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Bugger, screwed up the html for the link on the previous post. Here's a better post anyway, with the links fixed.

The trials have already been completed. Legislation is coming in the next few months. It's not just Conroy in favour of the filter, but a majority of cabinet. The Liberal party are in favour of censorship of the web in principle, however they disagree with some of the technical points of Conroy's proposal.

Conroy has said repeatedly he supports a mandatory filter. He is cabinet's salesman for it, seeing as the filter falls under his portfolio. If you haven't heard him say it, it's because you're ignorant, not because he hasn't said it.

Senator Conroy says some internet content is simply not suitable in a civilised society.
"It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material," he said.
"The Government believes that parents want assistance to reduce the risk of children being exposed to such material."

Source

Senator Conroy says the new filter rules are not designed to curtail freedom of speech.
"No-one can currently host RC material in Australia. That is the existing situation," he said.
"To strengthen cyber safety this Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcast Services Act to require all ISPs to block material rated refused classification that is hosted on overseas servers and therefore not subject to the existing take-down regime."

Source. Sounds "mandatory" to me.

Content from the events cost $$$ so the TV networks pad the coverage out with cheap human interest crap and trolling. Its been this way for decades. We all hate it and it will never change given the current economic model for broadcast coverage of the Olympic Games.

Modified for clarity.

I feel your pain.

Our choices include:

Record the broadcast and fast-forward through the offensive coverage.

Attend the games and watch what you want.

Purchase the broadcast rights and broadcast only what you see fit.

Complain until the owners of the broadcast rights see it your way.

These are listed in order of increasing probability of not ever happening.

Content from the events cost $$$ so the TV networks pad the coverage out with cheap human interest crap and trolling. Its been this way for decades. We all hate it and it not getting any better.

The only reason this particular theft worked via the link you posted is because someone recognized the thief. That chances of that are remote at best.

I disagree. While I have no numbers, I'd expect most thefts of laptops to be people stealing the laptop when it's unattended somewhere public, not a mugging or break-in. In this case, it'd most likely be left unattended at the school, and the criminal of opportunity another student.

Even a fair proportion of break-ins I'd expect wouldn't be completely random, like in the article the thieves have some connection to the place they've robbed. After all, thieves want to know there's something to steal, and knowing if there's a security system helps even more. Even if it is random, a photo of the thief would go a fair way to helping the police find them.

The only reason this particular theft worked via the link you posted is because someone recognized the thief. That chances of that are remote at best.

WiFi can also be used to determine location via software only. Older iPhones already do this. They could also easily identify the IP range, contact the provider, and find out who it was assigned to.

Someone would have to be caught with the laptop in their possession to be charged, which makes the photo kind of irrelevant at that point, no?

You also glazed over the fact that the parent pointed out. This laptop was not reported as stolen. Do you seriously think this kid is a "reactionary idiot", because someone was spying on him on a laptop that had not been reported stolen? How can you possibly defend that type of action?

Of what possible use would a 'camera' be in locating a stolen laptop? Would they be able to identify anything other than a room with 1 or two walls in the background? If they saw a face, would that bring them realistically any closer to an arrest?

well...

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/mac-attack-pair-caught-on-candid-webcam/2008/05/12/1210444306538.html

Doesn't it make more sense to triangulate the laptop's position via WiFi, or even via a GPS tracker installed in the hardware?

Yes but that requires extra hardware and it harder( costs more)
A system which simply calls home when it's on any kind of net connection and if it has been registered as stolen allows the real owners/security administrators to have root access to the machine helps in a BIG way to figure out where it is.
for one thing if it's connecting over a land line then a few commands will go a long way towards telling you what ISP to go talk to(or have the police go talk to) about who was on such and such an IP at a certain time and date.

The article states that the laptops cost about $1000 each, and that they have had 42 reported stolen, and have recovered 18. It does not state that the security feature was beneficial in that recovery. Given that they've lost $24,000 dollars worth of hardware even with the security software, and that the resulting lawsuits will probably easily be in the 10's or 100's of times that actual loss value, is this even worth the potential litigation risk?

It's a sensible system. a system does not have to work 100% of the time to be useful.
It's not the systems fault that people are reactionary idiots.

On page 6 of the class action doc, it specifically says that Lindy Matsko, assistant principal at Harriton High School informed the minor Blake J. Robbins, that he was engaged in improper behavior and she produced a photo of said conduct that was captured from the laptop's cam. The laptop was not reported as stolen, even though the school claims that feature is only activated in the event that a laptop is reported stolen. The parents were not informed of this capability until this incident (rather hard to hide when they produced the picture from the web cam).

