HDTV support: With supported HD capture card, terrestrial broadcast HD and Cable HD are supported (with the exception of encrypted cable HD channels - which cannot be decrypted on any PC PVR)
Maybe not for ATSC (the American standard), but I can watch the encrypted HD test channels on my digital cable connection without problems via my DVB-C (the European standard) card. I did have to add the channels manually though, the channel scanner did not find them automatically (although this is one of the things that reportedly has been fixed in 0.20).
I just finished setting up my home MythTV system. It rocks! I've got my digital cable connected directly to my backend using a PCI DVB-C card, and my projector is connected to my frontend using a DVI cable, so the backend can record the MPEG-2 streams directly to disk with no quality loss whatsoever (and including all the audio and subtitle tracks), and then the frontend can display them on my wall with not a single bit of quality loss in between! Plus it plays my videos and my music, it lets me skip commercial breaks (which it has automatically tagged for me), watch DVD's, play legacy games with MAME, etc., etc.
It really is a fantastic piece of kit. It can be pretty finicky to set up and you need to be prepared to invest some serious amount of time, but it's worth it!
I hope that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD _never_ get cracked, or at least if they do it's never ported to Windows in an easy to use fashion. It's hard to think of any other way to get the formats dropped faster.
I hope it does get cracked, and as soon as possible and as wide as possible. If I can't make fair use of the movies I purchase, then I don't have any use for the format and would rather it went away sooner rather than later. Hopefully the content companies will learn their lesson (hey, I can dream right?) and it will be replaced with something less draconian or get competition from a better alternative.
I'm sorry, but what? All I can see is that their current online video authoring package isn't very good, and they don't want to have people who's OS doesn't support it thinking that there's a bug with their site.
Did you even watch the video? The whole point of it is that the video player does work on Linux, since the videos on the NYT front page work. There are no technical reasons why the videos are not displayed to Linux users, only (one has to assume) political.
They must be either atheists or fools to not fear the cost of abusing the bereaved for profit upon their souls.
In other words, smart theists only act morally because they're afraid that if they don't they will be punished? Thanks for pointing that out. I, being an atheist, try to do right because that's the right thing to do, I don't need the threat of eternal damnation hanging over me. I was about to feel offendend by your remark, but now I see it's actually religious people who should feel offended...
If you log into a phishing website, what is to stop the phishing website from replaying your actions to the bank, to have the bank send you the SMS, that the phisher then steals from you, to break into your account?
I guess that's possible, in theory. It would have to be an extremely elaborate and convincing phishing site though. You can't "break into an account" using the SMS, since all the SMS does is validate one transaction. I guess a phishing site could try to steal my money by replaying my actions to the bank, but altering the target bank account numbers of the transfers I enter (but not the amount, since the SMS includes the total amount and the number of transfers so that still has to be what I expect it to be). That would involve recreating (convincingly) the entire Postbank online banking site though, not just a login page.
I don't think it would be worth the effort for a phisher, since it would be a huge amount of work to recreate the entire Postbank site (they can't just show me the actual pages from the bank, since those would list the actual recipients of the transfers), for relatively small gains (since they could only steal as much as I happen to be transferring).
And of course, before any of this would be possible they would first have to steal my account, and the Postbank has pretty good (but convential) security, and they're good about educating their clients about phishing (by never having links to the bank in their emails, for instance).
I like how the Postbank does it here in the Netherlands. For every transaction (which may include multiple transfers) they SMS you a random number which you have to enter in the site to validate the transaction. They send the SMS to a phone which they previously determined belongs to you (you don't enter the number on the spot or something like that). A phisher might hack your Postbank account, but they won't be able to impersonate you since the security number (and the total amount of money involved in the transaction) is sent to your cell phone which they can't get at (and which alerts you to the fact that your account has been hacked).
In the past (actually it's still possible for people who don't have a cell phone or don't want to use this system) the number wasn't sent as an SMS, but was on a long list of numbers they would mail you (the list was printed and sealed by a machine, no humans would see it before you). This was a nuisance because I kept losing the list and it was a hassle to use, but this new system is quite convenient in my opinion. I always have my cell phone with me, so I can do my banking from any location.
In Dutch that's even an expression: "het ei van Columbus" ("Columbus' egg"), meaning a simple solution to a problem which is very obvious in hindsight.
A large molasses (treacle) tank burst and a wave of molasses ran through the streets at an estimated 35 MPH (56 km/h), killing twenty-one and injuring 150 others.
