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Long before the internet radically transformed the way we organize ourselves, theorists were predicting we'd use computers to achieve ambitious goals without traditional hierarchies -- but it was a rare pundit who predicted that the first really successful example of this would be an operating system (GNU/Linux), and then an encyclopedia (Wikipedia).

Wikipedia is a very poor example of a non-traditional hierarchy. It has a very traditional and very solid hierarchy upon which it maintains its desired pro-Western establishment bias. Want an example ? Take a look at the cited sources for en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Civil_War and try to find a Syrian source among them. This isn't an accident. They want this bias and enforce this bias through their administrative hierarchy by making sure that any source that doesn't conform to the Reuters, BBC, NYT, WSJ etc point of view should be tough to include.

As for Linux, I think it became relevant when IBM and Canonical streamlined it for businesses and the general public but I may be entirely wrong here.

In this US fiscal year that ends next month, total US government revenues will amount to the equivalent of 14.8% of US GDP. That's the lowest percentage since 1950, and back then US Federal Government spending was only 15.6% of GDP, compared with what is expected to be 24.3% of GDP in the current fiscal year.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see fixing the problem requires that 14.6% and 24.3% move towards each other. Both figures are lowish, so it doesn't matter which one moves. Your S&P rating dropped because your politics is so divisive it is looking like neither will. The right wing is welded to the 14.6%, the left the 24.3%. If they both stick to their guns you are well on your way to creating a banana republic.

I read this great article about how stupid this new law will be. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10589

Actually, no, that's not what did it. There's a good writeup on what happened to get Fielding into the Senate; it has to do with the vagaries of how members in the upper house are elected, and the deals that are done.

There's a quote I saw that seems very pertinent to all this discussion: "The list wasn't leaked because of the stuff that should be on it. It's been leaked because of the stuff that shouldn't."

"i blame this on one thing alone - extremism. "

No you're blaming it on capitalism, extremism is the clueless man's excuse.

"So the badge of contemporary economic expertise lies with those recognising extreme capitalism as the cause of the current economic crisis. Political figures, media commentators, and theologians concur that "extreme capitalism" must be addressed. The problem is that "extreme capitalism" is just a meaningless slogan without definition or meaning in formal economics. Such economic sloganism identifies how debased the current economic commentary has become. It is becoming increasingly clear that the slogan brigade is out if its depth. The current crisis is about fundamental economic philosophy and theory.

1980's structural reform was based upon 19th century economic philosophy modernised in the 1950's by Milton Friedman. Political scientists mistakenly attribute contemporary orthodox economics to Hayek. While Hayek is undoubtedly the darling of the far right free market brigade, it is Friedman whose modern monetarism pervades western economic policy. The Australian Reserve Bank and Australian Treasury accepted Friedman's theories in the mid 1970's. Independent central banks, inflationary expectations, natural rate of unemployment and inflation targeting policies are identifying characteristics of modern monetarism.

Led by the outgoing President Bush, the G20 and Lima Conference reaffirmed more of same. As modern monetarists assume a full employment stable real sector, monetary policy is anointed as the major policy arm. Fiscal policy is relegated to dividing the economic cake among contending sectoral interests. Consequently, free markets and free trade become critical to world growth and prosperity; and protectionism must be resisted at all costs. After all President Bush claimed protectionism caused the Great Depression.

The truth is that periodic economic depressions are recorded persistently in annals of economic literature. Six economic depressions are recorded between 1815 and 1866. Between 1876 and 1938 seven more occurred. Periodically through the history of capitalism depressions and wars have been the "cleansing mechanisms" through which excesses of the system are sorted and a more stable system restored. Historically, periodic failure of free market capitalism lies in economic philosophy based upon three 18th and 19th century theories: Adam Smith's invisible hand, Ricardo's comparative advantage; and Jean Baptiste Say's Law of Markets."

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8251

Hmm, SSPI, who are they? Ah, they used to be the Center for Science and Public Policy at Frontiers of Freedom. To quote Sourcewatch quoting the NYT: "Frontiers of Freedom, which has about a $700,000 annual budget, received $230,000 from Exxon in 2002, up from $40,000 in 2001, according to Exxon documentsâ. They also get tobacco money for their little public policy "research". Amazing how not-hard it was to find that.

