Superficially, this would appear to have a significant degree of bias and I'm left wondering what's the point. For starters it used a test developed in the US as its starting point. It would be expected that students from the US would already be somewhat familiar with the test and associated methodology whereas the other students wouldn't. Also teaching tends to become skewed towards common testing regimes, so it is likely that the material being covered in the US is more relevant to the tests than other countries. I suspect that with a minor tweak to the content of other schools this alleged advantage will disappear. Also the definition of world is just a tad skewed... why not say the best of 4 countries tested out of 195 countries.
Its a job market, if you're not swapping jobs, you aren't using the market and you're getting underpaid. It's not about productivity, it not about scratching the itch its about maximising your return. I like to solve problems and build things. There are lots of organisations which value my skills and that keeps me happy. While I've found that I enjoy working in research organisations more than accounting firms they've both paid me well in the time that I was there. Your bosses will try to pay you as little as possible to do the job because that's their job, so do yourself a favour and make sure that your pay reflects your value.
Under Mitchell Baker's expert direction Mozilla share of the Market has gone from around 30% to around 5%. When considering her advice I would assess it against this historical backdrop. This is not a track record of success. Of course she could simply be blowing her own trumpet, as her qualifications would appear to be very light on "STEM" and of course you need more non-technical people.
Is it possible to get a list of phones which incorporate a headphone jack which are currently on sale. A headphone jack is a feature that I would like to have. Reviewers get your heads out of your arses and give phones without headphone jacks a bad review.
What apples doiing isn't particularly amazing, guys it's bluetooth. Interesting but not amazing. What the cochlear implant does is amazing, and its been amazing since the technology was developed in Australia in 1978. Watch some of the video 's on youtube of people hearing for the first time, it's pretty heady stuff.
While there's a lot wrong with the Common Criteria process some of the underlying concepts are good. EAL7 essentially relies on the implementation of a security concept that is provably correct. This is opposed to trying to harden/secure a general purpose system. This is why people use Data Diodes, which are essentially one way network connections. Security Concept = Only allow data to travel in one direction. You can then prove that data can't get from the high side to the low side Implementation cut one of the fibres in a ethernet fibre connection allowing signal to travel in one direction and then make the network card think all is well. (Build a network stack that convert tcp to udp and spoof acks )
If you really want security design a system with these components.
From a Non-US viewpoint. Trump is a money guy, that's his source and he'll bend like a pretzel to get more. Sanctions against Russia have had a huge financial impact on the value of Russian resource contracts. There's a connection between Trumps Team and Russia, this is on the record, hence the terminations Comey appears to be a bit of a straight laced guy with a moral compass with a strong reputation Comey leads a further investigation into these connections Trump discusses the matter with Comey Trump fires Comey (with extremely poor form) Comey leaks details of conversations.
Reading between the lines, Trump was extremely threatened by the investigation into links between the Trump's presidency and Russia and he acted to remove the source of this threat. He knew that there was a chance that Comey would leak but he's also misjudged Comey's finesse in the manner of the leak. What is truly ironic, given the recent US-USSR history is that the US leadership appears to be under the thrall of Russia and the associated resource values that are being impacted by US economic sanctions. The other source of tension is that the Orwellian US state surveillance might actually already know answers however to do so would require the admission of the actual scope of this program which nobody wants to do. Because Trump's team were outsider's their understanding of the capability of these programs was infantile and they didn't modify their actions.
There are suites of jobs which are at risk in high wage earning countries. Hopefully yours won't be one of them. Lets face it we're about to be exposed to the largest revolution in earning power that the world has ever seen. Drive a truck or buy a PC to do it for you. Deliver pizza's or buy a PC to do it for you. Deliver financial advice or buy a PC to do if for you Assist with inventory or buy a PC to do it for you Drive a tractor or buy a PC to do it for you.... Get the picture...