The collapse unleashed an immense wave of molasses between 8 and 15 ft (2.5 to 4.5 m) high, moving at 35 mph (60 km/h) and exerting a pressure of 2 ton/ft (200 kPa).
Google calculator shows:
35 miles = 56.32704 kilometers
Both those conversions are accurate, given that the orgiginal 35 mph was most likely rounded off to begin with. The actual speed (assuming it was even measured at all, and this isn't somebody's estimate) could have been anywhere between 32.5 mph (52.3 kph) and 37.5 mph (60.3 kph). It makes sense to apply the same rounding to the converted number as was used for the original number, otherwise you imply a precision which isn't really there.
But obviously I agree that it would be a good idea to at least use the same conversion everywhere...
I've got a better chance of being hit by lightning that being killed by the (boogeyman) Terrorists. This whole 'terrorists are going to get you' nonsense has gone way too far. Yes, it's a risk, but no reason to go belly up to the threat. Be a man about it. You WILL die someday. It probably (nearly definitely) won't be terrorists. Are you giving up all your privacy and other rights to avoid it?
Yes, you will die. Think beyond yourself. Your children will live on for a while after you are gone, and your grandchildren after that. Think fourth dimensionally - what kind of a world are you building for them? You want them to be slaves with no freedom of thought, unable to speak their mind because they are being monitored 100% of the day? Just so the fucking boogieman terrorists can't get you?
Terrorists are a lame red herring. There's always been terrorists, there always will be unhappy people in this world. Take appropriate measures against the risk, but don't become OCD about it and go into a sheep spasm.
I mean, seriously..... come on. If there is ever a reliable way to distinguish advertising from editorial content {such a thing actually was nearly mandated in the UK once but was rejected}, then it will end up being used in ways that benefit the consumer more than the advertiser.
There is. MythTV does commercial break detection and can either notify you when one starts and let you skip it with one key press, or even skip them automatically. It looks at things like the number of totally blank frames and the length of time between scene changes, and you can help it by telling it which channels don't have commercials at all. I think it can even look for station logo's (which usually disappear when a commercial break starts).
It works great! I very occasionally get false positives (on videoclips usually, which makes sense), and sometimes I'll have to press the skip key twice in a row, but otherwise I hardly see any commercials at all these days.
The point of ABS is not a decreased stopping distance, the point is keeping control of the car while you're braking. Without ABS the wheels will lock if you floor the brakes, and no amount of turning the steering wheel will make the car change direction. With ABS, the wheels will keep rolling and you'll still be able to steer the car around an obstacle the car would have otherwise slid straight in to...
Actually, it doesn't say that noone's rights can trespass on any others. If it said that, I wouldn't have a quibble. It says Parliament can do what it likes to your Rights, if they think they can get away with it.
I know it doesn't literally say that, but that is what it is meant to do. I can't bash someone's head in in the name of freedom of religion, for instance, since that would be a violation of my victim's right to inviolability of person (article 11). If that qualifier wasn't there, parliament could not make a law which prohibits me from bashing people's heads in in the name of religion.
The Netherlands seems to be an earthly paradise,
Far from it, I assure you.;-)
if they have no lawyers/politicians who are willing to ignore the spirit of a law in favour of its letter when it's to their advantage to do so.
Of course we have those. But we also have judges, who will not allow them to do so.
Of course they can - all it takes is a Parliament that's willing to do the deed. Or, more likely, just incrementally erode the rights away with an endless series of minor qualifiers....
Not without changing the constitution they can't! Which takes a huge amount of time and effort (and requires the consent of a large majority of both the parliament itself, and of the population). I'm not saying it's not possible, just hard to do and not likely to succeed without good reasons.
Umm, no. Our Bill of Rights includes absolute, inviolable rights. "Congress shall make no laws...".
We have those too. Article 1, for instance (the anti-discrimination article, in my opinion the most important one), has no qualifiers, so no law can ever be made which allows discrimination.
It seems like our constitutions work in a reverse manner though. Ours gives rights, and then allows parliament to make exceptions, yours seems to instead restrict the laws which congress can make. Not saying one or the other is better, just pointing out something which may make them hard to compare.
Another difference I think is who it applies to. If I'm not mistaken the US constitution applies to the government only, in the sense that it restricts the laws the government can make. The Dutch constitution applies to everyone in the country. So not only is government not allowed to make laws which are discriminatory, or which allow discrimination, but private persons are also not allowed to discriminate against others.