I guess they'll have to look at the logs.
If that's true then that's extremely serious.

The laptops should have never been placed with a student without notifying them of the security software, it's capabilities, or the potential privacy violations.

Sure, they should have been told that there was security software that could execute arbitrary code on their laptops.

If Jimmy Wales will take money for favorable edits on wiki pages, I have no doubt that he would sell Wikipedia in a heartbeat.

It was named in part to bring to light the stupid rules used by ACMA to classify content, the week 'Operation titstorm' was announced by Anonymous a story came to light about ACMA banning some porn as 'Child Porn' because the legal-age woman had small tits. The initial idea was to fax/email massive amounts of small breasted pornography to all parts of the Australian government, but most of the focus has been on the DDoS.

Nor did we last time. Nobody understands the list it seems :) But your point was "people won't find out", not they "won't understand".

"...But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist..."
(Sydney Morning Herald)

...a deaf judge seems to have presided over a case against Men at Work in which it is claimed that their song 'Down Under' plagiarizes a song from 1935 named 'Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree'. I listened to that song. It is nothing at all like the flute riff in 'Down Under'. Still... They Won. What do you think?

Here's another link. This one contains some of the actual conversation between the police and the driver (sorry about the Flash and advertisement before the actual story):
http://www.smh.com.au/national/cruise-control-terror-for-freeway-driver-20091215-ktxn.html

Or, in other words, MagTek have Fujitsu banged to rights for infringing their trademark, whereas Apple have a strong argument that they're not operating in the same market.

That certainly didn't stop Apple going after Woolworth's in Australia for trademark infringement, despite the latter being a supermarket chain. Although Woolworth's doesn't sell computers, Apple claimed that they someday might.

Claiming protection from potential infringement while failing to do due diligence in assessing the availability of a trademark before using it? Either Apple's totally taking the piss or the company has a delusional sense of entitlement.

Interestingly, Canadian courts have ruled that you have an expectation of privacy even when there's drugs in your luggage.

How come cycling is at an all time high in Australia? (source: Sydney Morning Herald a couple of weeks ago) I guess making helmets compulsory hasn't put people off cycling in the long term.

...someone they can scare with random stuff that never really happens...

• Yes, I suppose that
• you must be entirely
• right, despite the
• easily Googled evidence
• to the contrary.
• Of course, Googling is a rare skill, and one can't
• expect everyone to grasp it.

That, by the way, was a hit directly on your head with the clue-bat. :)

So what do you have to say about this Mr Australian http://www.smh.com.au/national/online-fury-over-stabbing-death-of-indian-man-20100103-lnb9.html. It is amazing how one can jump to any conclusion without actually knowing the place and its people.

Does every stabbing have to be hate related? Of course it does, evil wants us to hate and look for reasons to do so.

C/- the Sydney Morning Herald - http://digihub.smh.com.au/node/1484

The article linked to from the Slashdot story discusses this a bit in the "No Significant Pattern" subsection, noting that the trends didn't change much in the late 1990s (compared to the 1970s and 1980s) when cellphone usage increased far faster than the cancer rates -- the most anomalous change being a larger-than-average increase in tumors for women over 60 (who were stated to already be the most at-risk subgroup).

It's not conclusive proof, of course, but it's a fairly solid correlation, particularly given the lack of any evidence that cellphones do cause cancer.

No it's clear cut corporate intervention, unless you want to go for the standard conspiracy theory crap.

Considering how irritatingly slow auDA are at handling any kind of request (think a month to 6 weeks, yes I have witnessed this), I find it highly unlikely that they weren't at least prod'd into action via external forces (ie Senator Conroy or one of his cronies).

I guess it's not like they have a history of doing this... Oh right they do -> Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics

> I am thoroughly convinced that no amount of evidence at this point can convince the skeptics.

You've hit the nail on the head. In Australia, the Senator (Nick Minchin) that led the putsch against his own party leader (the one who was negotiating amendements to the government's proposed ETS scheme), is as hardcore a denier as they come. And I say denier, because he was (mid-90's) as equally opposed to the links between passive smoking and ill-health (at that time he was trumpeting a study by the Tobacco Institute as validating his views).

