People in the US seem to think that loser-pays lawsuits are a recipe for legal disaster... even though most of the rest of the free world has been successfully using the system for centuries.
It really isn't that bad, guys. Simple application of discretion on the part of the Judge is sufficient to eliminate most frivilous lawsuits.
In a society that's increasingly becomming dominated by the effects of lawyers and lawsuits, debating the merits of loser-pays is perfectly justifiable. But if you're against it, don't argue from a position which asserts that the system wouldn't work; Do some research and find a reason to object which isn't contradicted by emperical evidence in hundreds of countries over hundreds of years.
Of course it means we're beaten - there is no technological approach to spam which will work.
This shouldn't be surprising: Throughout ACLU vs Reno we were quite happy to assert that there was no technological approach to censorship which would work; If blocking porn as one class of Internet content is technologically impossible , I don't know why anyone would ever believe that blocking spam as another class of Internet content is even remotely feasible.
Blocking is blocking, and whether you're trying to blacklist spam or porn only depends on your politics, and I'm yet to see a technological representation of that.:-)
I'm sure IT Minister Richard Alston would do everything he could possibly do to help Microsoft...
... which, true to the form that Alston has demonstrated in every other area of public IT policy he's touched, would have the almost certain effect of ensuring Microsoft's downfall.
The difference between handling of prisoners of war in this conflict as opposed to handling of prisoners in any other conflict is that this conflict is, in all likelihood, going to continue forever.
The practice of denying legal representation to prisoners of war is founded on the understanding that the war will someday end, and when it does those prisoners of war will be sent back to their country of origin.
But this "war" will never end. Ever. The Administration hasn't even said what it hopes to achieve by fighting it (indeed, the Afghanistan operations have been simmering down for months, but the war rhetoric is no less pronounced than it has ever been during the last year).
When do you think the war will end, and the prisoners of war can be released? If you're going to argue that what's happening now is just "Standard Operating Procedure", then you can't have it half way: There MUST be a time when the war finishes and the prisoners go home. So when is it? Does anyone know? Will it ever happen? Does anyone even know who the enemy is? Do you actually seriously believe that the US Military will make any impact at all on global terrorism by waging a "War On Terrorism"?
When American soldiers stormed the cliffs on D-Day, they were functioning under an actual declaration of war, with actual objectives, and an actual enemy.
Your president and your congress have not declared war. They have no objectives, no identifiable enemy, and no stated conditions for the end of the "war".
WW-II prisoners of war were released at the end of the war. Current US foreign policy hasn't even acknowledged that a state of war exists, let alone defined conditions for its end. Meaning that people like al-Mahajir will almost certainly be detained without trial forever.
I'm amazed that you can't understand the betrayal of American principles which that outcome represents. That an American citizen can be locked up by his own Government, without trial, without evidence, without access to a lawyer, forever -- Why aren't you and all your countrymen screaming your outrage at the top of your lungs outside the White House?
Orwell had it right: Eastasia and Eurasia existed in a state of perpetual war, allowing the Government depicted in "1984" to carry out any travesty of justice it wanted to under the justification of wartime emergency. Why can't you see that Bush Jr has created an identical state of perpetual war in the US?
Or, to put it another way, how are you going to feel about this if al-Muhajir is still in jail in twenty years time, and evidence emerges that the US Government fabricated its accusations against him?
The US presents itself to the rest of the world as the world's last bastion of freedom and democracy.
... then it locks up its own citizens forever, without trial and without legal representation. And it pretends that there are some parts of US territory where the constitution simply doesn't apply at all (Guatanamo Bay - It is in US jurisdiction, y'know? So why doesn't the constitution apply?)
If you're wondering why the rest of the world looks on the US with contempt, that hypocrisy goes a good way towards explaining it.
If you had absolutely no idea that the rest of the world looks on the US with contempt, then that also goes a good way towards explaining it.
Anyway, to answer your direct question:
If you think you can only be an enemy combatant if a state of war exists already, does this mean that you think that any Japanese pilot who had been captured during the attack on Pearl Harbor would have to be released, since we did not declare war on Japan until after the attack?
Nobody is saying that anyone has to be released. The argument at present is whether people who have been arrested should be (a) charged with a crime, (b) provided with legal representation, and (c) given a timely and fair trial -- Isn't that everything the US stands for?
