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Among the prisoners being held in Guantanamo are a dozen Kuwaitis. While some are likely to be bad guys, at least five appear to be there by mistake, apparently humanitarian workers trying to help with the Afgan refugee problem who got swept up in the dragnet.

Now it's possible that they aren't telling the truth, but they are just sitting there rotting with no chance to make a case, not even to a military tribunal. The scariest quote in the article I link to above is

So, are they guilty or innocent? And of what? The Defense Department says answering such questions is not what Guantanamo is about.

There are supposed to be two categories of people that can be captured in war: a POW, or an illegal combatant. The former is entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention, and the latter, as an accused criminal, is entitled to the rights of an accused criminal. Instead, a third category has been invented, or rather, copied from the South American generals of the 1970s: suspected "enemies of the state" who simply disappear.

I have difficulty understanding how the idea of interrupting programs at all was ever thought to be acceptable. In Australia, the public broadcaster has no ads, and the next best thing is limited by its charter to five minutes' ads per hour, strictly between programs. These channels are my staples, and I find the commercial networks totally infuriating as they are. (Channel Nine is doing more and more scrolly-ads on top of prime time shows now, too...)

These are terribly rough numbers as I'm not sure how many copies were really sold, only gross dollars sales figures from here.

The linked article noted that HP sales totaled about $200 million (US) the first week of video release. I took a wild guess at each copy selling for $16 (about what I bought mine for), arriving then at a figure of $625k that they would have had to pay Macrovision at .05c a copy.

And that's just the first week! I had never thought before about how much companies had to pay to have Macrovision - given how much it costs (or that it costs ANYTHING) I can't believe video companies use this technology at all! And I thought the lottery was the biggest stupidity tax going.

Also what are the ramifications of the Power Tower effect on the space elevator?

Aint it great how in 1996 the aussie government withdrew all funds from a asteroid mapping program.

This pretty much leaves noone gaurding the southern skies.

There was a story on this on 60 minutes (aussie version) 3 days ago. A transcript of it can be found at http://news.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/20 02_03_17/story_531.asp

All this talk about solar and wind power reminded me of something I'd seen just recently that combines the two, and I found the article here.

Basically the idea is to build a very tall tower (1km high) with a big greenhouse (20sq km or more) at the bottom. As the sun heats the air in the bottom of the tower, it rises, and gets pushed out the top, spinning 32 turbines for a peak output of 200MW as it goes. Each of these towers would clean about 920,000 tonnes of co2 emissions from burning fossil fuels from the air every year.

I think it's a great idea, if the Australian government buys in and it ever happens. Growing plants to produce clean energy that even improves the environment in the long run? Could it sound any more too good to be true?

Omo detergent is also a mediocre laundry detergent, and I think most people would rather prefer not dissolving their clothes if they accidentally set the knob on "hot".

Was that bike ever more than just vapor and lab prototypes?

Don't forget that there are a lot of ways a product can fail, and you can't rely on the inventer or marketer to give you the whole story. In fact the state reason that a product failed is usually not the real reason it failed in my experiance. Also, beware of one sided marketing, something can have all of the greatest features in the world, but if it kills you 1 out of every 10 times you use it, nobody is going to use it.

From NineMSN;

Telstra retail corporate affairs manager Stuart Gray said the virus, which operated on broadband users, collected the user names and passwords, automatically sending them back to the person who had activated the virus.

"BigPond has not been hacked. What has happened is a Trojan virus has been lodged on a number of BigPond users," he told AAP tonight.

Mr Gray said the hacker responsible had placed the user names and passwords of 69 BigPond customers on websites.

BigPond had contacted the customers, changing their passwords and closing down their sites so other people couldn't use their names.

The virus had been found on the websites of the customers contacted.

"It's a real warning for broadband customers how important it is for them to have the latest anti-virus software and firewall software and protect themselves as much as possible," he said.

Telstra is evil, but this looks more like the work of idiot users.

