off there would be this almighty flash which could blind you and it was like a hot towel was being put on the back of your neck.

"After that we were actually told it was all right to turn around to look at them. The last one was hotter than the other two, that's how close we were."

Soon after the explosions, the Maralinga Village was hit by strong wind gusts which coated buildings and equipment with contaminated radioactive dust.

Soldiers toured the local test sites within hours of testing.

Unfortunately at the time very little was known about the dangers. Hence why they were testing. even after almost 50 years the sites have been through a complete cleanup (in the last 10 years) but are still radioactive.

Residents would picnic and visit the areas to watch the nuclear testing.

My friend's grandfather died of cancer. So did many who were at the testing with him. They were exposed to nuclear blasts with out any protections. The worst part is that both the British and Austrlian Governments refuse to have any inquiries into what our Nuclear Veterans suffered, nor will they offer any compensation those those or their families who suffered directly from Nuclear Testing.

Could this be the reason?

The GNAA is dealt a severe blow in Nigeria as five hundred 419 scammers are arrested.

A train wreck you say? Well, maybe our hindu friends would solve that with some prayer?
Surely Vishwakarma (the Hindu god of machines) will help prevent this train wreck...

If you want the Symantec release re-written by someone who knows what they're talking about, look here.

"Evaman occupies a false email address" doesn't fill me with respect for CoolTechZone's credentials.

Okay, fine, users are dumb. How how about we give them a slight break in this case? Failed deliveries are far enough out of most people's 'normal' e-mail experience that i can understand why they'd read the message. No it doesn't excuse opening anything with .scr, but txt.scr, html.scr, outlook.scrtxt.exe might dupe your avg users.

Anyways, here's a better article linked by McAfee and The Article That Started It All from the Sydney Morning Herald. Perusing the summaries off of Google News makes it seem like this will either be "unlikely to have a major impact on Australian businesses." or (now this is really crazy because it's from the same website, but a different article) "clog mail servers, cause severe slowdown and wreak financial damage as it spreads rapidly around the world when businesses return to work today"

I love that everyone can quote the Sydney Morning Herald to report that the sky is falling, or that things will mostly be okay. how do two journalists end up with such completely different viewpoints? They both quote Tim Hartman

"Tim Hartman, senior technical director at the security firm Symantec, said Evaman had the potential to be "every bit as bad as MyDoom. It's really shaping up like that. Mr Hartman estimated the virus would spread at an uncontrollable rate as people returned to work"

"We don't think it's going to be a major outbreak... most businesses had been able to filter out the affected emails" Mr Hartman said.

So if you still happen to have an elderly relative around, make sure they are watered properly and/or are properly kept away in cool storage for the summer.

If something is counter-intuitive, i.e. countrary to the gut feelings of someone with reasonably good general knowledge in the relevant fields of science, it is important to question such numbers.

In this case, while the linked-to slashdot text claims (as you quote) "amazing 10 megabits per second", the statement in the actual article is significantly weaker: "The companies have confirmed in an experiment that data can be transmitted at 10 megabits per second".

Hence this "10 megabits per second" is under laboratory conditions (without the kind of electromagnetic noise that will necessarily be there if you're close to other people using a "body bus").

Also, that article talks about a single, unidirectional data transmission, not about a bus. I suspect the experiment may have been about the case of the sender and receiver being in shoes. That case is much easier to get to work with good bandwidth, because you'll actually have a closed electric circuit, with the floor functioning as an additional conductor.

If your gut feelings are different from mine, fine. That'd be a reason to dig up actual research data. But I'm going to disregard your request to keep my gut feelings to myself :-)

My gut feeling is:

• Data transmission: maybe, but bandwidth will be low.
• Power supply: won't work

Eye of the Frog writes "Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. and its subsidiary NTT DoCoMo Inc. have developed a device that attaches to your PDA which uses the body's conductivity to transmit data at an amazing 10 megabits per second.

Please consider the moral issues that derive from making money off a war and its reconstruction. Do you want to be part of the military-industrial complex, to join the likes of Haliburton or Kellog, Brown & Root? Do you want to be a war profiteer?

FUCK YOU NIGGER!

You're a stupid yank, Stay out of Australian Politics

Australia, the Broadband backwater

That happened to hit the news just yesterday. Bioaccumulative poisons are released from many computers. Dell and Apple no longer use these flame retardants. Google

Oh, yes it is. (well, at least one).

Interestingly, the "obvious reasons" didn't occur to anybody in the U.S. (or anywhere else) until the mid 19th century, when the so-called Australian (i.e., secret) ballot was introduced. Not that secret balloting had never been done anywhere ever, but it apparently had not been used before on a large scale in representative democratic government.

That's a lot of work for something that really doesn't matter that much.

You are either trolling, or are just unaware of how important final-year school exams can be, and how seriously they are taken. This is the case in many countries throughout the world; it's in no way specific to India or to developing nations.

Here in Ireland these exams are the most important you will ever do and count as a fairly pivotal point in your life. How many points you get in your final school exams determine what course you do and in what university, and from that what you do for your career. (There is a fixed number of places on each course, and students compete for entry on the basis of highest exam points.)

People get enormously concerned about the results; other posters have already pointed out the suicide of a girl who erroneously thought she had failed, and this is only one of thousands of exam-related suicides in India around this time of year.

So yes, I think students would like to know the results as soon as possible.

According to the Herald Sun, one 17 year old student killed herself after the computers sent her the wrong sms telling her that'd she'd failed while she'd in fact past. (sorry a repost because my a href didnt work properly)

Suicide

Just so that we don't get all gung ho over the news, here's a very sad story.. A girl committed suicide when she got a result over SMS that she had failed. She had in fact passed the exams.