The fact that that proposal can somehow be conflated with releasing these people only goes to prove the abysmal quality of the public debate that has been carried out on this issue.
How can he be a prisoner of war when Congress hasn't declared war?
Bush is giving all these war powers to himself by declaration and fiat. But until congress formally declares war, he can't possibly be a prisoner of war, and should be given a fair public trial.... and Congress can't declare war, because it hasn't the faintest idea about whom to fight. So instead it has passed a few bills to provide resources for fighting terrorism, but the only notion of "war" that the US is involved in right now is purely rhetorical.
Americans can be so hypocritical about their principles sometimes - that's why the rest of the world holds them in such contempt: The entire country is living proof of the maxim that humans are intelligent as individuals but stupid in large groups.
As more Governments across the world do this, MS is going to have a quandry on their hands: If they ever hope to win this business back, they're going to have to work to ensure that their products are compatible with the competing products which Governments across the world are starting to use.
If they don't do that, companies and countries which switch to Open Source software will be able to say, "Huh? Run MS Office? You must be kidding! It can't read most of my documents, and I won't be able to send useful documents to any of my colleagues in other organizations because they can't read MS formats!"
The thing is, that outcome doesn't need Open Source to completely displace the MS Hegemony to be effective; it only needs enough market share to make the fact that Open Source is harming MS's sales obvious to the press, then the bad PR from MS's incompatibilities will basically force them to play ball.
In the US, T1's are used by businesses; In Australia, most businesses use ISDN (yes, 128kbits/sec), or if they need a "fast" connection they'll usually pick one of the Telstra "DDS Fastway" offerings (leased-lines provided as a managed end-to-end data service at committed datarates between 64kbps and 2 Mbps). There's an increasing amount of ADSL used for business connections too.
In the wholesale marketplace, ISPs have tended to use Telstra Megalink for 2 Mbps services (basically E1 on G.703), but that's increasingly being replaced by 100 Mbps Ethernet as next-generation carriers lay more fibre around the place.
Yes, you'd be right in thinking that all these connectivity options are very Telstra-centric. They're the monopology carrier in our, ahem, "competitive" telecommunications marketplace. It sucks, but it's one of the industry conditions which we just have to cope with, and it's one of the single largest reasons for the high cents/Mbyte figure you see quoted by retail ISPs in Australia. Just to give you some starting points, a Telstra Megalink in the 6km distance band costs $3000 to install and $800 per month to run. 64k on ISDN costs about $400 per month (if you've told Telstra which number you'll be dialling in advance - if you dial any other number, it's about $1800 per month in the local call charging band).
The thing that always chokes me up about these sorts of conversations is that the people who have strong ideas about how much it "should" cost don't actually know what they're talking about.
Just a hint: Anyone who is even remotely interested in thinking about how much bandwidth in Australia "should" cost really needs to understand that there is no such thing as a T-1 in Australia.
Trying to make judgements without that kind of basic knowledge is a bit like making judgements about how much cars "should" cost without knowing that they're made out of steel.
If the deficiencies in your knowledge are really that basic, you just aren't qualified to comment about how much it "should" cost. A fundamental understanding of the market conditions in Australia is required before you can put yourself into the position of making authorative statements
about costs.
What you are really doing is taking a US-centric view of the Internet, and applying it to other parts of the world -- And anyone who lives outside US territory will be able to tell you that that's just nonsense.
The company I work for used to sell software produced by a certain Silican Valley company. We were the sole agent for that software in Australia.
Every now and then they'd ask us why the Australian sales numbers weren't the same as, say, the sales numbers for the East Coast of the US. It was difficult to explain to them that the entire population of Australia is roughly equivalent to the population of LA, and that if they want to do sales comparison numbers then that's the basis they should have been using.
They got bought out by someone else eventually anyway, then their product was discontinued. Harumph. I guess we should have sold more of it:-)
The original poster is mistaken: No split happened, and Australia still pays the full cost of connectivity to the rest of the world.
That's not to say that prices haven't come down: They're a mere fraction of what they were before the Southern Cross Cable Consortium finished laying their cable. But the cost of wholesale bandwidth here is still 3 - 5 times the cost of the same amount of bandwidth in the US, because nobody in the US pays anything to see the rest of the world, whereas the whole world pays the full cost of getting to the US.