Of course, our Congress has more lawyers in it than your's, it sounds like, since they've been making laws in places they are forbidden to by the Constitution at least since 1933. And arguably much earlier.
Then why has that been allowed? Why haven't those laws been found unconstitutional by whoever's responsible to check those things (I would guess the courts)?
I'm curious, though. Is the Netherlands one of those idiot countries that makes talking about the Nazis a crime? If so, it would seem that they're already on their way to violating the spirit of the Constitution - I seem to recall something about prior restraint of speech being unconstitutional.
No, it isn't. I'm not aware of any countries which are, actually. You're probably thinking of Germany, but they only make a few specific things illegal (denying the Holocaust, displaying the swastika, that sort of thing). Now personally I'm against any restrictions on freedom of speech, but I'm willing to cut Germany some slack in this because of their past. It's not nothing to have been responsible for two world wars and the attempted murder of an entire religious group.
I notice that the phrase "without prejudice to the responsibility under the law" still appears. Does that restrict the right, or restrict the government's ability to make laws that restrict the right?
It allows parliament to make laws which restrict the right (but only for the explicitly mentioned purposes, for instance to protect the public health).
Note that I use the word "government" in the American sense, not the European sense - you seem to use the word "government" the way we use "executive branch", if you count the King and his Ministers as government, but the Parliamment as not-government.
Yes, you're right, I mean what in the US would be called the executive branch. In Dutch the word is "regering" and like you said it only includes the "King" (actually we have had Queens for a long time now; note by the way that the King has very little actual power, it's mostly a ceremonial function) and the cabinet. The parliament (or really, the "staten generaal" (states general)) doesn't govern, it keeps the government in check by amending or stopping laws or sending away ministers or even the whole government.
Everyone shall have the right to respect for his privacy, without prejudice to restrictions laid down by or pursuant to Act of Parliament.
That's the first part of Article 6 of the Constitution of 1989, as translated into English by whomever. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the translation, of course.
I don't know which version of which country's constitution you're looking at, but article 6 of the constitution of the Netherlands of 2002 is the freedom of religion article. It does have a qualifier which says that the law may restrict this freedom, but only outside of buildings and public places, and only so far as to protect the public health and traffic safety. Seems very reasonable to me. Basically all it says is that one individual's constitutional rights can't trespass on another individual's. Most of the qualifiers are like that.
If NOONE is allowed to elect members, does that meet the definition of "equal right" mentioned?
No. It would be against the spirit of the constitution (since it would completely negate the first paragraph of that article), and judges don't just look at the letter of the law, they have to take its apparent intent into account as well. A law which said that would be found unconstitutional.
A constitution has to allow these kinds of exceptions and amendments made by law, otherwise it would be unworkable in practice. But the law can't stray too far from the spirit of the constitution.
So. Interesting then that your Constitution defines Parliament as the First Chamber and the Second Chamber, and talks about elections to same. Which elections can be regulated by Act of Parliament. Doesn't sound to me like Parliament is the People. The People's Representatives, perhaps, but that's true everyewhere. Do your Representatives represent you more faithfully than they do in other countries?
Of course they aren't literally the people. We can't have 16 million people governing the country. And yes, I do think they represent the people more faithfully than in many other countries (especially the US), mainly because of the fact that we always have coalition governments.
My big problem with rights "subject to limitations and exceptions as defined by Act of Parliament"... is that a sufficiently motivated Parliament... can strip away rights as easily as recognize them.
That's the point: they can't strip away the rights that the constitution gives us.
I'm not saying our constitution or the situation here in general is ideal and that there are no problems. Far from it! I was just making the point that the situation is better than it is in the US or (apparently) Australia, while the parent seemed to be saying that the US and Australia are the epitome of freedom.
> We have a very strong bill of rights in our constitution, guaranteeing freedom from discrimination, of speech, religion, press, etc.
Your Bill of Rights seems to have the qualifier "This right may be restricted by Act of Parliament" (or variants thereof) in entirely too many places for it to be a "strong bill of rights".
And I wish I knew what was trnaslated into English as "without prejudice to restrictions laid down by or pursuant to Act of Parliament." meant in the original Dutch. Since that's a qualifier to many of your rights....