If you look at the list technical experts 1 Bob Muglia - Head of a startup competitor that trying to market data analytics product trying to steer some of that Hadoop investment into his fold. His sales model is "Look how easy we are" What you should be asking is how much does it cost and how do I get my data back. 2 Bob Johnson - Cofounder of an analytics company trying to steer some of that Hadoop investment into his pocket. This is a beat up driven by people who wished that they had a slice of the Hadoop pie. Hadoop is a complex system, however it scales to levels far beyond relational database technologies. Basically if you can do what you wanted with relational databases in a cost effective manner then you wouldn't or shouldn't have contemplated Hadoop in the first place. I'm not saying that the above products are good, I am saying that you have to take what they're saying with a grain (or bucket) of salt.
A number of existing Hadoop interfaces are batch based and exhibit a significant degree of latency, however other interfaces such as impala are faster and bypass the map/reduce operation to achieve realtime results. When organisations get this wrong, iIt's a bit like your finance manager talking to your vehicle fleet manager (who recommended Ford vehicles) and based upon that conversation getting a great deal on 2000 tractors. Upon finding his staff are upset, he/she dumps American manufacturing and settles on BMW as their Fleet vehicle of choice even through the cost is significantly higher. If you're a clever organisation you don't need to buy a Mercedes or BMW to achieve good results, however the owners of BMW or Mercedes would certainly encourage you to do so.
Personally I have watched a number of organisations deploy Hadoop clusters in a poor manner without understanding the system fundamentals and they'd love to blame the tool. I've also seen clever organisations save millions on their existing licences and meet their business or compliance objectives. It really comes down to looking at your organisation in a pragmatic manner and deciding are you collectively clever, or are you collectively stupid. Based upon what I've seen and know. 1 Data Locality - Don't deploy Hadoop as virtuals which rely on an underlying SAN technology, if you're doing this you don't understand either the problem or the solution. The issue that you might solve with virtualisation is deployment and management, don't kill locality in doing so. 2 Competent staff - You are going to need, and retain, and train highly competent staff to ensure that the interfaces are simple (see point 4) 3 Understand your business drivers, are you a knowledge based organisation? What insights do you expect will make a difference to your bottom line. 4 Who will get access to the information and how. 5 Where is this information that you're going to throw into Hadoop anyway?
There are a number of managers who should be held accountable for poorly performing hadoop clusters and the above questions should be asked of all of them.
In some cases they would have been better off going with a simpler model initially such as Casandra to meet their requirements, however most organisations overestimate their abilities.
I would just like to say thank you, and I hope that other government agencies worldwide contribute equally. Being born when astronauts were taking the first steps towards the moon I have always held NASA in high regard and it is fabulous that they keep impressing many decades later.
What makes me laugh is nobody's actually stated the obvious, looking after the poor and the needy is the Government's job. Companies really shouldn't be donating money to charities at all, their job is to look after their shareholders, ie you don't have a by the people for the people section in a companies constitution. If a manager want to feel good about themselves, get them donate their own money, and not somebody else's money. As a Google shareholder I'd be pissed off and I'd be asking whoever approved this to reimbursing me. If you care about people vote for a government that cares for people and provides basic healthcare, dole and pay your taxes to support this agenda. Personally I don't think that donations to charities and religious organizations should be tax deductions at all, effectively they're just tax dodges.
You're flat out wrong. Provably secure system exist and have existed for decades. Go to, or go back to Uni and learn a little. The fact that it's much cheaper to develop systems which aren't is a design choice. The people making those design choices should be held accountable for the decisions, no ifs, no buts. Heads on sticks is the answer, who was responsible for implementing this system on Windows? Who was responsible for not patching the system? and who was the clown that provided vectors from the Internet to this system?
Smart watches are a bit lame. People who wear them are a bit lame as well and generally fit into the 1 I'm a fanboy/girl 2 I'm trying to look smart 3 I'm trying to look like a newage technical person 4 All of the above. Whereas something like Google glasses might actually be useful.