But why stop there? Who is this McLean guy that wrote it? Let's consult his own description of himself: "John McLean has an amateur interest in global warming following 25 years in what he describes as the analysis and logic of IT." Apparently he has a Bachelor of Architecture.

So your no-consensus argument comes down to a piece written by a guy who isn't a climate scientist for an oil-industry funded think tank. Convincing. There's some criticism of the actual paper here, and more linked to from there.

Apart from accusing every climate scientist of some mass conspiracy, do you have an actual argument to make, or some actual climate scientists to quote?

The myth of shareholder primacy

Granted, this is about Australian law, but American law isn't substantially different. Microsoft want to swallow up Yahoo. The company would no longer exist. It's relevant.

Yeah, what's the story with executive remuneration? It's ridiculous.

Executive remuneration is increasing at a far quicker pace than average weekly earnings.

It's all good and well to give executives incentives that are linked to corporate performance, but it pisses me off to no end when they get those bonuses ANYWAY even when they haven't met their targets.

I DON'T believe this is just free-market at work ... it boils down to the fact that they set their own pay. (Crikey, let me set my own pay !!)

Iraqi army didn't gas anyone, Iranian army did. Check your sources and try to distinguish them from propaganda. Here and here.

My, they didn't tell you that on Fox did they? I'm so-oo surprised!

CFP is an ultra right wing blog and has an anti global warming science agenda. The have no balancing articles.

But hey, the maybe posting a valid article. Let us see who wrote it.

Tom Harris wrote the article. He is a PR person working for PR/Lobby firm High Park group. They don't say who they are working for, but this guy is paid to have this opinion. I suppose it is possible that he was paid by some concerned for the environment corporation, but I have my doubts.
http://www.highparkgroup.com/services.htm

How about the Scientists:
Bob Carter. First "Scientist" quoted. Known climate change skeptic, Member of Institue of public affairs: Lobby group.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institu te_of_Public_Affairs
Funded by Oil/Gas/Mining/Pesticide/Logging corporations.

Bob wrote this Gem of a piece about protectin Austrailians from the dreaded disease "Mother Earhism":
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3 813

"Compare these tiny changes with the experience of an Australian citizen who moves from Hobart to Darwin to live. Such a person experiences a change in annual average temperature of 18C, which is accommodated quite happily by wearing fewer clothes, drinking more beer and trading in one's heater for an air conditioner."

There you go folks, just wear less clothing and global warming will be a non issue.

I really have to wonder who falls for this stuff.

Not to mention wondering about the sellouts who write this stuff.

The first 'scientist' mentioned, Bob Carter, has a history of denying human impact on the environment. More Carter opinions here.

The sole purpose of Yahoo's existence is to profit. They took on responsibility to do everything necessary to maximise profits when they started selling shares. If they don't do this, then they can be sued by their shareholders under USA law.

I'm pretty sure none of that is true, though it's a common misconception. See here, for example.

"
Contrary to the assertions of climate alarmists, present day atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are NOT significantly above pre-industrial levels. According to testimony by Prof Zbigniew Jaworowski before a US Senate committee hearing last year, the average for the 19th century was 335ppm by direct measurement, not the widely quoted 280ppm derived from ice core measurements, which are prone to gross experimental errors. The picture gets worse for the alarmists .

Current CO2 levels are low by historical standards. Only the Upper Carboniferous/Lower Permian geological periods and the Quaternary, including the present day, show CO2 levels below 400ppm over the last 550 million years. Ironically, to the chagrin of the alarmists, the Late Ordovician saw extensive glaciation, when CO2 levels were nearly 12 times higher than today's at 4400ppm. According to greenhouse theory, this period should have been a hothouse! It wasn't. Average temperatures were no higher than they are today.

The major greenhouse gas is water vapour, not CO2 as the alarmists would have us believe, and accounts for approximately 95% of the total greenhouse effect. The contribution of anthropogenic CO2 is a trifling 0.12%.

To ignore evidence from the earth's long history, and to be mesmerised by computer generated fantasies, is to be deliberately obtuse.
"
An opinion from http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?artic le=2899

As for blind followers:

1. People sometimes follow those with an agenda without knowing it.

2. Sometimes the best way to defeat another's agenda is to coopt it and then make it fit your agenda. I think that this is what G.W. has done. He did this because we need to cut our dependence on foreign oil and he needs to give a thousand reasons why we need E85 (sort of like all those arguments for war with Iraq). The democrats won't argue with it because he threw them a bone.