It would help if you would be a bit more specific. Most of the major bill of rights articles (non-discrimination, etc.) don't have that qualifier. These supercede any other article. So for instance no law, or any other article of the constitution, can ever introduce discrimination of any kind or it will be unconstitutional.
Some others articles do have qualifiers, but there the qualifiers are restricted to protecting public health, traffic safety, etc. Mostly, they're there to allow exceptions for shouting-"fire!"-in-a-crowded-theater type of situations.
Also, keep in mind that parliament == the people. It's not the government which is allowed to make those exceptions.
1. One party entirely in control of both houses of parliament
Nope. We always have coalition governments, keeping government reasonable, accountable and away from the extremes.
2. No bill of rights, either legislative or constitutional
We have a very strong bill of rights in our constitution, guaranteeing freedom from discrimination, of speech, religion, press, etc.
3. Legislation allowing for the arrest, detention, and interrogation without charge of persons not suspected of any offence if they may have information that is somehow relevant to a suspected terrorist offence; the onus of proof is reversed so that the person being interrogated must prove that they do NOT have any such information.
We have no such draconian laws. A person can only be arrested if they are suspected of a crime and are innocent until proven guilty in all cases.
4. One of the highest rates of phone tapping in the world
No idea, but laws governing surveillance of civilians are very strict (I know, I worked for the police in exactly this area), so likely the rate is low.
5. Unelected bureacrats empowered to spy on Australians with no parliamentary oversight to speak of
We have a secret intelligence service of sorts (the AIVD). They don't amount to much though. In fact they're regularly in the news for (unintentionally) leaking information.
6. Several semi-secret US intelligence bases operating on our soil
No American bases here!
7. New crimes of sedition for exercising free speech in a manner that encourages the overthrow of the government
Freedom of speech is one of the best guarded freedoms in this country. There's not much you're not allowed to say (and encouraging the overthrow of the government is certainly not one of those things).
8. Troops in Iraq despite over 80% of the population opposing our involvement before the war
No troops in Iraq during the war. They were there after the war though, but most people didn't oppose that because the were there to keep the peace (at which they were extremely successful) and help rebuild the country.
At the moment we also have an extremely disturbing rise in racial and religious intolerance, which in my opinion is in no small part attributable to the federal government's policies and fearmongering on those issues.
This is the only point I have to concede. This happens in my country too, unfortunately. I think it's a temporary thing though. We have a right-wing government (understand that "right-wing" is relative. In the US it would be regarded as very left-wing) at the moment, but the next one will most likely be left-wing and will hopefully reduce or even reverse this development.
But of course, this doesn't stop us selling weapons-grade uranium to China because they weeeeally promise to use it for civilian purposes only.
OK, we don't have any uranium to sell, so we can't take too much credit for not doing it...:-)
Now, it's all too late. I'm afraid MiniDisc will slowly but surely die out-- and that will leave me and all of MD's die-hard fans who supported the platform since day one without portable music.
And that, my children, is why you shouldn't buy in to proprietary, closed technology such as Mini Disc or iTunes. If you are left without portable music, that is because you didn't choose portable music to begin with! Let this be a lesson...
Firstly, the price is too high. I'm accustomed to paying about EUR 5 to EUR 15 for a no-frills DVD. $ 35 is way too high for a download which I assume will consist of just the movie without any extras.
Secondly, I think we can be sure that these downloads will be encumbered with some kind of draconian DRM schema. I'm willing to bet they'll be encrypted WMV's, meaning that you will be able to play them only using Microsoft Media Player on a Windows PC, or a portable device which supports encrypted WMV's (can't be too many of those). And it would mean having to be online so the player can check your licence, which could be revoked by Universal at any time!
I'll only be interested if the price is dropped, and I can play the movie on any of my operating systems and portable devices (and without having to be online, or worry about my access being revoked at some point).
Slashdot Mirror
HDTV support: With supported HD capture card, terrestrial broadcast HD and Cable HD are supported (with the exception of encrypted cable HD channels - which cannot be decrypted on any PC PVR)
Maybe not for ATSC (the American standard), but I can watch the encrypted HD test channels on my digital cable connection without problems via my DVB-C (the European standard) card. I did have to add the channels manually though, the channel scanner did not find them automatically (although this is one of the things that reportedly has been fixed in 0.20).
