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You probably mean, don't fly Qantas.
They have been the subject of a surprising number of high-profile incidents, regardless of the plane flown. Coincidences happen, but now this is increasingly becoming a statistic.

Yep. And the US has so far guaranteed $67 trillion in loans which they can't pay for!

From http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/americas-century-is-the-sun-setting-on-an-epoch/2008/10/03/1223013791575.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
Jim Grant, publisher of Grant's Interest Rate Monitor and a perpetual pessimist on the US economy, performs this function for his clients. "No goose was ever so golden as the US economy, but that doesn't mean it's immortal," he says. "Generations of politicians have had their knives out for it."

He points out that while the nominal US economy has been growing at a compound annual rate of 5 per cent for seven years, the liabilities of the US Government have been expanding at a compound rate of 13 per cent.

Grant wrote to clients: "In 2000, the Government was on the hook for $US29 trillion of guarantees, insurance obligations and projected future payments to Medicare and Social Security recipients. Seven years later, the grand total of such projected future obligations and payments was $US67 trillion." Even in America, this is big money, equivalent to about five times the nation's total economic output.

Grant continues: "Insofar as the promises continue to pile up faster than the domestic resources with which to redeem them, the Treasury's creditors must be at some elevated level of risk. Needing money it can't easily get through taxation, the Government must borrow it. Who will lend it, and at what cost?"

The article is a good read and compares the rise of China and the fall of the US amongst other things.

"Plus, who are you going to replace them with? Honest people don't like government work very much."

That is one of the more profound statements I have encountered here (on slashdot) about politics for quite s while!

Well I quite enjoy government work, but maybe my situation's different since I'm working in the New Zealand government which doesn't sound as if it's very stereotypical as governments go around the world. I also know that the other people in my IT department know their stuff and are really good at what they do, which seems to contradict what I hear about other governments and also quite a few of the businesses we've dealt with who've tried to sell us stuff with all kinds of problems. (eg. Companies who don't understand or try to hide basic security issues about the software they're selling are common.)

This would be all about the design of the government and the people it attracts to work for it, as well as the environment they're put in, would it not? Introspectively I consider myself to be "honest" (at least as much as anyone considers themselves honest), and I enjoy working for the government in New Zealand. There are a few exceptions on occasion, but generally government departments here are independent from the politicians. If and when interference is discovered (and it does happen occasionally), it tends to be frowned upon from everywhere and most people who get caught don't last long. We definitely don't have politically-aligned appointments in the same way that the US Feds do.

I like working here because it's a good working environment, the people are good to work with, and the idea of doing something towards public service actually appeals to me more than just being in a business to make money (perhaps for someone else) often at the expense what I might think of as quality work.

Granted that the entire country is about the same size as a typical US State (~4.1 million people) so the structure's different and the government's probably more directly responsive to people who vote for it than in some other places. There's also some very strict legislation (notably the Official Information Act) which essentially states that anyone (or at least NZ citizens, I think) can request information about anything from a NZ Government Department and the department has to provide it unless there's a good reason not to. (Allowable reasons to withhold might include sensitivity of information, privacy of individuals who aren't very relevant, questions that aren't specific enough or would take an unreasonable amount of work to answer, not actually having the information in which case the request might be transferred to somewhere that does, etc.)

If there are disputes about how the department is interpreting the law in responding, an independent ombudsman can investigate with a lot of authority and basically force the department to release it, if they agree with the complaint. (Here's an Australian journalist raving about it.) The IT areas I work in have a lot to do with records management, and there's a huge amount of emphasis in getting everyone who works here to file their information properly so it can quickly found if and when it's ever requested. (We'd get in trouble if it were later discovered we missed something important after it was requested.)

Everyone who works in government departments here is doing so on the assumption that what they do today might be reported publicly the next day, but it's not really that bad if you're doing it as habit because people just get used to doing work with the expectation that in the future, they might have to back up what they've done. It's usually the managers who'll have to take responsibility, so they're immediately interested in making sure that what their employees do is as high quality as possible and will stand up to public

These are worthy of mention...

