Rupert Murdoch Wants To Destroy Australia's National Broadband Network

pcritter writes "With the Australian Federal Election looming, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Australia's biggest newspapers, is looking to unseat the incumbent Labor government over its centerpiece National Broadband Network policy. The media mogul sees the NBN as a threat to his media empire and has ordered newspapers to attack the project at every opportunity. The NBN seeks to bring 100Mbps Fibre-To-The-Premises internet to 93% of the country with wireless and satellite for the remainder. It currently reaches 4% of the population and is slated to complete in 2021. The conservative opposition has promised to dramatically scale back the project."

Comments

Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[bartron]

Honestly, I'm sick of technological advances being blocked because it hurts someones bottom line. Something something stock whip makers.

If the NBN affects his business then his business is archaic and newscorp can adjust or die...preferably the latter

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Nichotin]

It is both funny and tragic how these people, who can build such large conglomerates, fail to see the business opportunities that arise when 93% of the population has 100Mbit fiber...

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[aurispector]

If you're not making money, you're losing money. But only a government can simply tax you for more or worse borrow it and let your kids pay it back.

Put the government in charge of the Sahara desert and in five years it will run out of sand. Any organization tends toward inefficiency. A free and open competitive market tends to put pressure on participants to be efficient.

Governments have no idea how to run a tech (or any) business except to make it late, over budget and under spec. Every decision is made for political rather than economic reasons. The only people who think that's a good idea are fools that thing government is always good, or wolves that want the power.

Which are you?

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[khallow]

What is the "technological advance" that is being obstructed here? Looks to me like a standard fight over a government program with the side that is getting teh short end of the deal trying to cripple it by attacking some of the main backers.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[bartron]

I don't trust the government as far as I could spit but the advantages afforded by 100mbit fibre to the home is worth picking the lesser of two evils (or incompetents as the case may be. BTW, my election preferences go way beyond fast internet, although it is a consideration)

Also, even though a government may be inefficient it takes a government with no expectation (or requirement) to make a profit to implement a scheme such as this. A private company needs to make money to survive and can't bear the debt an initial rollout requires to implement (case in point, the fibre rollout in the ACT by TransACT). Once the infrastructure is in place then it, or portions thereof, can be privatised if needed.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[polar red]

at's a good idea are fools that thing government is always good

also fools : people who think the government is always wrong, or after them. you generalise too much.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Carewolf]

Well, he probably sees the opportunities, but also realize he is not the best person to take advantage of them, so he must destroy it to avoid his betters from getting an advantage there, since they might use that to bring light to the places his media empire currently rules.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be the reason there are no public libraries anymore.

They could have been saved if our only "government" was a bunch of out-for-themselves captains of industry. The unfettered free market would surely have found a way of providing enormous utility to citizens who couldn't afford to pay.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Put the government in charge of the Sahara desert and in five years it will run out of sand.

And this is a problem because? Are you a naturalist who doesn't want to disturb the pristine Sahara desert?

The idea that government running the Sahara desert out of sand would be a problem is somehow based on the premise that we want it to have sand, which is a sentiment I'm not quite following. Would you be upset if the government were to reverse the desertification of the Sahara, flooding it with water from the ocean or the Mediterranean, or just finding a way to change the sand into fertile soil instead?

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[erroneus]

Government does, on the other hand, understand infrastructure needs. Matters such as minimum standards, right of way and others help to prevent cherry-picking businesses from servicing and improving only the most profitable areas which leads to all manner of growth and development problems not the least of which are population densities in small and concentrated areas (which leads to high real estate/housing, high violent crime and many other problems) and extremely underdeveloped areas where the population cannot participate in modern life.

At first basic needs included roads, then sewage, then public water (not so sure that's as much of a great thing these days), then electricity, then telephone. We all agree these things are not just good, but necessary for a civilized area to exist today. And the internet? I think we've gone far beyond it being considered a novelty and no one uses FAX machines any more... (okay, almost no one) As far as I'm concerned, it's as much of an infrastructure/utility need as the rest and internet needs to replace the telephone and it cannot do that without first having efficient and usable broadband. Also, we need some open standards for internet telephony that doesn't mean paying someone or something like Skype or other commercial entities.

Anyway... I have too much to say on the subject, but while I agree we can expect waste and mismanagement from government, you have to understand it goes back to the motives of government. Ideally, government should not be for profit. (Invariably it is because business people help get government into office which supports their business interests... a whole other discussion)

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure exactly what your point is, however part of a (good) Governments responsibility is to invest in long term infrastructure that wont see immediate benefits.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drinkypoo]

I was watching a Werner Herzog documentary about trappers in the Siberian taiga and, long story short, one trapper was complaining about trappers who will trap before some kind of critter's coat was really ready, on the basis that a few coins in his pocket now is better than someone else getting full price for the pelt later if they trap it instead of him. It's universal, and it's the reason why I'm a liberal and not an anarchist; without adequate restrictions on commerce it rapidly becomes first and foremost an instrument of tyranny. Kind of like now.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Ocker3]

Don't forget he makes a Lot of money from Foxtel, which people wouldn't pay as much money for if they can get content from a provider like NetFlix, which they'll be able to do if the majority of the country have Fibre instead of the crap Copper lines. He's got a monopoly atm, he doesn't want competitors.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Ocker3]

Exactly, things like water, power, roads, internet access, these are infrastructure that is necessary for commerce, you'd think any politician who wants business to flourish would Want a Labor-style NBN as it increases the chances for Australians to do business tasks better than other countries!

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Ocker3]

If by short end of the deal you mean 'losing his monopoly on providing premium television/movie content' then I agree with you. Because you won't need a special box or line to get high-end content, Murdoch's monopoly will fall.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[BrokenHalo]

Well, he probably sees the opportunities, but also realize he is not the best person to take advantage of them...

I don't think so. Murdoch might be an asswipe (except with the reservation that such an item is actually useful), but from his point of view, the NBN is a threat to his Poxtel network. There's no way he can abandon that, so he'll just swing his wrecking ball wherever it'll work. But let's face it, he's 80-something years old, and he has been solidly on the most extreme right-wing side of the fence for decades, so really there's nothing new to see here.

He has unlimited access to advertising space, which will probably work in his favour with the so-called "swinging" voters - i.e. those who are so brain-dead, they should be disqualified from voting at all.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[BrokenHalo]

This would be the reason there are no public libraries anymore.

Actually, in Australia, the public library systems are often quite good. (For now, at least.)

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[asaul]

Some history. Until around 1991 Australian telecommunications was provided by a single government owned business - Telecom (formerly Post Master General, then later Telstra). Telstra practically owned all the in ground infrastructure including the last mile copper to practically every phone in the country. Any hint of competition was crushed with obstruction, anti-competitive wholesale practices etc. Other players came in and grew some of their own infrastructure, extra long haul fibre mostly, but still practically any Telco wanting to provide services to a customer had to lease a Telstra tail line, generally at prices that made it impossible to offer anything cheaper than Telstra offered. During this period technology that the US long forget (such as ISDN) was as premium as you could get here, and technology like DSL was limited by being only possible where Telstra decided to offer it or where Telstra were forced to provide space in exchanges.

The old copper network crippled any sort of improvement to Australian internet technology - the copper lines were Telstra's cash cow and doing anything modern with them would also mean they would have to share it with the competition, so nothing much changed.

Then a previous conservative government came up with the idea of doing a "National Broadband Network" initiative. It was basically WiMax everywhere, except new places that might get some fibre over time - most likely FTTN (fibre to the node). The problem was to do anything more required buying the copper back from Telstra, and the conservatives screwed the pooch on that because they sold off Telstra as one entity - retail, wholesale and the copper network. As a new deregulated entity with some more gung ho leadership, Telstra were even more anti-competitive and not willing to give up their network. The conservatives also naively believe the free market will bring in the new technology, despite 20 years of proof that Telstra won't let that happen.

When the government they got voted out, the new more socialist government (read that as centre left) plan for the NBN was researched, and the proposal was Fibre to the Premises (FTTP). To do this they gave Telstra the option of selling its copper/access for $11B, or having it bought by compulsory acquisition (a constitutional right of the government) and a long legal fight. A deal was reached (most likely because Telstra delayed long enough and now had a new 4G network that was now its prime market) and the copper was sold, allowing the NBN project to kick off and start rolling out fibre across the country. The basic plan is the NBN Company (NBNCo) build a national fibre network and run it, and service providers sell services on it to customers.

As is natural of opposition government, they say no to everything, and think their way is better. The argument boils down to this:

a). Spend $36B and provide 96% of the population with 100M or 1GB internet over fibre. Most of that cost is covered by selling investment bonds and the eventual income from providing services on this network, so the cost is not necessarily on the taxpayer as much as the opposition would like to go on. Obvious benefit, its long term scalable infrastructure, but is more costly and slower to deploy. This is the socialist (Labour Party) plan.
b) Spend $28B and provide most of the population with 24MB VDSL using FTTN, leaving the copper as the last mile to the premises. Similar business plan, just slightly less cost. Benefit is it is slightly cheaper, and meets current internet needs. This is the conservative (Liberal Party) plan.

So - Murdoch is quite definitely a friend of the Liberals (ironic naming for conservatives), and is using his weight in the media to lay into the NBN plan every chance he gets to attack Labour. Any minor delay, problem, cost increase or simply propaganda he can find to rubbish the Labour government using the NBN is headlines. Also because if the Liberals get their way they will basically stop rolling out the current NBN and go to the lower specification one, just on the basis of slightly cheaper cost at the expense of building actual real infrastructure for the country - and that would be ideal for Murdoch too.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[SuricouRaven]

There's almost more general competition. He controls a media empire: Television production, broadcast networks, newspapers. Maintaining an empire like that depends to some extent on barrier to entry and economy of scale considerations - no new startup channel is going to appear to compete with his own because they would be unable to afford to set up studios or license content, and even if they could they don't own huge cable networks or geostationary broadcast satellites, and even renting some capacity on his own networks costs a lot of money - there's a reason all those religious channels, shopping channels and very niche-interests live up in the 900s on the episode guide.

The internet changes that. Anyone with a little skill and some very affordable equipment can set up like That Guy With The Glasses or SF Debris did - all the time people spend watching videos off of such websites is time they might otherwise be spending watching television.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fustakrakich]

The success of anarchy depends on self discipline and voluntary cooperation. It is possible that such a thing is unattainable in this physical universe, but it would be nice to make the effort. It would mean we are becoming human. What you described is not anarchy.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[geoskd]

If you're not making money, you're losing money. But only a government can simply tax you for more or worse borrow it and let your kids pay it back.

Put the government in charge of the Sahara desert and in five years it will run out of sand. Any organization tends toward inefficiency. A free and open competitive market tends to put pressure on participants to be efficient.

Governments have no idea how to run a tech (or any) business except to make it late, over budget and under spec. Every decision is made for political rather than economic reasons. The only people who think that's a good idea are fools that thing government is always good, or wolves that want the power.

Which are you?

Inefficient organizations are not the worst things that can happen to society. Far from it in fact. Tyranny and monopoly abuse are by far the greater evils. In the so called land of the free, we have millions of workers being squeezed for every penny in the name of efficiency, so that the tyrants on top can have more and more. Meanwhile, they use their powers to control access to resources that should cost almost nothing so that those in the middle and on the bottom can have less and less even though the availability of resources continues to grow.

The simple fact is that efficiency of markets under capitalism only benefits the already wealthy. It does practically nothing for the middle class, and actively hurts the poor. The phrase a "rising tide lifts all ships" is not true with our broken economic system. What we need is a new economic system that severely limits how far ahead of the curve any individual can get. We used to have such a system, it was called progressive taxation. What we have now is a shambles.

The solution is relatively simple. Wipe out corporations the way they stand now. The socialists got the problem right, just botched the solution. You cant take the power away from one group of greedy scuzzballs, and give it to another group of greedy scuzzballs and expect everything to get better. A better suggestion I have heard is to give ownership of all corporations to the workers who are employed by the company. Each employee gets 1 vote in selecting those that run the company. Limit companies to a maximum number of employees to keep super-conglomerates from swamping individuals with raw numbers. To be sure, some economies of scale would be lost. The wealthy would never permit it if they have any say in the matter. Our current system of government will not allow it to happen because the wealthy have too much power and there is no way to get it back from them.

Our government has been completely and wholly pwned by the wealthy. Unless they are willing to give up the power permanently and in ways that can be enforced, the peoples of the democratic nations of the world may have no alternative than to replace capitalism at the point of a gun.

That is the reason that gun control is so dangerous to the average person. Once you have no ability to do violence, you have very little power to enforce your authority, and authority that cant be enforced isn't real. Remember that the next time you vote to "make our streets safer". Its not us they're making the streets safer for...

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments have no idea how to run a tech (or any) business except to make it late, over budget and under spec

Not really... There are many things that, at least some, governments are great at and that is infrastructure.
Roads - Sure some can be worn down a bit, but at least everyone has a functional one leading to their home.
Electricity - Most people have electricity at home. Most of the power-grids where built up either by the government or together with the government.
Water - Most people have running water at home. Most of the water-systems where build up either by the government or together with the government.
Taxes - Try and find a single government that is inefficient in collecting them..

A free and open competitive market tends to put pressure on participants to be efficient.

I would actually say no to that... An open competitive market will make money efficient for it's owners, but the actual company will not be efficient in terms of resources unless it will make them more money. Also companies do fear change because it requires them to change and take risks on new development..
Example: It's efficient for a company to install 100Mbit to 50% of the residents in a community. 20 other companies will not be able to make money in the community without having at least 80% of all residents. Residents in the community do not see the benefit of the 100Mbit connection after a while and goes with the 20Mbit ADSL that is half the price of the 100Mbit connection.
The thing is that a single company only cares about itself, they do not care about the global picture and what is more efficient and beneficial to the whole.
This is why there are many smaller towns have decided to build their own networks and finance it via tax to allow for better development of the town as a whole, and why some companies have blocked them because that company could have made a small profit on maybe 50% of the town. Break even for the town with 100% or private company making some profit on 50% while the town loses money on the other 50%.. What do you think is better?

Basically all organizations are inefficient. But what can be done is that the government can regulate and then the open market will have to conform. Problem is that currently the companies in the open market buys the government so the actual regulating part is lost.

Actually... The only truly efficient and fair society would be with a dictator-ship where the dictator would be completely fair and equal against all... But try finding a person that would be like that, probably even [pick your favorite] would fail at that..

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll never have a worthwhile society until the average human is significantly more intelligent and ethical. Everyone is just too dumb and destructive on average to hope for much better right now.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fustakrakich]

...the Liberals (ironic naming for conservatives)...

Not really. What many people call 'conservative' are actually neo-liberals, the most famous of which being Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher... and would include Rupert Murdoch.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[bkmoore]

Infrastructure in and of itself doesn't necessarily make a direct profit. But having good universal infrastructure, from clean water, sewage, roads, etc. is necessary to having a decent standard of living and a solid economic foundation. Yes, private enterprise can do infrastructure. But generally private infrastructure takes over the profitable segments of the country and leaves the government (by extension, the tax payers) with the cost of doing the unprofitable areas, if they're served at all. Then when the government inevitably loses money, because the most profitable markets have been privatized, the magical-market-political-types stomp on how inefficient the government is and how government can only squander resources. It's like having Fed-Ex trash talking the USPS, even though Fed-Ex doesn't do universal mail delivery.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Accurate and widely available information about reality is a mortal threat to your business model.

  What does that say about what you do for a living?

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Bert64]

There are open standards for telephony, SIP for instance... You can call someone over SIP like an email address, e.g. user@sip.domain.com etc...
The problem is there is no profit in open SIP federation, it's far more profitable to keep users locked in to your own proprietary service (and new ones seem to keep cropping up all the time).

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Howitzer86]

Translation: We have to control commerce before the other guy does.

But I suppose that's what politics boils down to... each group jockeying for control over a market. You've got the early trappers who will lobby against rules on trapping so they can get an early pelt, and you've got the late trappers who will lobby for rules against early trapping so they can get a mature pelt.

I think simply being able and willing as a government to make such rules is the problem. People learn expect that rules can be made in favor of their particular group, and that's all they lobby for - like Rupert Murdoch.

I'd personally much rather see a natural fairness - early pelt trappers and a national broadband - than a contrived fairness: laws against them to "make things more fair".

