Slashdot Mirror

Gun control is not a fringe element, it had majority support, has still does in most parts of the western world outside the US. Interestingly there was a article about the effect this has had just last week: http://www.smh.com.au/national/howards-gun-legacy--200-lives-saved-a-year-20100829-13xne.html

Assange broke the laws of Australia, where he is a citizen, when he released another country's secrets.

Wrong. The Australian government hasn't even issued an arrest order for Assange, much less convicted him of any crime.

I'm guessing you're thinking of this Australian lobby group's claims that Assange committed treason by releasing the documents. But they can claim anything they want; unless the courts believe them, it's just wishful thinking on their part.

Australia, like most countries, has laws against aiding and abetting the enemy in wartime, but that doesn't mean a journalist is prohibited from releasing information just because it could indirectly aid the enemy. That interpretation would be ludicrous; it would mean the law could be used to silence any criticism of the war efforts, since it could always be said that criticism demoralises the troops.

In all modern democracies, freedom of speech has a special status which allows it to override most other laws. This is true for the USA too; a law which unduly limits freedom of speech is deemed unconstitutional, and if another part of the constitution would ever come into conflict with freedom of speech, the Supreme Court would have to weigh them against with each other. This provides a safety net, so the government can't bend existing laws in order to silence criticism.

Come visit Australia, "The Lucky Country". I mean, come visit Australia, We will steal your internets, then we will steal your pr0n, now we will steal your gamez".

Fuck it, don't visit Australia, because it's gone to the dogs already.

"the Act put the bulk of revenue generating products under a stringent price cap and gave the Postal Service limited ability to control its costs or increase revenue."

I wonder which company wrote that legislation? - From your post, it looks to me like the US government has deliberately tied the hands of the USPS managers behind their backs and then accused them of doing nothing.

The postal service doesn't need to be a drain on taxpayers, in fact they are usually seen as a revenue raiser for governments and are still making healthy profits elsewhere. For example; Australia post is run like an independent bussiness, with less than a tenth of the potential customers of USPS spread over a similar area it still managed to make a $381M profit last year, this is in spite of the GFC devaluing their assets, higher fuel costs, and a sharp drop in snail mail volume.

"Australia Post’s pre-tax profit for 2008/09 of $380.9 million was down on the record high of $592.2 million booked in the previous financial year." - Source - SMH

You may be interested to read this story about a family that followed their GPS and got stuck for three nights. For our American friends - driving Brisbane to Perth is similar distance as Seattle to New York. A ute is like a pickup truck.

You might be joking, but they are already doing it for pornography.

Along with the standard "did you spend time in agricultural regions" and "are you carrying more than $10,000 cash" is a question about whether travellers are carrying pornography. Not just child porn or videos intended for redistribution in the country, but any porn whatsoever, including your honeymoon snaps. Privacy isn't really something that is taken quite seriously by successive Australian governments. The one we end up with on Saturday won't be any different, regardless of who wins, but at least it looks likely the Greens will hold the balance of power and keep whoever wins accountable.

What is with the Australians

I suspect that, on average, Australia is a lot less prudish than (for example) the USA. Our national broadcaster's "Youth radio station" for example frequently plays songs with swear words in them, including "fuck", though I think "cunt" is still "out of bounds" despite some more recent attempts and discussion.

As for why some parts of our government occasionally seem to get on their high horse, this song from last nights TV probably explains it best.

I was not aware that the superior officers of Mr. Bradley Mannings were arrested and facing court martial or other disciplinary action. Can you provide a link?

You probably won't be completely aware of it either. The US military doesn't generally deal punishment in civilian law as they have their own laws and punishment procedures. You generally will not hear of specific military members being punished unless the crime crosses into the civilian rule of law or someone thinks it's to their advantage and is in a position to know.

However, there is a clear distinct difference between failing to do one's job correctly or efficiently and purposely doing an act that is not only illegal, but deadly to your own countrymen. If you can't see how one deserves an internal review, removal from command, or some sort of punishment while the other is so much more severe it's on another level entirely, then I don't think you should be discussing this.

