Slashdot Mirror

If you think they aren't serious, check out the following recent story about a lucky Aussie who supposedly criticised the Thai Royal Family. I say lucky because, after much protest and legal fighting, he was deported after he'd been jailed for 6 years !

http://www.theage.com.au/national/jailed-author-back-on-australian-soil-20090221-8dx7.html
 

I find it interesting that the UK, France and Sweden all scorned Obama for all of this bailout money

they may have scorned him then, but he got a standing ovation from the press at the g20 summit. how quickly they've turned.

I am still puzzled about this one. Particularly since we finished with April 1 eleven hours ahead of UTC.

Plastic surgery clinics could do that too. It would be better than just leaving their lipid waste in big plastic bags in bio hazard dumpsters, where anyone can just jump the fence and steal it.

Already tried by a doctor in Beverley Hills. He used it to power two SUVs.

As a first step, the cops should target one of their own for secret investigation. Will they do it?

I agree with you, However there are two issues that come to mind

1) the mind set : police in australia will not arrest there own. http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/policing_the_police/

2) Investigations into police can bring up more dirt then they can handle . http://www.theage.com.au/national/police-watchdog-sacks-own-investigator-20090304-8oic.html

How would Peter Costello or Nathan Rees react if they were targeted for such an investigation?

The investigators would be told to cease. The powers that be know that the damage would be too great.

Why don't the politicians confiscate the super annuation of corrupt politicians ? What prevents them passing such a law?

[sarcasm warning] What are you suggesting that they get denied there right? every politician knows that if they serve the time they get the rewards.

Also for a lot of politicians its there retirement fund, imagine if they got caught doing something naughty and they had to go into a nursing home with the great unwashed - (the horror)

And last of all, why are politicians around the world so intent on destroying the last shred of privacy of the Common man under the guise of terrorism? First USA (thanks Bush), UK, Australia, Germany and lastly even Canada. Why?

there bastards

Didn't Dr Karl Kruszelnicki win an Ig Nobel prize for similar research in 2002? http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/04/1033538774048.html '...concluded the lint was a combination of clothing fibres and skin cells that were led to the navel, via body hair, "as all roads lead to Rome". "Your typical generator of belly-button lint or fluff is a slightly overweight, middle-aged male with a hairy abdomen," he said.'

Global warming had nothing to do with the Australian incident. Bush, forest, snarf fires have pretty much always happened.

What happened to make it bodycount was that their government has more and more been taken over by envirowackos that prohibit people from putting trees down, even if it means living surrounded by a potential inferno.

I read about this guy that was gonna put down some two hundred trees to make a 100-meter fire clearing for his house. The government fined him. He said fuck it, and did it anyway. His house is one of the few that didn't burn to the ground.

Bottom line, even if global warming is that big a problem, the last one we should have fight that problem is the State and its army of mediocrity, incompetence and lust for power.

Thanks to the influence of the environmental lobby in Australia, we have situations like this:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/fined-for-illegal-clearing-family-now-feel-vindicated-20090211-84sw.html?page=-1

Summary: the Sheahan family of Victoria bulldozed a firebreak around their house to protect them in case of a catastrophic bushfire. Of course, anything that involves killing trees places you somewhere between "pedophile" and "war criminal" these days, so the family were taken to court by the local council, and ended up $100,000 poorer.

Then a catastrophic bushfire came along and the Sheahan's is now practically the only house left standing in the district.

The component which we will lose is local reporting on remote events. I read The Age for news in my region. For everything else I browse google news and select the best source.

The Age won't get much advantage from sending reporters to the USA. But historically they only did that because I couldn't buy the New York Times in Melbourne.

They are all crooks.

In general, yes, but...

The hypocrisy of the democrats who ripped on republicans and Bush and now ignore it when they do the EXACT same type of stuff just kills me.

I would say EXACT same type of stuff. I for one would much rather go into debt trying to help the economy and make things better at home than invading foreign nations for almost no reason.