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[cffrost]

I was watching a Werner Herzog documentary about trappers in the Siberian taiga and, long story short, one trapper was complaining about trappers who will trap before some kind of critter's coat was really ready, on the basis that a few coins in his pocket now is better than someone else getting full price for the pelt later if they trap it instead of him.

Indeed, tragedy of the meta-trap.

It's universal, and it's the reason why I'm a liberal and not an anarchist; without adequate restrictions on commerce it rapidly becomes first and foremost an instrument of tyranny.

I'm with you.

Conceivably, a local game warden could enable the community to maximize their overall pelt yield — though, in this particular environment, I imagine that the pervasive threat of regulatory capture could make the position cost-prohibitive to fill.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[dmbasso]

It would mean we are becoming human.

There is something that I'm still not fully convinced (and therefore I welcome comments) but I don't think the terms human and humane convey the right meaning. We humans are by nature pretty fucked up, but culture and reason keeps us away from our primeval instincts (to the point most of us don't even acknowledge they're still there). You can argue that culture and reason is part of the human condition, but even so it is not enough to curb a significant part of our population. And even if it is ugly, you should not deny it is part of being human.

In particular, I think we should change our culture in order to avoid the biases of:
1. group thinking
2. believing without evidence

When/if we get there, we'll still be humans, but we'll not behave as humans anymore.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Samantha Wright]

The hallmark of what it means to be human and not some other species is that we are not only capable of such things, but much better at doing it than any other. It is in our nature to improve ourselves through cultural and technological innovations. What you're thinking of is much more universal; merely 'animal' or 'mammalian'—perhaps 'great ape' at best. If anything deserves the title of 'human', it should be the struggle between the two. Don't be so cynical as to deny the natural legitimacy of your own idealism.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or simply more invested. Political power in anarchist societies is organized from the ground up. There simply aren't opportunity's for one idiot to snatch everything up

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fustakrakich]

Political power in anarchist societies...

???

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Primeval instincts cover both the good and the bad aspects of humanity. We shouldn't discount their relevance. e.g. many of the things we call "moral" or "rational" ways to get along with each other can be observed in wild animals. Most of our holy books tell us not to kill each other (our own species) but it's ok to kill / eat other species.

The "don't kill each other" ethos can be observed in numerous species which don't instantly into rampant cannibalism because it would be harmful to their survival. e.g. a school of piranhas will mercilessly eat anything that they can - except each other. The school of fish "know" that those are it's "family". In a sense we can map their "code of behavior" to the biblical "code of behavior" fairly easily.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[dmbasso]

The hallmark of what it means to be human and not some other species is that we are not only capable of such things, but much better at doing it than any other. It is in our nature to improve ourselves through cultural and technological innovations. What you're thinking of is much more universal; merely 'animal' or 'mammalian'—perhaps 'great ape' at best. If anything deserves the title of 'human', it should be the struggle between the two.

Exactly my point.

Don't be so cynical as to deny the natural legitimacy of your own idealism.

Not at all, my point is that the common use of the term reflects only the ideal, when it should also encompass the bad aspects of being human.

And it is in itself an instance of group thinking. We are humans, therefore human must mean something positive only.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fahrbot-bot]

you'd think any politician who wants business to flourish

To the politician, it depends on which businesses are lining his/her pockets. /cynical

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[ebno-10db]

Political power in anarchist societies...

???

It's not a contradiction. Anarchists, or at least social anarchists, understand the need for some political organization. In fact anarchists don't believe in anarchy. It was a label slapped on them by those who didn't agree with their approach. After a while the anarchists got tired of fighting the label and just adopted it as their own. Unfortunately (and understandably) it's the source of much confusion.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[wisnoskij]

But the opportunities are not for him. The opportunities are for others to take a piece or the whole of his pie. The absolute most he could hope for, after a long and expensive shift, would be to be basically in the same position he is now, but in control of a internet based conglomerate instead.

There is no more money being made available by this, just a new chance at the same money that is already going to monopolies like RM. In fact demand, aka the wages of the working class (the ones who already spend 110% of their earnings), have been going down steadily for years now, along with the total potential income any of these competing companies could possibly make.

So I think he understands the opportunities perfectly.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[wisnoskij]

Which is a main reason why many/most pure anarchy-theorems disavow personal-property, and share many similarities to socialism.
To at least reduce the desire to screw everyone else for your own benefit. But at mentioned in another comment, self-discipline is also necessary.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Grishnakh]

I thought most of our holy books said it was perfectly OK to slaught other humans as long as they're of some other tribe or don't believe in the correct god. The same books will elsewhere say not to murder people, so the whole thing is a big contradiction.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Each employee gets 1 vote in selecting those that run the company.

That's a very naive proposal. The firm's objectives and the employees' objective are strongly divergent and the conflict of interest would destroy the company. Imagine you are a valuable individual with a job in such a profitable worker-owned corporation and a vote comes up as to how to better use the profits: invest them in new technology, reward the most valuable employees, or spread it equally among the workers. At every iteration of this decision the most valuable employees would be under-rewarded compared to their contribution so they will leave to a different, "capitalist" company. This process will continue until the least productive and most job-loss averse employees will dominate all decisions. This is not a theoretical model, employee-owned firms don't grow except in very special circumstances, for example Huawei which is actually ran with an iron fist by the Party.

There's nothing wrong with letting the capitalists run the efficiency show, as long as we are agree efficiency itself is not the goal, but a fair and fulfilling life for all people. The market outcome is not the end goal, the price system is just a way to rationalize the use of resources. Social justice and equal opportunity is the task of the state. Fuck trickle down and assorted fallacies. Progressive taxes impossible to dodge, government subsidies for education and health, massive intervention in the labor market, rentier euthanasia via macroeconomics, estate and inheritance taxes - this are the tools of the social progressive, not fudging with the incentive structure of the firm.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Socialismis so clearly the best social organizing force, I just can't see why these bourgeois capitalist pigs can't figure it out. What we need is a revolution! Unlimited progress can happen with unlimited government, forward comrades!

Seriously guys, you're all idiots. Community centers, swimming pools, roads, trains, healthcare... what aren't you willing to nationalize?

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[johnw]

During this period technology that the US long forget (such as ISDN) was as premium as you could get here

To be fair to ISDN, it's not technology that the US forgot - US telecoms never got quite that advanced. ISDN had some distinct advantages, but apart from in Germany, it was pretty much killed by telecom marketing wings who never really understood what they were selling.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need is a new economic system that severely limits how far ahead of the curve any individual can get. We used to have such a system, it was called progressive taxation. What we have now is a shambles.

The solution is relatively simple. Wipe out corporations the way they stand now.

Read up on the economic philosophy of distributism. It's close to what you're asking for.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the sand performs some other functions like filtering water that ends up in aquifers, prevents historic monuments from being sand-blasted into non-existence, provides a soft cushion for camels to walk along instead of rough bedrock, muddy sinkholes or quicksand.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[XcepticZP]

And you think that people which are "too dumb and destructive" are going to be somehow "controlled" in another political system? What most people fail to consider, is that somehow these magical political systems are insulated from the people you speak of. On the contrary, those people become part of the political system and leverage the power we've given that system in order to indulge in their "dumb and destructive" behavior, often with the implied moral sanction of the rest of us.

If you don't believe me, just go ahead and ask yourself why most laws need to be "sold" and "marketed" to the public without any studies or peer-verifiable proof. And why none of those laws/policies are then examined after the fact to determine whether they achieved the goals they were put into place for, and subsequently repelled.

You can preach "checks and balances" all you want to me in response. But until such a time as all politicians are held accountable for their words, actions and laws they sanction, you are merely spouting pure unsubstantiated fantasy.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Maxo-Texas]

If one group can set the standard of working people to death, then why isn't that also fair?

"Your lucky to have a job"

"We have flex time, You can work any 80 hours a week you want"

and of course also...

"Full time is 30 hours a week here, so if you want to survive you better expect to work 60-90 hours a week at three different jobs. Heck- we've paired up with another business to employ you 30 hours a week if you work 30 hours a week here just to make it easy for you."

---

What is "fair" is ultimately up to the citizens. And sometimes, if you have strong enough control over the media and the police, they never wake up from propaganda.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[MLRScaevola]

I've heard it said, and it seems more and more true as time goes on, that (paraphrasing): "Everything Marx said about Communism was wrong. Everything Marx said about Capitalism was right."

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

The success of anarchy depends on self discipline and voluntary cooperation. It is possible that such a thing is unattainable in this physical universe, but it would be nice to make the effort.

The simple facts of life are such that around 18% of a population is perfectly willing to muck it up for the rest as long as it helps their short term goals (this can easily be verified by looking at the election results of any country with an actual democratic election process).

The same fact can be observed in evolutionary biology - even though in the long run, cooperation will benefit the individual most, being 'selfish' in a cooperative climate has enough short term benefit for it never to completely be bred out of a population. The statistics here often boil down to a rough 80/20 too.

So although there may be no physical laws preventing anarchy, it is certainly unattainable among life.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[microbox]

but culture and reason keeps us away from our primeval instincts

It's important to realise that culture and reason are equally the product of primeval instincts. We like to flatter ourselves into thinking that emotion is somehow primitive; however, if you think about it, you are /always/ high on your feelings. We all are. For example, consider that you only know something is correct because of how you feel when you reach the conclusion. "Reason" is couched thoroughly in those primeval instincts. As an AI researcher and life-long student of the mind, that is my opinion.

How does this play out in the real world? Well, consider homosexuality and homophobia. Pro-gay groups like to say that homosexuality is "natural", and homophobia is a "cultural construction. Anti-gay groups like to say the opposite.

Both are wrong.

Human suffering happens because we are born with so many different competing instincts within us. The structure of the mind determines how we cognize and "reason" about these instincts. There is nothing in the universe that we can recognize outside of this stuff of thought. There is nothing "important" outside of what our instincts tell us.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Nostromo21]

Nuff said.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[geoskd]

There's nothing wrong with letting the capitalists run the efficiency show, as long as we are agree efficiency itself is not the goal, but a fair and fulfilling life for all people. The market outcome is not the end goal, the price system is just a way to rationalize the use of resources. Social justice and equal opportunity is the task of the state. Fuck trickle down and assorted fallacies. Progressive taxes impossible to dodge, government subsidies for education and health, massive intervention in the labor market, rentier euthanasia via macroeconomics, estate and inheritance taxes - this are the tools of the social progressive, not fudging with the incentive structure of the firm.

There is very much wrong in letting the capitalists run the economy. Until very recently, a large portion of the population (90%+) were required to actively participate in the maintenance of society (manufacture goods, distribute them, provide services). Increasingly these functions can be automated, and they will be. This situation should logically lead to a reduction in the amount of people who need to work, and a reduction in the length of service they need to provide. Capitalism however has the perverse effect of ensuring that a lack of need for workers translates into falling value of those workers. This effect causes power to concentrate at the top of society, and ultimately leads to extreme poverty at the other end. When society only requires active participation of 1% of the population, under capitalism the other 99% starve to death. That's just plain F'ed up. Capitalism worked OK (as in better than everything else), when workers were required to maintain society, this worked acceptably well. Today, it is a dismal failure of an economic policy known as "trickle down". Its time to cut capitalism loose the way the more progressive countries have done by moving to a mix of socialism and capitalism. Long term, capitalism will have to succumb entirely to something else. That something isn't going to be socialism because in many ways socialism is worse. I expect it will be some kind of socially enforced anarchy or something entirely different, that we haven't even glimpsed yet.

As a side note, the only reason companies need to grow is to satisfy the capitalists running things. In fact, companies are only needed in order to take products from the idea stage and get the products to the masses. For this, capitalism works exceptionally well, but it is not the only way to achieve this goal, and as labor is less and less needed, its evils are starting to outweigh its benefits.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[dmbasso]

but culture and reason keeps us away from our primeval instincts

It's important to realise that culture and reason are equally the product of primeval instincts. [...] As an AI researcher and life-long student of the mind, that is my opinion.

Sure, emotion is the base of reasoning. As a fellow AI researcher myself, I suggest for those curious on the subject to read "The Feeling of What Happens", by Antonio Damasio.

How does this play out in the real world? Well, consider homosexuality and homophobia. Pro-gay groups like to say that homosexuality is "natural", and homophobia is a "cultural construction. Anti-gay groups like to say the opposite.
Both are wrong.

Would you care to elaborate? From what I know homosexuality is actually natural, occurring in several species (as anecdotal evidence, I had a neighbor that had a dog that seemed to enjoy being mounted by other dogs :p). OTOH, what could possibly be the reason for homophobia except group thinking? It is not caused by culture, but it is certainly reinforced.

Human suffering happens because we are born with so many different competing instincts within us. The structure of the mind determines how we cognize and "reason" about these instincts.

I agree. But just to make sure we're on the same page, when you say "structure of the mind" you are also considering our mental tools (e.g. language) right?

There is nothing in the universe that we can recognize outside of this stuff of thought. There is nothing "important" outside of what our instincts tell us.

I understand what you mean, but I don't think you should use "instinct" in this context. Instinct is an innate behavior, what you're referring to is "emotional response". You're not born programmed to feel that 1+1=0 is wrong, so you don't have the instinct. Later on you learn a bit about algebra and you create the expectation that 1+1=2, so when you see the first statement you get the emotional response that it is wrong (what people call intuition). Then you learn that plus sign may mean +_{mod 2} and it was actually correct, and you decide to go do Tibet to become a monk, living happily in the here and now.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[WillKemp]

Don't forget Murdoch tried keeping up with the times and failed dismally - he bought MySpace, which he later sold at a massive loss. He's totally incapable of getting to grips with the modern world.

However, the issue here is that the NBN will compete with his Foxtel cable TV network - making the result of a big of capital investment totally redundant. So business opportunities don't really come into it.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[WillKemp]

Even if anarchy was attainable in this universe, it would be unworkable - as it would require every member of the population to spend 25 hours a day in meetings, trying to agree on how to run the world.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[microbox]

You're not born programmed to feel that 1+1=0 is wrong, so you don't have the instinct.

The only reason 1+1 = 2, is because there is something like a half-bit adder in the brain. If the human mind reflects the universe (to a rough approximation), then it is no accident that such an adder would exist. You might say that there exists a culture somewhere that doesn't know about larger numbers. Well perhaps. (The social sciences have manufactured a lot of "evidence" like this.) But even if it were true, you would find it impossible to tell someone these people that 2 apples is not the same as 1 apple and 1 apple.

There are also intuitive notions of biology, which gives us much of our understanding of race. You can tell this from cross-cultural studies of young children. They see an "essence" in living creatures that is unique to their "class". Plays very well in to creationist populism. Much learning is actually about seeing that such naive notions exist, and much political populism is playing to those naive notions that are embedded in our minds. (Every mind is different though.) We never leave our naivety behind. It is part of every thought.

If that sounds distressing, Kant wrote: "The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space." The limitations of the mind *is* the air that makes the resistance to knowledge.

Regarding homosexuality: if one identical twin is gay, then the concordance rate for the other twin is only about 50%. Keep in mind that that says next to nothing about the amounts of nature and nurture. It does say that homosexuality is not purely genetic in origin. If you are interested, I summarised a lot of research in a short essay about two years ago.

As for the biological basis of homophobia, we have no reason to believe that it is purely cultural, but there sure is a lot of wishful thinking on the issue. Yet we see every culture in all times engage in persecution of gay men in particular. We also see adolescents reliably engage in homophobic harassment. We also know from the three laws of behavioural genetics that genetics (not just biology) probably has a large role in homophobic behaviour.

With these culture war issues, it really is just an issue of choosing the "evidence" for what is "natural" for whatever position you want to take, all the while ignoring the very problems with any notion of "natural", and all the while surreptitiously asserting that if it is "natural" it must be good. It is a fraught exercise through and through.

But just to make sure we're on the same page, when you say "structure of the mind" you are also considering our mental tools (e.g. language) right?

Language is couched in mentalese. The structure of mentalese determines the types of thoughts that we can have as much as the limitations of memory and other such factors. Language comes later.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[MichaelSmith]

I agree, and I am not sure if you are an Aussie but around here in Melbourne, newspaper sales have absolutely died. My local news agency has about 25% of the papers it used to stock. I hardly see papers home delivered now, and each paper is a fraction of the size it used to be. Paper delivery of news has pretty much gone, right now, and news companies are still trying to make pay walls work.

So this is Murdoch chucking a wobbly after he got the last quarter's sales figures. Fucking google, fucking facebook, etc.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

gun control is so dangerous to the average person. Once you have no ability to do violence you have very little power to enforce your authority, and authority that cant be enforced isn't real.