The Aquanator captures power for underwater currents.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/26/1096137100758.html?oneclick=true

The Florida current has 30 times the flow of all rivers
of the World.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_stream#Possible_renewable_power_source

The Antarctic current has 135 times the flow of all the
rivers of the world.

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

There are a lot of other underwater currents around the world.

This next idea has been more about how to do it vs. practicality.

I think the undersea currents are the best direction at present.

But for those who like to think on the fringe...

Some ppl have found out that 1% of the jet stream world wide
would replace all forms of fuel and power around the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream#Future_power_generation

No one has figured out a sure way to capture the power.

But I think I have an idea how to do it.

Cables from the extreme height to the ground in a 100+ mph wind
are going to be subject to terrible sheer forces.

Microwave loses power over distance geometrically.

With the high altitude aerodynamic balloon you can ease into
the high winds like jet liners do now to cut down on long
flight times.

A large Zeppelin like the prior planned Cargo-lifter, but
designed for higher altitude flight like planned by
21st century airships, and fuelless flight.

Cargolifter 160 tonne capacity planned Zeppelin: ( out of business )

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

The fuelless flight idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nKltbQ8PBQ

21st century airships ( Strato-lites - High Altitude Balloons )

http://www.21stcenturyairships.com/HighAlt

21st century plans a balloon that will reach 67,000 ft
above all the wind and can act as a low cost satellite for telecom.

The jet stream is around 25,000 ft up.

Imagine these ideas as a hybrid where it can move into the
Jet Stream, and capture power via Super Capacitiors or in
some other extreme dense power storage method.

Then it glides to the ground once full of stored energy
in what ever form is most efficient and xfers it.

If two were connected like in the Fuelless flight idea,
it would have a Cargo capacity of near 320 tonnes.

The extreme cold at that height might also make
super conductors viable.

It is a wild and expensive idea, but it could be tested
small scale with a smaller model with long range remote controls
like 21st century has planned for their unmanned balloons.

A manned flight to 132,000 ft. is in the works right now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/jul/11/spaceexploration.sciencenews

So 25,000 ft. unmanned is quite doable.

Just look at all of the recent hysteria of treating American children like VIPs that need to be protected 24/7.

In reality there are only ~50 children per year (out of 70,000,000) who are kidnapped and murdered by strangers.

http://www.smh.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2008/04/25/1208743246526.html

They are twice as likely to be struck by lightning (~100 children struck per year).

Never happened.

A quick google shows that the bill does indeed not prohibit MS software entirely, but it sounds like it does prohibit a pro-MS preference:

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2005/09/29/peru-rejects-microsoft-windows
http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/perus-green-light-to-opensource-software/2005/09/28/1127804508352.html
http://news.cnet.com/Perus-president-approves-open-source-bill/2110-7344_3-5907226.html

And some older articles that sound a bit more extreme (like I remembered it):
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2002/07/54141
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/19/ms_in_peruvian_opensource_nightmare/

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a piece about the paper when it was published, which has bit more detail but is still lighter reading than the paper. It was also the third Google hit for 'religion violent crime correlation,' so you could easily have found it if you'd wanted to do the research or even tried looking for a study backing up your counter-assertion. Note that my search terms were not biased in either direction - I would have used exactly the same terms to find studies showing a direct or an inverse correlation, however the results only return one study (and a load of articles about it).

http://news.smh.com.au/world/church-of-scientology-to-be-tried-in-france-for-fraud-legal-source-20080908-4c6p.html

Bizarre idea I had was to seal the data center on the ship,
and have the equivalent of decontamination chambers to enter
the room.

Then lower a deep sea intake line down to where the water is
about 5 degree celsius, and pumps it in to heat exchangers
to cool the server room.

I used to work on heat exchangers when I worked on RADAR in
the Navy, we used it to cool our RADAR but we didn't go for
the deep much colder water.

In theory the server room could be devoid of oxygen so oxidation
of contacts could not take place, and give the server techs
small oxygen tanks and masks to work like the small walk
around device that emphysema patients use.