Under the laws of which country could that happen, and what would be his crime?

US laws for one, but it appears that Australian laws which he claims to be a citizen of and possible other country's laws too. You see, the problem for Assange is that NATO troops are involved which include troops from other countries as well as NATO being key parts of their national defense forces. The entire purpose of NATO is to make sure allied countries are secure in their sovereignty by ensuring support from allies in an effort to avoid the domino effect that allowed WWII to get to the scale of a world war before other countries would step up and do something. So as long as a country is a member of NATO or has troops in Afghanistan, whether just for humanitarian aid or for war/peacekeeping, then any actions that place them in danger whether it's NATO troops or their country's troops, places their national defense in danger. An country that has laws pertaining to this, will have laws applying to Assange whether they decide to prosecute or not.

Reorganise your spectrum so that you can deliver a gigabit per second over cellular protocols.

No chance of that happening - as it is we've got people bitching about cell towers.

A cellular base station can be as small as the router hanging from the optus cable outside my house. There are plenty attached to traffic signal poles in the Melbourne CBD. Big, long range base stations are definitely on the way out in the city.

Reorganise your spectrum so that you can deliver a gigabit per second over cellular protocols.

No chance of that happening - as it is we've got people bitching about cell towers.

Yeah, I really wish he'd asked the White House or Pentagon for help in redacting these documents.

THEY ASKED Pentagon for help in redacting these documents. Pentagon denied, hoping that Wikileaks wouldn't raise the money for the menwork. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikileaks-to-seek-pentagon-help-on-war-logs-20100804-11flb.html

> For example, a virtual environment could help medical students learn how to interview a patient or run a patient clinic.

Neither is a substitute for interacting with real patients or working at a real clinic. It may be less work for the medical student to play PC games, but for effective diagnosis you need to know what the patient looks like, how they walk, move, etc. How much are you going to get out of interviewing a Sim? Do these people think they can interact with a Sim the same way they would with a real patient (other than a pre-canned script)? Being able to play it in your underwear with a beer in your hand may sound more appealing to the current generation of med students, but it won't make them better doctors. Last thing we need is more lazy butts looking for a ride on easy street:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/stressed-out-surgeons-or-tomorrows-easy-riders-20100806-11oik.html

> In the survey, 80 percent of students said computer games can have an educational value.

In the survey run by a medical education company, 80 percent of students said they *think* computer games can have an educational value. There's a difference.

> according to a study published online in BMC Medical Education

BMC, might I suggest in your next press release announce you will deliver your product on iPads or on Facebook for even more publicity. I don't blame BMC for PR scamming, but I do blame the media for lazily reprinting any press release e-mailed to them.

There are actually 84 Senate candidates in NSW.

I think the system is obviously pretty broken if the only choices are to number each of 84 boxes, go with a pre-decided list that the main parties have reached through secret preference deals, or have your vote rejected. At the moment you have to choose between two evils, and it has been made as inconvenient as possible for you to even make that choice rather than the party powerbrokers.

Group voting tickets are just undemocratic. Preferential voting should only go as far as the voter wants - if your vote doesn't get distributed to any of your preferences, it should be discarded.

I was thinking of one of these incidents in Iraq.

My comment was not meant to denigrate the troops. Clearly it is an established fact that suicide car bombings are a real threat (don't need to supply links to support that notion, do I?) but unfortunately the fact that a large amount of civilians get killed at checkpoints is an established fact as well. Hence, I understand the desire to find a non-lethal technical approach to disable vehicles.

For your sake I hope that Iraq calmed down enough so you won't end up in a situation where you have to make split second life and death decisions.

And, just in case you're wondering, yes, all EOF incidents are investigated.

I expect nothing less.

Be safe.

They did it to stop 'premature unnecessary debate', apparently.

They don't want any facts or public opinion getting in the way of something they have already decided on and that serves nobody else but themselves.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/no-minister-90-of-web-snoop-document-censored-to-stop--premature-unnecessary-debate-20100722-10mxo.html?rand=1279849637950
http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/354283/government_stifles_debate_web_browser_history_retention/

Like they were popular enough already with the manditor filter? And comming up to an election I have to ask, WTF?