I just finished setting up my home MythTV system. It rocks! I've got my digital cable connected directly to my backend using a PCI DVB-C card, and my projector is connected to my frontend using a DVI cable, so the backend can record the MPEG-2 streams directly to disk with no quality loss whatsoever (and including all the audio and subtitle tracks), and then the frontend can display them on my wall with not a single bit of quality loss in between! Plus it plays my videos and my music, it lets me skip commercial breaks (which it has automatically tagged for me), watch DVD's, play legacy games with MAME, etc., etc.
It really is a fantastic piece of kit. It can be pretty finicky to set up and you need to be prepared to invest some serious amount of time, but it's worth it!
I hope that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD _never_ get cracked, or at least if they do it's never ported to Windows in an easy to use fashion. It's hard to think of any other way to get the formats dropped faster.
I hope it does get cracked, and as soon as possible and as wide as possible. If I can't make fair use of the movies I purchase, then I don't have any use for the format and would rather it went away sooner rather than later. Hopefully the content companies will learn their lesson (hey, I can dream right?) and it will be replaced with something less draconian or get competition from a better alternative.
I would prefer to have the blank media tax, and to just be left alone in peace to do what I want with my media.
And let me subsidize your music and movies? Tempting, but no thank you...
I'm sorry, but what? All I can see is that their current online video authoring package isn't very good, and they don't want to have people who's OS doesn't support it thinking that there's a bug with their site.
Did you even watch the video? The whole point of it is that the video player does work on Linux, since the videos on the NYT front page work. There are no technical reasons why the videos are not displayed to Linux users, only (one has to assume) political.
They must be either atheists or fools to not fear the cost of abusing the bereaved for profit upon their souls.
In other words, smart theists only act morally because they're afraid that if they don't they will be punished? Thanks for pointing that out. I, being an atheist, try to do right because that's the right thing to do, I don't need the threat of eternal damnation hanging over me. I was about to feel offendend by your remark, but now I see it's actually religious people who should feel offended...
Now go ahead and mod me off-topic.
A significant number of people, sucking down 5-8Gb every day or so. I think we'll start to see the ISP's enforcing their (unwritten) bandwidth limits.
Yeah, because nobody does that now of course...
If you log into a phishing website, what is to stop the phishing website from replaying your actions to the bank, to have the bank send you the SMS, that the phisher then steals from you, to break into your account?
I guess that's possible, in theory. It would have to be an extremely elaborate and convincing phishing site though. You can't "break into an account" using the SMS, since all the SMS does is validate one transaction. I guess a phishing site could try to steal my money by replaying my actions to the bank, but altering the target bank account numbers of the transfers I enter (but not the amount, since the SMS includes the total amount and the number of transfers so that still has to be what I expect it to be). That would involve recreating (convincingly) the entire Postbank online banking site though, not just a login page.
I don't think it would be worth the effort for a phisher, since it would be a huge amount of work to recreate the entire Postbank site (they can't just show me the actual pages from the bank, since those would list the actual recipients of the transfers), for relatively small gains (since they could only steal as much as I happen to be transferring).
And of course, before any of this would be possible they would first have to steal my account, and the Postbank has pretty good (but convential) security, and they're good about educating their clients about phishing (by never having links to the bank in their emails, for instance).
I like how the Postbank does it here in the Netherlands. For every transaction (which may include multiple transfers) they SMS you a random number which you have to enter in the site to validate the transaction. They send the SMS to a phone which they previously determined belongs to you (you don't enter the number on the spot or something like that). A phisher might hack your Postbank account, but they won't be able to impersonate you since the security number (and the total amount of money involved in the transaction) is sent to your cell phone which they can't get at (and which alerts you to the fact that your account has been hacked).
In the past (actually it's still possible for people who don't have a cell phone or don't want to use this system) the number wasn't sent as an SMS, but was on a long list of numbers they would mail you (the list was printed and sealed by a machine, no humans would see it before you). This was a nuisance because I kept losing the list and it was a hassle to use, but this new system is quite convenient in my opinion. I always have my cell phone with me, so I can do my banking from any location.
From the wikipedia entry on NTFS:
<snip>
The article incorrectly states...
So did you fix it?
Why do people think that "redneck" (or "hillbilly", or "white trash") is a socially acceptable term?
Because the very fact that "people" think that it is socially acceptable makes it socially acceptable...