Mock the law, women in Iran and around the world should shave their heads in protest. If you're in a western country wear an armband so that people know why.
Saving a few kilos on these missions is very important, I'd say someone under 50kg would be on the money. You might be able to go lower if they had no legs as legs are basically baggage on a space journey. Especially when NASA have been asked to do everything on the cheap.
Consumers are being had, a large single entity controlling distribution is not a good thing for you. If you look at how Dell buys components it shares its component sourcing among a variety of manufacturer, it buys more cheap ones than expensive ones however it ensures that competition remains. From a technical perspective Netflix can limit content based upon your location. No if or buts. Netflix don't limit your content for a couple of reasons. 1 It makes their service more attractive. 2 Technically it may require changes to their infrastructure and software stack. (but its not difficult) 3 They are well aware of the first mover advantage. 4 You subscibe and authenticate. 5 Your money come from a country Netflix know that in the future they will limit by geographical location and the reason for this is simple, licensing and profit, but first any hint of competition should be eradicated.
The problem isn't selfies, the problem is poor maintenance, system design etc. This just gives the idiot who made the decision to connect the internet to the floodgate controller the ability to point his finger at someone else. Its a simple rule don't directly connect your control plane to your windows desktop network that surfs the Internet. It's a bit like a toilet in the corner of your bedroom, undoubtedly convenient but a dumb idea.
Hi, as someone who also worked for a company which was working for Centrelink at the time (Not involved in PLAID) I have to admit that I admire the development of PLAID because the commercial products available were rubbish and "Security agencies" such as NSA and DSD were not helpful in this regard. A significant gap in the way that smart-cards which were being used for access control such as building security worked was found and an attempt was made to re-mediate this. Protocols evolve over time to either become better or reveal the fact that they are fundamentally flawed. SSL was not written by cryptographic experts it was created by Netscape and it has evolved over time to secure a significant percentage of Internet transactions. PLAID exists because all of the available security products in this space were fundamentally broken and PLAID was an attempted to fix this problem. During the time since this protocol was created I've watch the various debacles with a number of propriety commercial smart card products used in public transport. I would hope that PLAID will evolve over time with the assistance of interested parties to be an open protocol which provides a solution in this problem space. One criticism of this appears to be that a department which spends billions of dollars on ICT infrastructure should engage in the development of a product when there is an identified gap identified in the market. The spend in total was in the hundred thousand dollars so in reality the project was done on a shoestring is it's not surprising that there are flaws.
Personally I'm sick of developers who didn't go to Universities and don't study the field who get promoted to well beyond their understanding and abilities. That's not to say that there aren't some very good programmers who didn't go to university however in most cases their sphere of knowledge is constrained by the tool-sets that they've worked on and their interest in ICT theory in general. Recently I was working with a developer turned manager and there was a requirement to develop a software component with far greater assurance than he had come across. He was completely unaware that there have been decades of research in this field which has lead to a variety of techniques for developing high assurance software components. After a less than friendly series of meetings I finally had to approach him in private with a set of texts for him to read which provided him with an introduction to the various fields. Prior to that he firmly believed that Object Oriented programming was the be all and end all of programming techniques. In countries with free educations systems all aspiring programmers should go to Universities (even if they don't finish they tend to pick up some gems), in the US with the education systems is geared towards ensure that the wealthy get the top jobs it's not as cut and dried as the education system is a bit broken. However the key factor in this field is aptitude and interest, the concept that you can train a bunch of people with low IQs and no interest to code effectively is completely broken. If you look at standardized aptitude tests the profile required for good programmers sticks out like dogs balls, any country that wants a strong ICT industry would be better off developing this pool of talent via scholarships and special training.
The cloud is a new service, for some it will be economical and for others it won't be. If the cloud was really changing IT companies like IBM, HP and Microsoft etc would be tanking. They're not so these clowns are just trying to convince you to part with your cash. Yes the cloud will mean the mum and dad companies can run their IT services in the Interwebs however bigger companies will still see the break even point for running their own infrastructure with maybe their backup web presence in the cloud when and if it makes sense. In the final analysis money talks and bullshit walks.