Could make it a sterile environment that could make the servers
actually last longer.

On US Navy warships special door seals were used so that ships
would not sink if they had a hole blowing the side of them just
like the Cole in Yemen.

It had a huge hole, but did not sink due to these door seals.

Shifting the fuel storage tanks levels kept the Cole mostly vertical.

For power they could mount Wind Turbines and Solar Panels on
Main Deck and even use them for shade on Main Deck.

If they Anchored out in a strong current like the Florida
Current they could tap it by lower Aquanators over the side.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/26/1096137100758.html?oneclick=true

The Florida Straits alone has about 30 times the flow of
all the rivers of the world combined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_stream#Normal_behavior_of_the_Gulf_Stream

Facebook is such a pain to use, and it's so slow. No wonder designers use Flickr instead....

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/virgin-sued-for-using-teens-photo/2007/09/21/1189881735928.html

Oh nice, I can hardly wait. All the christians dissapear? I wonder how many weeks it'll take for war/crime to halve. Itd still be better if it took all the religious though. And to make this post not entirely flamebait let me point out that pretty much half the wars in the last 3000years were caused by christianity. And christianity correlates strongly to poor morals. http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/correlation-of-christian-ethics-social-ills-knocks-advocates-fromknees-to-backside/2005/10/03/1128191653994.html

The biggest 'easy' alternative energy projects are
wind on the plains states and grid it to the east and
west coast.

Solar energy in the western deserts and grid it to the west coast.

California is the biggest economy state, and biggest power user
so it should work pretty well.

Some of the hard alternative energy ideas are tapping the
Florida current, and the Jetstream.

Whoever figures one of those two out is a Trillionaire.

1% of the world wide Jetstream could power the whole world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream#Future_power_generation

The Florida Current passes about 30 times all the rivers of
the world in water in that area.

Tapping that current with underwater Aquanators would make
insane power for the Eastern part of the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream#Normal_behavior_of_the_Gulf_Stream

Aquanator:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/26/1096137100758.html?oneclick=true

Here we see Hollywood studios regularly rob, cheat and steal from the people that work for them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/aug/31/artsfeatures

Here companies like News Limited trick the public into surrendering their copyright, giving them massive royalty-free photo libraries, all for the "chance of winning an iPod".
http://blogs.smh.com.au/photographers/archives/2008/07/read_the_fine_print.html

Orson Scott Card wrote this good piece on the hipocracy of the RIAA:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1.html
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-14-1.html

And for years, we the public have had our rights progressively eroded. Well-monied rights holders throw money at congress who turn around and keep extending their copyright. This reached an artform in the "Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act", otherwise known as the "Mickey Mouse Copyright Act". Yet Disney has quite happily argued against this when it suits them.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,17327,00.html

Well, eat this Disney: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mickey22-2008aug22,0,3228580,full.story

And then there was that DRM debacle... What's worst is countries like Australia spinelessly accepted the DRM laws as their own (and US patents being enforcable in Australia) all for a political photo opportunity with George W. Bush. In this way, these execessive new laws are spreading all over the world. And here we have Universities teaching one side of the Great Copyright Rights Grab. Why aren't they educating their students about both sides, instead of brainfeeding them RIAA propaganda?

Bottom line is: Congress doesn't work for you. It works for these guys. I don't see Congress ever saying no to MPAA slush funds, and treating IP the way the Constitution intended it too. So to hell with Congress and the MPAAFIA: Stupid Laws are made to be broken. I say torrent freely and torrent often. It's our very own digital tea party.

No its not, they are the easiest to scam - you just have to make the scam appeal to a different aspect. i.e. solicit donations to non-existent charities.

WRONG. The scammer wants to make money from the deal. How are they going to coax the mark into giving them money when they claim to already have lots. Let me guess some regulation is stopping them so they want you to help them break the law by helping them unlock funds... If the mark helps he's no longer an honest man.

The timing couldn't have been better. Fark just had an article on this:

"He was going to give me $10,000, and I would take the rest of the $80,000 and place it in a charity to help the poor," Malone said.
Click here to find out more!