First, as the Middle Ages, martial arts, thugs, etc. have proven, we don't need a gun to be violent or violently enforce authority. (I have little need for a gun because being threatened enrages me enough that if I let myself react violently rather than intelligently cooperating -- as anyone armed with a gun is supposed to do, given showing a gun drastically increases the chances of being shot -- I'd be too focused on using the item to bludgeon the person to bother shooting it.)

Second, genuine authority comes from being highly respected for one's abilities, knowledge, wisdom, and so forth -- the sort of person people want as a leader, doctor, etc. -- not from being physically feared. "Authority" that comes from physical fear is tentative at best, as the other individual has no respect or interest in you as a leader and will seek to gain the upper hand the first moment they can. To use a childhood comparison, the difference between real & pseudo-authority is seen in school: students are far less prone to obeying a teacher that flaunts their disciplinary power than a teacher that they look up to.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like it is time for the government to step in and break it up in smaller parts then. That should encourage some competition.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drsmithy]

At every iteration of this decision the most valuable employees would be under-rewarded compared to their contribution so they will leave to a different, "capitalist" company.
"Citation needed".

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[gmhowell]

No true Scotsman. Got it.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fido_dogstoyevsky]

If you're not making money, you're losing money. But only a government can simply tax you for more or worse borrow it and let your kids pay it back.

Put the government in charge of the Sahara desert and in five years it will run out of sand. Any organization tends toward inefficiency. A free and open competitive market tends to put pressure on participants to be efficient.

Governments have no idea how to run a tech (or any) business except to make it late, over budget and under spec. Every decision is made for political rather than economic reasons. The only people who think that's a good idea are fools that thing government is always good, or wolves that want the power.

Which are you?

Tony? You on Slashdot?

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Zontar The Mindless]

... it's the reason why I'm a liberal ...

You do realise that in Australia, "liberal" means "the type of folks that Murdoch usually aligns himself with", don't you?

ProTip: In any other country but the US, you'd be a socialist. Go ahead--say it: "I'm a socialist". I promise you that the earth will not open up and swallow you whole if you do, nor will lightning strike you down where you stand.

Making people afraid to state what they really are is one of the best ways that the right wing has come up with to stack the deck in political discourse. It's why, in the US, the "Left" are really centrists at best, and the real Left is practically non-existent.

(For some odd reason, I'm reminded of Microsoft's use of the backwards slash where nearly every other OS on the planet uses a forward one.)

As for me, anyone trying to game the discussion by pinning fucked-up labels on me or my beliefs gets beaned with my copy of Quotations From Chairman Mao.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[aurispector]

You aren't cynical, you're realistic, which is exactly why government has no business being in, well, business. The political influences present in an open market are a thousand times worse when the it's government that is the only player.

I swear, half of the people posting here have never been in the real world, the other half don't understand the meaning of the word "politics".

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Zontar The Mindless]

That's "anarchy"? You have obviously never worked for a major corporation.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[sd4f]

Considering there's a big corruption scandal in australian (well really state level) politics at the moment, your cynicism is more a truism.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[complete loony]

Labor's NBN is much better than the Liberal plan, but it's not a utopia. There are plenty of issues with the current design that could be simplified and improved.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

at's a good idea are fools that thing government is always good

also fools : people who think the government is always wrong, or after them. you generalise too much.

All of them?

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[sd4f]

Newspaper sales aren't as important, it was the classifieds. According to Pamela Williams (Fin review editor or something), who wrote the book 'Killing Fairfax' she stated that classifieds were 60% of the revenue, and they were cheap to produce. All those classifieds are now a tiny fraction of what they once were.

Basically for newspapers like the fairfax ones to keep their churnalism going, they need some sort of low cost way of bringing in money. The journalism part isn't really selling papers (although it has moved online as well, but there's a lot more competition online as well), and as a result isn't valuable enough to keep journalists employed.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

That the vote would tend to reward mediocrity should be beyond questioning. It's standard operating procedure for all unions to desire and push for uniform raises for all members. I have yet to hear a union say "we want better accountability so that the lazy can be fired". Putting the union in charge of the business is the fastest way to lose any competitive edge - to stop responding to the needs of the customer and focus 100% on your own employees.

You might believe the most talented employees would not leave (or become lazy) and take part in the egalitarian utopia "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". The truth of the matter is that people respond to incentives and a bigger paycheck is a great incentive. Once you earn that bigger paycheck you can support any cause you want - but most people would rather see the cash in hand instead of a cozy feeling that "I've helped increased production today" and redistributed my higher productivity to other cowworkers. It the exact reason communism failed, lack of incentives to excel.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[betterprimate]

Ahem. Tell that to these companies: http://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100

You seem to think that this is some experiment. When in actually, employee-owned companies are the most stable and oft times most profitable like John Lewis Partnership. http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[kqs]

Not a contradiction. "Murder" doesn't mean "kill", it means "kill without the approval of most of society". War isn't murder. Capital punishment is only murder in some societies. Same with killing teenagers wearing hoodies and armed with candy, or killing women who show their faces in public, or killing those of the wrong skin color or religion or sexual preference.

Sucky and misleading, perhaps, but not a contradiction.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drsmithy]

That the vote would tend to reward mediocrity should be beyond questioning.
It's easily questioned. Further, the claim was not that mediocrity would be rewarded, but that "the valuable employees would be under-rewarded".
Putting the union in charge of the business is the fastest way to lose any competitive edge - to stop responding to the needs of the customer and focus 100% on your own employees.
This is what's called a false dichotomy.
You might believe the most talented employees would not leave (or become lazy) and take part in the egalitarian utopia "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
This is what's called a straw man.
I believe a bunch of people working together with a common interest will be prepared to reasonably reward those who have contributed more. Seems to work OK in Germany, after all.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[MichaelSmith]

Yeah fairfax lost me when they started trolling for page views in The Age. I don't feel comfortable going there now. I reckon the collapse of news papers will be second only to the collapse of 35mm film.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Murdoch has kept Foxtel, his Australian pay TV monopoly, in his news paper group and a source of cash flow. It may be threatened by Netflix and others if there is a high speed broadband network is the accusation. Though there will be a high speed network of some sort and Netflix can run over fast ADSL anway. And Foxtel itself is moving into online TV so the conspiracy theory doesn't make that much sense. Being at odds with their policy of small government, free markets and freedom of the press (the government tried to take over regulation and control ownership of the media after it criticised their mistakes) would seem as likely reasons.

The NBN was designed on the back of an envelope while the communications minister, Conroy, was on a plain flight to present a brilliant new plan to the Prime Minister who needed a newscycle changer. There was no proper study or cost benefit study done, and in fact the Government blocked studies when parliament try hold them. The programme is running years behind schedule and is massively over budget. Subcontractors and unions are currently demanding a 40% increase in construction fees. The NBN spent $20b on buying access to old copper phone line ducts from the national telco but work has been stopped because they are full of crumbling asbestos, which the contractors have been showering all over themselves and houses as they dig them up to repair them and install fibre optic cable.

The ABC and the leftwing Fairfax media have been promoting the NBN as a technological wonder and are refusing to be critical of it. The government is running ads for a service that doesn't exist yet as hidden taxpayer funded election campaigning for themselves. So it is good that someone, even if they have some self interest in doing so, is being critical of it.

We have some free speech and freedom of the press left in this country and it is amusing that as soon as it is exercised people start yelling for it to be abolished. The Australian has a circulation of less than 200k readers/day, some of News' tabloids a bit more. Most of their online editions are behind paywalls so not widely read. Do you really think that a few newspapers pointing out some of the facts about problems with the NBN is a major deal? Or that Newspapers run the country these days?

The first article alleging the conspiracy is an op-ed in News' main left-wing rival (whom News have been promoting a book that is critical of their management and they want to get back at them). It had no evidence other that the papers have appointed a special editor for the election coverage for 5 weeks. It is pure speculation.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Macgrrl]

Regarding homosexuality: if one identical twin is gay, then the concordance rate for the other twin is only about 50%. Keep in mind that that says next to nothing about the amounts of nature and nurture. It does say that homosexuality is not purely genetic in origin. If you are interested, I summarised a lot of research in a short essay about two years ago.

Given you can have identical twins of differing genders, whose to say sexuality can't be expressed differently at a genetic level. From Wikipedia (yes I know it's a secondary source).

Monozygotic twins are genetically nearly identical and they are always the same sex unless there has been a mutation during development. The children of monozygotic twins test genetically as half-siblings (or full siblings, if a pair of monozygotic twins reproduces with another pair or with the same person), rather than first cousins. Identical twins do not have the same fingerprints, due to the fact that even in a small space inside the womb, people have contact with different parts of this environment, which gives small variations in the same digital, making them unique. Monozygotic twins always have different phenotypes. Normally due to an environmental factor or the deactivation of different X chromosomes in female monozygotic twins, and in some extremely rare cases, due to aneuploidy, twins may express different sexual phenotypes, normally from an XXY Klinefelter syndrome zygote splitting unevenly.

Although monozygotic twins are genetically very similar, a study of 92 pairs of monozygotic twins, carried out in November of 2012, has found that monozygotic twins acquire hundreds of genetic differences early in fetal development, due to mutations (or copy errors) taking place in the DNA of each twin after the splitting of the embryo. It is estimated that, on average, a set of monozygotic twins will have about 360 genetic differences that occurred early in fetal development.

Another cause of difference between monozygotic twins is epigenetic modification, caused by differing environmental influences throughout their lives, which affects which genes are switched on or off. A study of 80 pairs of monozygotic twins ranging in age from three to 74 showed that the youngest twins have relatively few epigenetic differences. The number of epigenetic differences increases with age. Fifty-year-old twins had over three times the epigenetic difference of three-year-old twins. Twins who had spent their lives apart (such as those adopted by two different sets of parents at birth) had the greatest difference. However, certain characteristics become more alike as twins age, such as IQ and personality. This phenomenon illustrates the influence of genetics in many aspects of human characteristics and behavior.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Macgrrl]

Which Government. His media empire spans multiple continents.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Nom du Keyboard]

Honestly, I'm sick of technological advances being blocked because it hurts someones bottom line.

How about the taxpayer's bottom line who are being forced to fund a Liberal agenda for 100mbps Internet, which while it's nice and good for bragging rights, still exceeds the capacity requirements by far of most home users?

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Macgrrl]

Given how little of this continent is settled and the distances between major population centres, high speed internet also provides opportunities for tele-medicine and education to be delivered to remote rural communities at a greatly reduced cost.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Grishnakh]

I guess that's a good point.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Macgrrl]

Pretty much the most efficient and 'ideal' form of government is a beneficent dictator. And then you have to worry about what they think is before for everyone (and whether they are sufficiently well informed to really have enough knowledge and understanding to make a good decision no matter how well meaning they are).

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Further, the claim was not that mediocrity would be rewarded, but that "the valuable employees would be under-rewarded".

It's the same thing, assuming a fixed pool of resources is available. Under-rewarded as compared to a competing, capitalist, "exploitative" firm, that's the whole point.

This is what's called a straw man. I believe a bunch of people working together with a common interest will be prepared to reasonably reward those who have contributed more. Seems to work OK in Germany

"Reasonably" is not the same as "competitive in a market environment". It might be reasonable for you to think your coworker deserves twice your pay, but that won't stop a competing firm to offer him 3x. It laughable to suggest that a competitive pay scale could come out of a workers vote - it would require by definition for the majority of employees to vote to reduce their paycheck in favor of the talented minority.

Furthermore, I don't claim worker-owned is impossible, I say it does not scale. A family owned business ? Perfect. A factory in a small town where most people know each other and being lazy caries a social stigma ? Workable. A billion dollar corporation with tens of thousands of employees voting on a round of layoffs ? Probably a disaster.

The average cooperative in France has 21 employees. There's nothing wrong with nimble, worker-owned firms, but some tasks really require massive scale to be efficient. And consumers will always go with efficient (cheap and good).

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

You just said that anarchy is impossible. If it depends on voluntary co-operation, that means you have to opt in to it; so that implies there must be some 'default', non-anarchic state that you're opting out of. And if that didn't exist, the anarchy would fail.

I fear you may be right. I also fear that you haven't thought through the implications of your own insight.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr Murdoch and Mr Abbot are of the same opinion as all "conservative" politicians.
Government must only provide the most basic (cheapest) public services (health, water, electricity, phones, schools, internet etc), if you want a usable service then you are free to pay a commercial entity to provide such.

Government of the company by the company for the company profit.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fche]

... and they'd have to revoke that law of physics that talks about absolute power and corruption and whatnot.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

That some employees own variable parts of the company they work for via an ESOP has little to do with "each employee gets 1 vote" approach proposed above. In the first model there is no conflict of interest, I will select the manager that will best protect my stock value. The second will select a manager that will maximize employee satisfaction.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[perceptual.cyclotron]

Sort of. Technically, 'anarchist' simply means 'without ruler' – not 'without order', 'without cooperation', or even necessarily 'without rules'. Etymologically, it is a political system only a hair's breadth from democracy (which simply means 'the people rule'). This fact is studiously ignored because it quite directly puts the lie to the idea that democracy has ever been attempted with any honesty.

Some relatively-parent poster hit on the core aspect, which is voluntarism, and is rightly now a +5 insightful. A ruler is someone who can force you to undertake certain behaviours, but the absence of a ruler doesn't restrict your ability to choose to follow someone, or to take their orders. Most apprentices are in this type of relationship with their mentors. They take instruction, and generally follow it, because they are confident in the topical authority of the mentor. If this confidence lapses, the apprentice finds a different mentor. If the apprentice successfully gains valuable experience, the relationship gradually shifts into a collaborative one based on equality and mutual respect.

Critically, the mentor's authority is always understood to be domain restricted. They are not a better or more worthy person – they are simply more knowledgeable and more experienced in a relevant area. Such individuals tend to accumulate followers quite naturally, and have no need to enforce their doctrines.

So, in practice, it might be better to reframe 'anarchists' as 'heterarchists' – highlighting transient, fluid, domain-restricted, and reciprocal hierarchies over entrenched asymmetrical trees with privilege, power, and authority accumulating at well-defined apical nodes.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[sg_oneill]

THE SINISTER LIBERAL* AGENDA FOR FASTER INTERNET

(*Opposed by the Liberal party because our toilets go backwards in australia and conservatives are liberals here.)

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[_xen]

Sounds like it is time for the government to step in and break it up in smaller parts then. That should encourage some competition.

Except that in Australia it is Murdoch who generally gets to decide who the government is. HINT: If your policy is "to break it up into smaller units" you almost invariably loose government.

Rudd might just scrape in before the Tele & friends has had enough time to throw sufficient mud. Though they are throwing it by the bucket-load right now, it still looks pretty tight at the moment. It would be a bad loss for Murdoch should he fail to get his man in power this time round, so News Ltd will be at it no holds barred. Expect a propaganda campaign not seen since ... oops, almost Godwineed myself!

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Howitzer86]

I'm not saying it can't have good intentions. One reason I'm not a libertarian is the fact that I believe that there really is a class war going on. It's only big media and big people that say it's not real.

I also recognize that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If you start lobbying in mass for rules intended to hurt an opposing group it can come back upon you at a time when your group is weaker. Taken to the extreme it's mass rule and mass theft. Still.... in certain instances I must admit it makes sense. We just gotta not have that constant adversarial mindset with regards to public policy.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Maxo-Texas]

A) I believe that there really is a class war going on.

B) We just gotta not have that constant adversarial mindset with regards to public policy.

Have to choose one or the other.
People have to hurt a lot more before they stop believing the propaganda they consume.
I've listened to an out of work man on the radio raging against unemployment when he self-admittedly was about to lose his house, his marriage, and everything he'd worked for.

I imagine if they brought of age discrimination, he'd have been against rolling back the supreme court rulings in 2007 that gutted citizens protections.

Libertarian is fine- but you need a strong government or it turns facist or oligarchical (because the powerful and wealthy walk over everyone else without a strong government to stop them).