Due to its relative isolation Australians pay significantly higher prices than their overseas brethren for a variety of goods and services. These prices have nothing to do with costs and everything to do with a market that has been geographically isolated from a historical perspective. What I find incongruous is that politicians do nothing to overcome these rigged markets. For example an xbox game is significantly cheaper in the US however it won't play on an Australian console, a home theatre amplifier costs more than twice the US price. A kindle book priced in American dollars is blocked from sale from Australian Internet addresses. Recently I could buy two of the same model Dell computer in the US, ship it to Australia for less than the price of the Australian channel. When Dell were contacted about this they said that they would refuse to support such a purchase (Initially they claimed the costs were import duties etc until I pointed out the actual duties). It is ironic that implementing these anti-piracy is not in the public or government interest from an economic perspective given the current budget problems and ensuring that purchasing parity would create a more efficient market enabling the Australian economy to complete more effectively. Australia is a net importer of entertainment goods and propping up distribution channels is in no-ones interest bar the owners of those channels. (Who incidentally donate to the political parties involved)
It should be the norm but its not. Company's normally side with the approach that costs the least, in this case handing over their clients details puts an end to the matter at a low cost possible cost. I suspect, based upon their previous legal challenges that the management of iiNet actually think that what is occurring here is wrong and they're putting their money into what they believe which isn't something that you often see in the corporate world.
Not only is this the right thing to do, by attempting to stop a shakedown by a company with low moral standards, it's a great marketing ploy. Internode put a few ads on the mainstream media and get the best outcome. Australian ISP clients move to iiNet to demonstrate that this is the behavior that you want to see. I've already voted with my money and done exactly this and have been really happy with the end result. (My download speeds have also improved (ipv6 as well)
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Superficially, this would appear to have a significant degree of bias and I'm left wondering what's the point. For starters it used a test developed in the US as its starting point. It would be expected that students from the US would already be somewhat familiar with the test and associated methodology whereas the other students wouldn't. Also teaching tends to become skewed towards common testing regimes, so it is likely that the material being covered in the US is more relevant to the tests than other countries. I suspect that with a minor tweak to the content of other schools this alleged advantage will disappear.
Also the definition of world is just a tad skewed... why not say the best of 4 countries tested out of 195 countries.
Its a job market, if you're not swapping jobs, you aren't using the market and you're getting underpaid.
It's not about productivity, it not about scratching the itch its about maximising your return.
I like to solve problems and build things. There are lots of organisations which value my skills and that keeps me happy. While I've found that I enjoy working in research organisations more than accounting firms they've both paid me well in the time that I was there.
Your bosses will try to pay you as little as possible to do the job because that's their job, so do yourself a favour and make sure that your pay reflects your value.
Under Mitchell Baker's expert direction Mozilla share of the Market has gone from around 30% to around 5%. When considering her advice I would assess it against this historical backdrop. This is not a track record of success.
Of course she could simply be blowing her own trumpet, as her qualifications would appear to be very light on "STEM" and of course you need more non-technical people.
Is it possible to get a list of phones which incorporate a headphone jack which are currently on sale.
A headphone jack is a feature that I would like to have.
Reviewers get your heads out of your arses and give phones without headphone jacks a bad review.
What apples doiing isn't particularly amazing, guys it's bluetooth. Interesting but not amazing.
What the cochlear implant does is amazing, and its been amazing since the technology was developed in Australia in 1978. Watch some of the video 's on youtube of people hearing for the first time, it's pretty heady stuff.
While there's a lot wrong with the Common Criteria process some of the underlying concepts are good. EAL7 essentially relies on the implementation of a security concept that is provably correct. This is opposed to trying to harden/secure a general purpose system. This is why people use Data Diodes, which are essentially one way network connections.
