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The article linked to from /. has a link back to /.. Wonder who gets /.ed first?

Quaoar (pronounced Kwah-o-ar) - which is still hard to pronounce.

This discovery is being hailed as the most important solar system discovery in the past 72 years.

I'll say, it's the first "planet" that's not been named after a greek god! This one gets its name from the creation force of the Tongva Indian tribe! How cool, huh? We waited 72 years for something to pop up and we wreck our big chance at coming up with a cool name and call it Quaoar?

Clearly this speaks for humanity. ;)

This article at TheAge disputes whether this object is really a planet...

if only it was hosted on a real news site like theage.com.au.

First referece I found was this. You can google from there.

Last year in a show of how easy it was to disrupt and abuse the patent process by registering a common, every-day idea a Melbourne lawyer patented a "circular transportation facilitation device" with more info on the story here, here(pdf file), and here

Obviously it's too easy to get things patented these days, especially in areas of high technology as few if any patent officer workers are well versed in the areas of technology. Most of the patent office stampers would have little inclination as to how an intigrated circuit works or if an item of software recently designed is any different or unique from any other piece of similar software.

Sure, it's nice to be able to patent and protect your inventions and innovations, but when most of today's patent holders are larger corporations, it's hardly meant to protect the garage inventor anymore.

This is the man who, when head of security for MS, gave us the above quote in August 2001 when viruses such as Melissa virus were targeting MS products. If your chief security officer makes such a statement, doesn't it set you wondering about their credibility working in the field of security at all, and the attitude of the company or government that employes them?

Does anybody know if they are any patents that might interfere with this (like that damn patent on mp3 encoding)?
All it would take is one good patent for MS to shut this down.
I guess we'll just have to wait for the legal battle to begin. sigh. I wish I lived in a country that allowed intellectual freedom.
On the brighter side of things, at least I don't live in a country that allowed someone to patent the wheel. Although, we did let IBM get a patent on measuring bra cup size via direct measurement. :(
I wonder which is worse.

Ms. Rowling, who was on public assistance when she started the series, is now the third richest woman in England (after HRH and Madonna).

She is literally set for life. She doesn't have to write another word. A full tummy and villas in Spain tend to damp out the writing urges.

Therefore, I predict the already late "Harry Potter and the Golden Phoenix" or whatever the heck the book is named, won't be released until 2003, and it will be the last book of the Harry Potter series.

Remember, it takes a borderline autistic to keep at wild success and really make something big. Other talented obsessives eventually burn out.

Incase it escaped anyone's radar Worldcom owns OzEmail, which according to an IT news website is ranked the No. 2 Australian ISP after Telstra. This most likely means that Worldcom will have to sell off OzEmail to recover some assets for it's creditors, but this is not all bad because it means it's original owners could buy it back for far cheaper than they sold it for. There is some more information at this link and this link.

This amazing resiliance demonstrated by electronics (not just this but also Mir and Poineer 10, and there are probably others), combined with the fact that electronics are starting to get smart and escape (as reported on Slashdot, but I can't find the story now), is rather alarming. Sure, right now it's durable space probes and escaping benign experimental robots, but what will happen in the near future? You'll throw out your toaster and the thing will come back ten years later seeking revenge. Combine this with the work on modular robots and you won't only have a pissed toaster out for vengeance, but it'll be riding on that lawn mower you tossed earlier, firing AOL CDs and spraying used motor oil. *shudder*

It could happen! Check this out!

..anymore than "Dog bites man - while he's at his computer"

There is no way Slashdot would have posted this article if the fire had occurred in any other form of business in china. And trying to pass this off as a human rights/totalitarian government issue is bullshit too.

this is something to get upset about

This is a government going nuts

But this story, is standard practice worldwide. Illegal operations lead to loss of life, crack-down ensues. How much more commonplace can it be?