Check out:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/abbotts-warriors-place-their-trust-in-an-ancient-virtue-20091211-kokj.html?skin=text-only
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/nick-minchin-was-a-sceptic-on-tobacco/story-e6frgczf-1225805535960

Most people currently questioning the reality of anthropogenic climate change can be categorised as follows:
- genuinely confused or skeptical people who have often been on the receiving end of mixed messages
- those that just can't trust what they don't (or won't put the effort to) understand (e.g. science, scientists)
- oil/coal lobby shills/politicians who are happy to sell their mother if it suits their agenda/bank-balance
- complete kooks (TimeCube guy; the LaRouchies; David Icke; NWO conspiracy nuts etc)

Of these groups, only the first is really open to persuasion. Nick Minchin is at best in the second group, although he is more than likely in the third.

It's a lot of things, including foreign intervention in local politics by, dare I say it, the CIA and other western intelligence agencies.

Source?

And do you really think any kind of local authority beyond that of an Israeli military state could defend their territorial waters against a Chinese ship dumping nuclear waste?

Well, the Somalia Pirates have hijaked a Chinese ship before. source

Neither does CoS without the subject's consent. AFAIK CoS isn't kidnapping unwilling people and forcing them to become members, so it's kind of Darwinian in principle

Hmm... I don't agree.

The original wording of that Tom Lehrer quote was, "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." See here.

Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister, has said he's concerned too, and wants to see the material before calling a full inquiry.

It's a sudden outbreak of common sense in the House in the Hill, that's for sure.

ANYONE who thinks information recorded in tiny wiggles in groves and played through a bunch of springs (stylus, cartridge coils, tonearm, not to mention the non-trivial compliance of the record itself) and then amplified by two-three orders of magnitude is a more accurate representation than a full digital string (almost independent of bit rate) is deluding themselves.

Actually, what those people are referring to as better is the fact that frequencies lower that 20Hz and higher than 44Khz are still in that particular recording. I would love to have the noise floor of CD while keeping the frequency range of records... There have been plenty of studies that show the human body still detects and interprets infrasound and ultrasound, even if the human ear can not discern or recognize a particular pitch or tone to those frequency ranges. Specifically, studies have shown that there is a MUCH higher emotional reaction to music containing those frequency ranges. In particular, the experimental concert Infrasonic, did a pretty good job of proving this fact. Link to article on study

gas 'em

Point being, that you have whatever chance you are willing to give yourself. Personally I carry everywhere that it's legal to do so. I hope and pray that I never have to use it. Should the day come though I won't be cowering under a desk waiting to be murdered by some mental case or Mumbai copy-cat.

Most incidents of gun violence are domestic &/or perpetrated by someone you know.
Here's a prominent example that was in the news recently

Re government debt & Australia - have a read of this: http://www.smh.com.au/business/no-infrastructure-unless-you-borrow-20091030-hps3.html

Hong Kong - having land is a liability, unless you spend to make it productive. The "growth" since the 50s was mostly fuelled by super cheap labour - something New York used to have, before standards of living lifted it to being impossible. Hong Kong has caught up, which is why Shenzhen is now the cheap labour location in the vincinity. Skyscrapers are built by corporations or land developers, not government.

I'm not sure how many other city-states you know of, but the only other ones I can think of are Singapore, Monaco and Vatican City, neither of which have a particularly low standard of living.

But we have a buffoon who's attempting it, he just made recent blunder. Read the PDF, it seems like he's still pushing the whole FTTN + VDSL angle, which when I met him, argued that the premise, whilst an improvement on what we have, is seriously flawed. Telstra will still control the "Last Mile", meaning that they can still gouge us. Now if they are going to go with FTTP, then that changes things a lot, but it isn't going to close to even being started in their current term and I have a feeling they may not make it to a second term. Combine all of that with the fact Senator Conroy changes his story on a daily basis, so I wouldn't be watching us at all!

I'm sure the Amish way is great. Until someone gets sick or injured and they end up $500k in debt with medical bills. Wanting to be self-sufficient is admirable. Desires and reality, however, tend to differ. And the Amish do pay taxes, just not social security (which includes things such as medicare).

Source on medical stuff: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hospital-bills-overwhelm-amish/2008/07/04/1214951044281.html

The thing I can't figure out is why this is on /. other than /.ers hate Scientology (and all religion).

See the guy in the background of this picture? http://images.smh.com.au/2009/10/27/818030/420spokeswoman-420x0.jpg
from this article

That mask represents a pushback against Scientology's censorship and abuse of the legal process.
Feel free to read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology
You don't have to agree with all of it to accept that freedom of speech is good and censorship is bad

The thing I can't figure out is why this is on /. other than /.ers hate Scientology (and all religion).