Keep the pitchfork and flaming torches handy though, they'll fuck up sooner or later.

Here's the link at the ninemsn web site:
New law won't punish forwarding e-mails (http://news.ninemsn.com.au/sci_tech/story_9424.as p)

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I noticed a news article this morning on Australia's road toll. It refers to the period 0001 December 22 to 2359 January 7. I can only assume that those dates were computer generated.

• • technical
    bandwidth - because of the lack of competition, Telstra has effectivly hindered any growth in high bandwidth access to the backbone. What access exists is too expensive, is inflexible. Telstra goes out of it's way to extract $ (and hugh profits) but any implementations of broadband is laughable.
    
    IT skills - it skills levels are good to very good, but there is a severe shortage coupled with a brain drain of top technical staff.
    
  
  
  • human rights
    privacy laws - lack of, hence allowing business, government and external bodies to push the limits of basic privacy and rights, that other countries take for granted.
    
    government censorship - federal government trying to force internet censorship that is technically very difficult even of it forces local ISP's for a lot of extra expenses.
    
    governent cracking - ASIO given rights to crack domestic computer systems with permission from the crown, no legal process can be involved.
    
    business - weak privacy laws allowing business (PBL) to attempt to capture, store and profile the entire country.
    
    
  
  
  • business
    business conservatism - banks, big business, the engines of change for the country are reluctant to go boots and all>.
    
    e-business's - toe-dipping, lack of funds, lack of business exploitation skills (not techincal skills) is holding back the growth of e-commerce.
    
    venture capital - venture capital is looking up. More vc's are looking at funding start-ups.
    
    
  
  
  • education -
    funding - funding to education is being cut (Monash University), privatisation and business driven courses is the word.
    
    course access - hard core science (and other non essential academic cources) are being replaced with vocational courses.
    
    
  
  

If you follow the above link to ninemsn you can discover that "Ninemsn is an online joint venture between the Microsoft Corporation and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL)."

It should also be noted that, besides Microsoft, Inside Rugby magazine and The Australian Women's Weekly are in on the evil conspiracy. In fact, if you click down far enough, you get to Rupert Murdoch and Bart Simpson.

But the list of conspirators is very long, so by the usual convention it is abbreviated to "Microsoft Corp.".
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If you follow the above link to ninemsn you can discover that "Ninemsn is an online joint venture between the Microsoft Corporation and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL)."

It should also be noted that, besides Microsoft, Inside Rugby magazine and The Australian Women's Weekly are in on the evil conspiracy. In fact, if you click down far enough, you get to Rupert Murdoch and Bart Simpson.

But the list of conspirators is very long, so by the usual convention it is abbreviated to "Microsoft Corp.".
--

If you follow the above link to ninemsn you can discover that "Ninemsn is an online joint venture between the Microsoft Corporation and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL)."

It should also be noted that, besides Microsoft, Inside Rugby magazine and The Australian Women's Weekly are in on the evil conspiracy. In fact, if you click down far enough, you get to Rupert Murdoch and Bart Simpson.

But the list of conspirators is very long, so by the usual convention it is abbreviated to "Microsoft Corp.".
--

The Microsoft connection is NineMSN. Nine Network is owned by PBL.

Microsoft is a joint partner in Ninemsn , with the Channel Nine Network (one of Australia's three commercial television networks). PBL owns Channel Nine... and Ninemsn is basically the Australian equivalent of MSNBC, though Ninemsn has an even heavier M$ slant.

And yes... the MSN in Ninemsn stands for "Microsoft Network"

So M$ is very much involved.

M@T

I did the search for Echelon on the Sunday web site, and there's two links, which I reproduce below.

Big Brother Is Listening
Echelon system: FAQ and website links

The Sunday program (a Sunday-morning current affairs program that is seen on Australian television) did an hour-long feature article on Echelon back in May. It was this program that first brought Echelon to public awareness in Australia.