The document was censored because, more or less, it wasn't ready yet. It's part of the "deliberative processes", and releasing it "could, more than likely, create a confusing and misleading impression." The letter from the legal officer of the FOI and privacy section was very clear that sending out the uncensored document is more like spreading misinformation than spreading information. The "premature unnecessary debate" quote, in the article, was taken waaaaaay out of context, and even then, far from the only component in the decision-making process.

I applaud SMH for bringing such censorship to light, but I must say I'm not impressed with the quality of the journalism.

In the (Blacked out) of the [Censored].

I've been making plans to get a job in another country. This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or East Germany circa 1980, not Australia.

It's a mangrove.

T.gondii has a better impact on humans:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/parasite-makes-men-dumb-women-sexy/2006/12/26/1166895290973.html

"A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.

About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.

Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite's eggs excreted by an infected cat.

The parasite is known to be dangerous to pregnant women as it can cause disability or abortion of the unborn child, and can also kill people whose immune systems are weakened.

Until recently it was thought to be an insignificant disease in healthy people, Sydney University of Technology infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter said, but new research has revealed its mind-altering properties.

"Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women," Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine.

"Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.

"On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.

"In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens""

...you can't have twins because only one was born on Tuesday.

That's not actually correct. It is perfectly possible to have twins, identical or otherwise, that are born either side of midnight, and sometimes by quite a considerably margin, even several days. For a family that is of some relevence to this due to their particularly perverse combination of childrens birthdays and twins, take a look at this story.

Telstra is a sad case of a company. The ex-government telephone monopoly, it was privatized and the profits of that went into the "Future Fund." Sounds nice, but it's just a fancy name of for the public service pension fund. (You can almost imagine the delight on the faces of the public servants and politicians who thought this idea up - it's their pension fund!)

Telstra was run into the ground by a American CEO Solomon Trujillo. He was hired at a time that anyone with an American accent could get a CEO job in Australia. Aussies were that parochial. But Trujillo did a really crap job. He only installed ADSL2 at exchanges where competitors installed ADSL2. He didn't kiss the butt of the government of the day, which is the custom in Australia. Combine all that and the share price sagged. Telstra continued to offer the most overpriced and poorly serviced offerings, relying on ill-informed consumers who believed "You can't go wrong with Telstra." Hell. I've got two service complaints over a year old they still haven't fixed.

Sadly when the previous government sold off Telstra, they let them take all the wiring with them which means any ISP who sells an ADSL service must house it in Telstra's exchanges and over their wires. Telstra doesn't need to be competitive, which is why broadband in Oz is still so expensive. There is one competitor - Optus - who has their own cable, but they gave up before they wired half the country and being appointed as a duopoly (yes, the government before last actually did that!) they don't have to be competitive either: all they have to do is match Telstra, to the point Telstra and Optus offer the worst deals in the country.

A few days ago the government paid Telstra $11B for access to their wires and infrastructure and (believe it or not) to compensate them for the future loss of customers. That's right. I hate Telstra and can't wait to leave them, but the government is actually using my tax dollars to compensate a company for losing my business through their own sheer ineptitude.

Don't expect changes. After the disaster of the Telstra privatisation the Rudd ^H^H^H^H Gillard government are creating a new national broadband network... which is what that $11B is for. But they've also announced an intention to privatize it making exactly the same mistake as last time. One of the heads of this effort is Michael Kaiser, an Labour party politician (kicked out for electoral fraud) who is now earning $450K a year appointed without so much as a job interview.

And this, my friends, is why telecommunications in Australia is such a mess.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/how-to-get-a-450000-job-no-ads-required--just-a-nice-word-from-the-minister-20100209-no66.html
http://www.smh.com.au/business/sol-trujillo-was-worse-than-he-looked-20100211-nv22.html
http://www.moneymorning.com.au/20091202/kris-sayce-scam-telstra.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly

Telstra is a sad case of a company. The ex-government telephone monopoly, it was privatized and the profits of that went into the "Future Fund." Sounds nice, but it's just a fancy name of for the public service pension fund. (You can almost imagine the delight on the faces of the public servants and politicians who thought this idea up - it's their pension fund!)