The man then asked Malone to prove he could be trusted by showing he had his own money, so Malone said they went to a nearby bank.

"All I could think about was, 'This money's going to help a lot of people,'" Malone said.

WRONG. You wanted to $10k you greedy bastard.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/jail-greedy-scam-victims-diplomat/2008/08/21/1219262419867.html

is this seen as a scandal the world over, or just in America?

What about this scandal:

"In 2003, Dr. Wade Exum, the United States Olympic Committee's director of drug control administration from 1991 to 2000, gave copies of documents to Sports Illustrated which revealed that some 100 American athletes who failed drug tests and should have been prevented from competing in the Olympics were nevertheless cleared to compete. Among those athletes was Carl Lewis.

It was revealed that Lewis tested positive three times before the 1988 Olympics for pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine, banned stimulants and bronchiodilators also found in cold medication, and had been banned from the Seoul Olympics and from competition for six months. The USOC accepted his claim of inadvertent use and overturned the decision. Fellow Santa Monica Track Club teammates Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard were also found to have the same banned stimulants in their systems, and were cleared to compete for the same reason."
(here and here).

Children of doping athletes have a higher incidence of deformity: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/children-of-doping-athletes-deformed/2007/10/31/1193618974100.html The point of the olympics includes an ideal of finding out our limits, and improving them. The problem with doping is the same one with modern news: it favors the individual instance instead of favoring the system. It is not sustainable, nor durable over the long haul... and by long haul I mean multi-generational.

"Because nobody here knows anything about the actual hardware or setup or anything else. Anything *you* say will also be speculation"

What exactly did I say that speculated on the causes of the BSOD?

Suppose the way to test it would be to put the same sim in a different 3G phone when experiencing problems with the iPhone and see how it works?

In the comments section of an overseas article regarding this problem, one user writes:

I have an iPhone 3g with Optus. I have done comparisons using my new Optus sim card both in the iPhone and my previous Sony Ericsson 630i. At home with the iPhone I get 1 bar of 3g reception, and often no service. In the same spot, with the same sim card in the Sony Ericsson I get 4/5 bars of 3g reception. So obviously its not bad Optus reception alone.

This isn't an AT&T problem, it isn't an isolated problem, this is something being experienced by disappointed iphone users all over the world.

Oh well, its hard to feel much sympathy for early adopter suckers who fell for some bling & a slick marketing campaign.

I'd like to set this as my desktop pic.

Anyone got a higher-res photo of this?

Just today they've ensured many many more people see Google's photo of some drunk guy who'd been mourning a dead friend.

And now I've done it too. However at least I'm only linking to the story rather than hosting the "offending" image which has been removed from Google.

This guy has a different opinion.

No, they're calling it the "Cold Rush". Ha ha.
Still ironic, but less funny is the realization that here is another force pitting big money vs global warming. Drilling and shipping routes opened by the loss of northern icecap make and save trillions to companies and countries.

Granted. I was addressing the specific issue of whether knowing the girl was prone to depression should make any difference, and you seem to be addressing the issue of whether or not being mean to someone should ever constitute a crime.

Not just being mean, but being mean in a way that leads to physical harm.

I don't think Lori Drew was the first person to be mean to the victim. But I'm sure most of them fall into a scenario like the one you describe above -- I would wager that none of the other individuals who were ever mean to her did any planning, or made being mean to this girl into a damn project. And I'll wager none of the others were adults.

I suspect that, as is often the case, her parents were part of the problem so there are some adults. As for planning and what-not, after reading a bit more about it, it seems that Lori Drew didn't even create the profile.

From http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/05/16/1210765091402.html :
"She claims the profile was the work of her teenage daughter and a teenage employee called Ashley Grills.

Last month, Grills, now 19, went on national TV saying that while she was responsible for setting up the fake Josh profile, Lori Drew and her daughter were also involved in the cruel hoax."

It doesn't matter whether Lori Drew was the sole single cause of the girl's suicide -- few things ever have single causes. What matters is whether she was a significant enough contributing cause to be criminally liable for it, and she ought to be. It was bullying, and there's no excuse for an adult bullying a child.