That story is usually associated with Columbus
In Dutch that's even an expression: "het ei van Columbus" ("Columbus' egg"), meaning a simple solution to a problem which is very obvious in hindsight.
the conversions are quite hilarious in Wikipedia:
A large molasses (treacle) tank burst and a wave of molasses ran through the streets at an estimated 35 MPH (56 km/h), killing twenty-one and injuring 150 others.
The collapse unleashed an immense wave of molasses between 8 and 15 ft (2.5 to 4.5 m) high, moving at 35 mph (60 km/h) and exerting a pressure of 2 ton/ft (200 kPa).
Google calculator shows:
35 miles = 56.32704 kilometers
Both those conversions are accurate, given that the orgiginal 35 mph was most likely rounded off to begin with. The actual speed (assuming it was even measured at all, and this isn't somebody's estimate) could have been anywhere between 32.5 mph (52.3 kph) and 37.5 mph (60.3 kph). It makes sense to apply the same rounding to the converted number as was used for the original number, otherwise you imply a precision which isn't really there.
But obviously I agree that it would be a good idea to at least use the same conversion everywhere...
I use vlc to stream TV to my work.
Does your boss know that?
Oh bullshit. Come on. You've got to be kidding.
I've got a better chance of being hit by lightning that being killed by the (boogeyman) Terrorists. This whole 'terrorists are going to get you' nonsense has gone way too far. Yes, it's a risk, but no reason to go belly up to the threat. Be a man about it. You WILL die someday. It probably (nearly definitely) won't be terrorists. Are you giving up all your privacy and other rights to avoid it?
Yes, you will die. Think beyond yourself. Your children will live on for a while after you are gone, and your grandchildren after that. Think fourth dimensionally - what kind of a world are you building for them? You want them to be slaves with no freedom of thought, unable to speak their mind because they are being monitored 100% of the day? Just so the fucking boogieman terrorists can't get you?
Terrorists are a lame red herring. There's always been terrorists, there always will be unhappy people in this world. Take appropriate measures against the risk, but don't become OCD about it and go into a sheep spasm.
***Standing Ovation***
I mean, seriously ..... come on. If there is ever a reliable way to distinguish advertising from editorial content {such a thing actually was nearly mandated in the UK once but was rejected}, then it will end up being used in ways that benefit the consumer more than the advertiser.
There is. MythTV does commercial break detection and can either notify you when one starts and let you skip it with one key press, or even skip them automatically. It looks at things like the number of totally blank frames and the length of time between scene changes, and you can help it by telling it which channels don't have commercials at all. I think it can even look for station logo's (which usually disappear when a commercial break starts).
It works great! I very occasionally get false positives (on videoclips usually, which makes sense), and sometimes I'll have to press the skip key twice in a row, but otherwise I hardly see any commercials at all these days.
The point of ABS is not a decreased stopping distance, the point is keeping control of the car while you're braking. Without ABS the wheels will lock if you floor the brakes, and no amount of turning the steering wheel will make the car change direction. With ABS, the wheels will keep rolling and you'll still be able to steer the car around an obstacle the car would have otherwise slid straight in to...
Actually, it doesn't say that noone's rights can trespass on any others. If it said that, I wouldn't have a quibble. It says Parliament can do what it likes to your Rights, if they think they can get away with it.
I know it doesn't literally say that, but that is what it is meant to do. I can't bash someone's head in in the name of freedom of religion, for instance, since that would be a violation of my victim's right to inviolability of person (article 11). If that qualifier wasn't there, parliament could not make a law which prohibits me from bashing people's heads in in the name of religion.
The Netherlands seems to be an earthly paradise,
Far from it, I assure you. ;-)
if they have no lawyers/politicians who are willing to ignore the spirit of a law in favour of its letter when it's to their advantage to do so.
Of course we have those. But we also have judges, who will not allow them to do so.
Of course they can - all it takes is a Parliament that's willing to do the deed. Or, more likely, just incrementally erode the rights away with an endless series of minor qualifiers....
Not without changing the constitution they can't! Which takes a huge amount of time and effort (and requires the consent of a large majority of both the parliament itself, and of the population). I'm not saying it's not possible, just hard to do and not likely to succeed without good reasons.
Umm, no. Our Bill of Rights includes absolute, inviolable rights. "Congress shall make no laws...".
We have those too. Article 1, for instance (the anti-discrimination article, in my opinion the most important one), has no qualifiers, so no law can ever be made which allows discrimination.