Telstra was run into the ground by a American CEO Solomon Trujillo. He was hired at a time that anyone with an American accent could get a CEO job in Australia. Aussies were that parochial. But Trujillo did a really crap job. He only installed ADSL2 at exchanges where competitors installed ADSL2. He didn't kiss the butt of the government of the day, which is the custom in Australia. Combine all that and the share price sagged. Telstra continued to offer the most overpriced and poorly serviced offerings, relying on ill-informed consumers who believed "You can't go wrong with Telstra." Hell. I've got two service complaints over a year old they still haven't fixed.

Sadly when the previous government sold off Telstra, they let them take all the wiring with them which means any ISP who sells an ADSL service must house it in Telstra's exchanges and over their wires. Telstra doesn't need to be competitive, which is why broadband in Oz is still so expensive. There is one competitor - Optus - who has their own cable, but they gave up before they wired half the country and being appointed as a duopoly (yes, the government before last actually did that!) they don't have to be competitive either: all they have to do is match Telstra, to the point Telstra and Optus offer the worst deals in the country.

A few days ago the government paid Telstra $11B for access to their wires and infrastructure and (believe it or not) to compensate them for the future loss of customers. That's right. I hate Telstra and can't wait to leave them, but the government is actually using my tax dollars to compensate a company for losing my business through their own sheer ineptitude.

Don't expect changes. After the disaster of the Telstra privatisation the Rudd ^H^H^H^H Gillard government are creating a new national broadband network... which is what that $11B is for. But they've also announced an intention to privatize it making exactly the same mistake as last time. One of the heads of this effort is Michael Kaiser, an Labour party politician (kicked out for electoral fraud) who is now earning $450K a year appointed without so much as a job interview.

And this, my friends, is why telecommunications in Australia is such a mess.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/how-to-get-a-450000-job-no-ads-required--just-a-nice-word-from-the-minister-20100209-no66.html
http://www.smh.com.au/business/sol-trujillo-was-worse-than-he-looked-20100211-nv22.html
http://www.moneymorning.com.au/20091202/kris-sayce-scam-telstra.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly

http://www.smh.com.au/national/catholics-divided-in-the-house-20091225-lezv.html has her saying she is a "non-practicing Baptist". I have no idea what the hell that is, but it isn't atheist...

Hawke called himself agnostic (of the "I don't know and don't waste time thinking about such crap" variety), and a few previous Prime Ministers are referred to as agnostic, though I don't know if they called themselves that: Curtin, Gorton, Whitlam.

Citation: Sydney Morning Herald November 2007: Take me to your leader - Ruddbot wired for power

So we have a "Office of Online Security be established within the Department of Prime Minster and Cabinet"
Then we see a cut to "The Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team", a unit of the Australian Federal Police of $2.8 million.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/fight-to-filter-out-evil-leaves-bad-guys-to-do-their-worst-20100514-v4cq.html
We also have some fun news via http://www.zdnet.com.au/inside-australia-s-data-retention-proposal-339303862.htm
Beyond the "want the source and the destination IP addresses for internet sessions" they are dreaming of linking
""They want allied personal information with that account, including, [the department] said, passport numbers.""
with "automate the process of requesting and obtaining access to telecommunications data."
One day your ip could be linked to your isp and photo id while you surf on a filtered internet with Windows anti-virus and firewall software running.
Some great projects and funding for someone :)

MAYBE you should read the frigging NEWS before accusing somebody of not knowing their stuff, eh?