See the guy in the background of this picture? http://images.smh.com.au/2009/10/27/818030/420spokeswoman-420x0.jpg
from this article

That mask represents a pushback against Scientology's censorship and abuse of the legal process.
Feel free to read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology
You don't have to agree with all of it to accept that freedom of speech is good and censorship is bad

majority of australians don't complain, they take the "she'll be right" approach and get on with their lives, the ones that do complain vocally are those who try to stay abreast of current issues and what the govt is doing down here atm... which is essentially trying to convert a secular "democracy" into a theocracy http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/10/01/1159641213160.html
I know race issues have been in the news down here recently, especially certain ethnic groups claiming that any crime committed against them is a hate crime when in reality a thug is a thug and will rob/bash anyone regardless of racial decent, but I can't say i've seen much open or overt racism... then again, in Perth we have a far more blended culture than the eastern states cities, so i can't really speak for the whole of Aus.

Unfortunately they're not quite that honest - that title is from the author, not the Australian Government.

His actual title is "Minister for Home Affairs".

I would have said that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy was more deserving of that title. He's the one pushing for mandatory state-wide internet filtering, three-strike copyright infringement laws, and privacy/interception exemptions for ISPs so they can prove their users aren't breaking the law. Also known as the internet villain of the year.

However, because his ideologies and his interests aren't in line with the West's, we try to make it out as though he's a carbon copy of Stalin.

As far as the approval ratings, it is easy to publish figures like this when you use your power in government to shut down any media outlets that speak out against you and use goons and thugs and police state practices to silence critics. Besides, given the right questions or the right analysis, statisticians can show anything to be true. Especially if you own them. Example: do you think Putin is doing a better job than Yeltsin (who was a drunk clown)? Yes. There your go, another tick in the approval column!

And are far as the west thinking Putin is another Stalin, generally the west believes in free political dialogue, the government not interfering with the media (not shutting them down if the don't like what they have to say about you), and not interfering with other legitimate political parties, like throwing their leaders in jail on trumped up tax charges or chasing others into exile, and generally frowns upon killing detractors with radioactive isotopes while they are residing in foreign countries, or using goons and thugs (who often are also the police) to stop free association and political protests. So if you say many in the west think that Putin is a carbon copy of Stalin, then you'd be wrong. It is probably more correct to say that we think he is a Stalin wanna-be, but can't get away with it... yet. But he is working on it. Not only is he as tall or short as Napoleon, he has the complex as well.

and here is your evidence it was in the works before industrialism really kicked in http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/cold-hard-facts-take-the-heat-out-of-some-hot-claims/2007/08/17/1186857765035.html

Too lazy to click on the link?

No, because apparently you were too lazy to post the link. Reread your prior post agian...it contains no link (other than the one in your sig, which is not flu related)

Only 7 swine flu deaths, not 152, says WHO

April 29, 2009
A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.

Vivienne Allan, from WHO's patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease.

"Unfortunately that [150-plus deaths] is incorrect information and it does happen, but that's not information that's come from the World Health Organisation," Ms Allan told ABC Radio today.

As for the NEJM article, read it again. It says out of the KNOWN cases. Many people contract the disease, don't seek treatment, and recover spontaneously. Most people refused to see a doctor because they didn't want to be identified as sick. The TRUE fatality rate was no where near 1.7%. It was under 0.5% - the NORMAL flu fatality rate. And it continues to be UNDER the normal fatality rate today.

Also, it's expected that the virus, which is already no worse than any other flu virus, will continue to weaken. Simple math - most alterations in the viral genome will be less effective, so while they'll provoke a response that will provide immunity to the original virus, they'll be even less likely to kill the host. Or do you believe the virus is "intelligently designed"?

We're in no more danger than a "normal" flu. take the same precautions as you would in any flu season - proper hygiene, stay away from infected people, plenty of ventilation and sleep. Flu shots aren't really needed unless you're in the highest-risk group - the morbidly obese who are just waiting for any opportunistic disease to pick them off, same as any other flu season.

Besides, I'm immune to H1N1. Looks like my daughter, who was in Mexico at the time, now also is.

- 1 in 199.something (ok, call it 200) people who have been confirmed to have the swine flu have died from it.

... is NOT the same as saying 1 in 200 people died from swine flu.

this thing has been over-hyped from the beginning - when the WHO had to reduce the initial dead from 152 to 7. "Serious outbreak?" Bullshit.