It seems like our constitutions work in a reverse manner though. Ours gives rights, and then allows parliament to make exceptions, yours seems to instead restrict the laws which congress can make. Not saying one or the other is better, just pointing out something which may make them hard to compare.
Another difference I think is who it applies to. If I'm not mistaken the US constitution applies to the government only, in the sense that it restricts the laws the government can make. The Dutch constitution applies to everyone in the country. So not only is government not allowed to make laws which are discriminatory, or which allow discrimination, but private persons are also not allowed to discriminate against others.
Of course, our Congress has more lawyers in it than your's, it sounds like, since they've been making laws in places they are forbidden to by the Constitution at least since 1933. And arguably much earlier.
Then why has that been allowed? Why haven't those laws been found unconstitutional by whoever's responsible to check those things (I would guess the courts)?
I'm curious, though. Is the Netherlands one of those idiot countries that makes talking about the Nazis a crime? If so, it would seem that they're already on their way to violating the spirit of the Constitution - I seem to recall something about prior restraint of speech being unconstitutional.
No, it isn't. I'm not aware of any countries which are, actually. You're probably thinking of Germany, but they only make a few specific things illegal (denying the Holocaust, displaying the swastika, that sort of thing). Now personally I'm against any restrictions on freedom of speech, but I'm willing to cut Germany some slack in this because of their past. It's not nothing to have been responsible for two world wars and the attempted murder of an entire religious group.
I notice that the phrase "without prejudice to the responsibility under the law" still appears. Does that restrict the right, or restrict the government's ability to make laws that restrict the right?
It allows parliament to make laws which restrict the right (but only for the explicitly mentioned purposes, for instance to protect the public health).
Note that I use the word "government" in the American sense, not the European sense - you seem to use the word "government" the way we use "executive branch", if you count the King and his Ministers as government, but the Parliamment as not-government.
Yes, you're right, I mean what in the US would be called the executive branch. In Dutch the word is "regering" and like you said it only includes the "King" (actually we have had Queens for a long time now; note by the way that the King has very little actual power, it's mostly a ceremonial function) and the cabinet. The parliament (or really, the "staten generaal" (states general)) doesn't govern, it keeps the government in check by amending or stopping laws or sending away ministers or even the whole government.
I make no claims as to the accuracy of the translation, of course.
Here is the official English translation from the ministry of foreign affairs.
Everyone shall have the right to respect for his privacy, without prejudice to restrictions laid down by or pursuant to Act of Parliament.
That's the first part of Article 6 of the Constitution of 1989, as translated into English by whomever. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the translation, of course.
I don't know which version of which country's constitution you're looking at, but article 6 of the constitution of the Netherlands of 2002 is the freedom of religion article. It does have a qualifier which says that the law may restrict this freedom, but only outside of buildings and public places, and only so far as to protect the public health and traffic safety. Seems very reasonable to me. Basically all it says is that one individual's constitutional rights can't trespass on another individual's. Most of the qualifiers are like that.
If NOONE is allowed to elect members, does that meet the definition of "equal right" mentioned?
No. It would be against the spirit of the constitution (since it would completely negate the first paragraph of that article), and judges don't just look at the letter of the law, they have to take its apparent intent into account as well. A law which said that would be found unconstitutional.
A constitution has to allow these kinds of exceptions and amendments made by law, otherwise it would be unworkable in practice. But the law can't stray too far from the spirit of the constitution.
So. Interesting then that your Constitution defines Parliament as the First Chamber and the Second Chamber, and talks about elections to same. Which elections can be regulated by Act of Parliament. Doesn't sound to me like Parliament is the People. The People's Representatives, perhaps, but that's true everyewhere. Do your Representatives represent you more faithfully than they do in other countries?
Of course they aren't literally the people. We can't have 16 million people governing the country. And yes, I do think they represent the people more faithfully than in many other countries (especially the US), mainly because of the fact that we always have coalition governments.
My big problem with rights "subject to limitations and exceptions as defined by Act of Parliament" ... is that a sufficiently motivated Parliament ... can strip away rights as easily as recognize them.
That's the point: they can't strip away the rights that the constitution gives us.
I'm not saying our constitution or the situation here in general is ideal and that there are no problems. Far from it! I was just making the point that the situation is better than it is in the US or (apparently) Australia, while the parent seemed to be saying that the US and Australia are the epitome of freedom.
> We have a very strong bill of rights in our constitution, guaranteeing freedom from discrimination, of speech, religion, press, etc.