-MKD

Last year in a show of how easy it was to disrupt and abuse the patent process by registering a common, every-day idea a Melbourne lawyer patented a "circular transportation facilitation device" with more info on the story here, here(pdf file), and here

Obviously it's too easy to get things patented these days, especially in areas of high technology as few if any patent officer workers are well versed in the areas of technology. Most of the patent office stampers would have little inclination as to how an intigrated circuit works or if an item of software recently designed is any different or unique from any other piece of similar software.

Sure, it's nice to be able to patent and protect your inventions and innovations, but when most of today's patent holders are larger corporations, it's hardly meant to protect the garage inventor anymore.

The Roaring Penguin article was reprinted in full in The Age (Melbourne) and the Sydney Morning Herald today. Those IT sections are read by really quite a lot of people in IT in Australia.

But at the end of the day, I reckon them filming it is just a publicity stunt - that way they'll at least the entire population of sydney to watch the movie ("see, honey - that's where I work"), buy the DVD, get the action figure doll. Sure, it'd prolly b cheaper to do it all on the computer, but u can't buy people's sentimentality.

a fine article on the value and benefits of hiring an MCSE

Like the one the CEO of IBM recieved from Hitler for setting up the infrastructure that helped make concentration camps more efficient...

Maybe the Australian Government should start ordering its military equipment over Ebay - it'll probably get there faster than the choppers they ordered *grin* N.B. I'm Australian, so it's hardly trolling or flamebait

from The Age

(1) "If we didn't think that (was possible) we would be wasting our time,"

(2) "After that they plan to find a suitable host - probably a large marsupial such as a Tasmanian devil or a numbat - then fertilise the host and 'cross their fingers'."

(3) "Ultimately they hope to breed a genetically varied population of Tasmanian Tigers capable of living in their natural habitat. " Although the article doest state how.

Try this for US anti globalism, subsidising the rich farmers , plus a pittance for the poor.

At first, Altnet will market video and audio clips. Brilliant is negotiating with music labels and movie studios to market their material as well. The files will be copy-protected in some way, using Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology. Restrictions could vary with the type of file or its source; a record label may let you copy a file once (onto a portable player, for example), or play it only a certain number of times.

It's good to see that record labels have finally come to their senses and are starting to use the Internet as a marketting tool. An example of this is how silverchair released their single 'The Greatest View' as a digital download to great success. However it is a pity that such downloads usually have some form of DRM like they stop playing after a certain date, but I guess some record labels aren't prepared to hand out freebies even if it means potentially increasing sales through exposure. On the otherhand other labels, usually the smaller/independent labels are quite happy to hand out free tracks with no constraints at sites like Epitonic

Speaking of Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology, I wonder if Microsoft have released a patch for it since it was cracked last October

Australia welcomes US Heroes!

Or should I say a circular transportation facilitation device?

Naive you are. Read this you must.


Ironic that the October '01 story you linked to refers to the telephone numbers as the 'DNA of business'. Hmmm, maybe I should copyright every IP address, which would trump cybersquating laws. Amazon could tell me that Amazonsux.org violates their copyright, and I could countersue claiming that http://207.171.181.16/ violates MY copyright!

As to the original post in this thread, the guy aparently doesn't get that since its possible to code any sequence of DNA deliberately, the fact that the DNA exists in nature would only be relevant in a patent case where prior work is a valid counter claim. To show copyright infringment, you need a prior owner of the copyright to enforce their right, and would likely need to be in a creative work that consisted ONLY of the sequence (i.e. gene) in question, not in the form of an entire chromosome. Thus the ability to copyright phone numbers as referenced above.

You are sadly mistaken.

You can be in "public" but still have some level of privacy.

To get copyrightprotection it must be an original and creative work.

Naive you are. Read this you must.

Read about here

You forgot the water canon. It's frequently used in Belgium and other European countries and I really like it! It's very effective (you just sweep the street and the protesters end up in the gutter) and not very dangerous..

The Age Online has an independent news site created in Australia that is translated into Chinese every day.
A friend of mine in China at the moment says it has not yet been banned by authorities.

By the way, an Australian soldier was killed in Afghanistan on Saturday.

A follow-up story on the site, with Federal Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott saying he thinks the spying was "justified."