Change we can believe in ROFL. I'll bet now not one real change will happen.

Obama IS changing the tone in Washington, just not all at once. The democrats in congress are just getting there pants tight over finally being able to DO something that they're stuffing this stimulus bill full of everything they've ever wanted. They shouldn't be doing this, but history has shown that the president doesn't have complete control over ANY party in congress, even their own (this is a good thing). Before you say there's no change, keep in mind that a few things are already different from our last administration.

The explanation you're asking for is that the US is bound by the international treaties which it signs, and they become part of the US law. If the US did violate the UN Charter by invading Iraq, and lets face it it's obvious that it did, then this is in fact an illegal act by the US law and by the international law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War Even Richard Perle has conceded that the invasion was illegal: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/20/1069027255087.html

What part of Sovereignty do you not understand? First, as being a sovereign nation, the US as well as any other sovereign country is able to act independent of other nations. You right that we are bound by international treaties insomuch as they have been ratified and made into law. But as a right of sovereignty, any sovereign nation can change it's laws at will. But more to the point, the First gulf war was never ended. The armistice was an agreement upon conditions that Iraq failed to uphold. When you fail at your obligations, then the conditions behind them disappear too. These conditions were the cease fire that stopped the fighting from the first gulf war.

However, that is all pointless too. A sovereign nation has a right to defend itself. Bush's proactive defense strategy was an exercise of that right. No other nation can stop that while the country is sovereign. Other nations can take up arms or appose it but that's the extent.

This is why the US is not a member of the international criminal court (ICC) and your own link to the UN specifically says that UN Charter required the UN security council to rule on a war being illegal before it is. That has not happened and probably won't happen because the US and UK have Veto powers in the security council. So the UN charter argument falls flat on it's face because of the charter itself. The UN charter also give every state the right to self defense and the Bush preemptive defense doctrine is in and of itself, self defense so the argument fails there too.

To date, no official body with the Authority, internationally or domestic, to rule on the legality or the war has ruled it illegal. That statement of it being illegal is little more then hopeful dreams from anti-war or anti-American factions attempting to gather support and sympathy for their cause.

As a sovereign nation, The US doesn't need permission to act on anything. To date, all claims of illegality rely on some hidden idea that we have no sovereignty. Perhaps you could explain why we aren't in control of our own country and aren't sovereign or finally shut the hell up about the illegal bullshit.

The explanation you're asking for is that the US is bound by the international treaties which it signs, and they become part of the US law. If the US did violate the UN Charter by invading Iraq, and lets face it it's obvious that it did, then this is in fact an illegal act by the US law and by the international law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War Even Richard Perle has conceded that the invasion was illegal: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/20/1069027255087.html

you have problem of transmitting power from where you can produce it, to the place where it needs to be employed

HVDC, High Voltage DC powerlines can transmit electricity log distances.

Also, you still need some way to ensure a stable baseline of power - power that you can count on producing a minimum amount, all hours of the day or night, every day of the year. Coal, oil, nuclear, and geothermal offer that

As you say geothermal can provide at least some baseload as can natural gas. Geothermal provides power in California. Geothermal provides 13,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity. One geothermal power plant on the Big Island in Hawaii provides 25% of it's electricity. And in New York City geothermal energy is used to heat homes.

Finally, have environmentalists considered the impact of the land use necessary to produce electricity on the scale our nation needs using solar and wind?

Actually now many environmentalists now support nuclear power.

How many birds will be hacked to death by wind turbines

Cats are now a bigger threat to birds than wind turbines. Actually it was some of the older wind turbines that killed a lot of birds. Today they're made with bigger blades that spin slower, it was the fast spinning blades that killed birds.

Maybe bird migrations will be confused by all the glare from PV panels?

Birds are already confused by the windows on buildings.

Where are the UK, France, Germany, etc going to build their solar and wind farms?

Much of Germany has good potential wind energy. A German town is going 100% Renewable Power.