Why do you think the communist party renamed itself to the "Green" party?
Why do you think that Greenpeace and WWF are leftist organizations?
Why do you think that the "Captain Planet" cartoon was done by Ted Turner?

Easy. It isn't humans that are messing up the planet, it is those evil corporations! Humans are slaves to the evil corporations! Geesh.

(whether or not covered by water)

Am I the only one wondering why this line is included?

Here's a number: Denmark supplies 20% of it's power from wind alone (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article= 3057). But of course wind doesn't work...

Here are my positions up front:
I think Sandra Day stepping down is a bad thing during this administration.

I don't think the eminent domain ruling was a particularly bad one.

Here is why:
Sandra Day is the swing vote, and a voice of 'moderation.' Unbalancing the supreme court like this will likely lead to some polarizing decisions in this country. First against the wall will be Roe v. Wade.

In this modern world, a world some people want to fight kicking and screaming, abortion is a reality. It will happen regardless of the legality of it. Any many ways like other prohibitions. Further I find Andrew Leigh and Justin Wolfers contention that the legalization of abortion can be tied to the post 1990 reduction in crime. This makes me very concerned about any potential appointee that will work with the Bush administration to strip the right to privacy from women.

As for eminent domain. I'm not as up in arms. To me property is not sacred, nor was it to our founding fathers. It is something that one is allowed to own for a period but by no means an inalienable right. It can be removed from you for any number of reasons including non-payment of taxes, drug charges, a legal process and eminent domain to name a few. As I have heard it interpreted, the ruling allows cities with a planning process to exercise a right they always had, to reclaim property and use it for what is considered a common or public good. Splitting hairs over the word public is pointless, much of the constitution is vague. They didn't want to or couldn't hash out contentious issues so they just left blanks to be filled in later. The government clearly has the right to reclaim land, and without that right individuals can halt the progress of society or a city as a whole. I guess that my view on physical property is similar to that on intellectual property. Individuals can unjustly hold property over the rest of the world's head without consideration for the consequences, or how the property was acquired.

I somehow have gotten the impression that the AUS Government is very computer hostile unless it is at the behest of large corporations or pressure groups, could anyone living in AUS give the low-down on some of the problems that plague internet users there?
Sort of right. See the goverment used to own this company called Telecom which provided telecommunications. No one else could, the goverment owned all of the phone lines in the country. Which worked ok.

The goverment finally let other carriers in and in 1992 Optus launched in Australia. In 1997 the goverment sold (I think) 25% of Telecom (now called Telstra) and in 1998 sold enough to give the goverment 51% control (A Brief History of Telstra).

Which is where we are now. Basically Telstra owns most of the lines (because they were paid for by the Australian people) and it costs a fair bit for anyone else to roll out an entire network. But Telstra obviously set the retail and wholesale prices of the lines. And strangely, sometimes, the wholesale prices are more than or equal to the retail. Optus gets around this via thier TV cable services, Alphalink rolled out wireless and iiNet are doing what article says.

There were claims that Telstra blocked the introduction of broadband for it's own benifit and that it has been unfairly competing against other carriers (but I don't think Fair Trade has upheld any of these claims).

In reality the goverement is pushing to sell the rest of Telstra and the Coalition have never quite got enough votes in the Senate to get it thru by themselves. For the last two sales they mad stupid ammendments to appease an independent who calls himself Brian Harradine, who's very into censoring everything, including the net. Thankfully he's going, but Family First managed to get one senator in (and I'm ashamed that it's in my state) and they are a party who... shock horror... want to ramp up net censorship further than what Harradine dreamed he could get.

So the simple answer is it's not that the goverment are actively computer hostile, it's just that thier short sighted plan of selling a monopoly means that they have to be mean to all of us.

I think I might have ranted a bit there, but you should get the general impression of what's happening down here. Oh... and do a search on google for Telstra suck if you need more of an idea... :)

• If you protest the government, they imprison you, or just gun you down on the spot, free!

So give it time, I'm sure we'll have the gunning down protestors legalized eventually. (And no I don't think that's a good thing.)

I think you are right on about lost causes getting booted to the UN, but
Long-established commercial activity such as farming, mining, agriculture, retail, insurance, medical practice, etc. have equally long-established, effective laws that protect us from the abuses of their worst practitioners.