To me it matters because she's the only one being punished. It's arguable that Lori didn't even bully Megan. She faked a nice relationship for a few weeks, then:

"On October 15, 2006, Josh sent Megan a message saying, 'I don't want to be friends with you anymore because you're not nice to your friends'.

That post triggered a flood of hate posts from other users.

"All of Josh's friends and all of Megan's friends were calling Megan a whore, a fat ass. Calling her all kinds of god awful names," Megan's mother, Tina, told the ABC network in an interview last year."

So to me it sounds like the really awful stuff was said not by "Josh" but by Megan's own friends! That was probably the most damaging part of this, her being told off by her own friends. Reading even more about it, it sounds like Megan was going through a period where she was mean to people, and people were tired of it. In light of that statement by Megan's mother, I would say Lori Drew's involvement was not even the most immediate OR most significant cause of the suicide.

She is singled out for being the most significant and immediate cause, for being the only one acting with premeditation, and for being the only one who is considered under the law to be responsible for her own actions.

Okay, it's true that teenagers are somehow considered to be completely irresponsible for their own actions in some situations (ignoring that male teens are routinely tried as adults for serious crimes).

I already discussed the "most significant and immediate" part. I believe that if Megan's friends hadn't joined in, if Megan had had other people sticking up for her, this wouldn't have happened.

As for acting with premeditation, I don't think that Lori *knew* or even suspected that her actions would lead to Megan's suicide. Megan never even found out that Josh was a fake account, right? So basically we have a troubled teen girl who got dumped by a teen boy. What is the probability that the girl kills herself? I would guess very low. To me it's completely reasonable to believe Lori did not set out to make Megan kill herself, simply because that's so unlikely to happen.

So in my opinion, the only reason Lori is being prosecuted is that she was the only adult in the si

Wind and solar probably can't deliver the wattage.

searching Wikipedia renders that incorrect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Available_Energy-3.png

A "tiny" portion of the Sahara desert could power the earth
completely in all forms in use at present, transport and otherwise.

The SEGs system at 1.5 square miles is 350 MegaWatts.

The Sahara is 3.5 million square miles.

Total average power usage worldwide is 15 Terawatts.

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

So 50,000 times 1.5 = 75,000 sq. miles = 17+ Tera watts.

About 2 % of the Sahara.

Spread it around the world so sun is always hitting the arrays
in different timezones, ie. sun is always up somewhere.

Bingo, power forever.

Total transmission losses for the US in 2005 was approx. 7%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses

I have been bashed by ppl for wanting to put CSP solar
in desolate almost totally barren deserts.

Nuclear is a crap choice, undersea currents hold more power
than wind does, geothermal near volcanoes is a great idea.

Look at the power for Africa, Australia, and South America
in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

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

135 times all the rivers of the world...its mind boggling.

The Aquanator is the current most likely candidate for tapping
it with little to no ecological harm.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/26/1096137100758.html?oneclick=true

There are other major ocean currents elsewhere that are prime
for tapping.

I read the NY Times article and thought Steve Jobs calling Joe Nocera a "slime bucket" was not accurate. But then I realized that apparently someone doctored the recent NY Times photograph of Steve Jobs used in the story so that it would have less healthy-looking red color.

This is apparently a normal photograph: Steve Jobs, looking healthy. Here's another: Steve Jobs, plenty of purple in the background, but with red in his skin.

To: John McCain
From: President Dmitry Medvedev

As Medvedev advises, learn about
computers
or find a shuffleboard court in Arizona.

Sincerely,
K. Trout

This is about the sellers still being forced to accept Paypal:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/ebay-still-forcing-sellers-to-use-paypal/2008/07/04/1214951011001.html

It notes "eBay spokesman Daniel Feiler denied the site was strong-arming users into using PayPal. ... Feiler would not comment on individual circumstances but did not deny that eBay was contacting buyers advising them not to deal with sellers who state in their description they prefer being paid through bank deposit."

Sounds dubious...