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/big-brother-wants-all-your-bits-and-bytes-20100611-y3p3.html

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/blogs/the-geek/internet-freedom-in-2010-looks-like-1984/20100618-ykr9.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/govt-wants-isps-to-record-browsing-history-339303785.htm?omnRef=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webspy.com.au%2Fblogs%2Findex.php%2Fgovernment-sanctioned-isp-filtering-and-monitoring%2F

http://www.webspy.com.au/blogs/index.php/government-sanctioned-isp-filtering-and-monitoring/

http://www.itwire.com/it-policy-news/government-tech-policy/39742-australian-government-to-monitor-all-internet-usage

http://www.smh.com.au/national/government-plans-to-monitor-without-court-authorisation-20100611-y3lq.html

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1276537/Government-web-monitoring-slammed

WHO said it had anything to do specifically with the NBN? You still end up with a trade... unless you can bash some sense into your representatives. Who, from the recent evidence, seem to have an even lower IQ than the idiots in the U.S. Congress.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/obama-internet-kill-switch-proposed-20100618-yln6.html?autostart=1

Why else would Australian customs cancel his Julian's passport ?

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/australian-wikileak-founders-passport-confiscated-20100516-v6dw.html

First Julian is not an citizen of the usa.

I just hope that the Judge/ Judges who handles this case asks themselves :

Why did you enter the legal profession?

Do you believe in the principle of a fair trial?

Do you believe in free speech?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice

Apparently one body was recovered from the sinkhole. http://www.guatemalasinkhole.org/ http://www.smh.com.au/world/hole-that-swallowed-a-threestorey-building-20100601-wvgg.html

It being a sushi restaurant, it is probably reasonable to think that patrons can actually order only what they can eat.

In what appears to be the original story, it turns out that HER posted policy begins by requesting patrons "to share meals, to thank the earth while eating and to be mindful of the amount they order". And the article states that you can take food home, but bring your own container.

You are of course correct that you should have the right to order whatever you like, and do whatever you like with it. And, equally, she should have the right to refuse you service for wasting or for any other reason that she considers sufficient. Only time will tell whether hers is a viable business model.

Here is a link to the restaurant website. The full eat in and take out policies seem to be online there.

I can Karma-Whore and google for you, but you'll need to do the actual reading:

GP's Point 1 - http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/iran-inks-deal-to-send-enriched-uranium-to-turkey-20100517-v8uc.html
GP's Point 2 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaiMjAULWn0&feature=player_embedded#!
http://libertypundits.net/article/paid-mercenaries-on-turkish-flotilla-ship-and-more-censored-footage-of-violence/
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/turkish-paper-releases-censored-photos-of-beaten-israeli-commandos-1.294443
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_O'Keefe
http://trueslant.com/charlesjohnson/2010/06/06/another-cropped-reuters-photo-deletes-another-knife-and-a-pool-of-blood/
GP's Point 3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Turkey_relations
GP's Point 4 - http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/columnists-164310-turkey-hamas-relations.html
GP's Point 5 - RTFA, what we're discussing in this /. post.

If you don't see Turkish Islamist policy driving this and the bigger picture this fits into (radical Islam, oppressive regimes vs new-internet-driven-world-order, middle-east mentality and its differences from western mentality, arab nation politics, Turkey's NATO/european membership, Turkish internal right-left struggle and dirty laundry, Turkish history (murder/slaughter of 1,000,000 armenians last decade, try mentioning that on Turkish media), you're just another one of those people who just can't get geopolitics and need an oversimplified model - namely, a little demonizing circle drawn around one of the participants of an equation (typically ends being one of Iran, Al-qaeda, USA, Israel, George W, etc) with an "evil" sign pointed at it. If only the world were that simple. Fox and Al-jazeera do it equally well, depending on direction the guys with the remote wants the arrow pointed in.

I have a demonizing-circle detector. Every time I get someone draw me one (whether Erdogan from Turkey, Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel, Ismail Hanniyeh from Hammas, Al Jazeera or Fox, I immediately know I'm being told a half-truth. Big problems don't fit in little circles, and the root causes are way more complex and way more distributed.
If complexity can be equated to pain with people who can't grasp it, I'll invoke the following:
"Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something."

We're sorry man... here Mick went and punched a shark for you Surfer punches shark then catches wave We cool now? I'm just glad there's an election coming up so I can help vote the current government out.