Currently, the flu is estimated to cause 1 death in every 200 - same as regular flu - but that number is suspect because of the way it was derived. Unlike other estimates, it ignores people who contracted the flu and recovered w/o seeking treatment, so the actual number is lower than a "regular flu".

Also, 1918 didn't kill 20% of the population. The wiki article that people pull that stat from gives contradictory figures. In one paragraph, it's 10% to 20%. A few paragraphs down, it's 2% to 20%. Totally unreliable.

Now what was going on in 1918? Try a world war. Lots of disease and sickness and death during wartime. Also, people didn't die from the flu in 1918 - they died mostly from bacterial pneumonia - because antibiotics hadn't been discovered.

We won't see any more people die than during a regular flu season. In fact, since everyone who was exposed to the swine flu in 1957 has decent immunity to this flu (which is not swine flu - it's an influenza a variant), we'll probably see fewer deaths, except among the highest-risk - the 3% of the population who are morbidly obese, and are going to die of *something* anyways but would be unscathed if they just didn't eat for 4.

Also, I'm betting that this virus will follow the usual path, and rapidly become LESS virulent. Mathematically, as it mutates, the odds are that the vast majority of those mutations won't be as effective, so while it'll still provoke an immune response which will protect against the original form, it won't kill people off in anywhere near the same numbers. Talk of a pandemic is just hype at this point in time.

Also, if it mutated to something much more virulent, your vaccine wouldn't protect you, since it wouldn't be against the new strain.

Then again, I'm probably immune according to the gov't, so it's no skin off my nose.

I remember that case. I hope you stay healthy. That whole mess is just not right.

On- topic - Turns out that this flu (which isn't swine flu, btw) has a death rate lower than regular flu. They came up with a death rate equal to that of regular flu by dividing those diagnosed by those who died, conveniently ignoring that other people contract it and recover without seeking treatment, so that the REAL death rate is lower.

It's been over-hyped since day one.

April 29, 2009
A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.

Vivienne Allan, from WHO's patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease.

"Unfortunately that [150-plus deaths] is incorrect information and it does happen, but that's not information that's come from the World Health Organisation," Ms Allan told ABC Radio today.

Also, it appears that the oft-repeated "36,000 people die from the flu every year" number is also bogus, being a bad extrapolation from a set of people who are already seriously ill, and not numbers taken from actual sampling the population at large. The actual toll may be well under 1,000. So much for any epidemological studies that support big numbers with bad guestimates instead of hard counts.

Anyway, on to your other remarks ...

So even you admit that for at least, say, 30% of the population (I'll let you keep 8% for the chronically ill), the vaccine is not really needed, since they already are immune to swine flu from past exposure? Well, that's a start.

So how about removing the other low-risk groups - those over 5 years, under 6 months, the non-pregnant women? That's the vast majority of the population who simply aren't all that much at risk.

I'll give you the obese, because they ARE at risk, but that can't be more than ... oops, we're talking America ... 67% of the population over 20 are either overweight or obese. Fuck, why are you people even worried about swine flu when you've got a pandemic of excess flab? Okay, let's see - morbidly obese - 3%. I'll give you the fatties. Pick a reasonable number for the number of pregnant women, and the number of kids between 6 months and 5 years old ... both combined, along with the Lardos certainly won't bring you to even 20% of the population. ALL the under-5 is only 7%, and if we take 10% of the people between 20 and 45 and say they're pregnant, that still only yields 3.5%, and we have to remove half of them, because they're men ... which gives us 1.75% of the population who are pregnant (still high, but who cares).

So, between the morbidly obese (3%), the pregnant women (1.75%), and ALL the kids under 5 (7%), you're only at 11.75% of the population. How is giving the other 88.25% of the population a vaccine they don't need going to help the situation? And if the virus mutates, the vaccine is useless anyway. Now, since it's more likely that the vaccine will mutate to a weaker form, as happened in the past, people will crow about "how the vaccine worked", when it did nothing of the sort.

There is NO justification for hyping vaccines to people who aren't at risk. That's 88.25% of the population who are being buffaloed into doing something that only profits the drug companies, as opposed to simpler (but less glamourous) solutions that will also help prevent them from catching other variants of the flu, and colds.

And what about the latest study (look elsewhere in the thread) that shows that if you had a flu shot in the past, you double your chances of catching H1N1? Double! A study with 13 million subjects is not anecdotal - it's far more subjects than the other studies to date, which may explain why we're only making the connection now.