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed the above posters are correct. It is sad. Tyranny it is because were stuck with some form of it either way. May the weak and foolish fear the mighty and powerful. But here we have the reverse side of that coin. Someone has to be in charge and right now the animals are in charge. So it doesn't matter how good and righteous we are in our defense against this insanity.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is in human nature to test social boundaries whether with a clear prospect of personal gain or just to see what passes as acceptable within a given context. That's how we learn as children and that is why people (usually) grow wiser with age. And that is exactly the reason why anarchism is completely unattainable, just like communism. There will always be someone who will want to find out what happens if they impose their will on somebody, or what happens if they don't contribute to the community like they should. Simple gratification, like sexual release or lack of punishment, is enough for the culprit to accept this behaviour as "normal" and not intervene when another member of society tries something similar. From there, only a few steps remain for the very foundations of the given social system to collapse. Democracy works (so far and so-so) because it is a reactive system - it tries not to impose social boundaries until they are universally agreed upon, and adjusts them as the society changes. There are of course exceptions but trying to force, or even convince EVERYBODY that they should act in such and such manner is doomed to fail from the start. There will always be someone who will be daring enough to see what happens if you don't act as they want them to, and others usually follow. Kind of social evolution if you ask me.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wait here, maybe I'll give a f*** or two once I'm done bathing in 100-dollar bills" - Rupert Murdoch

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Everything Else Was]

The logical extension to this argument is that as the cost of producing, distributing and accessing content approaches zero, increasingly the best content will get the most readership. Newscorp recently announced they are setting up paywalls across all their sites. When people have to pay for content to access it, it not only has to be the best content, but the best by a significant margin. I don't believe this is the case for Newscorp. They'll see a protracted decline unless they can remodel their business to embrace the spirit of the internet, rather than the kneejerk reactions we're seeing.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it's business deals being the cause of this corruption, this means that businesses should not be in the business of business either.

Why is it that collusion, interference and corruption is absolutely fine if only non-politicians do it?

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately even in an anarchist society, the exercise of force is sometimes necessary.

Take for example you are living on an anarchist commune. One day you discover that your carrots are being pulled up and harvested before they are ready. Now normally, you would permit people to travel over your land, as long as they are not harming the welfare of your commune. But in this case, it is clear that one of the travellers is stealing your crop, and you have to curtail their freedom of movement as they are abusing it and stealing your crop.

In short, you've got to catch the bastard and force them (somehow) to stop doing what they are doing, as it is damaging everyone elses welfare.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, the term roots in the Enlightenment, and it represents the victory of our humanity over our lower beast forms. It is coined specifically to illustrate what differentiates us from beasts. Cunning, guile and selfishness are not human traits, all animals demonstrate these traits to more or less degree. It is the virtue of compassion, cooperation and humility. The victory of logic and reason over impulse and desire that imbues us with humanity.

There is a reason why we describe rapists and murderers as animals and beasts. It is precisely because we don't see the virtue of humanity in them that we normally associate with our fellow men and women.

I think, perhaps, what you are commenting on, is this modern trend (such as Randism) to portray demonstrating only some of the traits that make us human, logic and reason without compassion, empathy and humility. It is possible for someone to rationally plan the murder of another with logic and meticulous detail, but this person only possesses a partial set of the full qualities of humanity. They have the ability to reason about the benefits they will get from their actions, and the logic to plan how to complete them sucessfully, but they lack the compassion to empathize with their victim and the conscience to pevent them from acting. They are only part of a man.

It is resonating throughout society, across our whole planet, that we have in place a system that is rewarding these part-men and part-women for their selfish and cruel behavior. You can hardly talk to anyone who doesn't understand, feel and know this.

As an optimist, I feel the global awareness of the problem will inevitably transform society and correct this problem. Where other people see power structures increasingly exercising their authoritarian control, I see a system in decline flailing to try and maintain it's control over people who have woken up.

By the way, the solution of an individual is quite simple, and you know it already if you have humanity: You help people when they are in need of help, you refuse to participate in the selfish or malevolent plans of others, and you speak the truth when something needs to be said.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drinkypoo]

Political power in anarchist societies...

???

You are making the same error that many anarchists make. Eliminating the system does not eliminate politics. It simply tends to make them more parochial, often in both major senses.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drinkypoo]

You do realise that in Australia, "liberal" means "the type of folks that Murdoch usually aligns himself with", don't you?

You do realize that in the dictionary, there is a definition of liberal, and that's the one I'm using? I don't care about quaint localisms.

ProTip: In any other country but the US, you'd be a socialist. Go ahead--say it: "I'm a socialist". I promise you that the earth will not open up and swallow you whole if you do, nor will lightning strike you down where you stand.

I am also a socialist. But it just so happens that I am a textbook liberal. (Libertarian website claims I'm an upper-left centrist, but I'm more left than that.)

As for me, anyone trying to game the discussion by pinning fucked-up labels on me or my beliefs gets beaned with my copy of Quotations From Chairman Mao.

That is, in fact, precisely what you've just attempted to do to me.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Zontar The Mindless]

It's local to the US, my friend.

Get out of there for a few years, and you'll discover you've been peering through the wrong side of the looking-glass.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fustakrakich]

It's the word 'power'. It implies coercion, which does not exist in anarchy.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drinkypoo]

I'd love to, but anywhere I can afford to go for a few years is generally a craphole. Remember, I'm working with modern US dollars, not the ones from the 80s when you could go places. I have been to Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico. Panama suffers from endemic sexism, and I don't really like most of the expats I've met so there's no relief there. Didn't see much of CR.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drinkypoo]

It's the word 'power'. It implies coercion, which does not exist in anarchy.

That is an incredibly, astoundingly, jaw-droppingly stupid thing to say. Perhaps you meant to include some qualifiers. There's no state-sponsored coercion, but there's no state-sponsored protection from coercion, either.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

"That is the reason that gun control is so dangerous to the average person. Once you have no ability to do violence, you have very little power to enforce your authority, and authority that cant be enforced isn't real. Remember that the next time you vote to "make our streets safer". Its not us they're making the streets safer for..."

So many things to comment on in your post but this one sticks out for me.

When things get so bad that "the people" want to rise up and revolt, you have to remember that cops and soldiers are part of "the people". Look at Egypt, do "the people" need guns, no because the army joined them. When the government loses enough legitimacy "the people" including soldiers and cops, will rise up. Placing guns in the hands of untrained, unorganized hill billies does nothing for the safety of your country, neither on the streets, nor from tyranny.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fustakrakich]

Doesn't matter of it's state sponsored. I treat coercion from any group or individual the same way. You are ignoring the all important point of self restraint. Without it anarchy is impossible.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drinkypoo]

You are ignoring the all important point of self restraint. Without it anarchy is impossible.

I'm taking human nature into account. With it, anarchy is impossible. Perhaps one day that will not be true, but I am skeptical of any claims of a quick road there from here.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Cedarbridge]

Better the state who can enforce its tyranny with military might than a corporation who can wage it with voluntarily purchased products!

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Australia have a "National Security Law" of some sort, to send him to Gitmo sort of place for saying things like this? I am positive I can help draft one, if there be a need.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[romons]

The success of anarchy depends on self discipline and voluntary cooperation.

Humor +1

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Zynder]

Human suffering happens because we are born with so many different competing instincts within us

Ah you and I studied under the teachings of the same philosopher. For those not in the "know", these competing instincts are fear, anger, & hate. The main tenet of this long, long ancient philosophy is: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. It does not matter what causes the fear- the root cause is the fear and everything else follows. Some may say that being fearful is a path on the side of darkness but being a more practical kind of person, I really think that these hokey notions are no match for a good pistol at your side.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet is the place to get well researched and verified information that is presented with a neutral bias.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Zynder]

I've listened to an out of work man on the radio raging against unemployment when he self-admittedly was about to lose...

I have no idea what you mean by this statement. The whole tone of the post sounds dark and dismal so in keeping with that spirit, are you suggesting that he was gonna lose everything anyway so he shouldn't be on the radio bitching about it? Without more information you could easily conclude he is losing everything because he was unemployed. It appears to me you are countering that notion. Please clarify.

Libertarian is fine- but you need a strong government or it turns facist or oligarchical (because the powerful and wealthy walk over everyone else without a strong government to stop them).

You contradict your own statement, which is the elephant in the room everyone ignores: In order to make Libertarianism work you must be strong (applies to any gov style really). If you are strong then that means you are powerful and most likely wealthy too (money=power). If the powerful and wealthy "walk over everyone" then a government of powerful and wealthy (strong) people will walk over everyone. You in effect have become the thing you hate. This isn't a political problem regarding which party you side with; this problem exists with any humans in the loop. Were you cheerleading Libertarianism or were you trying to make a point? If it is the latter then I am afraid I failed to grasp it. Now from 2 posts up you stated:

"Your lucky to have a job" "We have flex time, You can work any 80 hours a week you want" and of course also... "Full time is 30 hours a week here, so if you want to survive you better expect to work 60-90 hours a week at three different jobs. Heck- we've paired up with another business to employ you 30 hours a week if you work 30 hours a week here just to make it easy for you."

All of these items you listed are exactly what a mostly Libertarian style of society is gonna get you. So I thought you were against it but then you posted that other bit above. Again, what are you trying to say?

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[demonrob]

... it's the reason why I'm a liberal ...

You do realise that in Australia, "liberal" means "the type of folks that Murdoch usually aligns himself with", don't you?

.

Interestingly, the Australian Liberal Party is composed of Liberals, as once represented my Malcolm Fraser, and Teabagging Conservatives, as once represented by John Howard, and now Tony Abbott. Two competing idealogies in the one party, and unfortunately the anti-science teabaggers have taken it over.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it goes far beyond that as it would open up opportunities for business to relocate to more remote areas, or at least individuals, considering the massive population drain from rural communities over the last few decades and the obscene cost of living in the major cities one would think this is as or more important that tele-med/education which in many voters minds is to much of an unknown to be able to consider a real value.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Telstra.

Game over bro, nice meeting you.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[tbannist]

All of them.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Matters such as minimum standards, right of way and others help to prevent cherry-picking businesses from servicing and improving only the most profitable areas which leads to all manner of growth and development problems not the least of which are population densities in small and concentrated areas (which leads to high real estate/housing, high violent crime and many other problems) and extremely underdeveloped areas where the population cannot participate in modern life.

Your post is like your name: erroneous. Population density doesn't cause high housing costs, high violent crime and many other problems. Government policies in countries like the US merely provide the illusion of that, through mechanisms like encouraging premium residents to expensive low density areas and encouraging low value but established communities to be bulldozed and replaced by less profitable (in terms of taxable/rateable land value) but better-looking chains.

On the contrary, population density can easily reduce crime by making breakins harder (you would need to scale a building) and keeping people active in the area around the clock, making it harder to be somewhere no-one's watching.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[cas2000]

Expect a propaganda campaign not seen since ...

not seen since Murdoch's papers fucked Whitlam in '75.

Whitlam's govt was a bit on the nose but still had a reasonable chance of winning without the sustained and vitriolic propaganda campaign against Labour by the mainstream newspapers - especially with the rage that many australians felt over Kerr's dismissal of Whitlam.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[betterprimate]

This is true. But in some cases they actually do. There are manufacturing plants in the U.S. that function in this way. They remained profitable throughout the recession.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Maxo-Texas]

The out of work guy was in relation to consumption of propaganda. I listen to a wide variety of news- conservative, liberal, wackjob left and right.

Talk radio seems unique in that many of the listeners are very poor and are very strongly against anything that would help them because they "might be rich someday" like the talk radio host.

In this case, since "unemployment is bad and only losers and layabouts use unemployment", the listener (who'd been unemployed for about a year) was about to lose his benefits, and with that everything else. He was solidly against any kind of government aid- even tho a small amount of aid might have made a huge difference in his life (he was 59 and not likely to work again until he got social security). I guess he just planned on starving to death homeless or on "getting rich someday" like the host.

---
On the libertarian point, I was hitting the elephant in the room on the nose.
Libertarian will not work without a strong government by people indoctrinated in libertarian values in a quasi religious fashion.

I was a libertarian (mostly a result of reading Heinlein where war veterans formed the quasi religious basis of a noble libertarian government) and I grew out of it and came to realize libertarian government is basically a fantasy that is impossible in the real world.

Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[Zynder]

Oh great, we're on the same page then. I too am a reformed Libertarian. It sounds good on paper, but as with anything else, humans will being able to screw it up greater than anyone could have theorized!

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fustakrakich]

There is nothing particularly 'human' about our nature. Becoming human will require the acceptance of anarchy.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drinkypoo]

There is nothing particularly 'human' about our nature

Congratulations, it's only 0549 and this is the dumbest comment I expect to see all day.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fustakrakich]

Well, wake me up when you can prove me wrong...

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[drinkypoo]

Well, wake me up when you can prove me wrong...

Perhaps you should look up the words you've used this morning in the dictionary, because some of them clearly mean things you don't think they mean, and/or don't mean what you think they mean.

Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already.

[fustakrakich]

Maybe you should watch Animal Planet for a couple of hours to understand what I mean.

Sheesh!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they did things "upside down" not "backwards" in Australia.

Re:Sheesh!

[dintech]

Why not both at once?

Re:Sheesh!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Australians can do both at once if you apply the [[-1, 0], [0, -1]] transformation matrix to them.

must be a slow news day

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitialist robber baron wants to restrict comeptition , hardly news is it

I should start a newspaper...

[Anonymous Coward]

I should start a newspaper with tons of pro-NBN stories. Either it will balance the media conversation, or I'll get bought out for a handsome sum. Or I guess potentially beat up by the mob...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The only correct response to this...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Scream bloody Murdoch.

Re:The only correct response to this...

[Sponge Bath]

Is that the title of an Australian folk song?

Re:The only correct response to this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except by their single vote, of course.

Re:The only correct response to this...

[FatLittleMonkey]

He shouldn't even have that. He's no longer an Australian citizen.

A nice idea

[Anonymous Coward]

NBN's 93% FTTH is like a bridge to Tasmania - expensive, practically unnecessary, and a harbinger of eye watering tolls... Who wouldn't poke fun at it?

Just a shame I'm not in a marginal enough electorate to get in on the early rollout.

Re:A nice idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Support newspapers, they are needed by pet bird owners. I never read the shit they print but works great on the bottom of bird cages to attract more shit.

Re:A nice idea

[Zontar The Mindless]

There's also the fact that Australia's fish & chips industry would collapse without newspapers to wrap them in.

Re:A nice idea

[Macgrrl]

I don't think I've ever seen a printed Newspaper used as a fish wrapper. While they use the same kind of pulp style paper stock, I haven't seen a newspaper in a Fish and Chip shop other than to read.

Re:A nice idea

[cas2000]

the last time i saw fish and chips - or meat from a butcher - wrapped in a newspaper would have been the late 70s or early 80s.

the practice was banned around then, due to the risk from toxic ink...so even the little corner shops had to start using the fancy clean and white butchers paper.

personally, i think chips taste better without little smudges of ink on them.

why bother?

[stenvar]

The whole thing is likely going to collapse under its own weight anyway.

Democracy or policy set by Murdoch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy or policy set by Murdoch? The conservatives are all for it because they know, if Murdoch really wants it he'll give them every media opportunity they need while denying everyone else except maybe unfavourable attention.

Welcome to Australia the Italy of the East. I'm waiting with amusement for the australian variant of "tutti frutti".

Re:Democracy or policy set by Murdoch?

[ebno-10db]

Democracy or policy set by Murdoch? The conservatives are all for it because they know, if Murdoch really wants it he'll give them every media opportunity they need while denying everyone else except maybe unfavourable attention.

Welcome to Australia the Italy of the East. I'm waiting with amusement for the australian variant of "tutti frutti".

To me, as an American, that's the real issue. I don't know, and frankly am not terribly concerned, about Australian NBN. Murdoch as the latter day Hearst is another story.

Re:Democracy or policy set by Murdoch?

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

To me, as an American, that's the real issue. I don't know, and frankly am not terribly concerned, about Australian NBN.

There's actually one good reason for us to care about their NBN project as Americans -- since Australia is highly similar to the USA in many ways, we can use their successes as evidence if we want to get similar projects moving in individual states or regions.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[I'm New Around Here]

Well, from what I just read, it shows the press council got three complaints in 2011, about three articles during June and July. The complaint was that the articles were inaccurate and misleading.

The press council agreed the articles were inaccurate and misleading, although the articles were full of verifiable facts. So now, stating facts in a news article is misleading. Using the latest published numbers is misleading. Quoting a customer, who when asked agrees with the tone of the usage of his words, is misleading.

Australian federal election announced today

[bigmadwolf]

The timing of this post on the front page is a little too timely. The prime minister Kevin Rudd today announced the date the federal election is to be held. It will be September 7th. Me thinks the poster is quite possibly a card carrying Australian Labor Party (ALP) member.