For instance it is reported from the article that "Sellers are reporting that eBay is systematically deleting auction listings from sellers who state in their item descriptions that they "prefer" to be paid with non-PayPal methods, such as bank deposit."

This sordid story is not over and us Aussies can be 'Real Right Bastards' when we are not given a fair go.

You're right, but I don't think it's working:

"eBay still 'forcing' sellers to use PayPal"
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/ebay-blasted-for-strongarm-tactics/2008/07/04/1214951011001.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

For me personally, there's only really one way to deal with this nonsense. I haven't used Paypal for a long time after I had what I consider to be a very bad experience (luckily I didn't lose too much money on the deal). I closed my account then, and I'm not opening one up again. If I can't pay by bank deposit or COD, I don't bid. In the long run I won't be using Ebay. I don't find bargains there nearly as much as I use to.

Your government hasn't given up on the idea that any worker with access to your privacy should inform them of your activities.

Join the Citizen Corps. Protect your country from terrorism now!

.au? That's not my country.
 

Actually, it would have been a good idea to get started in 2002.

Your government hasn't given up on the idea that any worker with access to your privacy should inform them of your activities.

Join the Citizen Corps. Protect your country from terrorism now!

I've never used twitter. But I keep seeing so much about it - a comic at Penny Arcade, articles, political events and such. So I thought I'd check it out. Went over to sign up and was told that it was under heavy load and to come back later. (Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.) I've tried a few times in the last week or two. Looks like that thing is suffocating under its own weight.

Wikipedia is doing the same thing: Jimmy Wales is most certainly profiting from the information that millions of well-meaning Internetizens innocently contribute. By the way, did you know that Jimmy Wales is an Internet pornographer? Yeah, his legion of zombie "editors" does a good job keeping such thoughtcrime out of his main Wikipedia article, but the truth is out there if you look a little. And, no, this photo isn't a fake. (Yes, that photo is safe for work. However, if you do an unfiltered Google image search for "bomis", the name of Wales's most successful porno site, then you'll find a few things that are decidedly not safe for work.)

The next time you feel like making a helpful contribution to a Wikipedia article, keep in mind that your work is creating a product used to shill for Jimbo Wales's yearly allowance. And God forbid you give money to the fundraising drive yourself! Who knows? Maybe there will be enough cash left over to buy more bandwidth after Jimbo's taken his cut - incidentally, what's a nightly hooker-and-coke binge cost these days? But, oops, I forgot: those hundreds of thousands of donated dollars also have had to pay the expenses of Jimbo's entourage, including the violent criminal Caryoln Doran, Wikimedia's Chief Operating Officer in 2007! (No lie: she's a thug who's done hard time for multiple offenses.) It seems that even the Wikizombie groupthink can't keep everything a secret.

So let's see: the thousands upon thousands of unpaid writers who author Wikipedia content are actually helping to solicit "donations" for a gang of pimps and ex-cons? Just who is this Jimmy Wales character, anyway? He's like an evil MySpace Tom. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Wikipedia funds terrorism.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Rudd withdraws troops

Contemporary sources:

Opinion polls indicate opposition to war

Thousands protest across Australia

Opposition to war in Iraq grows

Rudd withdraws troops

Contemporary sources:

Opinion polls indicate opposition to war

Thousands protest across Australia

Opposition to war in Iraq grows

"Except Yahoo's stock was at $19 before the Microsoft bid and now it's $23.50. How does causing its stock to rise by 24% qualify as 'tanking'?"

That is immediately before the offer and yea just who bought/sold the Yahoo stock in the preceding months? I'm talking about the secret offer made in 2007 at $40 a share ..

No they are all facts.
The US has the worlds 2nd largest stockpile of chemical weapons. We have less than Russia now, because we have been slowly destroying our supplies, but only since 2006 have we dropped into second place.. We still have 15,000 metric tons of nerve agents and mustard gas.
The CIA has been training terrorists since the 1950s. Most of the anti-American sentiment around the world can be traced to CIA operations attempting to influence foreign politics.
In 2006 the US Army patented A rifle-muzzle launched payload delivering projectile ...5. The projectile of claim 4, wherein the aerosol composition is further selected from the group consisting of smoke, crowd control agents, biological agents, chemical agents, obscurants, marking agents, dyes and inks, chaffs and flakes.
The US government ignores the UN whenever it is convenient. The US has used it's military on foreign soil 70 times since 1980.