As for the pandemic, it IS bullshit. 7 deaths in more than half a year. Even a death a day would not be a "serious pandemic", and we're nowhere near that.

Ah, I see where you've gone off now. You don't seem to understand the concept of Nonverbal Communication. This is why the person being in the car is completely different to bluetooth. You know when you go around a curve too fast and someone grabs the "Oh Shit!" handle? Or the sensation you get when someone tenses up beside you because some moron ran the red light and is about to slam into you? These are clues that cut the conversation short with a live person. On bluetooth, they just keep talking through your crash.

As to where your flight analogy fails is that the tower is watching you. They are looking at you, giving you clearance (telling you that they've looked around and it's ok) for you to land. The person on the other end of your bluetooth isn't looking at you telling you that no one is trying to speed through that red light.

Another instance where your analogy fails is that (you've admitted) the hardest part of flying is take off and landing (despite this, you yourself admit that people still crash because of wireless communication). You know it's hard and you know you have to concentrate. Driving through and intersection is the most dangerous (as in where most accidents occur) part of driving, but I guarantee that no one pays any more attention then.

Try this, next time you go flying, when you're landing, start hitting on the control tower while you try to land.

Handsfree is not safe. Your protests sound like the protests of people who were against seat-belts "They're more a danger than anything. I can brace myself on the dash." or people against DUI "I drive better drunk/ stoned because I have to pay more attention."

Well it could also be because a Rio olympics would be really awesome. I don't think Chicago could compete on atmosphere with Rio.

Plus the gander would get a little taste of the goose sauce too - Brazil is one of the few nations to 'retaliate' and start fingerprinting Americans (and only Americans) who enter the country:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/06/1073268024215.html

Nope, the lamest rebranding ever was Kraft Vegemite & Cheese as Vegemite iSnack 2.0. That's right, iSnack 2.0 . No, really.

She is really vehemently against filesharing technology. In fact she has quit from music apparently because of filesharing, citing that the days of being able to make money from music is over; and giving up her fight for the hasher 3 strike and you are out scheme.

Besides the obvious questions about being able to definitively identify the correct person responsible (IP addresses can be shared, spoofed, etc), won't this just increase the burden on ISP's and hence make things more expensive for their consumers? Such awesome artifical and abitrary restrictions...

A professional athlete - at the very least they'll have a personal trainer working with them if not a specialist coach, either of which will bawl them out big time for sloppy diet or training programs. I have met athletes competing at a national level. Great natural potential, certainly. But the age of John L. Sullivan is gone.

Get the macronutrients (protein, calories) right and the rest will follow. Hell, it is certainly possible to be ripped eating nothing but McDonalds if it is done right - getting the minimum protein won't be hard, you just need to limit the calories per day. If you can add and read nutritonal information panels, you can do this. Couple it with some basic exercise if you want to have some muscle or cardio along with the low bodyfat %. http://www.smh.com.au/olympics/articles/2004/08/25/1093246623182.html

I think this is what Spolsky is getting at with his Duct Tape Programmer idea. Every problem has a different set of fundamental requirements. Provided you understand the basic requirements of what it is you are trying to achieve (one of which may include long term maintainability), nothing else matters. So then everything else is literally a waste of time/effort/money.

Before and after. more. I was up before dawn.. I first thought it was just fog

Before and after. more. I was up before dawn.. I first thought it was just fog

"We" really want the rating but our fatally flawed democracy wont allow it.

Every now and then we try but it never succeeds

In order to get the R rating we require the unanimous decision from our state governor generals, and the SA Governor General is an ultra conservative, and refuses every time. Can't get around it until he dies or they change the bureaucracy .

The separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail divisions has been discussed heatedly for many years, long before the change of government. The previous administration was happy to let it stand, which made Telstra investors happy but pissed off Telstra customers as well as competitors, not to mention holding back innovation. You only have to look at the number of times Telstra has lost in fights with the ACCC, the courts and even the government to see why this was a mistake.

The only group of people who are opposed to Telstra being split are the (unlucky) shareholders. Pretty much everyone else who has had to deal with Telstra are unhappy with their service and pricing, their treatment of retail customers and wholesale customers.

I'm not saying that the government's NBN plan is well-thought-out or anything, but Telstra's joke of a proposal and their juvenile "change the law to suit us or we take our toys and leave" attitude is even worse for the competitive landscape and the general Australian public. A split can't come soon enough.