What I find particularly disturbing about Echelon is that it is being used more and more for purposes other than that for which it is intended. In particular, Echelon has being used by the Americans to help American firms win international commercial contracts. The article on the Sunday program mentioned this as well as the BBC article. On the Sunday program, it was said that for Australians, America might be a close military ally, but commercially America is Australia's strongest competitor.

To see the U.S. attitude on commerce, take a look at the recent tariff imposition by the U.S. government on Australian lamb into the U.S. market: 9% tariff with a quota, and lamb over the quota attracts a 40% tariff. This shows that as far as commerce is concerned, America is not an ally of Australia. (Echelon has nothing to do with the imposition of the lamb tariff.)

No wonder politicians on both sides of the Atlantic ocean are calling for an inquiry. Maybe our politicians here in Australia should be calling for one, too.

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I did the search for Echelon on the Sunday web site, and there's two links, which I reproduce below.

Big Brother Is Listening
Echelon system: FAQ and website links

The Sunday program (a Sunday-morning current affairs program that is seen on Australian television) did an hour-long feature article on Echelon back in May. It was this program that first brought Echelon to public awareness in Australia.

What I find particularly disturbing about Echelon is that it is being used more and more for purposes other than that for which it is intended. In particular, Echelon has being used by the Americans to help American firms win international commercial contracts. The article on the Sunday program mentioned this as well as the BBC article. On the Sunday program, it was said that for Australians, America might be a close military ally, but commercially America is Australia's strongest competitor.

To see the U.S. attitude on commerce, take a look at the recent tariff imposition by the U.S. government on Australian lamb into the U.S. market: 9% tariff with a quota, and lamb over the quota attracts a 40% tariff. This shows that as far as commerce is concerned, America is not an ally of Australia. (Echelon has nothing to do with the imposition of the lamb tariff.)

No wonder politicians on both sides of the Atlantic ocean are calling for an inquiry. Maybe our politicians here in Australia should be calling for one, too.

--

I can't give you a direct link, but go to the Sunday Program's site and do a search for Echelon. The head of the DSD, the local equivalent to GCHQ or the NSA, basically confirmed the existence of Echelon in writing. How much more black and white do you want?

• Covert Action Quarterly - has exerpts of Nicky Hagar who has written a book ( secret power) on his investigations into echelon and more importantly the echelon dictionary that is used to scan/parse messages.
  
  
• Federation of American Scientists website. outlines what echelon is, and gives exerpt (chp2)of secret power
  
  
• ( original information source - aus tv,ch9,sunday programme.)

• what if the information being scanned (phone, fax, email conversation) is being lexically scanned for keywords (eg: bomb, kill, etc..) but taken out of context (blah blah..i'll kill some time, drove in my bomb of a car on the way to the...blah blah ...watched a crappy american film the other night....) then secretly filed away recording the phone number, email information, time date, and any other gathered information - just because it might be useful for something in the future and NOT because you may have done something wrong or broken any particular law.
  
  
• what if these facilities are fully automated and unmanned.
  
  
• what if these facilities are on foreign soil and all the information gathered is sent directly to the NSA (we have nothing to do with intelligence).
  
  
• what if that information gathering tool is used in wide band mode (oh sorry we didn't mean to pick up your public company trade information sent by phone calls, emails etc.) then parsed for any hint of prices, countries, (read commercial gain) then used in any way seen fit?
  
  
• the most scary consequence could be, the filing of something you have said (which could be captured, filtered and written to some database) then used against you in a completly different social/political consequence...say yr2021's version the house of un-american (web) activities....i smell digital mccarthyism!

• ex aus dsd op. caught selling secrets
  
• echelon exsitance revealed - check out the faq and website.
  
• aus gov trying to censor the web & giving authority to DSD to legally hack web accounts.
  
• and using Cray supercomputers to do this.
  
• dont forget to go to the DSD homepage to play the puzzle games (a bit weird for a serious intelligence agency!)