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Cool slide show of Hubble photographs at http://wires.news.com.au/special/mm/030811-hubble. htm

While Webster might not stand up in court, I think the US Code will.

Well here is a link to the artical that appeared in my local paper this morning. It looks more or less the same as what was printed, except it is missing the pictures of the guys involved. It pretty much says what the original artical said, and I wouldn't exactly call The Advertiser credible... but it does contain a fraction more info...

As for your calculations. Yes, the monetary claims are ridiculous. Also, who's to say the people who downloaded the stuff didn't purchase CDs anyway. Some of them may have downloaded the music, listened to it and then decided it was all right.

---

The music industry estimates the pirate trio cost it up to $200 million in lost sales revenue

That's more than triple the Police's (almost certainly already inflated) estimate of $60m - at AUD30 per CD that's around 2,000,000 albums, and yet there were only 7,000,000 'hits' (and probably a lot less 'downloads'). Who's to say that any, let alone all, of those 'hits' would have converted to sales? Even if each were a download, at AUD3 per track (averaging 10 tracks per CD) I only count $21m - an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE less than the ARIA estimates and a THIRD of the police estimates! Who are they trying to kid?

It's also worth noting that the website contained CD collections (Pimpology, Blazin' Up, Spades and Club Ace) compiled by 'aspiring DJ' Tommy Le, in which case they weren't necessarily copying music for the sake of it (and certainly not for profit), as ARIA would have you believe, nor were they adopt[ing] nicknames to avoid detection, as asserted in the article.

I am going to go spend that money I might otherwise have spent on CDs on an Electronic Frontiers Australia Life Membership and I urge others to do the same - it's only AUD110, or AUD16.50 through 1 July next year. That's less than USD12 for international readers! (your money goes further down under)

Michael Speck, spokesman for the Music Industry Piracy Investigations Agency said while police had estimated the scam cost $60 million, the real figure was more like $200 million.

The original story was about an Australian busted for the 419 scam. This one is about a Canadian man being nabbed for it.

s, WMDs, it's all the same...

Good. someone made the WMD/MP3 funny.

Does this mean we'll see also two Representatives suspended from Congress for heckling the Australian Prime Minister on this issue?

Yes, yes, I'll wait for the air-borne porcine and the Red Sox/Cubs World Series....

Snow plow in iraq.... maybe they know something we don't. It should be noted that the corvette in question was not a car:)
Links:
http://www.denmarkemb.org/news/news_03_28_03.html

And the snow plow:
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,67 29744%5E13762,00.html

I don't even need to read the article.

- Takes known standards such as ASCII, fucks them up, uses them for itself.
- UI now Uglier Than Ever! (Stolen directly from QDOS)
- Company run by a raving lunatic.
- Consumes more resources than previous versions, doesn't share.
- Tends to force its will upon the user. Using weapons.

discovered by Australian scientists

From news.com.au":

"There was no dilemma when it came to shooting people who were not in uniform, I just pulled the trigger... If they were there, they were enemy, whether in uniform or not. Some were, some weren't," Specialist Corporal Michael Richardson told the daily newspaper.

Richardson, 22, serves with the 3/15th US Infantry Division in Fallujah, 50 km west of Baghdad.

"When there were civilians there, we did the mission that had to be done. When they were there, they were at the wrong spot, so they were considered enemy," said Anthony Castillo, who is also in Richardson's company.

Speaking of a battle south of Baghdad, without giving the exact date, the soldiers said that 70 per cent of the 400 combatants on the Iraqi side were dressed in civilian clothes.

Precision weaponry makes no diffence if you don't care if you are shooting at soldiers or civians...

• BigPond - Software upgrade affects some user names, plus an unrelated email software fault.
  
• OptusNet - incomming spam
  
• OzEmail - DOS attack on its SMTP (outgoing) mail server.
  

Sources close to Telstra and its suppliers, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, said both vendors would come in for a grilling about the software bug, although it was mainly due to a flawed configuration strategy of installing Sun's Netscape mail software on HP hardware.

"Telstra is always bullying behind the scenes and making life very difficult for Sun and HP and Sun-owned Netscape," one source said. "The method has been not to actually fix things but to patch them, and not think about the long term."