"We will do what is reasonably necessary to protect Australia's national interests. Let's not forget there were Australian troops on the Tampa and those troops were protecting Australia's interests."

And yet, legally, they are only allowed to spy in cases of grave severity. This, I'm pretty sure, doesn't qualify.

Read his whole response:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/2002/02/12/ FFXF44TKKXC.html

Eavesdropping's effects on Australian politics has a long history. The American NSA had a secret installation which eavesdropped on Asia which began to come to light under Gough Whitlam's left wing government. The government was actually thrown out of office by John Kerr, who had been on the CIA's payroll. American spy Christopher Boyce, who was stationed at a TRW location that received CIA, said that the CIA helped throw out, or overthrow, the Whitlam government. Not a big deal in the states, except to Christopher Boyce who's still sitting in prison in Kansas, but certainly a significant event in Australia

From The Age Under the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill, the public will be able to lodge complaints about offensive material with the Australian Broadcasting Authority, which will have the power to direct Internet service providers to remove it or face hefty criminal penalties.

As quoted from Australian Personal Computer The government has a rather interesting interpretation of 'success' when it comes to Internet censorship. When the first (decidedly rubbery) figures on the Internet censorship scheme were released a mere nine months after it started, officials decreed that a system which had only managed to identify and shut down 62 'offending' sites was an outstanding success. When APC did a quick check using a search engine, we found roughly 7 million potentially offensive sites. Drop in the ocean anyone?

What's worse about this is the laws were passed to gain the support of two independant senators so that the government could press ahead with the second sale of Telstra. (Telstra is the federally owned telco company, of which the government has sold 49% of). 62 sites, most of which hosted porn without AVS controls, or bomb-making instructions, isn't something to get up-in-arms (excuse the pun) about.

Before the GST (a new tax system) was brought in in Australia, it cost $60 per month for Telstra igpond cable, plus $90 initial set up costs. After the GST came in, I got a quote for setting up the same service, the monthly fee has jumped to $67 (a rise of more than the tax of 10 per cent) while the installation fee has leapt to $360. You can't say broadband in Australia is cheap, if you take into consideration all the other costs. This article explains that at the beginning of the year Microsoft was complaining about the cost of broadband in Australia. The price has not fallen.

Most reports (for example, this one) says they were sold outside the family for $20000 to settle a tax bill

This has already been covered both here and here.

The Australian EFF equivalent site has a lot of interesting information on censorship in general, and they also a review of some of the guts of the issue.

This doesn't seem to be a new issue though -- in 1999 The Age printed that the first game banned for violence actually occurred in 1997.

It's not like they've discovered flight or built the first boat or the wheel. All they've done is engineered a nice electric scooter. Cool but it seems harly "earth shattering", perhaps "earth nudging."

• Tasmania has a long history of electing Greens so in 1998 our "major parties" put aside their pretentions of difference and attempted to send the Greens extinct by reducing the number of state poiticians.
• More than fifty years before the last thylacine died in captivity, the last full blood Tasmanian aborigine died, a race that had been isolated from the rest of humanity for more than ten thousand years.
• Thirty years ago, the Tasmanian environmental movement was galvanised by the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to stop the then all-powerful Hydro Electic Commission from building a dam which would drown the remote and ultimately iconic original Lake Pedder. Proposals to drain the dam and restore the original lake persist.
• A decade later, a similar campaign against the proposed Gordon below Franklin dam was successful and South West Tasmania gained World Heritage recognition, including the aboriginal art in Fraser Cave named for our then Prime Minister in an attempt to enhance his environmental awareness.
• In the last few months it looks as though another predator, the fox, might be trying to get established in Tasmania. I'm sure I heard a report of some more recent evidence that they may indeed have a breeding population which defies thinking about given today's level of environmental awareness.
• The Tasmanian government recently retreated from its undertaking to support the outcome of the Tasmania Together process with respect to the unpopular logging of old growth forests to support huge (by Tasmanian standards earnings from wood chip export.
• On the other side of Bass Strait, there is growing environmental opposition to the Basslink Project to connect the Tasmanian electrical grid to the Australian mainland grid.