Or, putting it another way, consumers in 6 continents are subsidizing Internet access charges for the residents of North America.
People should stop complaining and move on
on
XP, Phone Home
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· Score: 2, Funny
It's really quite pointless complaining about privacy problems in Microsoft software -- The OS and its associated MS apps are so rife with security bugs that any script kiddy on the Internet can break in and obtain access to your closest-held secrets anyway, so complaining about additional bugs/features like the one described in this article is essentially useless. Let's face it, would less of your personal information be available to Microsoft if they didn't gift-wrap your search terms and send them to Redmond?
If you've deluded yourself into thinking that changing the behaviour of their search feature would make a difference, consider this: Microsoft is just as capable of being the aforementioned script kiddy as anyone else is.
Until MS fixes the underlying security problems in their OS, anyone who uses it is implicity acknowledging that they don't care about their privacy. If someone really wants to protect their privacy, they'll put in the small amount of additional effort required to run on a system which doesn't leak their data like a sieve.
We have four glider pilots in our company; We name our servers and routers after glider makes/models.
libelle, ash25, pik20d, cirrus, nimbus, ventus, bergfalke, moba, arrow, mosquito, you name it - if it has wings and no engine, it's on our network.
There are literally hundreds of them, so we won't be running out of names for quite a while.:-)
Representatives of the five major record labels would not talk on the record about the payment system or their rights to use the music. But in comments not for attribution, several executives at labels and their subscription services did not dispute the accusations regarding the payment plan. They said their first priority was to make the services attractive to consumers and that the details of compensation could be worked out afterward.
Wasn't that Napster's original plan?
There really isn't a whole heap of difference between Napster, Inc and any random record label, other than the fact that Napster got there first.
No, these might result in increased radiators. Two reasons: (1) these would add an extra layer blocking the removal of excess heat, and (2) the production of electricity is based on the difference in temperatures between the two sides of the device. The better you cool the outside the more electrity you'll get.
The electrical energy produced doesn't just spring into existence from a vacuum; It's produced by transforming some component of that temperature delta into electricity. Therefore it'll reduce the delta; therefore it'll reduce radiated heat.
Think of the device as a machine which absorbs heat and endothermically transforms it into electricity.
Australians can get connectivity to overseas casinos - no problem. No blocking by ISPs, no need to create blacklists, etc.
The Australian Government, within the next six months, is required to implement additional legislation which will prohibit banks from honoring credit card debits originating from transactions with casinos. They'll still have to honor credits, though. You can tell whether a credit card has been issued by an Australian bank by looking at the first four digits.
When an Australian gambles at an overseas casino and wins, they'll get to keep their winnings, because the casino will post a credit to their credit card account. When they lose, though, the casino will attempt to post a debit transaction... which the banks will be required, by legislation, to dishonor.
So Australians will still be able to gamble, but they'll never lose.
So there's no need to prohibit Australians from visiting online casinos overseas, because online casinos overseas will simply refuse to do business with them. You have an Australian credit card number? Sorry, that card isn't accepted here.
This isn't a technological issue, it's a financial "solution" to the "problem" of online gambling. Why bother banning it when the casinos themselves will do it for you?
The British tried this in Australia, while it was still a penal colony.
Port Arthur in Tasmania hosted a "Model Prison", which was where all the axe-murderers and child rapists ended up. The entire prison was designed so that it was not possible for a prisoner to see another human being. Think solitary confinement for decades on end and you'll start to get an idea of what it would have been like.
It's restored as a tourist attraction now, believe it or not. Details like a chapel set up with screens so that it can be full of people who can't see each other, and cells with walls four feet thick so that sounds from the cells next door can't penetrate; truly bizarre.
All us geeks and nerds should band together and collectively abolish the word "Internet" from out vocabulary and instead replace it with the words "efficient communication" (or something like that).
You're deluding yourself about the purity of their motives if you really think that'd make any difference at all.
It is apparent to me that the only reason Gore is promoted as having any more stature than Bush is because: a) The press, being mostly liberal, is inclined to bash him as much as possible
I don't live in the US, so I'd like to consider myself unbiased in this discussion -- But one thing which really needs to be made clear is that the press hasn't exhbited anything like a liberal bias during this campaign.