To prevent future moral failings, we must first as a country acknowledge the failings of the recent past. To hide our heads in the sand and pretend that US hasn't earned the animosity of the terrorists and insurgents we fight is to ensure our failure both in the battles we fight and in our rapidly eroding position as a world leader. Ignorance is unpatriotic.

> lots of people actually do need a rigid-frame, 4WD vehicle (e.g. several hundred thousand Australian and NZ farmers).

In Australia there is a tax break on SUVs (aka 4WD) supposed to help primary producers, but the same tax break is given to hordes of suburban 4WD's driven by Mum picking up the groceries and running the kids around. Besides the massive amounts of petrol they gulp down, they're basically a small truck which in the hand of bad drivers (there are many) are killers. Five-year-old Bethany Holder was run over in her school grounds by one Mrs Joan Waterhouse. Waterhouse was driving too fast in an area where the kids heads wouldn't even show up above the bonnet. Unless you regularly go off-road (once a year doesn't count), you don't need a vehicle like this. http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/The-right-to-drive-is-not-a-right-to-kill/2005/05/18/1116361614901.html

The government never removed the SUV/4WD tax break for fear of alienating SUV/4WD owners.

Good Riddance to the SUV/4WD. We've known petrol was going to keep climbing in price, but our short-sighted governments never moved alternate transportation (public or electric). Finally high fuel prices are doing what our government wouldn't. At least those who keep driving a gas guzzler can pay a tax on their stupidity.

Could you give the URL of a page that refreshes itself and causes Firefox to use more and more memory?

Try:

http://www.smh.com.au/

I haven't done any testing to isolate which pages, but I think that's the most likely culprit.

Boundaries are interesting.

Over in Australia, we've just seen a scandal about photographs by Bill Henson being withdrawn from display by the gallery that was showing them. The showing was cancelled after complaints from many people, including the Prime Minister.

The models in Hensen's portraits are often underaged and sexualised. Most who have participated, including many who are now adult, are proud of their portraits and strongly supportive of Hensen's work.

I accept that that children must be protected because they do not have the experience or the understanding to make an informed consent. There needs to be limits to their involvement in sexuality. I also believe that censorship of art is fundamentally wrong, and that artists should always be pushing limits and challenging authority. The tension between two conflicting, but necessary requirements is what makes this so interesting.

This is one area where it takes a brave artist to explore those boundaries, and I'm grateful that we have courageous people like Hensen doing that.

Bah, thats a light weight vacancy rate. Down here in Australian capital cities, the rental vacancy rate is less than 1%.

I assume that there's an IT professional somewhere that looks over these released files prior to their release?

I can't speak for everyone, but we just train our staff properly.

I work in a (non-US) government department where we often release information under New Zealand's Official Information Act, which basically says that anyone can request any information and the government's required to provide it as long as the request meets certain specifications. (ie. The request was specific enough, someone's privacy won't be unreasonably compromised, etc.) There's an independent office to resolve any disputes between government organisations and requesters (mostly journalists), but we actually go to efforts to avoid with-holding information unless there's a really good reason, because it just makes it easier. The fact that the law's the way it is in the first place means that people are fully aware that information about decisions they're making might one day be made public.

Occasionally we need to keep something back, though. In those cases I don't think IT people get involved unless they're specifically requested to. We do have specialist librarian staff though, whose primary work is to keep track of all the Official Information Act requests and make sure they're assigned to appropriate people and being answered properly. They're definitely not computer geeks, but they know all about the issues with releasing digital information and how things that look deleted aren't always gone, and they have procedures to cover that kind of thing.

I wonder if me and a few friends decided to go to LAX and shine lasers into the cockpit of planes of final, how long would it be before possessing a laser point would win you a free one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay?