There seems to be a lot of scaremongering going on in regards to the Liberal National coalition's NBN policy. The ALP is promising fibre to the building in all cases except for where it is completely infeasible (e.g. remote towns out in the desert etc.). Sounds great but it will be expensive. Probably somewhere well over $50 billion. The coalition is promising fibre to the node with fibre to the building available at cost to the user for those that need it. Coalition's will be a fair bit cheaper as it won't be funding fibre to every building.

The ALP's NBN policy page

The Liberal National coalition's NBN policy page

Debate over which of the two policies is superior is healthy but blatant biased scaremongering is not.

Re:Australian federal election announced today

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Keep following the money. Government doesn't do this out of the kindness of its heart regardless of the pleasing meme wrapper around it.

Other predictions: It will have greater overuse clogging issues (rationing creeping in) even as it costs more than private will. Don't mod me down. Just file it away and watch as history unfolds yet again. Maybe I'll be wrong. But history does not support that.

Re:Australian federal election announced today

[NoKaOi]

Sounds great but it will be expensive. Probably somewhere well over $50 billion.

In other words, still less than the US government's (pretty much failed) F-22 program. Of course, NBN benefits everybody in the country, while the F-22 mostly benefits a few individuals (aka campaign contributors) who got to pocket the profits of the $66.7 billion.

Re:Australian federal election announced today

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to like Malcom Turnbull, he's a pretty likeable guy after all. But since he's stood up for this alternative NBN plan I have to say I think he's a bit of a fraud. Most of the policies that the Liberals have come out with so far are pretty much aimed at helping out their buddies in big business rather than anyone else.
Nobbling the NBN saves Rupert's Foxtel cable TV network, Ditching the carbon tax panders to the coal exporters and miners, The Libs paid parental leave scheme removes the need for business' to allocate funds to cover parental leave and instead takes it from tax revenue, dumping the mining tax is just another gimme for the big miners, you can see where it's going basically.

The NBN one bugs me though, building this sort of infrastructure strikes me as an extremely worthwhile goal. Malcom's plan (although I suspect it's more the Liberal Party/Murdoch's plan), which he claims is more cost effective, would stop laying fibre at the box down the corner and then rely on the existing (decades old) copper system to provide the final service to the premises.

This would provide a substantially slower service than fibre but still cost a butload of money but still save maybe 10 or 20 billion dollars.

But. Given that eventually the final 100 metres to the premise is going to have to be upgraded to fibre anyway, only doing half the job now strikes me as just plain expensive and stupid. That final 100 metres will not be cheaper to lay at some random point 5-10 years in the future (if ever). You've got the guy there now doing the work, he's got the digger there and half the street's already been dug up, why not get him to finish it rather than tell them all to go home and come back next year...maybe. it would be like building most of the extension to your house but leaving the wall off and then saying to the builder "no that's ok, we'll live with that and maybe put the walls on in a year or so".

Stupid.

Re:Australian federal election announced today

[complete loony]

To add more fuel, Simon Hacket's teardown of the FTTN approach. The guy who ran Internode, one of Australia's largest ISPs.

Re:Australian federal election announced today

[Macgrrl]

Quite a few of the suburbs around our house already have NBN installed (new estates), and where we live is in the 2-3 year schedule. I want ALP to win the next election so that we get FTTP before the LNP pull the pin.

Re:Australian federal election announced today

[gnoshi]

If it has greater overuse clogging issues, then private companies can lay out their own infrastructure to compete. Hell, some of these areas are already serviced by HFC so they can sell their services on that.

Having a large government-owned infrastructure doesn't mean competition cannot occur if the government-owned infrastructure really does perform poorly.

Re:Australian federal election announced today

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Incoherent. ...Unless your premise is 'they're only helping you now so they can hurt you more later', which i think might say a bit about you.

Re:Australian federal election announced today

[Anonymous Coward]

Debate over the two policies is healthy only if, in fact, there are two policies. The liberal 'policy' is clearly just a placeholder for 'Not the NBN', and it fails to address the critical weakness in most communication structures - the last mile. The whole point of the NBN is to use fibre to the door, anything else is just wasting a huge amount of cash on a very short-term solution.

It's extremely disappointing to see something so beneficial used as a political football, although the wailing of dinosaurs was hardly unexpected (cya, Murdoch).

Re:Australian federal election announced today

[jezwel]

The ALP NBN forces removal of competing technologies, so internet over HFC will eventually die off. The provisioning costs are worrisome, however you are supposed to be able to change your ISP quite easily on the ALP NBN.
The LNP NBN seems to be happy to use whatever mishmash of infrastructure sticks on the wall be used, so long as the cap-ex cost is lower than the ALP plan. Long term management, maintenance, interoperability, ISP portability be damned.

Re:Labor Lie

[The1stImmortal]

Seriously? The coalition's plan is "Let's take the Labor Party's plan, and shave a couple percent off the price by dropping the most important bit of the project!" (ie, converting from FTTH to FTTN and leaving everyone stuck with telstra's awful ancient copper system connecting to a large and unsightly roadside active cabinet)

If the NBN is going to get done, lets get it done properly, instead of doing some half-hearted poor job of it.

slightly off topic

[Presto Vivace]

Murdoch's Pirates. It is useful to keep in mind News Corps' very sleazy business culture.

He will no doubt enlist the help of the country's

[mark_reh]

religious fanatics by pointing out that a high speed broad-band network will be primarily used to speed the delivery of pornography to children.

Re:Labor Lie

[ebno-10db]

What's a lie, that the Labour NBN policy is a good idea, or that Murdoch uses his media empire to oppose a policy that he thinks will hurt his business?

As an American, I don't know enough about the NBN program to say. If Labour sucks then let Australian voters throw them out.

Murdoch is another story. Excessive media consolidation is a major problem, and Murdoch's tentacles are not confined to your continent. The US used to have regulations that limited the extent of media consolidation, and ensured greater freedom and diversity of the press, but they were thrown in the trash. No one person or organization should control so much of the news that people get.

Re:He will no doubt enlist the help of the country

[ebno-10db]

The UK has fixed that. If we had such a program in America we could ensure that at least 50% of Internet content was evangelical preaching.

the news corp vine

[trillion]

i will light up your dark fibre heart.

Re: Labor Lie

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem we have here in Australia is that both choices in party suck, it's like choosing between syphallis and herpes. You don't want either of them, but once you've got em, they don't go away.

Re:He will no doubt enlist the help of the country

[Hentes]

They already have an internet filter so that argument won't work.

Re: Labor Lie

[ebno-10db]

The problem we have here in Australia is that both choices in party suck, it's like choosing between syphallis and herpes. You don't want either of them, but once you've got em, they don't go away.

Australia. You mean the country/continent in the Southern Hemisphere, right? Because it really sounds like you're talking about America.

Re:He will no doubt enlist the help of the country

[Anonymous Coward]

religious fanatics by pointing out that a high speed broad-band network will be primarily used to speed the delivery of child pornography.

FTFY

captcha: bowels

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[Anonymous Coward]

So if *some* of the claims in an article are true it cannot be inaccurate or misleading. Got it.

Of course he hates it.

[DMJC]

Of course Murdoch hates the NBN, he owns the largest Cable TV network in Australia! Who would be paying to watch shows over the cable network when they can download them over fibre? Or worse yet, pay money to netflix to stream them to their houses directly. It's a massive threat to FOXTEL.

Re:Of course he hates it.

[asaul]

There is nothing stopping Foxtel being offered over the NBN - what he hates is the hint of competition that it would bring compared to the current cable/satellite monopoly.

Re:Of course he hates it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sorry, Netflix is not available in your country yet."

So.....yeah.

Re:Of course he hates it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Foxtel over the NBN would never reach the profit levels that are needed, and he will be left needing to remove all those useless wires he put up all over the place.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[Anonymous Coward]

Properly chosen "facts" can be misleading and untruthful. For example, take Mitt Romney's comments about the size of the US Navy having fewer ships in service under Obama than anytime since the first World War.

True, but irrelevant information with no particular meaning or worth in the discussion. The needs and composition of the US Navy has changed in the almost century since that figure was pulled out of the air, and even the counting of ships.

Yet Romney parroted the line till his face turned blue. And so did Murdoch's networks in the US.

So you know what? Murdoch has a history in America of using facts in a way that is misleading and inaccurate, so why would any of us expect it to be different in Australia? A man doesn't change his conduct when crossing the ocean.

 

That anti-government bullshit is not relevant

[dbIII]

The government's role here is basicly to put up the money and get the thing built. To use a vehicle analogy they are contracting out to get highways built but have no role in the trucking companies that are going to use it later.

The entire thing is being done to repair an earlier government mistake anyway - of giving a communications monopoly away with not strings attached so the best way for that monopoly to make money was just sit on it and patch bits that broke since 1996.

Re:That anti-government bullshit is not relevant

[drinkypoo]

I live in former Pacific Bell territory, and in the boonies to boot. I can't get DSL because they're still patching bits that broke since the 1980s in my neighborhood.

Re:That anti-government bullshit is not relevant

[fche]

"The entire thing is being done to repair an earlier government mistake anyway ..."

So taxpayers are on the hook twice for governmental error? Count yourself lucky it's only two so far.

Re:That anti-government bullshit is not relevant

[dbIII]

It's a very long list as far as telecommunications goes but I've given you the big two. Putting the wife of leading party member on the board of a theoretically independent company is just complication in the tangled spider web full of shit. Phone lines are scientific aren't they, why not put a nuclear scientist with no management experience in charge of a telecommunications company with a couple of hundred thousand employees? It's gone from next day service to around a three week wait if you happen to be home when the tech unexpectedly drops in.

Re:That anti-government bullshit is not relevant

[Macgrrl]

And it was the LNP that sold off Telstra, these are the same guys who want to disband NBN should they win the election in September.

At least the ALP are trying to fix the problem.

Re:That anti-government bullshit is not relevant

[fche]

... so every time the political pendulum swings, the taxpayer will have to "fix" this issue again? (Or maybe not; if one of the swings results in a sale/revenue, the other a subsidy/expense.)

Re:That anti-government bullshit is not relevant

[jezwel]

Depends on whether you are rooting for individual taxpayers or corporate taxpayers.

If the ALP win the election:
The ALP will do it right by creating an almost ubiquitous FTTHome network that will last several decades. It will cost more than it should but it won't be disastrous - currently private enterprise are causing hold-ups for what looks like political advantage. Down the road the LNP will obtain a majority and privatise it for their corporate buddies - using a mantra of 'paying off Labor's debt'- with not enough oversight or regulation. Costs to consumers will increase, but at least almost every one will be on fibre, so that helps immensely when it comes to development of new tech.

If the LNP win the election: They will scratch a lot of the FTTHome and replace it with FTTNode, with last couple hundred metres served by copper xDSL. Other technologies such as HFC will be kept. 60,000 + DSL cabinets and consequently 2+ additional power plants will be needed. The cost *may* be several % cheaper than the ALP FTTHome plan, though it is doubtful it could be completed earlier.
There will be cherry picking and over-servicing.
Obtainable speeds will be variable and a mish mash of technologies and infrastructure owned by different companies.
The copper will require $1B annually to maintain, which - with the extra power plants - will increase the costs to the taxpayers.

The entire FTTNode system will be shown to be inadequate, possibly before it is completed. All those DSL cabinets will need dismantling, and the FTTHome runs will cost the taxpayer more $Billions.

IF you are a corporate that is interested in this venture, you will want the LNP to get in so you can get your snouts in the trough twice in quick succession.

Re:That anti-government bullshit is not relevant

[fche]

It is a shame they can't both lose.

That's nothing

[mbone]

Here in the USA he is trying to destroy the entire country.

Re:That's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Your foreign policy did that many years ago, as well a pricing higher education out of the majority's financial means, and then some for health care.

Re:That's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Got hyperbole? Sheesh.

Re:That's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the Kenyan you are thinking of not the former Australian.

Re:That's nothing

[ebno-10db]

Your foreign policy did that many years ago, as well a pricing higher education out of the majority's financial means, and then some for health care.

At least two out of those three were aided and abetted by Murdoch's American "news" operations.

Re:That's nothing

[antdude]

Didn't he already destroy USA? Look at it!

Re:Labor Lie

[dbIII]

Look at it again, it's a list of hopes and not a policy. The major hope is that Telstra will give away a lot of stuff for free - as if that's going to happen.

Re:Labor Lie

[dbIII]

The US used to have regulations that limited the extent of media consolidation

They were mostly designed to prevent foreign ownership which is why Murdoch is now a US citizen. The corporation itself is still technically foreign and based in Bermuda or somewhere to avoid US tax but that doesn't matter if a US citizen is in charge.

Re:He will no doubt enlist the help of the country

[mark_reh]

In the US we have at least 50% of TV and radio broadcast time and bandwidth dedicated to preaching (some of which is presented in the form of right-wing political propaganda), the remainder is divided between singing contests and "news" about the Kardashians.

Fair & Balanced

[mrspoonsi]

For the guy who owns Fox News, Karma works in weird and wonderful ways.

Re:Labor Lie

[AHuxley]

Lets do the math:
FTTN will need power and optical rolled out into suburbia.
Each node will be ejecting fancy new vectoring or better tech into existing final very old copper runs of 200~2000m.
Australia will have have to look hard at each adsl user. That long run of existing adsl copper from the 500m-4 km exchange/rim (~digital loop carrier) will have fight with the new nodes.
What will a new 300m-2km run of vectoring copper do to existing adel 1/2 users?
Hint - every user will have to get a node connection for internet if vectoring is used near existing adsl connections:)
Thats a lot of nodes to build out in suburbia per 500-2000m suburban copper loops.
The short runs of copper are corroded, crushed or have a few too many joins and will need ongoing care.
Australia did over provision copper, but that was a long time ago ~100% redundancy (~2.5 pairs per home) is now very low.
What is left is over used or of unknown quality re low number of working pairs.
http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2012/11/27/3642266.htm
Our solder joints are old, oxidisation is ongoing, alien crosstalk (ATX)....copper diameter (in Australia 0.4mm is common)... the list of copper issues in the ground is Australia is not like some 'new' lab network.
http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/products/network/vdslwp.pdf has some numbers over longer runs on page 32.
http://delimiter.com.au/2012/04/30/fttn-a-huge-mistake-says-ex-bt-cto/

That's only a Sydney solution

[dbIII]

One is a policy, another is a bit of a wish list before the policy is fully thought out. If you look hard enough there's bound to still be a podcast of the ABC radio interview with Malcolm Turnbull on the morning it was released, where the answer to nearly every question was along the lines of "we'll get to that later". If the Libs, Nats and LNP win and form a government I'd give it about a year before they have a plan. Whether it's better or worse depends on circumstances and how much pressure the Nats who want broadband in their electorates apply and what numbers they have. The preview we've seen is only going to work in areas with a lot of evenly spread telephone exchanges not far apart so is really only a Sydney solution.

The main purpose of the NBN as far as I see it is to do an end run around Telstra who is just happy to sit on infrastructure that hasn't changed much since 1996 and not let anyone else do anything better. Most of the vast cost of the NBN is about buying off Telstra. It's about fixing a mess that was dumped on the country in a desire for short term gain with a fire sale in times when the government didn't really need the cash. If Telstra had a board of better quality than a politician's wife, a failed historian and a union busting failed farmer things may have been different, but it's about sitting on stuff and not letting anyone else in instead of competing on the basis of improvements or service.

Fuck

[benjfowler]

I hate that evil old rightwing cunt. I hope he dies of cancer.

Re:Fuck

[trillion]

wow that is harsh, I hope he lives to see that cure for cancer be found.

Re:Fuck

[fustakrakich]

I hope he dies of cancer....

Insightful...

I find that fascinating.

Re:Fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

wow that is harsh, I hope he lives to see that cure for cancer be found.

But too late to be any use for him.

Re:Fuck

[mjwx]

wow that is harsh, I hope he lives to see that cure for cancer be found.

I hope he gets cancer, a cure for cancer is found and he's cured so that after he's cured we can hang him.

I also hope we can bring him back as a zombie and hang him again.

Yes I know zombies cant be asphyxiated, I like the idea of watching Zombie Murdoch continually flailing from he highest yard arm in Sydney harbour.