You can't escape US media, even if you're not in the US, so everyone in the world gets US election coverage. And one thing which has been stunningly clear has been the block-headed and hostile attitude which the Washington press corps has shown towards Gore.
Let's look at examples: During the first debate, when Bush was making it abundantly clear to anyone with a brain that he didn't understand his own health care policy, Gore demolished him, and all he could say in return was that Gore was using bogus figures. Did the press check to see whether that was true? Of course not, they swallowed the accusation lock stock and barrel and started dissembling about Gore's honesty!
If the press had performed its duty and actually investigated the controversy, they'd have found out that Gore's figures were true, and Bush was ignorant about his own policy's effects.
Then there are other cases where the press has absolutely slammed Gore for his honesty: He's been criticized for saying he was a role model for Love Story. Guess what? The book's author backs that up, but the press still, to this very day, uses that anecdote as an example of Gore's dishonesty.
Gore said he grew up on a farm, performing back-breaking farm labor. Another lie? The press would say, "Of course!" because he went to a Washington private school... but his parents lived on a farm, he spent summers there, and neighbors recount stories of the unbelievably hard chores his father would set for him to "harden him up." Does the press investigate that? No, they're too busy hooting about dishonesty.
The lullaby scandal? It was a joke, guys -- You can't watch the videotape of the speech he made without knowing that, but when it's reduced to dry print, the press has a field day with it, using it as another example of dishonesty.
The "invented the Internet" crap is the best one: When Gore says he "... took the initiative in Congress in creating the Internet..." luminaries of the 'net like Vint Cerf come out in support and confirm that the Internet would never have got to where it is today without Gore's work in congress. Does the press report that? Of course not, it's much more fun to have a good laugh at the things Gore never said, but which have been attributed to him anyway.
And throughout all this, Bush has had an easy ride: It doesn't matter that he doesn't know his own policies, it doesn't matter that he makes wild accusations about his opponent's honesty which are patently false, it doesn't matter that he "embellished" his military service record, it doesn't matter that he comes across as a bumbling illiterate fool -- It's almost as if those things are expected of Bush, because everyone knows he's stupid.
The first question I saw a Washington journalist ask of the local journo who uncovered Bush's DUI conviction was something along the lines of, "With all the controversy it's caused, do you wish you'd never found out about this?" OF COURSE SHE DOESN'T WISH THAT -- It's the biggest story of her life, she's a local journalist nobody has ever heard of who is having a noticible effect on the presidential campaign, why should she possibly feel guilty about doing her job?
Because the Washington press corps isn't doing theirs, I suppose, and they assume others should follow their example.
So -- Any claim of liberal bias from the press during this campaign is bullshit. They haven't had liberal bias, they've just had an attack of laziness and dishonesty. They've pigeonholed Bush as being "stupid", and Gore as being "dishonest", and they don't bother investigating or reporting any stories which might contradict the scripts they've already worked out for the candidates.
There's a web site which has lots of really breathtaking examples of press dishonesty during this campaign: www.dailyhowler.com.
There are examples of press irresponsibility which
benefit Bush and Gore, but the unavoidable conclusion is that the press has been overwhelmingly pro-Bush in an effort to create a close contest instead of the landslide for Gore people were predicting two years ago.
This is a distortion of democracy: People make their voting decisions based on what the press says, but the press is being outrageously dishonest. If I was actually living in the US, I'd be extremely concerned about the way the Fourth Estate has manipulated the result of this election.
Amendments to the Copyright Act in Australia earlier this year specifically exempted downloadable digital media.
As of this particular point in time, it's legal to download MP3s from the Internet. More significantly, it's also legal to share your MPs as well.
The situation arose because the Government attached digital media copyright legislation to a bill which contained a number of unrelated provisions which the Australian Democrats, who hold the balance of power in the Senate, weren't prepared to vote for. And, rather than separate the digital media copyright legislation from the bill and send it to the Senate separately (which would have resulted in Digital Media Copyright passing and the other stuff which the Government wanted being voted down), the Government gambled that the Dems would vote for the whole package because they wouldn't want to vote against digital copyright.
The Democrats examined the situation, and concluded that if they voted for the package, they'd end up with a whole lot of legislation they weren't prepared to support, whereas if they voted against it they'd end up with the status quo being preserved: The country has survived without digital media copyright for this long, it can survive for a few more months until the Government tries the Bill again without the bits the Dems object to.
