This actually is pretty stupid though. When you're driving in the country in Australia it's not like there are thousands of different main roads leading to a multitude of destinations. Once you get away from the east coast it's pretty sparsely populated and the major towns are signposted from hundreds of kilometres away. You would have to pretty wilfully ignore both the road signage and common sense to turn off the main road.
The 1880s were still deely gripped by puritanism, social stratification as being a good thing, institutionalized racism, and a very narrow and rigid view of what was considered "acceptable", and "proper".
Is there any reason a whole lot of canned/freeze-dried food couldn't be sent to Mars in advance? Now that we can target Mars with pretty much pin-point accuracy (within a few dozen KM) there's no reason a bunch of supply missions couldn't be sent before the fleshbots arrive.
I've always wondered why no one has built a loader a la Aliens yet. Surely it wouldn't be beyond current tech and I'd imagine it would be amazingly useful (not least for fighting Alien queens!)
That's the way the adversarial legal system works. EVERYONE is a potential criminal; those of us not in jail are only loose because of lack of evidence.
The original comment to which I replied was asking if this was a violation of competition laws. My point, that ebay in Australia is not legally a monopoly, means that it would not be.
The ACCC can only act under extremely limited circumstances. Remember they are bound by the Trades Practices Act. They won't act just because a bunch of geeks on slashdot says "That aint right".
Where is the anti-competitive behavior in this instance? Ebay may be the biggest game in town but they aren't the only one, despite your limited knowledge. They aren't running around buying all their competitors, or acting to inhibit competition. If anything, they are making it more likely that people will find other ways of selling their goods.
All ebay are doing is adding a rule to their already long collection of rules under which people who wish to do business with them must act. The fact that you don't like it doesn't somehow make it illegal.
The rub is that Wikipedia presents itself as a "real" encyclopedia, when it clearly isn't. If they didn't make such an issue out of the whole "notability" thing it wouldn't be so bad - as it is, it really looks like hypocrisy. I've got nothing against having all those articles up there - I've read a few of them myself. But wikipedia is presented to the world as a real encyclopedia, with high standards to match (e.g. the "accuracy competition" with Britannica) - and yet the vast majority of its material does not relate to anything real or important by any stretch of the (non-geek) imagination. When 50% of Britannica is composed of biographies of Captain Janeway and Buffy Summers then Wikipedia will be able to count itself as a real encylopedia, but not before.
(Just my own opinion of course, feel free to disagree)
It would be interesting to know how many "real" articles there are. That is, if you took out the individual articles for all the fictional sci-fi characters that wikipedia seems to excel at, all the articles for individual episodes of Star Trek and Dr Who, basically all the meaningless cruft that nerds deem important - then, count how many articles there are. Far, FAR less than 2 million, I would expect.
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This actually is pretty stupid though. When you're driving in the country in Australia it's not like there are thousands of different main roads leading to a multitude of destinations. Once you get away from the east coast it's pretty sparsely populated and the major towns are signposted from hundreds of kilometres away. You would have to pretty wilfully ignore both the road signage and common sense to turn off the main road.
The 1880s were still deely gripped by puritanism, social stratification as being a good thing, institutionalized racism, and a very narrow and rigid view of what was considered "acceptable", and "proper".
Sounds just like the USA circa 2012!
A story about super computers and not one comment about a Beowulf Cluster??
Using hydrogen for childrens' party balloons would solve the problem and make things potentially much more exciting!
Is there any reason a whole lot of canned/freeze-dried food couldn't be sent to Mars in advance? Now that we can target Mars with pretty much pin-point accuracy (within a few dozen KM) there's no reason a bunch of supply missions couldn't be sent before the fleshbots arrive.
In other news, India has just announced a manned landing on the Sun by 2019.
Luckily there's not much chance of him ever needing a double bed, because that would be a real pain in the ass to rewire.
I've always wondered why no one has built a loader a la Aliens yet. Surely it wouldn't be beyond current tech and I'd imagine it would be amazingly useful (not least for fighting Alien queens!)
Mars having 1/3 the gravity has more to do with its thin atmosphere than any lack of magnetic field.
Actually I thought that would have more to do with the mass of the planet than anything else.
That's the way the adversarial legal system works. EVERYONE is a potential criminal; those of us not in jail are only loose because of lack of evidence.
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The fact that you have no idea is obvious :)
The original comment to which I replied was asking if this was a violation of competition laws. My point, that ebay in Australia is not legally a monopoly, means that it would not be.
The ACCC can only act under extremely limited circumstances. Remember they are bound by the Trades Practices Act. They won't act just because a bunch of geeks on slashdot says "That aint right".
Where is the anti-competitive behavior in this instance? Ebay may be the biggest game in town but they aren't the only one, despite your limited knowledge. They aren't running around buying all their competitors, or acting to inhibit competition. If anything, they are making it more likely that people will find other ways of selling their goods.
All ebay are doing is adding a rule to their already long collection of rules under which people who wish to do business with them must act. The fact that you don't like it doesn't somehow make it illegal.
What constitutes a monopoly under US law is very different to what constitutes one under Australian law.
I doubt it - no one is forcing you to use ebay. They're not a monopoly.
Yeah the big actors are all hurting bad aren't they...
By the time you've clicked through all 21 pages, it will be March already.
does this mean all the party balloons will be filled with hydrogen instead?
oh the humanity!
Something Boing Boing keeps going on about, basically. That says all you need to know.
Oops, I thought Canada was part of Russia!
That's ok, Australia is practically the 51st state anyway, I'm sure US law will apply.
The rub is that Wikipedia presents itself as a "real" encyclopedia, when it clearly isn't. If they didn't make such an issue out of the whole "notability" thing it wouldn't be so bad - as it is, it really looks like hypocrisy. I've got nothing against having all those articles up there - I've read a few of them myself. But wikipedia is presented to the world as a real encyclopedia, with high standards to match (e.g. the "accuracy competition" with Britannica) - and yet the vast majority of its material does not relate to anything real or important by any stretch of the (non-geek) imagination. When 50% of Britannica is composed of biographies of Captain Janeway and Buffy Summers then Wikipedia will be able to count itself as a real encylopedia, but not before.
(Just my own opinion of course, feel free to disagree)
It would be interesting to know how many "real" articles there are. That is, if you took out the individual articles for all the fictional sci-fi characters that wikipedia seems to excel at, all the articles for individual episodes of Star Trek and Dr Who, basically all the meaningless cruft that nerds deem important - then, count how many articles there are. Far, FAR less than 2 million, I would expect.
Well 22 inches IS pretty damn small!