Re:Labor Lie

[AHuxley]

Hi ebno http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-home/how-it-works/how-it-works.html might help a bit
If you have a tech question have a text/google search of the NBN section at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/142

Re:Labor Lie

[Ocker3]

And Australia (under a conservative Gov) made a special provision so Murdoch could keep his 70% of national newspaper ownership (yes, 70%) while no longer being an Australian Citizen!!!

What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

What great new applications does a household 100 megabit connection permit? I am genuinely curious. The best I can think of is widespread piracy. As for video, people are willing to tolerate a few megabit, 360p video. Even blu ray only needs 36 megabit. Verizon Fios has been offering 50 and 100 megabit connections, for at least a few years. At least of few million people in America have access to such connections. If there was an obvious economic use of >100 megabit internet connection, some people would be aware of it by now.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[etash]

just because you are dumb enough to imagine of a future where 100mbit is less than necessary, doesn't mean there are or there can be no new applications. I guess you still have just 640k of ram in your computer eh?

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[fustakrakich]

I know you're trolling (especially on the 'piracy' thing), but why does 100 megabit internet have to be of economic use?

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[asaul]

Why have more than 8Mhz and 640k memory - all it does is drive people to use graphical based pr0n. Won't someone think of the ascii pr0n industry.

Think what a home with say two adults and two teenagers might consume in parallel - each possibly watching their own content - thats just video/streaming. Then you have other applications that benefit from low latency and low jitter connections that can be offered with such fast stable networks (better conferencing, gaming etc). The increased upload capacity can open up options for remote monitoring for medical or security purposes.

Sure, it will take time for the current use of such bandwidth to be consumed but you don't have the use for it until you build it. Go back 15 years and imagine those networks with modern YouTube and Netflix load on them.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you still have just 640k of ram in your computer eh?

I'm not sure even GNU/Linux can run in 640 KB RAM anymore. Okay, it has been decades since my computer had less than 2 MB RAM while my current computers have respectively 8 GB RAM (notebook), 2 GB RAM (smartphone), and 1 GB RAM (tablet). For the record, I miss programming the mere 3.5 KB RAM (user available) of the Commodore VIC-20 as well as its 128-byte cassette buffer which could be used for a terminate-and-stay-resident type utility provided the cassette was not being used. ;-)

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, personally?

As a freelance website developer, I can invest maybe $5-10k in getting a good server, a backup scheme and a UPS. Instead of setting all my clients up with external hosting plans and earning nothing for it, I could host at my office (aka home) and keep making money off my clients for as long as they keep their website.

"What great new applications does a household ADSL connection permit? I am genuinely curious. The best I can think of is widespread piracy. As for audio, people are willing to tolerate a few kilobit, 128k audio. Even flac only needs 1000 kilobit. Verizon Fios has been offering 512k and 1 megabit connections, for at least a few years. At least of few million people in America have access to such connections. If there was an obvious economic use of ADSL internet connection, some people would be aware of it by now."

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because fuck culture, education, and advancement of humanity. If it doesn't put more gold in my pocket I don't want to hear about it.

Said everyone ever. And that's how nothing ever got done, and the world fell apart.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know one, if all 7 billion people on world had cheap 100mbit connection i would make website with P2P video chat that is free so nobody would use phones anymore (except to access internet) and i would be rich on advertising on side of video call

unfortunately that idea and million other ideas that would make everyone life easier is not possible with current infrastructure

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[dreamchaser]

Obvious troll (or shill) is obvious. I'm not sure why anyone who seriously wondered about this would be the type of person who frequents /.

I have an 80+ connection via FIOS and I sometimes consider upgrading it to an even higher speed. I download ISO's frequently as well as other large software packages, mostly for work. People also share connections at home. My wife can be streaming Netflix while I download a Linux distro or some other large package and we both have the service we need.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would create a pretty good country-wide (continent-wide?) LAN, for a country where overseas traffic is costly and limited. I suspect this would actually reduce the outgoing traffic demands with an intelligent placing of "data hubs" (caching servers, local P2P sites/servers).

Anyway, 100 Mbit is "thinking for the future" -- it might be a standard speed in 2021 even if you don't have too much use for it in 2013.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Jeremy Erwin]

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones ---Linus Torvads

Why would Linus care about the limitations of 20 bit memory addressing, when he had a 386?

Re: What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for calling him a shill and providing shining examples of what 100 Mbit/s can do. (Nobody else has bothered to provide them either...)

I can imagine it being useful for home servers and The Cloud (incl. backups) but that's about it.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Howitzer86]

Because that's the only reason the internet is allowed to exist these days. Limitless communication between individuals hurts the economy and the country. It's bad for business, and if not for the fact that businesses took advantage of that too, they would have lobbied to shut it down long ago.

That's why the new filters being debated in the UK will block forums and educational sites as well as illegal content. The only thing of value in life is business, everything else is bad for business.

At least that's the logic I expect the elite who support this kind of bullshit to have.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Jeremy Erwin]

"What great new applications does a household ADSL connection permit? I am genuinely curious. The best I can think of is widespread piracy. As for audio, people are willing to tolerate a few kilobit, 128k audio. Even flac only needs 1000 kilobit. Verizon Fios has been offering 512k and 1 megabit connections, for at least a few years. At least of few million people in America have access to such connections. If there was an obvious economic use of ADSL internet connection, some people would be aware of it by now."

Are you quoting someone? Verizon FIOS supports up to 300 Mb/s (and possibly more). Video streaming (by multiple clients)was the killer app for a while--I'm not sure why any one household would need more than thirty or forty megabits per second, but I don't have the bandwidth to find out.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[lightknight]

How is a 100 mb connection not of economic use? The market can only move as quickly as the information that flows through it, yes?

So essentially, he's hampering the ability of the market to gather information (reports) from official and unofficial sources, to disseminate them in a timely fashion, and to react to them. Since the market, in its non-corrupt form, likes to purge inefficiency (a dirty word these days, since it has been co-opted to have certain negative emotional connotations that it shouldn't...much like when someone tries to make an organization more 'efficient' by firing the only people who know how to do anything, or by cutting away at the buffer systems (needed because of problems elsewhere)), this results in a loss of market efficiency...which seems like a boon to information providers (those who can acquire faster connections, and sell access to it, while denying others the same opportunity)...but the reality is that, on a larger scale, it probably is damaging to them as well. Think of it as breaking into the local water treatment plant to steal some copper power lines (a boon!), only to damage the plant in the process (thus denying water to everyone, including yourself in the process); now, the money you make off of that stolen copper, maybe it's enough to buy bottled water, and still come out ahead...or maybe not.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[wisnoskij]

A 640kbit connection ought to be enough for anybody.

Re: What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Grishnakh]

He is a shill.

There's only a few applications now that I can think of offhand: 1) backup (this is a pretty important one; it takes forever to back up a 1TB drive over the internet at current speeds; 100Mb/s or even 1Gb/s would greatly improve this, making whole-drive backups feasible over the internet to remote providers. 2) video-on-demand. Netflix is great, but the quality is a little low, and it always has problems on Friday and Saturday nights for me during peak hours. 3) Home servers would be nice too, since they're basically disallowed by most ISPs now.

Looking into the future, video-on-demand is going to need more bandwidth, especially as we demand higher quality/resolution. When we move to 4K video screens, we're going to need much more bandwidth to have video-on-demand to those services. Also, if you have multiple people in the same house wanting to watch VoD simultaneously (different programs on different devices), you'll need even more bandwidth to support that.

Finally, just as no one imagined all the applications personal computers and the internet would enable back in the 1970s, there's no way to imagine all the applications 100Mb/s networks will enable now.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Rakhar]

He was restating the parent post, only from the view of years earlier. The point is that at one time, the connection speeds we have now would have been considered excessive in much the same manner. Somehow some of us still manage to use all of the bandwidth we can get without sharing movies and other media. Maybe not always, but sometimes. (How 'bout that summer Steam sale? My ISP must've hated that...)

Having better internet access available universally can at worst have no effect on some people that really don't use it that much. For the rest of us, it's a bonus. To even imply that it should be seen as a negative thing is ridiculous.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[mikael]

Download, install and try out a complete Linux development distribution in a single afternoon, not wait a night for the installation CD to download, and then update (with a 128K download app).

Webpages and PDF files download instantly. Downloading and streaming HD movies is another big advantage, along with HD video conferencing. Download professional applications instantly and pay for a license key by credit card rather than having to wait until the local computer store is open at a time convenient for you, visit them place an order, wait for them to call you when it is ready for collection. It's even quicker than going to the online store, sending in an order, decide it's cheaper to wait for three-day delivery, because today happens to be Saturday evening and next-day delivery isn't available. Have access to cloud computing services for personal animation projects.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[mikael]

That's what happened in Australia. The state education system ran their own book printing service as part of the national course syllabus. Then the private sector said, "Hey, we can do that more cost-effectively and make a profit at the same time". So it was privatized and the prices shot up.

In the UK, the "independent" TV companies used to be required by law to provide education programming for schools (as in the TV Ark archive). But then after several mergers, they said, "It's really too expensive for us in a modern competitive broadcasting environment", so they were successful in getting absolved of that responsibility. And no-one really watches those channels anymore.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Apple regularly exploits "high speed" internet to push hefty MacOSX updates. The Combo update to 10.8.4 is 849 MB; the incremental update is 359 MB.

Still, if it takes longer to install the patch than to download it, it's not a compelling argument for more bandwidth. I suppose that if you do installs during your commutes, and waiting for the download will make you late for work, then it's nice.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Jeremy Erwin]

> Somehow some of us still manage to use all of the bandwidth we can get without sharing movies and other media.

Hulu doesn't "share" its content with me. It streams it....

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[XcepticZP]

[Citation Required]

Assuming it was true, though. What did you expect would happen? You expected the free-market to come in and provide books for a minor profit why? Charity? Of course not. The private companies came in and starting charging what they wanted. This is the norm and expectation of the free-market. But we're already assuming that they were charging a whole lot more than what it took to produce those books. Did you ever consider that maybe those books actually cost that much to produce? And up until now tax-money was being used to subsidize them via the government printing press? Even without me knowing the facts, there are many things we can consider without making hasty moral judgments. Unlike what you did, which is to come up with some sort of commentary about how the "free-market" is evil because it wants to make a profit.

The difference is that now the cost of the books is being shifted to exactly the people that use them. The school children and their parents. And as such the market is free of government interference.

On a side note. If you're such a smart-ass, why don't you open up a printing press in australia and under-cut those "evil free-market" companies. That's how the free market works and uses prices to propagate the value of goods and services. I'm sure you'll make a whole lot of money, if it weren't for silly immigration laws.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[sd4f]

There's corruption in Australia when it comes to getting government contracts. The Government appears to be able to pretty much select any offer irrespective of price. The current prime ministers wife is an excellent example, she has businesses which turn over hundreds of millions, all of them with only one client; the government.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[sd4f]

The thing is the NBN isn't cheap. You will be paying at least $70 per month for 100mbit connection with only 30gb of download data. For a more generous download allowance, you are looking at $100 per month. I currently have 24mbit adsl (get about 1.8 megabytes per second top download speed) with 50gbyte download quota, that costs $30 per month, to get a comparable NBN plan in speed and quota, I'd have to pay $50 per month.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Zontar The Mindless]

The difference is that now the cost of the books is being shifted to exactly the people that use them. The school children and their parents.

Or, in plain English, "If little Johnny wants to have schoolbooks, let him get a paper route and save up the money to buy them", eh?

You apparently assume that those with the greatest need are the same as those with the greatest resources.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

well for me to transfer from my 150GB 10/.7 (current speed) + voip from my current provider to NBN where i can get 12/1 and 300GB of date it costs exactly $4.50 more. if i go faster to 25/5 it costs $10 more. 50/20 $20 more and for $100 ($30 more than i pay now) i can have 100/40. but since Fraudband will get up i can either pay $3k for the fibre connection or be content with HTTN and the 30yo copper lines that run from my house to the pits.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[aXis100]

You wont be getting ADSL at $30 per month without including line rental, that makes it more like $60 per month. Even Naked DSL has higher fees to cover the line.

$50 per month to get a comparable NBN plan sounds like a saving to me.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Macgrrl]

We (Melbourne, Australia) routinely have public transport outages because some idiot stole copper wiring form the signalling system. And Murdoch already has a method of delivering his version of information to the general public through his newspapers, TV stations and radio stations. Economic rationalism be damned.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Macgrrl]

Almost all ISPs in Australia run most traffic through proxies to reduce the amount they need to pull down from international links.

There are also local hosts (or at least there used to be) of a lot of standard binaries on sites like Tucows.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Howitzer86]

Sheesh. I'm sorry to hear that the UK is losing its educational channels. I grew up watching PBS here in the States. It was my favorite channel as a kid. It had Reading Rainbow, Arthur, Magic School-bus, and some other animated stuff I don't remember too well. I can't imagine what it's like to grow up and not have something like that.

As for the printing, I imagine that will solve itself. I know here in the States the college instructors have begun writing their own materials and giving them out for free or at a greatly reduced cost. Or in the case of my programming instructor - no book at all. Very few of them do this, but it can be a great relief when they do.

I suppose for grade school that'll be harder to change, but the internet and the tablet age is going to force that. Barnes and Noble's selling their Nook HD for ~$150. It can only get cheaper.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Howitzer86]

Wow. How is that legal!?

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[quantumphaze]

You have to include the $30 line rental or compare the Naked ADSL prices in your comparison.

The whole point of NBN other than fast speeds, is that gets rid of the broadband lottery. So that 25/5Mbps plan gives you 25/5Mbps, not 1.8Mbps. The opposition's FTTN will not with download speeds varying depending on how far you live from the node.

Quite honestly most people who oppose the NBN oppose it because it's a Labor project and would just as readily oppose FTTN it if the parties' chosen technologies were reversed and Abbot/Turnbull were going to switch to FTTP.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[dudpixel]

$100 / month for 100Mbps still sounds like pretty good value to me.

I pay $70 / month right now, because I don't have access to ADSL2 outside of Telstra, and rely on fixed wireless (@ 12Mbps, or up to 40Mbps for local traffic) instead.
I live only about 30 mins from the CBD.

FTR, how much cheaper will the FTTN plans be?

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[rtb61]

For the umpteenth time. A family of four at home in a modern broadband family. Mother in the lounge streaming a sporting match with picture in picture video call with a friend from work discussing the event. Father in the kitchen streaming a video recipe for the preparation of tonight's meal, whilst having a video call chat with his father. Son is in his bedroom downloading a 3D model parts to print to complete a school science project whilst doing his homework on-line interactively with his school. Daughter is on a vid call with her friend whilst downloading a video game she just purchased and uploading a video recording of a recent social event to her friend. In the meantime the home security system is uploading current state to the monitoring centre. The power control system is updating current usage, power being generated by solar panels, and amount of charge in home stand by battery (no brownouts in the modern technology home). I changed gender roles to relive the boredom of yet again highlighting that total bandwidth consumption for a whole family can readily reach capacity. The more bandwidth the more it will be used.

Things like wedding video's, you can readily a copy being sent to each person who attended via email, when the bandwidth is there to do it. Fun stun like globally extended parties, with lives streams and capture to and from big screen TVs, bring the whole family together even when they are thousands of miles apart. Doctors making video house calls, with the correct local kit to pick up required readings and feed them to the doctors whilst the doctors makes a visual assessment. Grocery shopping takes quite a chunk of bandwidth when larger pictures of the products to be purchased are preferred and as required under law a complete list of ingredients has to be made available at the point of sale (the more rapid the update from page to page, by far the better experience).

Of course typical right wing response, if the typical family of four can not afford them, then fuck them, they don't deserve it, even when the human society they are a part of can blatantly quite readily achieve it. Why, WHY, apparently because douche bag psychopaths like to ponce about having much more than anyone else and when given the opportunity like to have the power of life or death over others to use at a whim.

Time for the car analogy, it took decades for people to fully appreciate and make use of motor vehicles, modern roads and traffic control systems. The more accessible the infrastructure the more it is used, fact, repeated, over (roads), and over (storm water and sewer) and over (electricity), and over (telephones), and over (mobile communications), again.

Obstructing all of those all along the way have been a handful of psychopathic arseholes who didn't give a crap beyond their own greed because the new technology disadvantaged their current profit centres. Till we get to today's arse hole Rupert Murdoch who would quite readily fuck up Australia's technological future because it affects his profits and power base. Not forgetting this is the same arsehole who was the number one mass media champion of leading the US into a false war against Iraq, so extreme mass murder is totally acceptable to this person as long as their goals are achieved.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is the NBN isn't cheap.