Oh, for crying out loud. Have you read anything about Nancy "N.K." Stouffer's books or, for that matter, anything having to do with how plagiarism is defined by law? To extend your analogy, if the "Jawas" of your example were a race of godlike beings who wore skimpy togas and led exemplary lives of self-actualization, rather than furtive cloaked second-hand droid dealers, and that "jawa" has been part of the English language for centuries... that would kind of take the wind out of your sails, wouldn't it? At any rate, plagiarism consists of more than a few similar names and commonly-used themes; you have to show that the bulk of the later work--plot, dialogue, descriptions of characters and scenes, etc.--is lifted verbatim from the earlier work, and not even Stouffer herself is claiming that. Even her lawyer has dropped her.Don't you think that it's high time you dropped this, as well?

Brainwashed /. readers, who would of thunk it.

Ronald Reagan administration gave 3 billion dollars to Afghanistan for weapons, the same weapons that the Taliban are using now. We can thank the CIA (Under RRA) for helping Afgahnistan terrorist groups, the same ones today that formed the Taliban.

Nothing like Americans killed with Republican funded weapons, and Republican created terrorist groups.

The only Republican I can approve is the Secretary of State Colin Powell. I have no respect for that draft dodger Bush who uses a mostly republican seated Supreme Court and his brother in florida to help him overthrow an election.

-
My how people forget, when its not on CNN.

Welcome to the real world.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/state/2001/09/17/FFX Q15CQNRC.html

The attacks happened around 11pm our time. Our Channel 9 took the ABC coverage. My original comment was kamikazes.

The scenes were horrific. The images of the buildings collapsing will stay with me the rest of my life. I alternated between CNN live, BBC World Service and ABC the rest of the night.

Our Prime Minister, John Howard, was at the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C. at the time. He was transferred to a safe room.

Your former President Clinton was holidaying at remote Port Douglas, Queensland at the time. Security was increased and a plane provided at Cairns for him.

An Australian company recently acquired a stakehold in the World Trade Centres. Refer to
The Age and the SMH

May I say that America is the greatest country in the world? The incredible tolerance shown by Americans in the wake of the tragedy is remarkable and displays exactly why America is what it is.

Condolences to the friends and families of the victims.

so did eddie mcguires house.
read story here

Hmmm... the Melbourne General Post Office was gutted by fire at around the same time as the Billennium. Do you suppose...?

"This company performed an illegal operation but they will not be shut down," complained Scott Harshbarger of the citizen lobbying group Common Cause. From the story @ the age.

He didn't really patent the wheel, in the same sense that patents usually work in the USA.

Here's the story though. It was on slashdot in July, but the search function was down.

• Legislation they cannot realistically enforce. Banning Internet gambling, attempting Internet censorship, making web caching illegal, making PlayStation mods illegal. Censorship laws have so far been a complete failure, with people circumventing them. Internet censorship is said to have cost $2.5 million, while providing no benefit. It's genuinely frightening that the people writing these laws have no knowledge of what they are trying to control.

• Partially privatising the previously Government-owned telco (49% so far) for political purposes, which has made them give clear priority to profit and share price over service. Access to affordable telecommunications in rural areas is getting gradually worse (though the private sector is helping). They restrict their broadband net access to 3Gb/month after selling it as unlimited, while ensuring they are the only available broadband provider for many Australians. They were force to give other carriers access to their DSL network, so they now sell wholesale network access at $69/month, while selling broadband DSL net access to consumers at $70/month (line + access + equipment), and placing limits on the service. Just today, they are refusing to give any rebate to a broadband customer who had a 13 day outage. Somehow the government don't see any of this as a problem, and still plan to sell the rest of Telstra.

• Various laws with no regard for the privacy of citizens, like allowing spies to crack systems, and remotely tap and alter data.

For what it's worth, even Microsoft realise they are hopeless. Hopefully they'll be voted out at the next election (probably later this year?), and this insanity will end.