Your Bill of Rights seems to have the qualifier "This right may be restricted by Act of Parliament" (or variants thereof) in entirely too many places for it to be a "strong bill of rights".
And I wish I knew what was trnaslated into English as "without prejudice to restrictions laid down by or pursuant to Act of Parliament." meant in the original Dutch. Since that's a qualifier to many of your rights....
It would help if you would be a bit more specific. Most of the major bill of rights articles (non-discrimination, etc.) don't have that qualifier. These supercede any other article. So for instance no law, or any other article of the constitution, can ever introduce discrimination of any kind or it will be unconstitutional.
Some others articles do have qualifiers, but there the qualifiers are restricted to protecting public health, traffic safety, etc. Mostly, they're there to allow exceptions for shouting-"fire!"-in-a-crowded-theater type of situations.
Also, keep in mind that parliament == the people. It's not the government which is allowed to make those exceptions.
The English-speaking countries are doing quite well for themselves.
How sad is it that you really believe that. That you really think that the level of freedom in the US or Australia is about as free as it gets...
Let's check the list for my country:
1. One party entirely in control of both houses of parliament
Nope. We always have coalition governments, keeping government reasonable, accountable and away from the extremes.
2. No bill of rights, either legislative or constitutional
We have a very strong bill of rights in our constitution, guaranteeing freedom from discrimination, of speech, religion, press, etc.
3. Legislation allowing for the arrest, detention, and interrogation without charge of persons not suspected of any offence if they may have information that is somehow relevant to a suspected terrorist offence; the onus of proof is reversed so that the person being interrogated must prove that they do NOT have any such information.
We have no such draconian laws. A person can only be arrested if they are suspected of a crime and are innocent until proven guilty in all cases.
4. One of the highest rates of phone tapping in the world
No idea, but laws governing surveillance of civilians are very strict (I know, I worked for the police in exactly this area), so likely the rate is low.
5. Unelected bureacrats empowered to spy on Australians with no parliamentary oversight to speak of
We have a secret intelligence service of sorts (the AIVD). They don't amount to much though. In fact they're regularly in the news for (unintentionally) leaking information.
6. Several semi-secret US intelligence bases operating on our soil
No American bases here!
7. New crimes of sedition for exercising free speech in a manner that encourages the overthrow of the government
Freedom of speech is one of the best guarded freedoms in this country. There's not much you're not allowed to say (and encouraging the overthrow of the government is certainly not one of those things).
8. Troops in Iraq despite over 80% of the population opposing our involvement before the war
No troops in Iraq during the war. They were there after the war though, but most people didn't oppose that because the were there to keep the peace (at which they were extremely successful) and help rebuild the country.
At the moment we also have an extremely disturbing rise in racial and religious intolerance, which in my opinion is in no small part attributable to the federal government's policies and fearmongering on those issues.
This is the only point I have to concede. This happens in my country too, unfortunately. I think it's a temporary thing though. We have a right-wing government (understand that "right-wing" is relative. In the US it would be regarded as very left-wing) at the moment, but the next one will most likely be left-wing and will hopefully reduce or even reverse this development.
But of course, this doesn't stop us selling weapons-grade uranium to China because they weeeeally promise to use it for civilian purposes only.
OK, we don't have any uranium to sell, so we can't take too much credit for not doing it... :-)
Now, it's all too late. I'm afraid MiniDisc will slowly but surely die out-- and that will leave me and all of MD's die-hard fans who supported the platform since day one without portable music.
And that, my children, is why you shouldn't buy in to proprietary, closed technology such as Mini Disc or iTunes. If you are left without portable music, that is because you didn't choose portable music to begin with! Let this be a lesson...
I see two problems right away:
Firstly, the price is too high. I'm accustomed to paying about EUR 5 to EUR 15 for a no-frills DVD. $ 35 is way too high for a download which I assume will consist of just the movie without any extras.
Secondly, I think we can be sure that these downloads will be encumbered with some kind of draconian DRM schema. I'm willing to bet they'll be encrypted WMV's, meaning that you will be able to play them only using Microsoft Media Player on a Windows PC, or a portable device which supports encrypted WMV's (can't be too many of those). And it would mean having to be online so the player can check your licence, which could be revoked by Universal at any time!
I'll only be interested if the price is dropped, and I can play the movie on any of my operating systems and portable devices (and without having to be online, or worry about my access being revoked at some point).