Go on ... say it ...

Here at FOXTEL we can offer you a much better price than that!

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[_xen]

What did you expect would happen? You expected the free-market to come in and provide books for a minor profit why?

Exactly! IF privatising the production of school books could lead to predictable negative outcomes, we ought express no surprise when those negative outcomes eventuate.

The difference is that now the cost of the books is being shifted to exactly the people that use them. The school children and their parents.

How do you factor in the free-rider effect of all those people who derive a benefit from living in an educated society without contributing. Left to its own devices, the market seems incapable of doing so.

... about how the "free-market" is evil because it wants to make a profit.

Clearly the market is driven by the profit motive of participants. And you would have to be blind to ignore the great social advantages to be gleaned from an exploitation of the profit motive via market mechanisms. Nor is it anything other than a platitude to observe that any intervention in market processes carries to risk, all too often realised, of slaying the goose who lays the proverbial golden eggs. However, it is an equal blindness to accept as a matter of faith, or of definition, that the outcomes of the free market will always produce the most "desirable" results --even on the basis of purely economic criteria, let alone on any criteria which may otherwise issue from human intelligence.

A free market cannot exist --or rather there is as yet no way available for it to exist --without the aid of the state (if only for the enforcement of proprietary rights and contractual obligations). Thus the basic question of market governance must be how much intervention is required. And this carries with it the corollary question: will that intervention be economically efficacious ( i.e. all to often "obvious" interventions negate the very outcome their authors wished to bring about).

Thus most governments make provision for the creation of corporations, because of the clear advantages the corporate form bestows on any economy where this intervention in the free market is tolerated. Indeed it would scarcely be possible even to conceive of the contemporary world without the contribution of the modern limited liability corporation (a creature of state, once again harnessing the profit motive of individuals for the greater good).

Arguably, the privatisation of school book production, in the naive belief that the private sector could more efficiently (read cheaply), do what the government printer was then engaged in, is a failure to anticipate how involving the market in educational policy would pan out. Ironically (in the sense of irony of fate), privatisation in the example turned out to be a poorly planed 'intervention.'

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[redmund]

Which provider are you with and where are you located? I'm finally going to be moving out of the sticks in the new year and will be looking for a decent provider with reasonable quotas and good speeds. I'd love something that cheap.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the economics definition of efficiency considers wages an inefficiency. It considers you having a home to live in and food to eat inefficiency. It considers healthcare and education inefficiency.

From an individual market participant, perfect efficiency would result in the transfer of all wealth in the market to the market participant.

If we keep trying to apply rice-me-harder '-O9 -funroll-my-intestines' economics our problems will only grow, as the key measure of efficiency is how fast it transfers wealth from stakeholders to shareholders, and when that is riced-out banking efficiency to transfer wealth from small shareholders to large shareholders.

For all the libertarian 'property rights are sovereign' trash-think, we have to consider whether we want to (or even can) live in a system that is optimised to transfer wealth in one direction, until 'the few' own and control everything. If we reject the notion that increasing the unbalance of wealth is fair and reasonable, then we have to do something about it.

Right now, most of our youth (18-30) can't afford to own homes, over half in many countries can't find work, they can't participate because they aren't sufficiently qualified or licensed, though that is moot because the efficiency masters are doing just fine without them participating. The legal and financial framework is such in most developed nations that they can't go up against any of the established systems to reverse the trend of efficiency and deliver wealth back to their communities. Capital is never available to the youth, their families are overburdened with debt, and even if it were, there are so many laws to prevent the creation of competition that the idea of a free market makes a ludicrous mockery of the real world.

The bitter irony is that in this age of information, where learning how and why things are done, and someone can become a master of a subject sitting alone in their parent's basement, it has never been harder for someone to participate or contribute usefully anything to the real world.

As one of these disaffected youths, I live daily in despair, every day learning more about the domains of physics, precision engineering, chemistry, biology, economics, and already expert in computer science and network engineering, though I know I will never have the chance to participate, to contribute and be rewarded in any of these domains. I go to sleep every night hoping I won't wake up, knowing every day my parents who are saddled with the burden of supporting me go further into debt as this economy pursues every greater 'efficiency', will one day no longer be able to support me. Knowing that I can do nothing to ease their burden as I have not created this system, nor can I, in any way known to me, exert influence to change the system, or my discarded position in it.

Sometimes I think about suicide, but I reject the notion. Every time someone takes their life (which is happening in staggering numbers), it is as if the system has murdered them, it has accomplished it's goal of increasing efficiency, by eliminating another moving, living, breathing part.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[XcepticZP]

And you somehow believe that government intervention is the only way that the people with few resources will get access to basic things such as education/books? Do you not factor in voluntary charity? Or is forcible "charity" via taxation the only way you think a problem such as this can be solved? Either people want to help the unfortunate, or you force them to. Can you show me a third alternative?

Also, you somehow assume that these people "need" schoolbooks? Or education for that matter. And that somehow the rest of us "have" to pay for it? This misunderstanding between us is precisely the reason why taxation should not be the way to solve such problems. Those who wish to solve the problem, should expend their own resources to solve it.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[XcepticZP]

Perhaps the real question to be asked is why are the majority of politicians rich? Are they rich because they are politicians (and in public office), or are they in public office because they are rich? Both explanations disturb me, so I'm hoping someone has a third option.

Sometimes I really wander why such questions are not being asked by the populace more often.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[sd4f]

I'm with TPG, basically a bare bones provider without any bells or whistles. Only caveat is that they do on peak and off peak quotas.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Okay, so you're rich and/or naïve. Thanks for sharing.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[sjames]

Parents watching one movie in HD, kids watching a different movie in HD. You're up to 72Mbps already. Given latency and protocol overhead generally limits a circuit to 80% of it's physical capacity (90 if well tuned which a residential connection won't be). Meanwhile, because things happen and packets go missing, you want the connection to be a bit faster than the content you're streaming to cover retransmission and such, and that the 100Mbps pipe filled.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[z0idberg]

On demand movies, TV and sports for one thing. Cable TV in Australia is (in my opinion) extremely overpriced and uncompetitive in content. The option to deliver HD content over the internet to 90% plus of the Australian population would change that dramatically. But guess who owns that Cable TV company and wouldn't want the status quo to be disturbed?

Re: What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[bhiestand]

I do a lot of storage, PCoIP, and virtualization. There is an enormous potential market of consumers, businesses, and creative professionals out there... just waiting for the right prerequisites: widespread reliable, low-latency, high bandwidth connections.

I know SaaS isn't all that popular on Slashdot, but so many people could save a metric asston of time and money...

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[XcepticZP]

Another statist thief leaves in anger because he doesn't have any leg to stand on. Good day.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it not of use? Rupe/someone bigger doesn't own it, at least until the conservatives get in power and sell it, the most common argument against the NBN from the Rupes finger puppets is that there has been no cost benefit analysis.

The further point is that for anyone with enough money to loose money they will give you full fiber anyway.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[cas2000]

please tell me where i can buy one of these free market things you keep talking about. they sound pretty good.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[cas2000]

don't forget - it would cost your parents about $5K just to bury or cremate you.

Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for?

[Zontar The Mindless]

I've not gone anywhere, as you can see.

Contrary to what you might tell yourself, acting like a selfish prick does not improve the species.

BTW, the last time I had this argument with someone IRL, it turned out that I pay more in taxes annually than the other guy even makes a year.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[cascadingstylesheet]

Oh c'mon, don't let boring reality get in your way! It's Murdoch! slashmind says must hate!

O RLY?

[martin-boundary]

What does he think he is? Australian or something? Foreigners should not meddle in Australian internal politics.

Re:O RLY?

[Macgrrl]

Tell that to the US Department of Trade and RIAA.

Re:Labor Lie

[benjfowler]

Why is this douche nozzle getting rated Insightful?

If anybody is lying, it's that insane right-wing psychopath and habitual liar, Tony Abbott, and his soggy-biscuit Coalition chums. That freak will destroy Australia in a single term, and there are plenty of dupes who'll vote for that nutter.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[benjfowler]

Concern troll is /concerned/....

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[Immerman]

Selectively telling the truth is one of the most time-tested effective ways to tell a lie - just spin a good narrative and leave out the parts of the truth that prove your position to be false.

So no, "having lots of facts" does not even come close to showing that something is not inaccurate and misleading. (Discalimer: I have no idea what the truth of the matter in this instance was, just stating a general trend)

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[BrokenHalo]

Well, from what I just read, it shows the press council got three complaints in 2011, about three articles during June and July.

OK, well here's some much more recent and relevant food for thought:

Murdoch sends trusted general 'Col Pot' to bring down Rudd over NBN

Is that specific enough for you?

Re:Labor Lie

[drsmithy]

The coalition's NBN policy is realistic and more affordable than the labour fantasy which is completely unaffordable.
The Coalitions NBN policy is to deliver yesterday's solution, tomorrow, for marginally less than it would cost to do it properly.

Actually that describes most of their "policies" (such as they are).

Re:He will no doubt enlist the help of the country

[Immerman]

Ah, but we know full well that such filtering doesn't actually work and never has.

What, then why do we have it? That's not the topic under discussion here, next question please.

Re:Labor Lie

[drsmithy]

As an American, I don't know enough about the NBN program to say.
In a nutshell, the NBN is a plan to deliver fibre-optic telecommunications infrastructure to most of the country. It will build (and own) the physical infrastructure upon which retail ISPs will deliver their products.
If Labour sucks then let Australian voters throw them out.
Labor does, indeed, suck, and Australian voters are probably going to throw them out. The problem is if they do they're going to replace them with a party that takes everything that sucks about Labor, and says: "You boys are just playin'. Let's crank this shit up to 11!".

Re: Labor Lie

[drsmithy]

Australia. You mean the country/continent in the Southern Hemisphere, right? Because it really sounds like you're talking about America.
For nearly twenty years Australian political leaders have looked to America and thought "that's awesome, we need some of that over here".

More proof 'hardcopy' news can't be trusted

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it weird that with most of the public able to gain access to so many news sources that papers under the Murdoch banner would dare to publish the rubbish they have been. It's rather easy to loose a consumer and extremely difficult to attain one, publishing false information in a news source is the best way to create a situation where the populous decides at whole to boycott the publications and to even go further and mock those around them until they follow suit. Being scared of loosing market share and doing the actions they are would seem to me a reason for them to loose it.

Re:More proof 'hardcopy' news can't be trusted

[ebno-10db]

I find it weird that with most of the public able to gain access to so many news sources that papers under the Murdoch banner would dare to publish the rubbish they have been. It's rather easy to loose a consumer and extremely difficult to attain one, publishing false information in a news source is the best way to create a situation where the populous decides at whole to boycott the publications and to even go further and mock those around them until they follow suit. Being scared of loosing market share and doing the actions they are would seem to me a reason for them to loose it. [emphasis added]

Hardly. Most people watch/read whatever news source feeds their biases. It can become a vicious cycle too where people's bias inclines them to a certain source, that source then feeds their biases and makes them more biased, etc.

I'm not saying that I'm above watching/reading news sources that feed my biases, but I at least try to sample the other side once in a while, and listen to counterarguments against my side's positions. I personally know plenty of people on the other side who do likewise.

However, for many/most people politics becomes a team sport. They identify with "Team Conservative" or "Team Liberal", and cheer every victory for their side like it was the home team winning. That's fine for sports, but a lousy approach to politics. It makes people especially subject to manipulation as they don't choose their team's positions, but will always support their team. Either side could decide that roasting small children for holidays was a fine idea, and many people would support it.

Re:Labor Lie

[ebno-10db]

If you're trying to outdo us Yanks in corruption, forget it. Murdoch became a naturalized US citizen by an act of congress, rather than following the path that tens of millions of people who don't have lots of money to bribe congress have followed over the last few centuries. He became a citizen (in name only obviously) because there is/was a law that only a US citizen could own a US TV station.

Can we just start killing all the pigs now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before they finish ruining our planet?

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[SuricouRaven]

Quoting customers can be misleading.

For example, there is a propaganda piece called 180 made in 2011 which has, as a central premise, the idea that people today are already forgetting who Hitler was. Soon after it opens there is a montage of interviews, as person after person is asked and claims no knowledge of the name or the events of world war 2.

Misleading, of course - because what the producer actually did was interview many, many, many people and only show those interviews which agree with his point. For every person he could find who had never heard of Hitler, there may have been a hundred who had - and he just didn't show them. At no point did he misquote anyone, yet he was still able to give a false impression about historical knowledge in the casual US population.

Re:He will no doubt enlist the help of the country

[SuricouRaven]

Until the religious fanatics realise that it is far easier to pass a law imposing mandatory filtering on a government network than it would be to impose the same filter on a private network. I imagine "No tax money for porn!" would be a good rallying cry.

The only correct response to this...

[FatLittleMonkey]

...nationalise his media conglomerate in Australia and break it up.

No single person should be able to decide who will or won't be the next government.

Well that's unusual...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the Dirty Digger using his gutter-rags to interfere in politics for his own profit.

Just the thing he denied doing when our Parliament here in the UK was questioning him (but funnily enough, nobody believed him).

current war

[Tom]

One part of many. Whether it's tobacco companies, the sugar industry, the media moguls - if you haven't realized that we live in the middle of a war between capitalism and humanity, you're living under a rock.

Corporations intentionally damage us, for profit. We are sold products known to damage our health because it's profitable. We have patent and copyright laws that are batshit crazy, because corporations think this will save their monopoly rents. In the US, corporations are fighting local governments who want to provide their citizen with services that the corporations fail to offer (like broadband in the hinterlands). All over Europe, we sold the public companies that our parents and in some cases grandparents had built up and paid for with tax money to private companies, and in most cases the results were rising prices and dropping quality. There are a number of movements to buy it back - that alone should tell you how successful the whole thing was for the public.

William Gibbson said in an interview that he stopped writing cyberpunk stories because if he had written what is reality today as fiction back then, people would've called him insane.

These are the final days of mankind. Not in an apocalyptic sense but in the sense of the end of our reign as the supreme creatures on this planet. Our overlords will be creatures we created, but it won't be robots or Skynet, it'll be virtual entities like corporations, governments and other faceless entities that you can't kill with a shotgun. The fringe-liberals are misguided, stockpiling food and ammo won't do you any good in this war, because it's not fought that way.

Re:current war

[bhiestand]

These are the final days of mankind. Not in an apocalyptic sense but in the sense of the end of our reign as the supreme creatures on this planet. Our overlords will be creatures we created, but it won't be robots or Skynet, it'll be virtual entities like corporations, governments and other faceless entities that you can't kill with a shotgun...

Somebody's a big Daemon fan.

Do you think Google Glass is designed to co-opt or enable the Darknet?

Re:current war

[Tom]

Never heard about Daemon before. Might take a look.

Like all technology, Google Glass will do both. I might, however, finally alert the public to the fact that they don't really want to be watched all the time. It is much more in-your-face than the other surveilance.

Re:current war

[bhiestand]

I think you'd definitely enjoy the book, then.

Glass really reminds me of the book. I see some dangers in it, and the obvious problems it will cause... but there's potential for serious good too. And some potential for outright awesome.

RM will shrivel up and die eventually....

[Bob_Who]

In the meantime, always oppose all things Murdoch.

I so look forward to that evil turd dropping dead so I can dance on his grave.

No level of hell is too deep for this pathetic sociopath.

He might be a mogul, but he will always suck ass like a loser.

Re:RM will shrivel up and die eventually....

[Anonymous Coward]

i, too, will go to his funeral. just to make sure he is dead.

Re:RM will shrivel up and die eventually....

[Anonymous Coward]

There's the standard liberal tolerance and respect we all know and love.

Re:RM will shrivel up and die eventually....

[Anonymous Coward]

In the meantime, always oppose all things Murdoch.

I so look forward to that evil turd dropping dead so I can dance on his grave.

That's quite a mean way to talk about Ruper Turdoch.

It's going up from 100Mbit to 1Gbit in January

[Anonymous Coward]

When the NBN begins installing Gigabit modems in households, there's no fucking way fibre-to-the-node can get within 2% of that speed, let alone 10%.
Yes, 20Mbit is the fastest the majority of homes will have indefinitely under a Liberal Government. This will create a humungous imbalance from one property to the next, and will completely disrupt the housing market.

Re:It's going up from 100Mbit to 1Gbit in January

[Macgrrl]

Don't worry, I'm sure the suburbs that are important to the LNP (Toorak, Double Bay, etc...) will somehow get FTTP before they pull the pin and make it FTTN for everyone.