This earlier article blames the email problems on buggy email software that Telstra installed recently.

Ms Lawrence said yesterday the software problems had been resolved and 90 per cent of emails were "getting through first time around".

Thank heavens, they're only bouncing one email in ten now :-)

In 1998, UN inspectors found evidence and in fact found biological agents in Iraq. They were shortly after ordered by the UN to leave Iraq because the Iraqi government had stopped "cooperating" with them (according to the inspectors) and the US was going to bomb Iraq in response.

Shortly after this, the head of the inspectors (Richard Butler) gave an account of the "incident" where they came to a base to inspect and saw trucks leaving through the rear gates. Some googling turned up this article:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5 942,6545273,00.html

Although his conclusion is odd, considering the content, this is what it comes down to: If there are not currently WMDs in Iraq, where are they? We know that they had them, and all Iraq needed to do was prove that they had destroyed them. There would be witnesses, evidence that the destruction had taken place. But Hussein's government was not willing (or able) to fulfill this requirement.

Also, here is an article from the History Channel: http://boards.historychannel.com/threadedout.jsp?f orum=73&thread=8608

To top it off, the nearly 18 months of delay caused by the UN gave the Iraqis plenty of time to either hide, destroy, or give away their weapons. Had the US not essentially forced the inspectors out, they would have continued to "inspect" forever. In 1998, Iraqi intelligence had infiltrated the UN inspectors, according to Richard Butler. The fact that the inspectors were not turning anything up in 2002-2003 is not surprising in the least.

Anyway, the cease-fire agreement with Iraq simply stated that they had to show exactly what they had and that they had destroyed it. Iraq did not provide the list, and when they finally did, it was missing many things that were already known about. In short, the Iraqis lied repeatedly about what they had. Even if they did destroy all of the items (which is doubtful) they could have shown evidence of it. But they did not even show what they had, much less suggest they had destroyed it.

So your assertion that widespread filesharing would allow people to sample more music, and subsequently buy more music is the complete and utter opposite of what is actually happening!

I said nothing of the sort! I said there's no proof illegal file sharing is responsible for the decline in music sales. I also said there were other factors at work that likely have a larger and more verifiable affect on music sales than file sharing.

I am aware of studies purporting to demonstrate file sharing increases music sales. For example, Report: File Sharing Boosts Music Sales from July 21, 2000, which references a Jupiter Communications report with such quotes as "Napster usage is one of the strongest determinants of increased music buying," and "the SoundScan study shows that music sales dropped off before Napster launched and does not take into account the shift from brick-and-mortar music stores to online CD sales." What the??!!?? That kinda supports what I was saying. Good thing I can link to a supporting reference.

And then there is CD sales fall despite drop in downloads from October 07, 2003. Huh? The fight against file sharing was supposed to help music sales. But if less downloads doesn't equal more sales, maybe more downloads doesn't equal less sales. My mind has been blown!

News.news.com.com has Study: File sharing boosts music sales from May 3, 2002 which has numbers from different sources supporting both sides. Maybe the issue isn't as clear as more download==less sales. Seems there isn't much solid support for your assertions or your gratuitous use of ALL CAPS and Bold and BOLD ALL CAPS. (I'm kidding with you now. Can you tell?)

Here's the part where I do something you'll never see from the jokers at the RIAA...admit I was wrong. I did a little more research, and it seems my numbers on sales for the last few years where a little off.

Of course, that does not change the framework of the discussion or go to refute any of the heart of my comment. Correlation does not prove causation. File sharing on the internet started to get big about 3 years ago. Music sales started to drop about 3 years ago. The economy went into the tank about 3 years ago. The stock market hit a peak and started a downward spiral about 3 years ago. My neice was born about 3 years ago. A lot of thinks happened about 3 years ago. That does not show any cause-and-effect.

I stand by my claim, there is no proof, no evidence file sharing is responsible for the drop in music sales. I'm not saying that isn't the case; I'm saying the RIAA hasn't proved it is the case.

