Slashdot Mirror

Of course, the SMH might also have just ripped off of an RMS press release, but then ZDNet is TWICE removed from the source, so why not just post the damn SMH link? It's non-reg? And it's a hell of a lot more independent media than ZDNet, which isn't really a news source, fellas. Thanks.

Oh, and the link: http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/08/25/112456296535 8.html

Here's the original article, but that doesn't really shed that much more light on things. That article does say "Stallman said he was concerned over issues of naming only when they helped to focus attention on the freedom to change and redistribute software", but unfortunately that wasn't a direct quote, so you'd have to guess what the actual question and answer were. I agree with you though, I initially took the quote to mean that names and software freedom are two separate issues. Of course I read pretty much every Slashdot article with the understanding that 99% percent of them are based on misquotes and misunderstandings. That's half the fun of slashdot, with the other half coming from the fact that they occassionally point to interesting news stories that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

Linux fracas not the main game: RMS

http://www.smh.com.au/news/icon/attack-of-the-botn ets/

Eastern Europe is the international cybercrime hot spot and although the countries of the former Soviet Union are half a world away, cyber crooks have Australian computer users in their sights, according to Australia's top cyber cop, Kevin Zuccato.

The breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s led to thousands of technically savvy people losing their jobs, says Zuccato, who heads the Australian High Tech Crime Centre.

"There's definitely a group of virus writers and hackers in Russia and in the Eastern European bloc that the Russian mob has tapped into."

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9b0af6ca-0409-11da-a775-0 0000e2511c8,ft_acl=.html

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/i s_200310/ai_n9331263

http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/dollar-surfs-o n-a-wave-of-euro-buying/2005/08/04/1123125853217.h tml?oneclick=true

Oh, wait, I have that wrong, you thought the dollar was doing better...

It automatically subscribes to RSS feeds, increasing bandwidth on those poor servers, without you telling it the feed is something you want.

But I guess "Do no evil" and geek chic overcome any privacy worries.

Well, you could look at what happened to this guy. man faces extradition to US
He broke no Australian laws, never set foot in the US and is facing extradition.

If you remove the 'oneclick' argument from the URL.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/next/linux-trademark-pr otection-comes-at-a-cost-for-some/2005/08/15/11239 57995044.html

It's not, as you pointed out. You can give your friend your book, and you can give your friend your CD. What you can't do is make a copy of the book, or a copy of your CD, and give that to your friend while you keep the original.

Really, it's not that hard to understand.

In Australia you're not allowed to make personal backups of other's copyrighted audio. I break the law every single day because I'm tired of my CDs being ruined in my car. One day I'll buy an mp3 player for the car: that will be a godsend for me. It will be illegal for me to use it though I guess.

Sydney Morning Herald Article on Fair Use

Cheers
Stor

Oh yes, and Europeans are innocent little lambs that never sue anyone frivolously. After all, Americans are all fat and stupid right?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bus-line-sues-wom en-for-carpooling/2005/07/11/1120934186065.html?on eclick=true/

1. camera takes snap shot, uses signing key on tamper-resistant chip inside camera to sign a hash of that photo (with the time, speed, etc. concatenated onto the end of the photo before hashing)
2. send bill to speeder (possibly including hash of picture or in some way "committing" to that particular md5sum)

"People have shown it [the algorithm] has been hacked and it's open to viruses."

And something in the paper about it : http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/23/109565147428 9.html?oneclick=true

A Sydney magistrate, Laurence Lawson, threw out the case because the Roads and Traffic Authority failed to find an expert to testify that its speed camera images were secure.

The motorist's defence lawyer, Denis Mirabilis, argued successfully that an algorithm known as MD5, which is used to store the time, date, place, numberplate and speed of cars caught on camera, was a discredited piece of technology.

Ah, I found the story...

From the Slashdot story: "both stories note that Cisco's latest troubles are likely fallout from their legal battles with researcher Mike Lynn".
I'm amazed at Cisco's lack of social sophistication. From previous dealings with Cisco, I knew they were boorish, but this is much worse than I imagined.

I'm amazed at the sure sense some executives have for creating millions of dollars worth of bad publicity. It's as though they studied how to sink companies, and that is their most professional and creative skill.