Security Concept = Only allow data to travel in one direction. You can then prove that data can't get from the high side to the low side
Implementation cut one of the fibres in a ethernet fibre connection allowing signal to travel in one direction and then make the network card think all is well. (Build a network stack that convert tcp to udp and spoof acks )
If you really want security design a system with these components.
From a Non-US viewpoint.
Trump is a money guy, that's his source and he'll bend like a pretzel to get more.
Sanctions against Russia have had a huge financial impact on the value of Russian resource contracts.
There's a connection between Trumps Team and Russia, this is on the record, hence the terminations
Comey appears to be a bit of a straight laced guy with a moral compass with a strong reputation
Comey leads a further investigation into these connections
Trump discusses the matter with Comey
Trump fires Comey (with extremely poor form)
Comey leaks details of conversations.
Reading between the lines, Trump was extremely threatened by the investigation into links between the Trump's presidency and Russia and he acted to remove the source of this threat. He knew that there was a chance that Comey would leak but he's also misjudged Comey's finesse in the manner of the leak.
What is truly ironic, given the recent US-USSR history is that the US leadership appears to be under the thrall of Russia and the associated resource values that are being impacted by US economic sanctions.
The other source of tension is that the Orwellian US state surveillance might actually already know answers however to do so would require the admission of the actual scope of this program which nobody wants to do. Because Trump's team were outsider's their understanding of the capability of these programs was infantile and they didn't modify their actions.
There are suites of jobs which are at risk in high wage earning countries. Hopefully yours won't be one of them. Lets face it we're about to be exposed to the largest revolution in earning power that the world has ever seen.
Drive a truck or buy a PC to do it for you.
Deliver pizza's or buy a PC to do it for you.
Deliver financial advice or buy a PC to do if for you
Assist with inventory or buy a PC to do it for you
Drive a tractor or buy a PC to do it for you....
Get the picture...
If you look at the list technical experts
1 Bob Muglia - Head of a startup competitor that trying to market data analytics product trying to steer some of that Hadoop investment into his fold. His sales model is "Look how easy we are" What you should be asking is how much does it cost and how do I get my data back.
2 Bob Johnson - Cofounder of an analytics company trying to steer some of that Hadoop investment into his pocket.
This is a beat up driven by people who wished that they had a slice of the Hadoop pie. Hadoop is a complex system, however it scales to levels far beyond relational database technologies. Basically if you can do what you wanted with relational databases in a cost effective manner then you wouldn't or shouldn't have contemplated Hadoop in the first place. I'm not saying that the above products are good, I am saying that you have to take what they're saying with a grain (or bucket) of salt.
A number of existing Hadoop interfaces are batch based and exhibit a significant degree of latency, however other interfaces such as impala are faster and bypass the map/reduce operation to achieve realtime results. When organisations get this wrong, iIt's a bit like your finance manager talking to your vehicle fleet manager (who recommended Ford vehicles) and based upon that conversation getting a great deal on 2000 tractors. Upon finding his staff are upset, he/she dumps American manufacturing and settles on BMW as their Fleet vehicle of choice even through the cost is significantly higher. If you're a clever organisation you don't need to buy a Mercedes or BMW to achieve good results, however the owners of BMW or Mercedes would certainly encourage you to do so.
Personally I have watched a number of organisations deploy Hadoop clusters in a poor manner without understanding the system fundamentals and they'd love to blame the tool. I've also seen clever organisations save millions on their existing licences and meet their business or compliance objectives. It really comes down to looking at your organisation in a pragmatic manner and deciding are you collectively clever, or are you collectively stupid.
Based upon what I've seen and know.
1 Data Locality - Don't deploy Hadoop as virtuals which rely on an underlying SAN technology, if you're doing this you don't understand either the problem or the solution. The issue that you might solve with virtualisation is deployment and management, don't kill locality in doing so.
2 Competent staff - You are going to need, and retain, and train highly competent staff to ensure that the interfaces are simple (see point 4)
3 Understand your business drivers, are you a knowledge based organisation? What insights do you expect will make a difference to your bottom line.