So, we're left with a new Copyright Act which passed last year, which carries a clause which specifically states that it's not intended to apply to digital media, because other legislation will deal with that -- But the proposed legislation has never materialized because the Democrats voted against it.
As a result, Australia is probably one of the most MP3-friendly countries in the world at the moment. Everyone thinks it's illegal, because it probably was under the old Copyright Act, but it isn't under the new Act. Share and enjoy!
Slashdot Mirror
Why bother? Just download MP3's instead of buying copy-protected CD's, follow the path of least resistance.
(do you think Columbia will lose more money by fighting lawsuits or by watching their customers irrevocably turn to P2P?)
Isn't selective discounting against the MS antitrust settlement?
- mark
It really isn't that bad, guys. Simple application of discretion on the part of the Judge is sufficient to eliminate most frivilous lawsuits.
In a society that's increasingly becomming dominated by the effects of lawyers and lawsuits, debating the merits of loser-pays is perfectly justifiable. But if you're against it, don't argue from a position which asserts that the system wouldn't work; Do some research and find a reason to object which isn't contradicted by emperical evidence in hundreds of countries over hundreds of years.
- mark
It isn't a Solaris Laptop, it's a SPARC/Linux laptop. :-)
- mark
Of course it means we're beaten - there is no technological approach to spam which will work.
:-)
This shouldn't be surprising: Throughout ACLU vs Reno we were quite happy to assert that there was no technological approach to censorship which would work; If blocking porn as one class of Internet content is technologically impossible , I don't know why anyone would ever believe that blocking spam as another class of Internet content is even remotely feasible.
Blocking is blocking, and whether you're trying to blacklist spam or porn only depends on your politics, and I'm yet to see a technological representation of that.
- mark
- mark
The practice of denying legal representation to prisoners of war is founded on the understanding that the war will someday end, and when it does those prisoners of war will be sent back to their country of origin.
But this "war" will never end. Ever. The Administration hasn't even said what it hopes to achieve by fighting it (indeed, the Afghanistan operations have been simmering down for months, but the war rhetoric is no less pronounced than it has ever been during the last year).
When do you think the war will end, and the prisoners of war can be released? If you're going to argue that what's happening now is just "Standard Operating Procedure", then you can't have it half way: There MUST be a time when the war finishes and the prisoners go home. So when is it? Does anyone know? Will it ever happen? Does anyone even know who the enemy is? Do you actually seriously believe that the US Military will make any impact at all on global terrorism by waging a "War On Terrorism"?
Your president and your congress have not declared war. They have no objectives, no identifiable enemy, and no stated conditions for the end of the "war".
WW-II prisoners of war were released at the end of the war. Current US foreign policy hasn't even acknowledged that a state of war exists, let alone defined conditions for its end. Meaning that people like al-Mahajir will almost certainly be detained without trial forever.
I'm amazed that you can't understand the betrayal of American principles which that outcome represents. That an American citizen can be locked up by his own Government, without trial, without evidence, without access to a lawyer, forever -- Why aren't you and all your countrymen screaming your outrage at the top of your lungs outside the White House?
Orwell had it right: Eastasia and Eurasia existed in a state of perpetual war, allowing the Government depicted in "1984" to carry out any travesty of justice it wanted to under the justification of wartime emergency. Why can't you see that Bush Jr has created an identical state of perpetual war in the US?
Or, to put it another way, how are you going to feel about this if al-Muhajir is still in jail in twenty years time, and evidence emerges that the US Government fabricated its accusations against him?
If you're wondering why the rest of the world looks on the US with contempt, that hypocrisy goes a good way towards explaining it.
If you had absolutely no idea that the rest of the world looks on the US with contempt, then that also goes a good way towards explaining it.
Anyway, to answer your direct question:
Nobody is saying that anyone has to be released. The argument at present is whether people who have been arrested should be (a) charged with a crime, (b) provided with legal representation, and (c) given a timely and fair trial -- Isn't that everything the US stands for?
The fact that that proposal can somehow be conflated with releasing these people only goes to prove the abysmal quality of the public debate that has been carried out on this issue.
How can he be a prisoner of war when Congress hasn't declared war?