It's awesome. In only one afternoon of work, Cisco corporate officers arranged to have Bruce Schneier call them "thugs": "I can't imagine the discussions inside Cisco that led them to act like thugs."

What's even more awesome is that Cisco managed to make the FBI look like it is willing to get involved in political attempts to suppress free speech, making it look like thugs, too.

Is there some competition among executives that I didn't hear about? Are they having a contest to see who can do the most damage to their companies? Is Cisco having a competition with Adobe? Is Cisco trying to outdo the Skylarov incident and the Killustrator incident?

I suppose it doesn't matter to top executives. They can just take their million-dollar golden parachutes and go to another company, leaving the wreckage behind.

I agree exactly and entirely with Mr. Schneier's assessment:

"... this has been a public-relations disaster for Cisco. Now it doesn't matter what they say - we won't believe them. We know that the public-relations department handles their security vulnerabilities [my emphasis], and not the engineering department. We know that they think squelching information and muzzling researchers is more important than informing the public. They could have shown that they put their customers first, but instead they demonstrated that short-sighted corporate interests are more important than being a responsible corporate citizen."

If I were on the Board of Directors, I would: 1) Fire the President and Vice-President of Cisco immediately, in a highly public way. 2) Do immediate damage control by exhibiting some sophistication about Cisco's relationships with the outside world. I'm guessing that, sadly, the Board of Directors doesn't have anyone who has the necessary social skills.

The prestigious Sydney Morning Herald confirms that the US already has "anti-gravity technology".

Yeah, didn't you know our nucular aresenal is second only to our awesome armoured personnel carriers.

http://smh.com.au/news/National/Auditor-slams-troo p-carrier-delay/2005/07/28/1122143948326.html?onec lick=true

So, is this the point where I make the inane crickey cobber type banter to namedrop my nationality? :)

The STA is responsible for the operations of the Sydney Buses network which I used to rely on for travel to & from school, work, and for social events -- until I got my car. It is the most unreliable system ever, on par with the NSW Cityrail system both which has been constantly riddled with problems. It's not surprising that a blunder such as this went by unnoticed.

I would like to do my bit for the environment and use public transport as much as possible but I never get where I need to on time. I've been to Russia and even there, the buses and subway system are more reliable.

There is no practical difference as far as I can see. The material is on the CD, the CD, and therefore the material, is being sold.

My understanding is that they have viewed content made accessible by the HotCoffee mod and decided it's not appropriate for a MA15+ certification. They will not review the certification again unless RockStar issue a modified version.

Those are not claims that were made by TFA. Do you have another source?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/game-over/2005 /07/29/1122144013611.html

Well I never made any particular claims to sanity, as it turns out, but at least I'm not an utter fool, know what I mean?

I found a recent interview with him interesting as in it he mentioned that he was far from the only one nightly sneaking into US Gov computer networks, saying that he saw many others from all over the world doing exactly the same as him. How well protected are these systems really then?

I think that it wouldn't beat this one:
Bus line sues women for car-pooling

Nice try though

save trees by reducing printing paper consumption
more info
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Tips/Save-the-trees/200 5/03/30/1111862448387.html?oneclick=true

If you're referring to cannabis psychosis, your numbers are way off. Most studies I've read say that heavy cannabis use "almost doubles" the risk of psychosis. Note that the risk is slightly less than 2% in the general population. So heavy use of marijuana makes a very small minority slightly larger.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Health/Cannabis-psychos is-risk/2005/03/01/1109546844568.html?oneclick=tru e http://www.google.com/search?q=cannabis+psychosis& ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Obviously we've already forgotten that one of the conditions to allowing UN inspections of Iraq was that no reconnissance overflights would be permitted. Period. We had them slated, but in order to give Iraq the maximum benefit of the doubt, we aquiesed on that issue. Somehow, I don't think these UAVs would have made the cut either, y'know?

And let's not try so hard to not inject political bias so obviously into cool tech stories, kk?

RTFA this is not an immortality treatment - they reckon it can be used to help save people who have suffered severe blood loss. By your logic that we should just let people die because of population concerns we should strip all our hospitals of life-support machines too.

