Slashdot Mirror

At 10.30am this morning, there were about 7,000 people swapping about 30 gigabytes of music.

In February this year the number of simultaneous users was 1.57 million, although that number dropped to 840,000 in May.

http://australianit.news.com.au/common/storyPage/0 ,3811,2085164%5E442,00.html

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/2001/06/06/ FFXHH7FZLNC.html

http://it.mycareer.com.au/breaking/2001/06/06/FFX7 G6FZLNC.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/telco/story/0,2000020 799,20227632,00.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/nat/newsnat-6j un2001-50.htm

http://www.whirlpool.net.au

http://www.a1h.com

in Australia with GM canola crops, being grown for commercial, not scientific use. These crops are being grown in "secret" locations, and may be polluting the neighbourhood crops (with windblown pollen), but since their locations are not public, we won't really know. This has really pissed off anti-GM and organic crop growers, who feel that their business is at risk.

The island state of Tasmania here would like to be a GM free zone, which if it can be enforced legally, would provide them with a lot of protection, as they are not close to many landmasses.

There has also been dumping of a GM crop into a commercial rubbish tip.

in Australia with GM canola crops, being grown for commercial, not scientific use. These crops are being grown in "secret" locations, and may be polluting the neighbourhood crops (with windblown pollen), but since their locations are not public, we won't really know. This has really pissed off anti-GM and organic crop growers, who feel that their business is at risk.

The island state of Tasmania here would like to be a GM free zone, which if it can be enforced legally, would provide them with a lot of protection, as they are not close to many landmasses.

There has also been dumping of a GM crop into a commercial rubbish tip.

I find it interesting that The Age web site shows on its front page news for today both an article about the Napster decision and another article that reveals that CD sales in Australia increased despite Net piracy.

It is interesting how the word "piracy" is increasingly being used to describe the dissemination of any information (software, music, etc) without the owner's permission. If that's the case, then surely every company in existence that sells its mailing list without seeking approval from everyone on it is indulging in data piracy.

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I find it interesting that The Age web site shows on its front page news for today both an article about the Napster decision and another article that reveals that CD sales in Australia increased despite Net piracy.

It is interesting how the word "piracy" is increasingly being used to describe the dissemination of any information (software, music, etc) without the owner's permission. If that's the case, then surely every company in existence that sells its mailing list without seeking approval from everyone on it is indulging in data piracy.

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I find it interesting that The Age web site shows on its front page news for today both an article about the Napster decision and another article that reveals that CD sales in Australia increased despite Net piracy.

It is interesting how the word "piracy" is increasingly being used to describe the dissemination of any information (software, music, etc) without the owner's permission. If that's the case, then surely every company in existence that sells its mailing list without seeking approval from everyone on it is indulging in data piracy.

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So the timing is "peculiar". Also, as some people pointed out, this is not new - Uncle Bill came downunder about 6 months ago and spoke at length about why Australian broadband had a long way to go etc etc ..(tried to find the link for this but couldn't oh well..it was done via webcast to all major Australian Universities)

Or perhaps it is because Bill is a little pissed about his treatment in the media (check out the headings on this search done of the fairfax web search =))
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They say that the largest pieces are expected to weigh more than half a metric tonne. That would hurt!

Here is an article on a similar theme

This is apprently a recent urban legend..

Check here for more info

Or do a search on deja.. Lotsa posts..

Besides I checked on my phone and it doesn't work.. :)

9210... the number sounds familiar... Beverly hills 90210 maybe? :)

Anyway, I would like to mention that a new feature has been 'discovered' on some Nokia phone models. The feature is a Police radar detector, (used to catch speeding vehicles) and it can be activated by following these steps:

1. Enter your menu
2. Select settings
3. Select security settings
4. Select closed user group
5. Select on
6. Enter 00000
7. Press ok
Clear back to normal, within a few seconds your phone will display a radar sign with five zero's next to it. It is now activated.

Note: Cell info display needs to be de-activated.
Settings -> Phone Settings -> Cell Info display

Here is an article from a newspaper with a bit more background information:
http://www.theage.c om. au/news/20001116/A52971-2000Nov15.html

Excuse me? Sometimes sharks bite it?! Don't you think something's wrong if any shark can just swim up and have a few miles of a major Internet backbone for lunch?

I am really hoping that I'm missing something here. As I read the story, all I could imagine was this super-thin strand of fiber-optic cable just lying on the sea floor. Someone please tell me that this is not so. I know they have it "armored", but if a shark can bite through it, then there's nothing really stopping a scheming human from hooking themselves into this. Imagine - buy a length of Gigabit fiber, and hook yourself right up to it... But seriously, if they just have this thing lying there as I imagined, they're really asking for it.