But wait! Perhaps I was wrong, but not in the way you suppose. RIAA piracy arguments, figures just don't add up from April 20, 2003 has a couple things to say on the issue. It seems the SoundScan numbers for music sales dropped for the first time in 2001. (SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991.) But the RIAA numbers show sales dropped in 1997. What gives? Well, SoundScan does not poll all retails and sources of legal music trade. The RIAA does not represent all artists and music publishers. So I guess the question is moot. Before we can discuss causes for a drop in music sales, we'd have to establish such a drop has indeed happened. Not only are the various industry groups highly suspect as dependable sources of information, but they don't agree with each other.

The sales figures for 2002 from SoundScan and RIAA differ by 20%. The drop in music sales was less than 10%. It's noise. It's reporting error. The pro-file sharing lobby is playing nice by accepting the premise that music sales have gone down. I a

Does this mark the beginning of the reign of the anti-christ?!

Truly appalling news this one. Let us all pray for the health of the current Pope and a divine insipiration amongst the cardinals before they'll send up the white smoke.

trying to destroy the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

Being the force behind Australia's equivalent of the Patriot Act

Refusing to defend a homosexual judge, despite being bound by his position as Attorney General to act as an advocate and protector for the judiciary

Refusing to accept UN reports on racism in Australia

Lobbying for increased intellectual property rights

Lobbying for laws allowing Australia's spy agency, ASIO, to read domestic emails

Supporting the increase in the rate of phone tapping

And generally trampling on human rights and civil liberties wherever possible.

This is definately not good news.

For those that dont remember, Richard Alston is the Communications Minister that spent $4 million on a website. I dont car how many good deeds he does, he is still the worlds worst luddite. References for those who dont remember: $4 million website or $4 million website And he couldnt even spend that money on the local economy. His view of technology is that it has to be done with the big multi-national companies, local ones dont even get a look in (see the whirlpool link). Obviously the companies prefered are the ones that are likely to hire him as a consultant either now or later on.

Yes, the anti-spam bill is a good step, but he's still a Luddite.

On Microsoft closing chat rooms:

Senator Alston said other firms would have social obligations and legal concerns prompting them to take similar action.

Article

He thinks MS did this for the public good.

Taken from http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/common/story_pa ge/0,5936,7351084%255E1702,00.html.

Australia 'world's gayest country'

23sep03
MORE than 47 per cent of Australians are involved in gay or lesbian relationships, putting the country equal first in the world for its proportion of homosexuals, according to a new worldwide survey.

The survey of sexual habits by international condom maker Durex found that together with Americans, Australians had the highest proportion of same-sex relationships.

At the other end of the scale, Vietnam recorded the lowest proportion of gay and lesbian relationships, at three per cent.

The company said Australians enjoyed a busy love life, having sex on average 125 times per year.

Hungarians came out on top, having sex 152 times per year.

But Australians were still ahead of Americans, at 118 times a year.

The survey also found phone, text and cyber sex were gaining in popularity in Australia, with 43 per cent indulging in "virtual reality sex".

The company said faking orgasms was also common in Australia, with 47 per cent of respondents admitting to doing so at least once.

This was almost twice the global average of 26 per cent.

The survey found 41 per cent of Australian men and women had sex for the first time because they were in love, and most agreed that more foreplay would improve their sex life.

The company said more than 150,000 people took part in the on-line survey, which was now in its seventh year.

In other news, GWB has shown is unbound arrogance again today at UN. Even now his war-cry is the barbaric: "you are either with us or against us" and did he show any conciliatory signs . No! It's the UN which has to "move on!".

This man's arrogance is unbelievable!

Vote out the idiot and his nazi neocon cronies - vote for Clark in 2004!

The debate over the use of open-source software is underway, with the ALP adopting a strong pro open-source policy.

It will be interesting to see if they actually do anything about it when the conservatives finally get dumped.

A short animated series on Cartoon Network: Star Wars: Clone Wars on Cartoon Network

Here's a picture of Anakin/Vader in Episode III.

Finally, if you're into minor spoilers, head over to the IMDB record for Episode III, and you might recognize some interesting character names in the cast list...

I assume they meant "coffee roll." Although, I can't be totally sure... It's Australia, after all.

There's a great picture of Anakin/Vader still floating around (hi-res one was taken down).

I certainly look middle eastern, and I have never been hassled (or singled out) because of the way I look. Certainly not at home in Australia.

themercurynews

" To maximise the impact, he gained permission for a US F-14 fighter jet to fly low over the works and break the sound barrier.