"Most cop cars have dash mounted cameras. It's not the idea that a cop does not want to be recorded, they want a system that the end user does not have the ability to alter. The individual cop can't get to the video, I am sure only internal affairs and their superiors have access."

Even the most rigorous set of controls over access to video recordings cannot prevent the camera from being deliberately obscured when the officer does not want his activities recorded for posterity. The wide availability of video recording devices is useful not just for catching criminals at work, but for catching corrupt police (aka criminals) at their nefarious business.

Since the corruption predates the drug trade, yes and no.

The corruption was there but the main movers and shakers of lower and middle class corruption are now the narco-gangs, but corruption in Mexico dates back in a continuous line to the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the governing system established by the Crown.

Similar to how the Ottoman Empire established a system that was at the base corrupt in its territories and that has remained entrenched in places like Greece and Egypt.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/smalltime-corruption-greeces-big-problem-20100514-v4dw.html

Countries without a history of corruption like Costa Rica or Belize are avoiding being caught up in the narco-corruption we see in Mexico even though they are prime areas for the pipeline to the US and for cultivation.

Some places I know of has a traffic light countdown timer which is extremely useful. this, this and this are just a few examples.

The guy in the van probably didn't know half of what it was going.?
They went to the cost of installing the wifi gear in vehicles around the world, set up the software, yet no realtime feedback that it was turned on and working in the vehicle?
Privacy laws would cover your payload data on any network and the unauthorised capture and storage of your data by any third party.
Try http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/privacy-watchdog-probes-googles-wifi-data-harvest-20100519-vckv.html?feed=html

Male, 18+ yo with a laptop.
Re And what exactly is this hoping to achieve anyway?
Votes for been seen to do something.
Hidden away in budget documents, they defunded the Australian federal police from doing real on line multi year investigations.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/fight-to-filter-out-evil-leaves-bad-guys-to-do-their-worst-20100514-v4cq.html
.."Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team, a unit of the Australian Federal Police .. - A$2.8 million.

heya,

As an Australian, I have to say...what the? This is the first I've heard of this, but it sounds bloody ridiculous.

I mean, seriously, this would be the same Labor party that say....just had their road/transport minister resign for visiting gay s*x clubs?

http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ncl=dm89TYq5QNgdQeMwGfI6gmxCykKlM&topic=h

Now, I don't support chlid pornography any more than the next person, but this just sounds like some more ridiculous pandering to the religious right, and stupid government posturing that will only waste our (taxpayer's) money. I mean, yes, I know we Christians have a reputation to maintain, of being all show and bluster, and nothing more, but this is getting absurd.

Firstly, what idiot carrying actual child pornography is going to tick yes on the form, then brazenly hand over his laptop? It'll be encrypted, for crying out loud, or they'll just sent it over the damn network, why on earth would they store it in the clear on their laptop. And yes, say they are completely retarded and didn't know how to go to www.truecrypt.org, at the very least bury it deep within the filesystem, it's not exactly going to be on their desktop in a folder entitled "CHILD PORNOGRAPHY - CUSTOM OFFICIALS, DO NOT LOOK HERE" is it, now?

If you look at this SMH article (as a background, SMH is a fairly left-wing paper, normally)

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/travellers-to-be-searched-for-porn-20100520-vh09.html

they ask the very good question of why the heck does it say "pornography", as opposed to "child pornography"? It's like they wanted to make it intentionally vague, and catch out people who were not carrying illegal material as well. Seriously, pornography may be a terrible evil and all, but it's hardly your right to impose your own moral values on the public to this level.

And if you read the comments, one apt observers notes it'll probably be the customs officials themselves who'll make a copy of and distribute this stuff ("normal" pornography), that is. Seriously, if you know the sort of people that work these jobs...probably a bit like those clowns at the TSA, who beat each other up, over jokes about the size of their you-know-whats...