...............
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name

Where do Wired get their figures from?? According to this article in The Age , and the actual proposal document at ICANN (see Section II.2.2 for the proposed revenue model and the pricing structure), the fee charged for the .biz TLD will be approximately $US5.00.

Bit of a difference to $US2000. What's going on?? Were they looking at the wrong bid?

Yes, The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) is a reliable paper. It is in the same stable as The Age, and The Australian Financial Review, Australia's 'Wall Street Journal'.

http://www.the age.com.au/entertainment/20000804/A48069-2000Aug3. html

I used to live in Wellington, New Zealand. And that's a nice city - but small, only 400K.

At the start of last year, I moved across the Tasman, to Melbourne. Melbourne is just a really nice place to live - great culture, night life, and the job scene seems to be going strongly.

I've found it pretty easy to settle in here, and meet people. There is always something to do. As for jobs.. try these sites:

IT Jobs site by Fairfax
Seek
Monster


As for other sites of interest, check out:
Immigration site
Autralian Taxation Office
Domain a great place to search for share accomodation
The Age newspaper

Umm.. I don't have links for what's on around the city, but some great stuff happens, apart from the good club scene - there's the formula 1 grand prix, if you like noisy loud things that go fast, moonlight cinema is a good thing in summer - outdoor movies. It's just really kind of relaxing and nice.

Melbourne is just really livable and has a good public transport system Victrip

Hope this helps.. and don't forget, I'm a kiwi saying this about Melbourne :)

Oh for FUCK's sake. That is SUCH an utter crock of shit. Nobody here in Australia has noticed this "skyrocketing" of crime rates. None of my friends or family have the victims of even petty crime for a long time. And gee, guess what - none of them have ever owned a gun, much less had it taken from them.

Mmm, I feel so much less safe walking the streets knowing that there are hundreds of thousands fewer lethal weapons floating around. Yeah, right.

Not that you will care, but the official statistics show murders involving guns fell from 99 in 1996 (before the reforms) to 54 in 1998 (after the reforms). Note that those figures are *total*, not for one city, out of a population of 19 million people. Some crime wave. Gosh, you're right mister, we Australians sure are stupid ... how many Americans are murdered using a gun each year again?

Here's a local news report on the recent claims by your NRA about our crime statistics.

A more subtle form of haemorrhaging is the dreaded brain drain that sees Australian scientists, frustrated by lack of opportunity at home, take their knowledge and ideas overseas.

Rob, on the off chance you have the time and inclination, head down to Phillip Island in Victoria to see the inspiration for Tux... its worth the trip...

As an added bonus, you'll get to see some of the real Australia in the people of Cowes and its surrounding countryside.

Further, if you let the rangers down there know you're coming and I'm sure they'll roll out the red carpet. They surely won't have forgotten the huge influx of support and donations received from slashdotters when we had a massive oil spill a few months back.

Tell the newspapers (partic. The Age) you're heading down there and you'd have a nice PR story for Linux to go with it.

just a thought ;)

M@T

This is something that I've noticed increasingly over the last couple of years, and the same thing is happening to TV.

There, quite simply, isn't anything that appears in the newspapers or on TV news broadcasts, that wasn't on the internet the day before yesterday.

I'm sick of seeing a story pop up on in a local newspaper or nightly news segment on the TV, 3-4 days or a week after I read pretty much the same story on CNN on the net.

There may be a fraction more information avaliable, but generally they are a straight rehash of CNN's coverage.

Which leads me to my second problem. There is no independence in news gathering these days. Whether its the fault of all of the media mergers over the last few years or not I don't know, but the problem is that everyone is using the same news wires to generate their stories... so what you end up with 100's of newspapers and TV stations sprout ing the same stuff over and over.

Prior to the net, that was ok, because physical location dictated the target audience. That's no longer the case. From Ballarat, Australia, I can read the New York Times , or CNN just as easy as I can buy the Melbourne Age or the Ballarat Courier. In fact, the only thing these papers can give me that I can't get elsewhere online is local content.

As I see it, there a two choices that can be made to keep a newspaper relevant over the next few years. Either start concentrating on local content and local issues, or play with the big boys and start generating your own news... ie. maybe start looking into the issues raised by cnn, ap and reuters, and provide something extra rather than just regurgitating the story, which is what every newspaper around the world seems to be doing these days....

Oh... and one other thing... so toning everything (stories AND editorial content) down in an attempt to keep your advertisers happy. If a newspaper anywhere was to give an accurate depiction of what is happening with DeCSS, then I'd buy a years subscription from them...