Anyway the population thing its not quite as bad as people used to fear say back in the 70's and so on. The world population growth rate is actually reducing significantly and the population growth curve is levelling off because of declinig fertility rates.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/09/10707322 12097.html?from=storyrhs
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3444

Given that the largest war in history (World War 2) only killed 50-100 million ppl I don't see how holding back medical treatments is going to have any significant affect on population growth or decline. Its been proven time and time again that the only way to control population is through sensible family planning.

According to Pentagon moves to shed Guantanamo numbers, 211 prisoners were transfered, of these 146 were then released. 10 of these prisoners being captured or killed in Iraq is disappointing but still not unexpected. Some of these people are lunatics without a doubt.

Presumably, if there simply wasn't evidence to charge them witha crime, then they should have been released. They can't just hold these people because they fear that they may do something in the future.

Hearings are not the same as having proper access to a court of law. The big problem here seems to be that these people are being held in legal limbo. This is the common perception and this damages America's ability to fight the lunatics who would drag the world down in to a holy war.

As it turns out, Mansfield is no longer even making the claim that his list is opt-in. According to this article, he admits his list was scraped from web sites. He also claims to be taking in excess of $2million per year from his spam runs for his own services.

Just search for "Sydney" and zoom in a little, you'll see the problem.

I bet this is part of our NSW government's plan to overcome terrorists...

It mentions they did more then they were required to.

John Howard used his sons IT company to send thoundands of emails to potential voters in his electorate spaming them but do we see him being charged .

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/26/10935180 06795.html?oneclick=true

Are you a guitarist too?

Actually, there was news of the US military trying to make weapons that don't kill, but rather pacify them. Do a search on "gay bomb" and see what kinda stuff you get. Rather funny, but interesting too.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Gay-bombs-US-secr et-weapon-plan/2005/01/14/1105582700951.html?onecl ick=true

crime plunges to lowest level in years:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Crime-plunges- to-lowest-level-in-years/2005/04/18/1113676704326. html?oneclick=true

This is in NSW, Australia's most populated state which includes Sydney Australia's biggest city which has the reputation as being the most crime-ridden too.

Interesting to note that the murder rate, which is typically affected most by the availability or not of guns, is the lowest on record at 1.0 per 100,000.

It makes me so angry when govenments censor games.

At 35 I can marry, have weird sex (if I choose), have kids, get into debt, take mind altering alcohol, pay taxes, watch contact sport (if i choose), watch horror films, read books and look at all manner of art.

I can make decisions, and am held resposible for my actions, it is assumed I know right from wrong.

Yet, the Australian government thinks I need my computer games censored.

The classification guidelines are supposed to allow me to make an informed choice, not to remove choice.

The situation sucks, I just hope it gets better as gamers get older.

Some links to explore.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/06/06/11179102 43491.html

http://www.oflc.gov.au/content.html?n=166&p=119

It's a really tough line, sure, we have lost maybe 3 customers as a result in 18 months (average spend per customer is $34 per month), out of 20,000. But it is far, far cheaper that the cost of just letting it happen unchecked.

All the reports say the spam problem is worse "over there", with "over there" being decided by the report writer. Rather than falling for the distraction let's look at the common denominator: MS still needs constant tinkering, it's not for amateurs or home users. Use OS X, BSD or Linux instead.

MS is like the old style Harleys. You know the ones from decades ago, before the retooling, where you had to have your toolkit with for any serious road trips. Neither is practical for your casual user.

Even recent versions like XP, still aren't ready for the desktop. Though some claim that XP about even with KDE. For home users that surf, check e-mail, listen to music, watch DVDs and maybe edit a few digital images, there's no need to waste time and money on a system which required esoteric knowledge and constant tinkering. A machine with a pre-installed and pre-configured Linux distro or OS X will save home users AND their ISPs weeks of headache per year. And, unless your time is free, this means substantially less burden.

For businesses you get economy of scale. Plus, zombies are not your only threat. If MS can read your business files and mail so can your competitors.

.. against the Evil Empire .. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/03/25/10170047 66310.html

Don't skip the sociopolitical commentary of Dune. Let's see... valuable substance, used for damn near everything, only found in a desert place, guarded by fierce people with a suspiciously Arabic language... Nope, no idea what he was talking about there.

...about online piracy?

Like I said, grow up.

A combination of hubris, condescendence and insults does not an argument make.

I'd suggest you learn a little about argument framing and how initial definition of categories can cause an argument to go in any direction. Your automatic assumption that what's good for the IP industry is necessarily good for anybody else is at best unproven and at worst simply wrong.