Now that I think about it, that's probably why they want to kill it, sour grapes that the deal done with the independents after the last election was that rural areas had to be done first.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Obama stating he called Benghazi a terrorist attack immediately during a national debate and having the liberal CNN reported Crawly perpetrate the lie?

Murdoch is scum

[Anonymous Coward]

But at least he is interested in fucking up something
in his OWN country instead of doing even more damage
in the US.

Has Murdoch ever?

[Gonoff]

I am curious to know if Rupert Murdoch has ever done anything good - or even tried to.

Re:Has Murdoch ever?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simpsons, Family Guy, In Living Color, Avatar...

Re:Has Murdoch ever?

[Anonymous Coward]

He waited half of a season before cancelling Firefly.

Re:This passes as informative these days? How sad

[Red_Chaos1]

Ohhhh, so Faux News tells the truth, everyone else is lying all the time, right?

Sorry bucko, you're as guilty of being a tard as those you accuse. Take your own advice before coming in here and trying to sound all smart and educated and talk down to everyone else.

Re:This passes as informative these days? How sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you new here? I mean, not just to /., but to the fucking planet? Murdoch being a rotten shitbag out to ruin society has been a running joke for decades. Hell, here's Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry making the exact same joke 24 years ago. The Murdoch's are a cancer, the sooner they all die off, the better.

FTFY

[microbox]

It would mean we are becoming human.

Anarchy will never work because we /ARE/ human beings. To a close approximation, we have /ALWAYS/ been human beings.

What you are really saying is that "it would mean that human nature is changing into what I conceive it should be"

Re:This passes as informative these days? How sad

[bussdriver]

US mainstream news is horrible; it does not matter which story or what "bias" you can find in the whole farce. FOX uses truth when it benefits their propaganda's agenda otherwise they filter, distort, or lie. The others probably had other agendas besides defending the NRA - I won't bother to speculate as to their motives (besides just ratings) because the whole thing is distraction from real issues.

As far as I was concerned the issue was simple- Zimmerman talked big and thought he could dish it out but was a coward who couldn't handle being on the receiving end. Every coward who can't handle an ass whooping is going to preemptively murder -- with great profits to those who bet on the cowardice of the younger generations.

Re:This passes as informative these days? How sad

[L. J. Beauregard]

can remember a time where to be moded up, you needed to have great depth in your thought or informative support with links, or really, really clever/funny.

[Citation needed]

George Soros

DRINK!

(How many news outlets does GEOOOOORRRRRGE SOOOOOROOOOOS! own, again?)

Re:This passes as informative these days? How sad

[Texmaize]

By name calling like a 5 year old, this makes you more correct? By having no examples, no evidence, just emotion this is a good argument? By attributing statements too me that I never said, this makes you intellectually honest? Yet, this gets moded up to 3, and I get a troll. Again, modern slashdot has become a poor, disgraceful thing. Again, I still remember the heady days when it was an arena of ideas. Not a sandpit of childishness and ignorance. Be better slashdot. Be better.

Re:This passes as informative these days? How sad

[Texmaize]

I humbly suggest that read and think more before knee jerk posting. The world is more complicated than you think. You think a certain way. You speak a certain way, because someone has crafted a message for you. Instead of being so vitriolic when someone suggests a counter argument or differing world view, take some time and explore.

Its really the height of irony that those who pride themselves on challenging the status quo and excepted "truth" are the last ones to ever do so when it comes to their beliefs. I mean you, gratuitously liberal slashdot poster. When something becomes an ideology, you leave the realm of rationality. This is true for religion, right wing and yes, even left wing politics.

Now, to shut down your reply. It depends on what you mean by own. Rupert Murdoch does not completely own his various media outlets, but has a controlling share. Similarly, Soros has a controlling and influential stake in many things. The difference is you turn a blind eye to later. That is a sad thing.

Nuke it

[fox171171]

Rupert Murdoch Wants To Destroy Australia's National Broadband Network

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Re:This passes as informative these days? How sad

[Texmaize]

The phrase I believe or I remember does not require attribution, since I am the source of the information. You can choose to believe that source or not. This is rhetoric 101. I would argue if you were as clever as you feel that you are, you should understand this.

That said, if I must:

http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2007/09/when_was_the_exact_day_slashdo.html

There ya go. B-slapped much?

can remember a time where to be moded up, you needed to have great depth in your thought or informative support with links, or really, really clever/funny.

Why would he bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

NBNCo and The ALP are doing a perfectly good job of that themselves.

Rupert and other business are all going to die!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Tyranny and monopoly abuse are by far the greater evils" - I fully agree.
So a government run monopoly on internet and data access where they log, and control all data available to the public is a "Good Idea"?
My biggest concern with NBN is the FACT that all data will be monitored, logged and kept. Access to "approved" sites etc. All user are FORCED to go on the NBN.
The NBN is primarily aimed at the Eastern states, and local competition and business of all sorts will be forced to close due to the monopoly and control the labour government wants on all aspects of data within australia. Not only will news and current affairs be restricted by the government, so too will access to any data, that the government want to restrict.
Also the government will dictate the price and access , so affordable internet access of any quality will not be available to many Australians and least of all to those that do not live in Vic, or NSW etc.

Re:Rupert and other business are all going to die!

[geoskd]

Not only will news and current affairs be restricted by the government, so too will access to any data, that the government want to restrict.

Yeah because the for-profit news outlets we have no are so good we cant afford to lose them...

Re: Labor Lie

[sd4f]

Blame Howard, he has the massive hard on for american style ruthlessness, funny that he was so anti-gun though.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[Zontar The Mindless]

"+5 Insightful" WTF?? Obvious troll is obvious.

The boring reality is that Murdoch wants us to pay him for any content we don't create ourselves. And he doesn't really want us creating any ourselves.

Re:This passes as informative these days? How sad

[Zontar The Mindless]

Translation: "At first I was just making shit up, and then I found a blog post from someone who says Slashdot is no longer cool, but since it's a link, we can ignore the fact that he, too, is making shit up."

Re:Labor Lie

[mjwx]

As an American, I don't know enough about the NBN program to say. If Labour sucks then let Australian voters throw them out.

Labor hasn't done that bad of a job, there's just a lot of people who hated Julia Gillard for no rational reason (I.E. rich single men complaining that she'd lost touch with the average Australian family).

The real problem is that the Liberals are even worse. Tony Abbott is nothing but a frontman for the party powerbrokers, he is even more spineless and weasely than the average politician. The biggest thing he has going for him is the fact that people hated Julia Gillard. But he's lost this edge now that Kevin Rudd is back in charge.

Seriously though, I dont mindlessly hate the Liberals, just the current form of the Liberal party. Abbott talks about "faceless men" in Labor yet expects us to ignore the strings attached to Abbott. If the Liberals really wanted to win this election, they'd sack Abbott and put Malcolm Turnbull in charge, but the "faceless men" of the Liberal party wont do this because 1) Turnbull is too much of a centrist for their liking, 2) Turnbull will not blindly follow their agenda.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[Anonymous Coward]

To be even more specific....

The election date was announced this morning and here's the front page of a Murdoch-owned paper...
http://www.thepaperboy.com/australia/daily-telegraph/front-pages-today.cfm?frontpage=30569

Re:Labor Lie

[Macgrrl]

The fortune cookie at the end of this page basically sums it up:

When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.

Just like republicans in America

[Anonymous Coward]

The rich making people vote against themselves to make rich people richer. And they fall for it while they have no jobs no benefits if they have one crappy vacation time vs the rest of the world no pensions no buying power wealth inequity so high that it can no longer ever be recovered from.
While the people who run the show feed you this line of turd sucking inflation is better than deflation.

attack the project at every opportunity

[manu0601]

He wants to attack the project at every opportunity, but such a blunt approach should not work against citizen that use their brains. Unfortunately we are probably to rediscover that mass medias have a brain suppression feature.

Re: Labor Lie

[Anonymous Coward]

For 6 years, the New Zealand political machine has looked toward Australia and the US, and thought "Shit! We're so far behind!" Now look at them - doing the bidding of the FBI and the NSA, because all us poor folks are lazy and evil terrorists. Oh, and al Qaeda trained operatives are here. The prime minister says so.

It is *not* 93% of the country

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so wrong:

The NBN seeks to bring 100Mbps Fibre-To-The-Premises internet to 93% of the country with wireless and satellite for the remainder.

Here in the real world the NBN is seeking to cover 93% of the *population*, which only accounts for about 3% of the landmass. Everyone in the major cities will be happy, everyone else from outer-suburban, rural and country areas will be shafted by Telstra's super-ludicrous satellite data pricing if they're not close enough to an exchange that has ADSL support (not even ADSL2+). For example: Dayboro, QLD is only 35.625 kilometres from the Brisbane CBD. It has it's own telephone exchange on McKenzie Street but has no ADSL2+ services (to clarify, it says it has ADSL2+ available but when you order you discover it only has ADSL hardware).

Re:Labor Lie

[Anonymous Coward]

But you're forgetting the most important bit. If the Coalition goes ahead, it changes the entire NBN from broadband for cities and towns to a massive, multi-billion dollar handout to Telstra. They won't have to provide high speed internet, so they can sit on their absurdly decrepit and ridiculously expensive internet offering, and they get almost their entire telephone network upgraded for free. Not bad for a private company, eh?

If the coalition wins I'm going to buy Telstra shares. If the government is going to give massive amounts of tax revenue to private companies with a monopoly, I might as well benefit...

See, I told you so

[Skapare]

Big business is more dangerous to your rights, and to society in general, than big government is.

Re:Labor Lie

[AHuxley]

Ebno another good site is http://stevej-on-nbn.blogspot.com.au/ "NBN Issues, Commentary & Opinion. 30 yrs in I.T. and Telecomms"

Re:Labor Lie

[fido_dogstoyevsky]

As an American, I don't know enough about the NBN program to say. If Labour sucks then let Australian voters throw them out.

Labor hasn't done that bad of a job, there's just a lot of people who hated Julia Gillard for no rational reason ...

Seeing her on TV baying for Julian Assange's blood - actually a pretty good reason.

The real problem is that the Liberals are even worse. Tony Abbott is nothing but a frontman for the party powerbrokers, he is even more spineless and weasely than the average politician. The biggest thing he has going for him is the fact that people hated Julia Gillard. But he's lost this edge now that Kevin Rudd is back in charge.

Seriously though, I dont mindlessly hate the Liberals, just the current form of the Liberal party. Abbott talks about "faceless men" in Labor yet expects us to ignore the strings attached to Abbott. If the Liberals really wanted to win this election, they'd sack Abbott and put Malcolm Turnbull in charge, but the "faceless men" of the Liberal party wont do this because 1) Turnbull is too much of a centrist for their liking, 2) Turnbull will not blindly follow their agenda.

Sadly true.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[TranquilVoid]

That's fine but it's ironic to defend shoddy journalism (Slashdot's) just because it attacks the shoddy journalism of someone else who you don't like. It's a massive leap from;

"Two years ago press council agrees three articles on the NBN are misleading"
to
"With the election looming Murdoch has ordered his newspapers to attack the NBN at every opportunity"

Just politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure what this nonsense is doing on Slashdot. This "news story" is a political attack related to the upcoming election. There is a serious debate about the best implementation of a National Broadband Network - but this ridiculous story has nothing to do with it.

Re:Labor Lie

[jezwel]

Exactly - the current speeds talked about are far less relevant than the shift of the underlying infrastructure to stable, passive, water resistance fibre from the current power sucking degraded copper with high maintenance overheads that requires cabinets closer and closer to the end consumer.
I'd also wonder if anyone is going to bother stealing fibre cables to sell the raw material for $$$. Oh that only happens with copper?

Re:Labor Lie

[jezwel]

If the Liberals really wanted to win this election, they'd sack Abbott and put Malcolm Turnbull in charge, but the "faceless men" of the Liberal party wont do this because 1) Turnbull is too much of a centrist for their liking, 2) Turnbull will not blindly follow their agenda.

They cannot replace Abbot as they have been heavily spruiking their 'stable government' platform based around the "Keven overthrow -> Julia -> leadership challenge" events in ALP. Too bad for them he is a muppet compared to Rudd with the silver tongue. Will be interesting to see how the country votes.

The powerful fear any and all change.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're near the top you fear any and all change. Change means that the order of business can change and since you're near the top, there are a lot more ways to go down than up, so it's on a "gut feeling" (i.e. completely wrong) a bad thing.

And remember too that though 90% of where they can go after even a massive change is still hugely wealthy, when you're that wealthy, money isn't for buying comfort for you or your family and friends, it's about the power you have over someone else. And with that power you get to tell others what to do (if they have less money than you) and therefore dropping means you're less in control and more controlled by others. That is an anathema.

Moreover, even if they don't actually lose, but someone else moves ahead, they *feel* like they've lost because not only is that now one person who they cant control, it's someone who can now control them. From their self-centred POV, a double-downer.

They are self-centred psychopaths, caused by their position and influence. They are not rational people.

I don't think the government change need Rupert.

[andy_t_roo]

I think the general public will manage to change the government without any prompting from "big media" in the election which has just been announced for about 1 month from now (the 7th).

Re:Labor Lie

[Anonymous Coward]

The Coalition policy is to provide fibre to the node and let consumers decide if they would like to pay to upgrade the last 300m or so to fibre themselves, or happily use the existing copper at reduced speeds. This provides a better balance between letting Government decide what consumers want, and letting the market decide.

It's ridiculous to look at any one policy in isolation. Yes, if money was no barrier then of course it makes sense to put fibre in everywhere. But there will always be a need to balance the expenditure, particularly against our essential services and other nation building initiatives.

We also need to ensure that we are reducing the nation's debt by spending within our means. Labor's policy is to increase immigration so that we have a larger population base in the future with which to pay off current debts (the "Big Australia" theory). The Coalition (being conservative) seek to regulate immigration but spend conservatively.

a government-owned and operated broadband network?

[JBaustian]

There is a difference between destroying something that already exists, and blocking something that is still in the planning stages. The headline is wrong -- Rupert Murdoch is not destroying or seeking to destroy anything.

Additionally, there is a difference between competing private networks and a single government monopoly. We have recently seen that an imperial government can coerce private media companies, to obtain information about users and subscribers. How much easier it would be if there is a single broadband network run by the very government that seeks to gather the information.

There seem to be very good reasons why a government should not be given a monopoly over broadband networks for the entire country. I think China has such a system, and maybe it works for them, but quite a few of the Chinese do not seem content to let their government filter their access to the internet. Murdoch has had decades of experience dealing with China, so maybe he knows something about closed media systems.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm quite capable of despising Murdoch and anything he touches without anyone telling me to do so, thank you very much. The man is awful, and a detriment to humanity as a whole. Murdoch belongs to the select group of people the world would be better off without.

Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read a Murdoch paper you will start to notice a clear pattern of bias, and a clear negative stance to both the current government and the NBN, while the oppositions history of costly failure with telecommunications policy, the Testra sell off [one wonders if the original prospectus outlined the serious costs and liabilities associated with the asbestos removal that is Telstra's responsibility alone to rectify] and the OPEL Networks flop.

New LTD is biased and has marching orders, whether they are clearly articulated by the boss or simply breed into the fabric of the organization through the process of hiring staff who already toe/understand the party line without it needing to be clearly articulated.

 

Re: Labor Lie

[Anonymous Coward]

For over 50 years American politicians and players have consistently been pushing crap into Australia via free trade agreements, bilateral trade agreements, and the rest, while pointing the koolaid-teet at us and saying drink, its only in the last 20 years or so that we have started to love that sweet poison we have been been suckled on since birth.

  Gotta love that Yellow peril, and how fear was/has/is been/being used to undermine Australian society and our political system. I'm uncertain how much more an island nation founded by people arriving on boats could be afraid of people arriving by boat, but I'm sure we will see with this coming cycle, personally I'm waiting for the day the coalition/labor announces the "final solution" to deal with all these pesky boat people, the quality and level of spin needed to make lining people up on boat decks before pushing their corpses into the ocean a humane response designed to protect the position of asylum seekers and stop the pesky queue jumpers will be epic.

Re:Labor Lie

[cas2000]

yes, this works for the water supply too. it's exactly why we have huge water pipes to every street corner and the people - the consumers - get to decide whether they want a cheap garden hose to connect up their house or a more expensive fancy metal pipe.