Falcon

Keeping fingers crossed for this fire in Churchill Park. I was in Tasmania last week and saw a big area south of Launceston where fire had taken out transmission lines. It looked like hot work putting new pylons up and stringing new cable. In this case I believe the conductivity of ionised gas below the transmission line can cause an apparent short to ground and take out the power supply.

Sounds like a great way to implement censorship or force traffic to follow certain (compromised) routes. Simply say: Wikipedia does something dodgy, they allow free speech and free information, let's revoke their cert (since IANA can be controlled by a government).

Preaching to the converted here my friend...

I immediately thought of this topic when I was reading the BGP article and thinking about the implications of a hierarchal structure (incidentally, they can pretty much "disconnect" direct connections between eachother NOW if they want to... but of course we can route around it, if required - adding encryption/PKI doesn't make all that much of a difference if people don't enforce it).

See, Governments are still duking it out (Diplomatically and Militarily) while their populations talk to eachother on the net' - the wonderful thing about this is I can talk to you, not knowing if you're White, Black, Green, Yellow, Blue, Purple, Male, Female, American, French, Canadian, Belgian or Martian... if you call me an idiot, I can't say "You called me an idiot because I'm (insert racial/gender type here)", well, I CAN, but you can reply... "I didn't know that, but I still just think you're an idiot!".

The concept of a Worldwide Global Communications network with almost ubiquitous availability is something we really haven't had for along time, it's going to take the Governments of the world a bit of time to get their head around it... Personally I think the Politicians/Diplomats of the world should read The Truth by Terry Pratchett (if they haven't already), as it has alot of similar concepts regarding local, social, and geo-political issues in it, just with a different "new" Technology.

The Australian supreme court might have a different opinion on the gravity of your drawings.

Here's something I thought was an exellent example of HR people tend to think (copied from here):

1. Put 400 bricks in a closed room.

2. Put your new hires in the room and close the door.

3. Leave them alone and come back after six hours.

4. Then analyze the situation.
 

oh my god, i read this and experienced a moment of pure bliss, imagining myself building something fantastic and awesome with 400 bricks. then i read i'd have to be in some boring planning department >_

Here's something I thought was an exellent example of HR people tend to think (copied from here):

1. Put 400 bricks in a closed room.

2. Put your new hires in the room and close the door.

3. Leave them alone and come back after six hours.

4. Then analyze the situation.

a. If they are counting the bricks, put them in the Accounting Department.

b. If they are recounting them, put them in Auditing.

c. If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, put them in Engineering.

d. If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, put them in Planning.

e. If they are throwing the bricks at each other, put them in Operations.

f. If they are sleeping, put them in Security.

g. If they have broken the bricks into pieces, put them in Information Technology.

h. If they are sitting idle, put them in Human Resources.

i. If they say they have tried different combinations and they are looking for more, yet not a brick has been moved, put them in Sales.

j. If they have already left for the day, put them in Management.

k. If they are staring out of the window, put them in Strategic Planning.

l. If they are talking to each other, and not a single brick has been moved, congratulate them and put them in Top Management.

m. Finally, if they have surrounded themselves with bricks in such a way that they can neither be seen nor heard from, put them in Congress.

It was for a senior uni case study concerning a few major happenings about 1.5 years ago. I was urged to publish, but after I stepped back and realized what exactly I had written, I thought otherwise. I petitioned that the school keep it internal and not release potentially disastrous critiques of many companies, organizations, and governmental law.

Sounds like FUD mixed with BS to me... What University? Give me an example of one of these disastrous critiques?

You wouldn't happen to be this bullshit artist would you?

This just came up.

When will this thing finally die? Every man and his dog acknowledges that it is a steaming pile of political rhetoric, yet it still goes on and on and on.

From the article I linked to:

Australia's largest ISP, Telstra, and Internode have said they will not participate in the trials. The second largest ISP, Optus, will run only a scaled- back trial of just the first tier while iiNet, the third biggest provider, has said it will participate simply to show the Government that its scheme will not work.