What I am curios to know is, say that you have this foresight, that these attacks are likely to come. What could large sites, such as Yahoo!, do to help prepare for the coming onslaught?

• the following
• link suggest this may not be the case...check your sources first.
  
  ...It is believed the oil came from the pumping out of a ship's bilge, rather than a tanker spill, though neither the Environment Protection Authority nor the Maritime Board was able to confirm this yesterday. An EPA analysis of the oil is expected today...
  
  if you want to ask questions go to the source...here - (http://www.penguins.org.au/chat/index.html)
  
  

Here's a link to a larger picture and more information from an ausie newspaper.
http://www.theage.com.au /news/20000104/A5181-2000Jan3.html

LONELY PLANET: Scientists in California have used a radio telescope in Arizona to capture this startling image of a planet passing in front of star HD 209458 in the constellation of Pegasus. It is the first independent confirmation of the existence of planets outside our own solar system.

Lol!

Every few weeks an article or comment is posted to slashdot lamenting the "controversial" Australian internet censorship laws, and every time hundreds of slashdot readers post comments to slashdot explaining (to the altar boy) exactly why this is such a bad idea.

Why post to slashdot only? Almost everyone here agrees with you.

If you think that the internet censorship is bad and can say so with reasonable intelligence - then please copy your comments to:

The Age - Letters to the Editor (print) and
The Age - Internet Censorship Feedback (online)

and check out The Age's Censorship Online section.

The Age is a leading national newspaper in Australia and if they think there is enough public outrage, both in Aus. and overseas, then they will make it a dominant issue. Other news organisations are then guaranteed to follow suit.

If you're going to preach about internet censorship, then you may as well be preaching in a forum that educates those with a limitted understanding of the issues.

M@T.

Every few weeks an article or comment is posted to slashdot lamenting the "controversial" Australian internet censorship laws, and every time hundreds of slashdot readers post comments to slashdot explaining (to the altar boy) exactly why this is such a bad idea.

Why post to slashdot only? Almost everyone here agrees with you.

If you think that the internet censorship is bad and can say so with reasonable intelligence - then please copy your comments to:

The Age - Letters to the Editor (print) and
The Age - Internet Censorship Feedback (online)

and check out The Age's Censorship Online section.

The Age is a leading national newspaper in Australia and if they think there is enough public outrage, both in Aus. and overseas, then they will make it a dominant issue. Other news organisations are then guaranteed to follow suit.

If you're going to preach about internet censorship, then you may as well be preaching in a forum that educates those with a limitted understanding of the issues.

M@T.

Power outages.. big deal, Trains not working.. Who cares.

Actually it is a very big deal... Victoria, Australia went through a similar scenario when there was an explosion at the major gas provider for the state late last year.

The gas was off totally for 3 weeks across a large part of the state, affecting millions.

In the days immediately following the blast, the only effect on the average person was to go to friends and relatives for electric hot water/heating/cooking etc. An inconvenience that could be lived with.

However as it dragged on, the crisis worsened.

Thousands upon thousands of workers were stood down as manufacturing plants and textile factories were forced to stop production lines. Manufactures in other states were forced to stop production lines as they relied on components from Melbourne.

There was panic buying of food and essentials as farmers tipped milk down the drains (they needed gas for pastuerisation), and large bread factories ground to a halt.

There was a shortage of electrical appliances as 100's of restraunts across the state tried to keep their doors open. Many failed and had to close for weeks.

All of these people lost a lot of money, with many of those working in manufacturing industries already hard up for a buck. It created an immediate welfare problem.

What I am getting at is that, whilst we should still heed the night, the Y2K problems on New Years eve are less of a concern than the amount of time it takes to rectify them and the ramifications of that delay.

This all came about due to the failure of one utility in one state in one country. You don't necessarily need a wide-spread Y2K failure to stuff things things up.

If you want a summary of the chain of events that took place then check out The Story so far... the gas crisis or the full coverage . It's a good indication of what might happen in the first few weeks of 2000.

M@T

Power outages.. big deal, Trains not working.. Who cares.

Actually it is a very big deal... Victoria, Australia went through a similar scenario when there was an explosion at the major gas provider for the state late last year.

The gas was off totally for 3 weeks across a large part of the state, affecting millions.

In the days immediately following the blast, the only effect on the average person was to go to friends and relatives for electric hot water/heating/cooking etc. An inconvenience that could be lived with.

However as it dragged on, the crisis worsened.