Below is a link to a story of teenager who commited suicide after receiving an sms telling her she had failed, when in reality she had passed. It just goes to show the pressures some of these teenagers face in India today.

news.com.au

But even more than Moore's documentary, I hope more and more images and video keeps coming out of Iraq in regards to the abuse, torture, rape and slaughter of Iraqi citizens, most of whom are guilty of no crime. That more than anything is Bush's legacy, his mark upon the world and truly the images that best define our Fascist Leader and his doctrines.

InstaPundit.com has been posting links to other prison abuse stories. For some reason, these aren't getting as much attention in the mainstream media ("all Abu Ghraib, all the time").

Maybe the French, Germans, Arabs, public employees unions, California Attorney General, and their apologists should take note.

May 22, 2004

PRISON MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS AND A DYSFUNCTIONAL CULTURE OF ABUSE in the California prison guards' union.

posted at 03:53 PM by Glenn Reynolds

May 21, 2004

SOMEONE TELL 60 MINUTES about this secret underground prison:

'It starts off by being stripped naked in front of 10 police officers including two women, gratutious humiliation is used to break you down.' '... worst jail that you can possibly imagine.' 'Not even a hole to go to the bathroom. You have to piss against a wall and you sleep in piss on the concrete floor.' The torture victim demands 'the immediate shutdown of this secret underground prison'. It's not at Abu Ghraib, it's in Marseille, France.

No doubt Ted Kennedy will be condemning it soon.

posted at 07:41 PM by Glenn Reynolds

May 21, 2004

MORE STORIES OF ARAB PRISONERS BEING ABUSED:

ARAB prisoners beaten and tortured, innocent bystanders killed by gunfire - another damning human rights report.

But the difference this time is that the violence is being perpetrated not by coalition forces in Iraq, but by the Palestinian Authority, and the victims are its own people.

The report, partly funded by the Finnish government, claims Palestinian cities are in a state of near anarchy, with people on the payroll of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) blamed for 90 per cent of gangland violence.

It highlights numerous incidents of torture of prisoners and refers to the killing of civilians in gunbattles between Palestinian factions.

It is another blow for Mr Arafat's organisation, which was recently accused of misusing 134 million of European Union funds. Mr Arafat was accused of signing cheques to people linked with terrorist activity.

I'm sure Ted Kennedy will have comments.

posted at 09:55 AM by Glenn Reynolds

May 18, 2004

IRAQI EMIGRES ON ABU GHRAIB: This is interesting:

Hadi Kazwini is an Iraqi engineer who moved to Australia in 1997 and lives in Sydney with his wife and three children. He is amazed at the gullibility of those Australians who have taken the Arab response to the photos at face value.

This sort of brutality goes on all the time, it is happening now in jails right through the Middle East, he says. But of course there are no photos. This is selective outrage.

Kazwini believes that the behaviour revealed by the photos is awful and the US soldiers involved should be punished. But he says some of the Iraqi prisoners shown were Saddam's killers and torturers. They have been responsible for far worse violations of human rights than the Americans.

Where is the outrage about this, he asks. I haven't seen

WMD found

However, Hans Blix, the man who should be the expert in this field, says it's probably "a stray weapon scavenged from a dump." Given that i'm yet to hear a "told ya!" from those who justified the war by saying that the Iraqi WMD's were "a clear and present danger" (it wasn't really a secret that Iraq had once had chemical and biological weapons), i'm guessing he may be right on this.

This one has a bit more information.

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,954972 3%255E15306,00.html

Beware the (sometimes flash) ads.

Though it's good that the Australian Computer Society (ACS) seem at last to have woken up to the dangers.
(Report , 4 May).

Well, I don't know about all that, but the woman in the torture photos, Lynndie England, would sure look good with my jizz all over her face.

Oh yeah, I'm jacking while I'm looking at her pictures.

Do you think that she'd mind if I mailed her a test tube full of my man-spunk?

God I hope she reads Slashdot. Then she'd read my comments with the full understanding that if she hadn't shown her obvious interest in Iraqi penises, then I wouldn't be furiously masturbating with the thought of Lynndie England in my head right now.

Photo of the laptop

Come on guys if the sysadmin had done his job there would be no problem. Microsoft has a free product called SUS server. If you have this and point all your client machines at it thay will all be kept up to date with the latest patches.

We do this at our UNI and had zero infections. Where as the state government did not and was stuffed as shown here

The worm is also a suspect for causing big problems in the communications in the New South Wales (that's the Australian state Sydney's in) train network on Sunday.

and come up with something truly unique and cool: a car ... that doubles as a boat

Maybe cool, but not unique! There was a story about a sportcar/speedboat that came up a while back. True, it can only go 100mph on land and 30mph in the water, but I'd say it's close enough to say it's not unique.

Oh yeah, and this site called Slash- something or other posted about the the same vehicle.

(note: not that I'm upset with the content of this news item, I think it's even cooler to have modded a car to do this than to create one from scratch -- I just have a problem with hype like saying something is new and unique when it's not)

With a Brazilian car you can.
Here you can find information on the old ProAcool program, strong back in the 80's when 90% of Brazilian cars ran on ethanol.
Now, big manufacturers came up with a flexible design called flex fuel engine which allows gasoline and/or ethanol to be used in any proportion with no manual adjustments required. There are talks of adding "support" for natural gas which is a popular choice among taxi drivers down there! (As of now cars must be modified to take both the gas tank and the fuel itself)

*cough* Nortel *cough*