Why wouldn't the government allow them to compete?

Revenge.

Infact, if my memory serves me correctly, after the "save the children by downloading this filtering software" failed dismally, the Howard government started to propose a filtering system put in at the ISP level.

This link has an article that mentions an ISP level filter to detect pervs and predators that use the internet to prey on children. Over time this has simply evolved into what you have now - I really don't think that voting National or Labour would have made a difference to this program going ahead.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/11/28/1227491813497.html?page=fullpage You know it is bad when children's groups want clean feed as well.

i'm pretty sure all NASA and DoD contractors are paid via cost-plus-award-fee contracts.

so the problem isn't that they're being paid too little. if anything, they're being paid too much for too little work (and too little quality). if NASA contracts are handed out the same way that military contracts get handed out, then it is probably done through a corruption-filled old boy network negotiated by kickbacks and bribery. that kind of cronyism breeds incompetence as it destroys any hint of meritocracy or accountability.

"Holly Doel-Mackaway, adviser with Save the Children, the largest independent children's rights agency in the world, said educating kids and parents was the way to empower young people to be safe internet users.

She said the filter scheme was "fundamentally flawed" because it failed to tackle the problem at the source and would inadvertently block legitimate resources."

No, we just get the flyboys to turn their F/A-18s into submarines for the holiday season...

I'm not sure which Australia you're living in, but I think the general public here has pretty good tech knowledge. The government, on the other hand, is made up of idiots like Conroy and Fielding - who, from their public comments, are puritan Luddite's.

The party's good intentions are there, it's just that those charged with delivering a product (Conroy) have no idea what they are doing. I think he's been so sidetracked with his little pet project of internet censorship, that he's forgotten what the "Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy" is actually supposed to do.

And none of this is helped by the resident monopoly Telstra who, following privatisation, have abused their monopoly on telecommunications infrastructure in an attempt to keep competition at a minimum. The Howard government simply didn't ensure healthy competition was possible following the transition of Telstra to private ownership.

You don't need CO.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/03/23/1016843080716.html

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1012207&cid=25565869

"Regarding the Australian filter, it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

The Green party and the Liberal party are both going to block the legislation in the Upper House. Their numbers combined are enough to stop the bill from passing.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/10/30/1224956188036.html

The Greens don't get much of their other policies talked about very much, besides the environment, but they have the most pro-Slashdot internet platform out of any political party. By that I mean they support open standards, net-neutrality and internet freedom (no censorship). They also want the government to embrace open source and all government documents to saved in an open document standard."

Iraq = OIL... Put simply, W was/is backed by oil cartel, Iraq is the second largest oil reserve in the world. From an Australian point of view, we Australia, where asked to join the invasion of Iraq, based on irrefutable evidence of WDM's. Our then Prime Minister (head of state) and his lies... or regurgitation of US lies... http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/11/6277_a_look_back_at.html More importantly our own intelligence contradicted US intelligence, and 1 leading analyst spoke publicly and resigned. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/24/1095961862471.html The same happened to England and every other nation that believed the US and followed. While our (Australia) involvement is very minor, it still is large burden for a country of only 20 million, England's involvement also minor compared to the US is still a large involvement for a country its size. As a result... public perception in these countries is that the US lied to the world for personal gain... This is the Bush legacy.

Regarding the Australian filter, it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

The Green party and the Liberal party are both going to block the legislation in the Upper House. Their numbers combined are enough to stop the bill from passing.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/10/30/1224956188036.html

The Greens don't get much of their other policies talked about very much, besides the environment, but they have the most pro-Slashdot internet platform out of any political party. By that I mean they support open standards, net-neutrality and internet freedom (no censorship). They also want the government to embrace open source and all government documents to saved in an open document standard.

More evidence of the commoditisation of the handset market:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/digital-life/smart-phone/google-phone-here-by-xmas/2008/10/30/1224956198293.html

Oh please let it be so...