4 Who will get access to the information and how.
5 Where is this information that you're going to throw into Hadoop anyway?
There are a number of managers who should be held accountable for poorly performing hadoop clusters and the above questions should be asked of all of them.
In some cases they would have been better off going with a simpler model initially such as Casandra to meet their requirements, however most organisations overestimate their abilities.
I would just like to say thank you, and I hope that other government agencies worldwide contribute equally. Being born when astronauts were taking the first steps towards the moon I have always held NASA in high regard and it is fabulous that they keep impressing many decades later.
What makes me laugh is nobody's actually stated the obvious, looking after the poor and the needy is the Government's job. Companies really shouldn't be donating money to charities at all, their job is to look after their shareholders, ie you don't have a by the people for the people section in a companies constitution. If a manager want to feel good about themselves, get them donate their own money, and not somebody else's money. As a Google shareholder I'd be pissed off and I'd be asking whoever approved this to reimbursing me.
If you care about people vote for a government that cares for people and provides basic healthcare, dole and pay your taxes to support this agenda.
Personally I don't think that donations to charities and religious organizations should be tax deductions at all, effectively they're just tax dodges.
You're flat out wrong. Provably secure system exist and have existed for decades. Go to, or go back to Uni and learn a little. The fact that it's much cheaper to develop systems which aren't is a design choice. The people making those design choices should be held accountable for the decisions, no ifs, no buts.
Heads on sticks is the answer, who was responsible for implementing this system on Windows? Who was responsible for not patching the system? and who was the clown that provided vectors from the Internet to this system?
Smart watches are a bit lame. People who wear them are a bit lame as well and generally fit into the
1 I'm a fanboy/girl
2 I'm trying to look smart
3 I'm trying to look like a newage technical person
4 All of the above.
Whereas something like Google glasses might actually be useful.
It just fits.
Mock the law, women in Iran and around the world should shave their heads in protest. If you're in a western country wear an armband so that people know why.
Saving a few kilos on these missions is very important, I'd say someone under 50kg would be on the money. You might be able to go lower if they had no legs as legs are basically baggage on a space journey. Especially when NASA have been asked to do everything on the cheap.
Consumers are being had, a large single entity controlling distribution is not a good thing for you. If you look at how Dell buys components it shares its component sourcing among a variety of manufacturer, it buys more cheap ones than expensive ones however it ensures that competition remains.
From a technical perspective Netflix can limit content based upon your location. No if or buts. Netflix don't limit your content for a couple of reasons.
1 It makes their service more attractive.
2 Technically it may require changes to their infrastructure and software stack. (but its not difficult)
3 They are well aware of the first mover advantage.
4 You subscibe and authenticate.
5 Your money come from a country
Netflix know that in the future they will limit by geographical location and the reason for this is simple, licensing and profit, but first any hint of competition should be eradicated.
The problem isn't selfies, the problem is poor maintenance, system design etc. This just gives the idiot who made the decision to connect the internet to the floodgate controller the ability to point his finger at someone else.
Its a simple rule don't directly connect your control plane to your windows desktop network that surfs the Internet. It's a bit like a toilet in the corner of your bedroom, undoubtedly convenient but a dumb idea.
Hi, as someone who also worked for a company which was working for Centrelink at the time (Not involved in PLAID) I have to admit that I admire the development of PLAID because the commercial products available were rubbish and "Security agencies" such as NSA and DSD were not helpful in this regard. A significant gap in the way that smart-cards which were being used for access control such as building security worked was found and an attempt was made to re-mediate this.
Protocols evolve over time to either become better or reveal the fact that they are fundamentally flawed. SSL was not written by cryptographic experts it was created by Netscape and it has evolved over time to secure a significant percentage of Internet transactions. PLAID exists because all of the available security products in this space were fundamentally broken and PLAID was an attempted to fix this problem. During the time since this protocol was created I've watch the various debacles with a number of propriety commercial smart card products used in public transport. I would hope that PLAID will evolve over time with the assistance of interested parties to be an open protocol which provides a solution in this problem space.