"You have all the effects of a large detonation without any collateral damage," Paul said. "

In fact, P2P IS a big part of the child porn subculture.

You haven't read The Australian or The Times, then.

While it's generally true that Murdoch tends toward the tabloid style that he perfected, he does have quality newspapers in his capabilities (because quality newspapers take much longer to become profitable [the opposite is true in the US, though], Rupert avoids them; the Australian wasn't profitable until the 1980's).

True, although the $3 or $4 billion profit per quarter and 80+% profit margins in the Office and Windows sections (with the current donations, "super deals" to the OEMs, academic versions, etc., mind!) sure do.

Then there's the issue of Enron-style accounting. In 1998, Microsoft ran an $18 billion loss. Sure 1998 was a while ago, but it was also when the IT sector was gravy. Since then sales of new Intel boxes have plummeted and MS-Windows sales depend largely on OEMs. Now the prices for MS-Office are plummeting to near free-market prices. Microsoft depends on MS-Windows and MS-Office as it's only two cash cows and both look to be drying up.

I say again that there is no guarantee that there's enough money in the bank to keep MS operating through the end of the year.

The campus agreement you describe for StarOffice sounds interesting. I'd think more universities would be interested in it as a long term investment in electronic publishing as there are plans for it and OpenOffice.org to support the upcoming OASIS XML-based format. That'd increase the likelihood of parsable term papers, theses, and dissertations.

SMC shipped routers with the ntp server at the CSIRO in Sydney hardwired, starting around July 2002. So now you need a fixed IP and a prior arrangement to use their server.

"If we don't have a resolution by midnight on Friday the 13th, the AIX world will be a different place." [June 12 2003]

I was napping when my guard dog started barking like crazy for some reason. It was a little past 4 in the afternoon. I woke up and went back and sat down at my computer, where I was working on a report. Of course, while the coffee is brewing you have to go to Slashdot, right? So there is this story about SCO declaring the GPL invalid - of course I had to see what was up. I went to click on the link and my monitor made a strange noise and went dead. My computer case beeped and I was startled. The surround sound system started making this very low cyclical sound - (scared the hell out of the dog) - I sort of wheeled myself back from the monitor as to ward off some evil spirit - that was that Thursday - I called the power company, and the 1800 number was busy - for hours - and eventually, of course I found out that was that power outage.

I can't take SCO seriously anymore, sorry.

Personaly, I'm getting sick of these Anti-Nintendo articles. You can bad mouth them all you want, but Nintendo made 6 times more profit in the first quater than the entire Sony group. (That's video games, TVs, DVD players, the lot).

The Gamecube has sold 9.6 million units world wide, vs 9.4 million Xbox units. And still everyone talks about the GC like it's a dead console and has lost the console war.

Sure, Nintendo owes a lot to the old battle droid that is the GameBoy, but any company pulling upwards of $100million a quarter in PROFIT in these economic times has to be doing SOMETHING right.

i am not a socialogist, but it seems fairly clear that the violence problem occurs earlier in a child's development than something induced by violent videogames. There's an interesting article about daycare centers in Melbourne and how they are banning superhero costumes. Why? cause little kids dressed up as superheros have much more violent / aggressive / dangerous play behavior.

Obviously this isn't a scientific study, just observations by daycare supervisors, but it illustrates that violent behavior is being exhibited by children that are presumably too young to be playing the violent video games that are often cited as the cause.

perhaps we should ban superheros first...

CIA didn't try and plant any WMDs...that's just BS, and you know it.

A scientist digs up a gas centrifuge he was ordered to bury in his back yard, and people blow it off as nothing to do with WMDs.

Some people seem to be hoping and praying that the WMD evidence won't be found, because it'll prove that they were wrong.

The evidence is being gathered even as we banter back and forth about this:

read this article from yesterday

I can't wait to see how conspiracy theorists about all this twist the report when it comes out.

At least that's what our Australian Federal Government is doing.

And our tech minister (Richard Alston) is about as technically advanced as stoneage man. His idea of a reboot, is to kick his press secretary. His latest faux-pas is to deny responsibility for his own official website which cost megabucks.

At least some techie is making money out of him somewhere but chances are, it isn't an Aussie. Dammit.