For the record, the Australian proposal is unlikely to go ahead, due to opposition in the senate. Yay for divided parliament.

Greenspan himself has admitted complicit fault in the credit crisis. Specifically, he has admitted that these fundamental *assumptions* that some economists have relied on, are in fact incorrect.

http://business.theage.com.au/business/we-cant-live-on-moonbeams-and-air-20081028-5am2.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Blaming a few dodgy loans for bringing down the global economy seems a bit wacky to me. Surely it shouldn't be structured to make doing such a thing so absurdly easy.

Well bloody said.

Friedman dead, Greenspan admitting fault. Could we finally be learning that economics isn't some "solved" problem and is in fact evolving like all sciences?

http://business.theage.com.au/business/we-cant-live-on-moonbeams-and-air-20081028-5am2.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

It seems to me though, that this is a massive discovery and a huge step forward in technology. So why is the only publication that they list a multimedia presentation on, The Age? Shouldn't Science and Nature be all over this? At least it should be in the Journal of Tissue Engineering.

Yeah, I do find it pretty easy to dismiss most witnesses - it's pretty easy to put it down to either hallucination or attention-seeking.

The ones I find a little harder to immediately dismiss are the ones where the witness actually disappears. I mean, maybe hallucination caused him to crash the plane, but that is a fairly interesting story.

And for what it's worth, it's not incredibly difficult to talk on the phone while driving -- or to ignore it. I'm sure drunk driving is a much bigger problem.

Nope. Common misconception and just plain wrong

The reactions of drivers on phone calls are worse than the reactions of drunk drivers. Check those links, or use google, you'll find a mass of studies supporting this.

So if you are someone who thinks it's okay to drive while on the phone, please turn in you license and refrain from driving at all.

Did you even read the links you linked to?

From your first link:

"In the US in 2002, alcohol was a factor in 41 per cent of all fatal traffic accidents and in 6 per cent of all accidents. Data collected by 20 state highway authorities showed mobile phones were a factor in an estimated one-half of 1 per cent of all crashes and these crashes were more likely to be minor, rear-end collisions."

AND

"Mobiles are also not the most common or significant distraction for drivers. Only last month, Monash University's accident research centre found "interacting" with a car stereo is more distracting than using a hands-free mobile phone. An American study that analysed more than 32,000 traffic accidents caused by various driver distractions found mobile phones contributed to less than 2 per cent of accidents, while an outside object, person or event contributed to more than 29 per cent. Adjusting the radio or CD player contributed to more than 11 per cent of accidents."

I think the above says it all.

And for what it's worth, it's not incredibly difficult to talk on the phone while driving -- or to ignore it. I'm sure drunk driving is a much bigger problem.

Nope. Common misconception and just plain wrong

The reactions of drivers on phone calls are worse than the reactions of drunk drivers. Check those links, or use google, you'll find a mass of studies supporting this.

So if you are someone who thinks it's okay to drive while on the phone, please turn in you license and refrain from driving at all.

Sorry, forgot the link. Here: http://www.theage.com.au/national/threewheeler-is-motorings-air-apparent-20081002-4svg.html/

And to go alll the way up there, we'd still be screwed if we were charged for distance as most (all?) of our links out of Aus are undersea cables anyway. Someone pasted me this a few days ago, it's an old article but it helps explain why we're all fucked either way.

While the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been doing some good things, I see one criticism missing from wiki. The foundation is a big investor in Eni, an Italian petroleum giant. Eni has been accused of having bad environmental and health records.

Falcon

The Age in Melbourne Australia reported this two days ago. I love how slow the US News outlets are...

You have a very good post, just pointing out that its somewhat easy (not really) to take out a plane.

Exactly! And if they accept 3 cases per 1.2M head of cattle from their own country, then there's no reason they shouldn't accept at least that rate in beef from ours.