One criticism of this appears to be that a department which spends billions of dollars on ICT infrastructure should engage in the development of a product when there is an identified gap identified in the market. The spend in total was in the hundred thousand dollars so in reality the project was done on a shoestring is it's not surprising that there are flaws.
Personally I'm sick of developers who didn't go to Universities and don't study the field who get promoted to well beyond their understanding and abilities. That's not to say that there aren't some very good programmers who didn't go to university however in most cases their sphere of knowledge is constrained by the tool-sets that they've worked on and their interest in ICT theory in general. Recently I was working with a developer turned manager and there was a requirement to develop a software component with far greater assurance than he had come across. He was completely unaware that there have been decades of research in this field which has lead to a variety of techniques for developing high assurance software components. After a less than friendly series of meetings I finally had to approach him in private with a set of texts for him to read which provided him with an introduction to the various fields. Prior to that he firmly believed that Object Oriented programming was the be all and end all of programming techniques.
In countries with free educations systems all aspiring programmers should go to Universities (even if they don't finish they tend to pick up some gems), in the US with the education systems is geared towards ensure that the wealthy get the top jobs it's not as cut and dried as the education system is a bit broken.
However the key factor in this field is aptitude and interest, the concept that you can train a bunch of people with low IQs and no interest to code effectively is completely broken. If you look at standardized aptitude tests the profile required for good programmers sticks out like dogs balls, any country that wants a strong ICT industry would be better off developing this pool of talent via scholarships and special training.
The cloud is a new service, for some it will be economical and for others it won't be. If the cloud was really changing IT companies like IBM, HP and Microsoft etc would be tanking. They're not so these clowns are just trying to convince you to part with your cash. Yes the cloud will mean the mum and dad companies can run their IT services in the Interwebs however bigger companies will still see the break even point for running their own infrastructure with maybe their backup web presence in the cloud when and if it makes sense. In the final analysis money talks and bullshit walks.
I expect my ads to be off to the side and not the main course on slashdot. What was the price of this post?
+2 for subtlety......... cocks
Due to its relative isolation Australians pay significantly higher prices than their overseas brethren for a variety of goods and services. These prices have nothing to do with costs and everything to do with a market that has been geographically isolated from a historical perspective. What I find incongruous is that politicians do nothing to overcome these rigged markets. For example an xbox game is significantly cheaper in the US however it won't play on an Australian console, a home theatre amplifier costs more than twice the US price. A kindle book priced in American dollars is blocked from sale from Australian Internet addresses. Recently I could buy two of the same model Dell computer in the US, ship it to Australia for less than the price of the Australian channel. When Dell were contacted about this they said that they would refuse to support such a purchase (Initially they claimed the costs were import duties etc until I pointed out the actual duties). It is ironic that implementing these anti-piracy is not in the public or government interest from an economic perspective given the current budget problems and ensuring that purchasing parity would create a more efficient market enabling the Australian economy to complete more effectively. Australia is a net importer of entertainment goods and propping up distribution channels is in no-ones interest bar the owners of those channels. (Who incidentally donate to the political parties involved)
It should be the norm but its not. Company's normally side with the approach that costs the least, in this case handing over their clients details puts an end to the matter at a low cost possible cost.
I suspect, based upon their previous legal challenges that the management of iiNet actually think that what is occurring here is wrong and they're putting their money into what they believe which isn't something that you often see in the corporate world.
Not only is this the right thing to do, by attempting to stop a shakedown by a company with low moral standards, it's a great marketing ploy. Internode put a few ads on the mainstream media and get the best outcome. Australian ISP clients move to iiNet to demonstrate that this is the behavior that you want to see. I've already voted with my money and done exactly this and have been really happy with the end result. (My download speeds have also improved (ipv6 as well)