Congratulations on saying that with a straight face, corporate behavior in those areas have had some of the worst abuses in the history of business. agriculture, medical practice, mining you are kidding right? The same people, people who have power, control the industries and the governments paying lip service to controlling those industries, so the laws have never been effective.
Laws haven't ever been effective against the rape of the environment and populace by these industries. - Esp. not during this administration and never before either:

One huge Bush example -
Strategic Metal Mining is not supposed to be owned by the Russians but in a elaborate back room deal to make Halliburton money on Platinum and Palladium, the US govt allowed a "private Russian company" aka the Russian mafia aka the Russian govt by the largest US Platinum mine and then had Monsanto hook up with Halliburton for a joint venture - unfortunately, some (supposedly effective as you say) US laws were going to get in the way, so what does Halliburton do?
The same thing that all is available to all wealthy, powerful individuals and corporations - they move to a jurisdiction that is more convenient, law-wise for what the want to do. Halliburton pays a couple hundred bucks for a PO Box in Liechtenstein and gets a part of a multi-billion dollar pie:
Bush allows Russians to own US strategic metals so that Halliburton can make money

It is hard to know where to start when you have mining and agriculture as targets...
But given just tobacco, pesticides, GM plants, mine tailings, "hydro" mining techniques, oil exploration and processing (considered in terms of laws often is the same vein as mining), the history of abuse is mind boggling.
Multinations
railroads and clear cutting
Big money cabinet
Corp Agribusiness

And I imagine someone from AU would have plenty of examples of mining abuses, including clear evidence of support and/or complicity of the Australian government in those abuses (But they are brown people and a third world country we are raping, so it doesn't really matter)...

Excuse me, I'm off to get in a single vehicle rollover accident on a clear, dry road and then have the authorities find lots of pr0n on my computer instead of the live-CD linux isos that I have on there now. I understand exposure of the links in the Stillwater Mining/Halliburton deal is really pissing off some people.

It should be noted that Lomborg is a statistician, and he is looking at statistics gathered by other companies, studies, and researchers...then making his own conclusion. This is hardly discrediting environmentalists. Lomborg's opinion based on numbers he has collected from others (which may or may not be all the numbers or even any correct numbers), which is not 'proof' as you claim.

He can also hardly conclude the the world is 'healthier' now than it has ever been in the past.

Bjorn Lomborg is neither sceptical nor an environmentalist.

Bjorn Lomborg's wonderful world

I think that it is good that others have brought up more birds being killed by buildings, cats, and acid rain on a massive scale compared to wind turbines. Here are a couple articles to read concerning that:

Are Wind Turbines Actually Bird Blenders?

Wind Turbine Myth #1 - Danger to Birds

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.

I often have to sign an NDA, sometimes just to get a job interview. If the terms are reasonable, I have no qualms about this: the agreement is just a written form of an implicit agreement I see as part of my professional ethics. If somebody trusts you with sensitive information, it is simply wrong to be careless about passing that information on.

It occurs to me this argument is partially about the attitude gap between the open-source (or "free") software community and the closed-source (or "commercial") software community. Thing is, these two communities don't have to be enemies. Yeah, some OS people think that commercial software is evil, and some commercial software people think that the OS movement is economically clueless. But the reality is that no one model is the best possible one for all kinds of software. Some projects will prosper if they're driven by volunteers who just want to advance the state of the art. Others will only succeed if they're driven by well-capitalized entrepeneurs out to make a buck. Neither model is likely to go away, and I predict that more and more companies will come to rely on both.

Yes, I did (specific and related), but I could not see how it those articles specified clearly that any bias towards the purchase or acquisition of open-source solutions was a mandate.

My original question was posed because I wanted background as to what, if any, Arthur Charles-Evans might be promoting as an indivdual cause. I googled a search on him and skimmed a couple of interesting articles, but I would not pretend to think that a cheap google search would grant me genuine insight regarding the situation; my question was genuine.

It seems he has an issue with the delay and/or protocol regarding release of information. I like the fact that he has an issue with it. I want to know more.

Lindsay Tanner, the Federal Opposition's Communications spokesman, has given a positive response to the idea and expects to have serious discussions about it in the coming term.

You can read more on it here.

Alex