If you read this page, you might find some interesting info:
Ms Ewen said Sony hoped to recreate the strong community that sprung up when the company released Net Yaroze six years ago.
Net Yaroze was a specialised version of the original PlayStation that allowed amateur programming.
The Net Yaroze software ran on a standard PC where the programmer would compile the code and a serial cable connected the PC to the Net Yaroze console.
"It was more limited because it did not access all the capabilities of the machine and there were non-disclosure agreements involved," she said.
There were 6000 Net Yaroze consoles sold across the PAL territories, mainly in the UK and Australia." Sony had developed the Linux Kit for PS2 in response to demand in Japan. The company sold 7000 beta copies in Japan last year but the full version was only released there in late April. "

Since most of the Net Yaroze consoles sold across the PAL territories, mainly in the UK and Australia, you might wanna look for websites in these countries...

Also check out the forums on this website

-- Sig
REJECTED STORY:
Making real money from virtually nothing on Online games
BBC has an interesting article about people making a real living buying and selling goods which only exist in the virtual world of an online fantasy game. A player says that he will declare to the US Internal Revenue Service in April 2004 that his main source of income is the sale of imaginary goods.

I'm seeing lots of jokes about checking out kids over the webcams. But it's not nearly as funny when it actually happens.

In this case, the lack of even minimal concern for privacy and security was truly staggering. If I was a parent, I would be suing their asses off too.

Full day drive away in Sydney, we're suffering through the MILLENIUM train fiasco, technology supplied by, no surprise, a Microsoft Operating system.

aarrh!

What's not to like?

I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic.

This fiaSCO is currently the main headline at Australian IT's site. Of particular interest is the various complaints to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission regarding alleged breaches of the Trade Practices Act.

This fiaSCO is currently the main headline at Australian IT's site. Of particular interest is the various complaints to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission regarding alleged breaches of the Trade Practices Act.

One example?

What about the whole friggin' Wall Street companies?

RedHat + Oracle are running many critical parts of Merryl-Lynch, First Boston-Credit Swisse...

Also, the German Parliament runs with Linux servers.

And Banco do Brasil as well.

And many, may others, including the US Army and the Hong Kong's HSBC

What else do you need?

Peace

Can be found here.

This is an article about the US media fawning over private Lynch despite the fact that she was injured by US military incompetence, not Iraqis, that she was captured without a fight, not firing her weapon valiantly to the end, that the US met no resistence in the hospital during her rescue and actually fired on a doctor trying to bring her out and hand her over.

Luckily for the rest of the world the actual facts have not been totally obscured because non-US media outlets have managed to get hold of the story... but the fewer outlets there are, the less would actually be known about this. As it is it sounds like half of America is still swallowing the 'enhanced' story whole... must be the same half that thinks Iraq used chemical weapons in the war and that the September 11 attacks were linked to Iraq.

In fact, when you look at it the media is already basically concentrated by virtue of the fact that it is ideologically concentrated. Once an 'accepted' version of a story is selected by someone, it becomes gospel and is repeated throughout the land.

Not only that, but since 301 is a label with an established global infrastructure, there's a mechanism there to support an act no matter how popular it becomes. This guy is no small potatos.

Australia is part of US of A, didn't you know..

Australia primed to be yanked into US

Times/UK: Lawyers Furious as US Builds (Gitmo) Death Chambers

LAWYERS expressed outrage yesterday at plans to put al-Qaeda suspects, including two Britons and an Australian, on military trial in Guantanamo Bay.
They would effectively be tried by a "kangaroo court", stripped of all basic rights of due process that would be afforded in criminal courts in Britain or America, they said.
...
He said: "The construction of execution chambers makes virtually every lawyer in the Western world extremely angry. The idea that there is an artificial creation or enclave which, according to the Americans, is beyond the purview of all recognised systems of law is repugnant."
...
Times/UK: Lawyers Furious as US Builds Death Chambers

The Courier Mail: US Plans Death Camp (May 26, 2003)

THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber.

Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported yesterday.

The plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two Australians.
...
"This camp was created to execute people. The administration has no interest in long-term prison sentences for people it regards as hard-core terrorists."
...
The Courier Mail: US Plans Death Camp