You haven't said anything that invalidates what I've already said so bye.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

Possibly the same crazy demographic who are willing to shell out £2 or more for a sequence of beeps or a midi file on their phone. Their are millions of them!

Dude, it happened.

Actually there were a few contestants. This was almost a month ago. SMH Article

Also, hard to compare just on speed. The availabilty and wide-spread ease of texting far surpasses the restricted use of morse.

I am a fan of Sir David Attenborough, whose documentaries for the BBC are simply fantastic. In my community, you can borrow most of them from the local library.

The following is a section from wikipedia, showing his rather sharp response to questions about creationism. It is quite possibly the best answer I have seen regarding the relationship between evolution & creationism.

From Wikipedia:

... Attenborough's documentaries exposed millions to the diversity of life on Earth, including, of course, viewers who subscribe to the belief that all life was directly created by God, known as creationism. In his series, Attenborough rarely explicitly speaks about the mechanisms of evolution. Instead, he describes the advantages of each adaptation in high detail -- why flowers are shaped in a certain way, why birds and animals migrate, how mechanisms of mimicry can serve as protection or to attract insects and animals, and so forth.

As such, his work has been cited by some creationists as exemplary in that it does not "shove evolution down the viewer's throat". Others have written Attenborough letters and asked him to explicitly refer to God as the creator of life. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, he has responded publicly:

"My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'." [2] (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/24/1048354 544138.html?from=storyrhs)

He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then He chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world."

Sorry -- took me a while to find the links -- It is true no matter how much you don't want to admit it.

A380 behemoth takes to the skies

"In May last year, the planned deployment schedule suffered a knock-back when Virgin Airlines postponed delivery of the A380 until 2007 - a year later than planned. The company cited difficulties in kitting out the aircraft, and added that "delays in airports - particularly that of Los Angeles (LAX) - preparing to receive the enormous aircraft are partly behind the decision", as we reported at the time."

Also -- $20 million in changes to allow Airbus at LAX

And to prove it's just not a US issue -- one more for ya!!

Emirates to bulk up on its flights to Auckland

"Auckland International Airport plans to spend $NZ27 million ($24.8 million) on upgrades so it can handle A380s."

It's actually $1.69, not $1.80 as predicted. See this Sydney Morning Herald article

To block them most certainly violates the social contract.

Nonsense. Not doing what they want doesn't make you a criminal or even a jerk. It makes you a free agent, a citizen, making a personal choice. In a free country one of the choices you are legally allowed to make is to ignore advertising, whether by technical or other means. Calling this a "social contract" is just a marketing 'droid trying to, as usual, manipulate people by manipulating the language.

---

Keep your options open!

The sex abuse scandal in west Africa is NOT misinformation. Nor is the oil-for-food scandal. Yes the purpose of the U.N. is laudable, but in practice it has left something to be desired (watch Hotel Rwanda). You could probably say the same thing of U.S. foriegn policy. In regards to sopmoric comments, as long as the U.N. wants to be a player on the global stage they will be subject to the world's criticisms, jests, and sopmoric comments.

Either way making up juvinile insulting variations on the name doesn't help your cause, it just makes you look immature.

Not true. Marketers and politicians know how important language is - it literally defines the terms of the debate. Use you're opponent's terms and you've already lost the debate, as this article discusses.

M$ would love it if everybody compared open source with M$Windows as a simple short-term TCO business decision, not as a long-term political decision. They'd love if it people ignored the long term, lockin and democracy compromising results of a private, unaccountable vendor monoculture and control. They'd love it if people continued to be good little consumers paying their $35,000,000,000+ per year for a dozen programs mostly written more than a decade ago with the most complicated bits, the device drivers, being written by third parties.

Sorry, but I for one am not going to play their game. If that alienates some people then so be it - at least it encourages people to think about why M$ has so many enemies and about the M$ market manipulation e.g. bullshit like the pre-install contracts, icon management, deliberate incompatibility, keyboard keys, stickers, oh-sorry security problems and "accidental" web redirects. There's good reasons why people hate M$. M$ strategy has changed in emphasis now they are an established monopoly but they're still hugely benefiting from the legal but unethical tactics they've been pulling for decades now.

---