Microwaving people has already been tried.

The government must be amenable to accepting help.

Sometimes the ruling junta isn't interested in help

The policies of the present Israeli Government have obstructed the peace process in the Middle East and all initiatives to free the region of the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction, and in particular of nuclear weapons, have failed.

No less than 4 UN general resolutions and 5 IAEA resolutions. Is there a problem here?

damn right i'm posting anonymously.

Does the Sydney Morning Herald fit your criteria for a good online newspaper, from a traditional paper news company? I certainly like it, and I feel like they've adapted their online version well.

As an Australian you seem to be pretty misinformed.

In 1992 pro and anti gun groups estimated betwen 2 and 10 million guns in the country.

700,000 were bought back in the gun buy back scheme. So only a small percentage of guns have been removed from the community.

You're deluding yourself if you think the gun laws of 1996 have made you safer, so says the Australian Institute Of Criminology...

http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/homicideRate2.png
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/77/rpp77.pdf
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/13/gr_guns_narrowweb__300x362,0.jpg

And no you can't just get hunting permits willy nilly, you have to own a farm and show a need to remove pests. Also, by getting a gun license now you give the government power of entry into your home at all times with no warrant.

Regarding the ability of our government to prevent a full blown revolution...You have got to be kidding. There's ~40,000 people in the Army here, provided you could even get half of them to go to war against their own countrymen, we're a country of 20 million, vs 20,000. If 100,000 thousand people will turn out to protest the iraq war, I reckon I could find at least 50,000 to take up arms and march down Commonwealth Ave in Canberra if the government ran away with itself.

The cynics among us do tend to see a correlation between the man who drove the pre-written gun laws through on the back of a national tragedy in 1996, admitting on many occasions that he knew didn't believe they would reduce gun crime. As the same man who tried to tear the foundations of this country apart and rebuild it in an image that *he* prefered whether the we liked it or not. The same man sho shut and locked down the CBD of the biggest city in the country, surrounded it with barbed wire fences and 5000 armed agents so that the rich and powerful could rub shoulders without having to worry about seeing or hearing the rabble. He was a little emperor and thank $diety, our system of governance worked extremely well and never allowed him to fully project his narrow idea of what this country should be onto everyone else.

That said I do agree with you, democracy and liberty in general is better protected by robust debate, citizen involvement and under our (Australian) system a strong *diverse* senate. If the only reason the governing power isn't authoritarian is because it fears out an out revolution...then the country is already lost.

In Australia, Virgin mobile has done quite a few things to lose our business. They violated some kids privacy, and they frequently screw up billing.

For instance, I was charged $5 a minute for "satellite charges" on mobile account (cost me about $80), then when I demanded my money back the customer service monkey told me that I "must have used the satellite service". When I challenged this, he went away, and the supervisor said that they'd give me back half my money. I refused, demanded it all back, he went away again, came back and offered me all my money back but said that it would be refunded on the proviso that they would "never do it again". I then said that that's not acceptable, eventually a supervisor called me back and grudgingly said that it was a mistake that happened to many others. I got it back - then for the next 5 months their bill said that I'd paid -$500 GST (tax for non-Aussies).

So Virgin Mobiles sucks, big time. I strongly urge everyone to tear up their contracts in protest.

I believe these things invalidate your comparison of Eyebrows & TinTin to Pepsi & Coke. On the scale of carbonated drinks, Mr Rudd rates at least a Fanta, or possible a Red Creaming Soda (with ice cream in it), in his difference to Mr Howard (Coca Cola).

Yours sincerely,

Summer Glau.

[1]"Rudd says sorry", Dylan Welch, Sydney Morning Herald February 13, 2008 http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rudd-says-sorry/2008/02/13/1202760342960.html

[2]"Australian federal election, 2007." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 9 Apr 2008, 01:16 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 Apr 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Australian_federal_election%2C_2007&oldid=204352606.

[3]"It's a beatup about a non-story." Slashdot Nerd, Slashdot, April 14th, 2008. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=521210&cid=23060106