This is nearly as hypocritical, and pathetically absurd as say, Thailand's whole two-faced "we're prudes" on the one hand, yet we allow a thriving s*x industry on the other. I mean, they make pornography illegal (http://www.thaipulse.com/cautions/laws-against-pornography-and-indecency/), and then basically have legallised child prostitution? These people are a joke. It's nearly as bad as their whole barbaric Lèse majesté laws - all bluster and face, and no real substance underneath.

Have any Australians actually encountered this policy? Experiences? Next time I fly, if it weren't for their rumoured lack of a sense of humour, even if I don't actually possess any pornography, I'd be sorely tempted to write something vaguely amusing on the form, or possibly boot up my laptop, and play one of those indecent scat videos. I'm sure the Slashdot community would be happy to suggest things to play here...lol.

Cheers,
Victor

Zuckenberg's strategy on privacy has long been to do something, see what the reaction is, then peddle backwards or forwards as appropriate. Then do it again. Creeping forward while they're not looking has worked brilliantly for Google. I hate the idea of their recording my search history and scanning my e-mail, but slowly I've learned (unwisely?) to trust them and so while those things bother me still, they don't bother me so much as they used to.

Look at Google's recent scanning of Wireless networks from the Streetview cars. Supposedly this was an accident. Oh LOL. But if they do it again in a few years maybe by then people won't mind. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/13/2898947.htm?section=business In most countries we even accept Google peeping over our fences, literally! When this news broke I remember some people (who presumably weren't employed by Google) vigorously defending Google's rights to do this: the public screaming for less privacy. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/google-to-reshoot-japanese-street-view-images-20090615-c9f1.html

We shot the messenger when Scott McNeally said we had no privacy - get over it, but he knew what we didn't: Never stand between a corporation and a pot of money.

After a German newspaper Der Spiegel caught the data collection.
The only internal investigations Google is doing is to find out how they where exposed.
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/please-explain-why-google-wants-your-wifi-data-20100513-uyyh.html
As for "require govt. intervention" they did not seem to know in Germany, UK, Australia ect.
"Given it was unrelated to Street View, that is accessible to any WiFi-enabled device and that other companies already collect it, we did not think it was necessary. However it's clear with hindsight greater transparency would have been better."

On the other side is WorkCover Minister Tim Holding

It was Tim Holding who got himself lost back country skiing in rather stupid circumstances last winter. So its wrong for him to oppose paying for a gadget which will get a recovering patient moving without risking his life.

Maybe Mr Jones from Coburg (hey! he's almost a neighbour) should throw himself off Mt Feathertop for exercise.

And Tim, try Lake Mountain. Believe me its your more speed. Harder to get lost.

Am I missing the point somehow? I've installed the browser and attempted to go to two sites: http://www.smh.com.au/ and http://slashdot.org/

Neither of those worked as I expected... it gave me the non-mobile version of the website which is _useless_ on a screen the size of iPhone's.

I don't see the point of this browser. Perhaps it's only suitable for iPad...

Whoa Slashdot! Why are you running stories like this? Do you want to get this site *BANNED* in Australia? Better tone it down. I suggest the only Aussie news you consider running are positive stories about the Rudd Government:

Like the one how Conroy gave a plum job for the Governent's Broadband network to Mike Kaiser, a Labor Party stooge who was previously convicted of electoral fraud. A $450K a year job without an interview for a guy who knows nothing about IT or comms and who should be sitting in a prison.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/i-recommended-mike-kaiser-for-nbn-job-says-stephen-conroy/story-e6frgczf-1225827983520

Submitted this next story to Firehose but it never ran:
"Stephen Conroy's Internet Filter has received an unexpected boost from the Australian Opposition. Instead of voting down the Filter in the Senate, the Opposition Party Leader Tony Abbot refused to articulate a definitive position on the Filter saying he would "await the final legislation and seek technical assurances from the government on the operations of the filter". Both Tony Abbot and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy who is implementing the Filter have affirmed their strong Christian faith, overwhelming anti-censorship moderates. This raises the question for those opposed to the filter: How can a Democracy work if the only two viable parties both offer the same thing?
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/web-filter-splits-opposition-20100406-rpf7.html

At least Conroy recently got a taste of his own medicine when Trend Micro's parliamentary web filter blocked politicians from accessing news commentary and train timetables."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/parliamentary-services-to-probe-trend-micro-filter/story-e6frgakx-1225850540731

> Dutch IT consultant Hans Schoenmakers, 49, proudly declared himself the first person from the Netherlands to own the shiny gadget: "It's better than I thought. I will use it for email while on the couch -- and Internet and reading books."