I don't think you're very familiar with the Japanese.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/11/1063268512176.html

The Japanese don't ban their own beef despite a few cases of BSE because it is their beef, not because they've come to grips with the figures.

That's because when Dick Cheney gives someone a facial it looks like this (safer for work than the imagery implied in the PP.)

I don't doubt there are environmental extremists but I do doubt they have any real power.

Speaking of cynical, the last time I heard of a windfarm cancelled because of 'birds' was a couple of years ago here in Australia. The project had passed enviromental planning but the right wing government's federal (anti-)environment minister overrode the states approval process and unilaterally cancelled it, he tried to blame it on parrots and imply that it was scuttled by 'environmentalists' when in reality it was his party's election promise to the local NIMBY's.

As for population, it will take care of itself. Considering the way we are trashing the place in our quest to eat our way though ~10^9 tons of food each year, it won't won't be pretty.

Well I've observed people for 13 years in internet usage and I see that people need more bandwidth (I said statistics, not opinion). And if you read the article, you'd realize the point is that the US is lagging seriously behind other industrialized nations in the adoption and availability of broadband to consumers. I seriously doubt consumers in Japan, South Korea, Finland, France, and Canada are all rushing out and paying for optical carrier and running fiber to their house. Their carriers are providing better infrastructure and higher capacity consumer lines, and at a cost that is sufficiently affordable that consumers are adopting them. And I'm sorry, but if you think SONET is a consumer grade infrastructure you've got your head wedged firmly up your ass.

Well then, we can start with the number of dial up users who don't want broadband yet. link Oh, and in several of those countries you listed, broadband has been subsidized by the government. So the actual cost is somewhat hidden compared to the US. link link link Oh, and I never said a SONET was consumer grade. I said that if you wanted high speed you could always buy it. Apparently you don't consider it worth it to do so.

Grandma is not representative of what "most people need". Grandma is a demographic of what working consumers wanted 50 years ago. The US had better start paying attention to what the demographic of current and emerging working consumers are wanting -bandwidth. Bandwidth for services that both do and don't currently exist. We have terabyte sized disks and we want to fill them with video and audio. We have HD televisions and we want dozens of stations in 1080p. We have XBoxes, Wiis, and playstations that communicate over the internet, and we want the content from those links to be high quality and fast. We have digital telephones, and video communications equipment and software. Every internet-aware product and service that is released will continue to use more and more bandwidth to provide a better experience. As was said in TFA, "Speed defines what is possible on the internet." I don't give a shit if you're happy with grandma being the standard of the internet consumer, the rest of the industrialized world is seeing the benefit in widely available, high capacity communications. There's no reason we should be left behind in a communications backwater.

"Working Consumers" are not the average internet user. After all, that doesn't include 12 year olds, for instance. The "rest of the industrialized world" as you put it is using taxes to pay for internet rollout and still subsidizing the monthly fees. Also, most of them have a denser population areas than in the US. Trying to say if they can do it and why can't we is comparing apples and oranges. You want faster speed? Go set up a company yourself to deploy it or buy it yourself. In the meantime, the US companies are operating without subsidies to do the same thing. Further, grandma does light websurfing, email and whatnot. That is what the average internet user does. What is possible is not what people do. You keep trying to claim that if people can do something they will. That is not reality. Reality is people will start to do something, bandwidth needs will increase, and companies will offer faster speeds. 1080P, and internet capably everything you list are not what the average person has, they are the bleeding edge. The average person does not have that. Also, the game systems do not need 20mbps. They use less than 1mbps. No game uses more than that.

yeah, well I have some news for you too, look at these two photos side by side and tell me if you can tell the difference:

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2005/08/17/menezes_osman_wideweb__430x253.jpg

The guy on the left is the guy that got shot, the guy on the right is the guy they were looking for.

Some other guy a bit further below posted an excellent link to an article in the register that details just how screwed up the situation really was. This should have *NEVER* happened. Really, there is absolutely no excuse for it.

Police apprehend, they certainly do not kill before having a positive id.