Thousands upon thousands of workers were stood down as manufacturing plants and textile factories were forced to stop production lines. Manufactures in other states were forced to stop production lines as they relied on components from Melbourne.

There was panic buying of food and essentials as farmers tipped milk down the drains (they needed gas for pastuerisation), and large bread factories ground to a halt.

There was a shortage of electrical appliances as 100's of restraunts across the state tried to keep their doors open. Many failed and had to close for weeks.

All of these people lost a lot of money, with many of those working in manufacturing industries already hard up for a buck. It created an immediate welfare problem.

What I am getting at is that, whilst we should still heed the night, the Y2K problems on New Years eve are less of a concern than the amount of time it takes to rectify them and the ramifications of that delay.

This all came about due to the failure of one utility in one state in one country. You don't necessarily need a wide-spread Y2K failure to stuff things things up.

If you want a summary of the chain of events that took place then check out The Story so far... the gas crisis or the full coverage . It's a good indication of what might happen in the first few weeks of 2000.

M@T

The real problem is that most people don't care enough to change the way they vote as a result of this stuff.

2 key problems to solve:

• Stopping this sound like a James Bond film - an urbam myth to be ignored.
• Getting people to realize the potential dangers of a government that act outside the law.

The current safety may be only because although the NSA/GCHQ/etc act in a way that is above the law, the people that make governing decisions are not to the same extent.

So which is more likely - Clinton/Blair etc finding a way to act illegally without a Starr report, or making the NSA act in a sensible/lawful manner?

Echelon Links, And More, And More

As others have stated, the media in Australia have largely treated the passing of this Bill as a non-issue. Though there have been some strongly worded op-ed pieces in the national newspapers, they haven't really devoted any major press to it.

Time to use the /. effect for a really good cause...

A national newspaper, The Age, has an internet censorship feeback section which would be good spot to voice your concerns (nicely and intelligently of course... ;). The only downside is that the feedback section is only appearing online at the moment and not making it to the printed version (ie. comments there are being read by people who already agree that the legislation sucks), but it is still worthwhile.

A much better approach, however, would be to CC those comments to letters@theage.fairfax.com.au as this a place to submit comments to their daily reader column for the printed version.

The Age does carry a lot of influence in Australia, and if they had the reactions of the rest of the world pushed at them, along with a valid reason as to why this should be an issue,then we could maybe get some press involvment and some proper public understanding (guaranteed to be followed by contempt) of what the Australian government has just done.

Make it happen. M@T

As others have stated, the media in Australia have largely treated the passing of this Bill as a non-issue. Though there have been some strongly worded op-ed pieces in the national newspapers, they haven't really devoted any major press to it.

Time to use the /. effect for a really good cause...

A national newspaper, The Age, has an internet censorship feeback section which would be good spot to voice your concerns (nicely and intelligently of course... ;). The only downside is that the feedback section is only appearing online at the moment and not making it to the printed version (ie. comments there are being read by people who already agree that the legislation sucks), but it is still worthwhile.

A much better approach, however, would be to CC those comments to letters@theage.fairfax.com.au as this a place to submit comments to their daily reader column for the printed version.

The Age does carry a lot of influence in Australia, and if they had the reactions of the rest of the world pushed at them, along with a valid reason as to why this should be an issue,then we could maybe get some press involvment and some proper public understanding (guaranteed to be followed by contempt) of what the Australian government has just done.

Make it happen. M@T

John Mashey (SGI, was MIPS, Bell Labs) has been lecturing recently on "Infrastress" which discusses the problem of computer architecture not keeping up with CPU speed. Not just a problem of slow disks, which can be raided to get parallel speed increases, but bus and net bandwidths, etc. He says: "It's as if cars suddenly became 10 times cheaper, but the roads didn't change." See articles: here and here.

• ex aus dsd op. caught selling secrets
  
• echelon exsitance revealed - check out the faq and website.
  
• aus gov trying to censor the web & giving authority to DSD to legally hack web accounts.
  
• and using Cray supercomputers to do this.
  
• dont forget to go to the DSD homepage to play the puzzle games (a bit weird for a serious intelligence agency!)

• ex aus dsd op. caught selling secrets
  
• echelon exsitance revealed - check out the faq and website.
  
• aus gov trying to censor the web & giving authority to DSD to legally hack web accounts.
  
• and using Cray supercomputers to do this.
  
• dont forget to go to the DSD homepage to play the puzzle games (a bit weird for a serious intelligence agency!)

Fairfax probably shouldn't have FunkyCaps, because it's a family name. For whose who care, they are the publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age (Melbourne) and the Australian Financial Review.