Ok. Let's go to work:

> "It's better than I thought. By buying this, I feel affirmation as an Apple consumer. I will use it for email while on the couch - though I shall spurn any application - communictaions or otherwise - offered by third-party developers like Google unless they have the blessing of Cupertino -- and Internet -- something I could never before -- and reading books -- approved by Cupertino - purchased at an approved iStore with all the necessary DRM. Truth is, I'm lousy at choice so I appreciate Cupertino doing all the hard work for me."

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/apples-ipad-hits-the-market-20100404-rl3x.html

Comrade Conroy has had a go a Google as well... http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/government-goes-to-war-with-google-over-net-censorship-20100330-r9bp.html/

Actually, this announcement has neatly coincided with the beginning of an 11-year period of increased solar activity with the peak expected in 5 years' time. NASA issued a warning about this very recently. Source: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/solar-storms-could-wreak-havoc-with-electronic-systems-20100313-q53m.html

Every independent survey run found wide support for an R rating for games amoung the Australian community: Link (reference in there to a survey finding 88% support). Atkinson is considerably more conservative than his base on the issue - this is (or was) a politician's individual crusade, not him representing his electorate.

The less data you have from the DNA, the more matches you are going to find.... Now that's usually pretty good, like 1 in a million or something. However not so useful if your sample size is 300,000,000 and growing.

Even reducing the whole genotype to 10 regions provides enough data to differentiate between most individuals:

wiki:"for unrelated individuals with full matching DNA profiles a match probability of 1 in a billion is considered statistically supportable (Since 1998 the DNA profiling system supported by The National DNA Database in the UK is the SGM+ DNA profiling system which includes 10 STR regions and a sex indicating test."

Also there's the fact that DNA tests aren't cheap, or particularly quick. They aren't the kind of thing you can use for every criminal case, it'd be way too expensive, not to mention unnecessary.

As somebody already mentioned, everybody in the U.K. is DNA fingerprinted when taken into custody (not even necessarily charged). The cost of sampling the whole nation has been estimated at £700 million. For comparison the Iraq war has cost Britain around £8 billion. So £700 million is easily doable if there is the political will.

(Original AC that kicked off the sub-thread here).

I agree that mining is important (what do you think has kept us out of the recession?), and I would be more than happy to vote Liberal, if that were still their policy. But that doesn't seem to be the case. If he were against this scheme (like the opposition damn well should be), he'd have said so from the start, citing the mountains of evidence of how this is a bad idea and offering something else (like the old plan of "free filtering software available on request") - get the best of both worlds.

Besides, what can I expect of someone who has explicitly eschewed fiscal conservatives in favour of social conservatives (and is also notorious for his social conservatism)? If anything, he's more likely to back this legislation than Rudd. (FWIW, I'd have voted Turnbull in a heartbeat over Rudd, but he's gone).

PS. Yes, there are other issues I care about, but I feel that both major parties have done poorly on most of these - another reason to vote third party, if I can find a good one.

Opposition in the back bench is growing. Even Conroy's understudy Kate Lundy wants to make the whole thing optional (hmmm... I can see iinet "opting out" by default for all it's customers).

My prediction, this fails to pass again (seeing as the parliamentary seat distribution hasn't changed I cant see why not). Rudd wins next election (Abbott hasn't got a chance), moves Conroy into the position of Minster for Sorting Odd Socks and puts someone less offensive in the communications spot (possibly Lundy). In public perception Conroy has ballsed up the NBN so just about every newspaper article about Conroy is about Conroy failing in one way or another (usually the NBN).