... and Congress can't declare war, because it hasn't the faintest idea about whom to fight. So instead it has passed a few bills to provide resources for fighting terrorism, but the only notion of "war" that the US is involved in right now is purely rhetorical.
Bush is giving all these war powers to himself by declaration and fiat. But until congress formally declares war, he can't possibly be a prisoner of war, and should be given a fair public trial.
Americans can be so hypocritical about their principles sometimes - that's why the rest of the world holds them in such contempt: The entire country is living proof of the maxim that humans are intelligent as individuals but stupid in large groups.
If they don't do that, companies and countries which switch to Open Source software will be able to say, "Huh? Run MS Office? You must be kidding! It can't read most of my documents, and I won't be able to send useful documents to any of my colleagues in other organizations because they can't read MS formats!"
The thing is, that outcome doesn't need Open Source to completely displace the MS Hegemony to be effective; it only needs enough market share to make the fact that Open Source is harming MS's sales obvious to the press, then the bad PR from MS's incompatibilities will basically force them to play ball.
In the wholesale marketplace, ISPs have tended to use Telstra Megalink for 2 Mbps services (basically E1 on G.703), but that's increasingly being replaced by 100 Mbps Ethernet as next-generation carriers lay more fibre around the place.
Yes, you'd be right in thinking that all these connectivity options are very Telstra-centric. They're the monopology carrier in our, ahem, "competitive" telecommunications marketplace. It sucks, but it's one of the industry conditions which we just have to cope with, and it's one of the single largest reasons for the high cents/Mbyte figure you see quoted by retail ISPs in Australia. Just to give you some starting points, a Telstra Megalink in the 6km distance band costs $3000 to install and $800 per month to run. 64k on ISDN costs about $400 per month (if you've told Telstra which number you'll be dialling in advance - if you dial any other number, it's about $1800 per month in the local call charging band).
- mark
Network Engineer, Internode
Just a hint: Anyone who is even remotely interested in thinking about how much bandwidth in Australia "should" cost really needs to understand that there is no such thing as a T-1 in Australia. Trying to make judgements without that kind of basic knowledge is a bit like making judgements about how much cars "should" cost without knowing that they're made out of steel.
If the deficiencies in your knowledge are really that basic, you just aren't qualified to comment about how much it "should" cost. A fundamental understanding of the market conditions in Australia is required before you can put yourself into the position of making authorative statements about costs.
What you are really doing is taking a US-centric view of the Internet, and applying it to other parts of the world -- And anyone who lives outside US territory will be able to tell you that that's just nonsense.
- mark
Network Engineer, Internode
Every now and then they'd ask us why the Australian sales numbers weren't the same as, say, the sales numbers for the East Coast of the US. It was difficult to explain to them that the entire population of Australia is roughly equivalent to the population of LA, and that if they want to do sales comparison numbers then that's the basis they should have been using.
They got bought out by someone else eventually anyway, then their product was discontinued. Harumph. I guess we should have sold more of it
- mark
That's not to say that prices haven't come down: They're a mere fraction of what they were before the Southern Cross Cable Consortium finished laying their cable. But the cost of wholesale bandwidth here is still 3 - 5 times the cost of the same amount of bandwidth in the US, because nobody in the US pays anything to see the rest of the world, whereas the whole world pays the full cost of getting to the US.
Or, putting it another way, consumers in 6 continents are subsidizing Internet access charges for the residents of North America.
A simple "Thank you" will suffice :-)
- mark
Network Engineer, Internode
If you've deluded yourself into thinking that changing the behaviour of their search feature would make a difference, consider this: Microsoft is just as capable of being the aforementioned script kiddy as anyone else is.
Until MS fixes the underlying security problems in their OS, anyone who uses it is implicity acknowledging that they don't care about their privacy. If someone really wants to protect their privacy, they'll put in the small amount of additional effort required to run on a system which doesn't leak their data like a sieve.
There are literally hundreds of them, so we won't be running out of names for quite a while. :-)
Wasn't that Napster's original plan?
There really isn't a whole heap of difference between Napster, Inc and any random record label, other than the fact that Napster got there first.
The electrical energy produced doesn't just spring into existence from a vacuum; It's produced by transforming some component of that temperature delta into electricity. Therefore it'll reduce the delta; therefore it'll reduce radiated heat.
Think of the device as a machine which absorbs heat and endothermically transforms it into electricity.
Personally I don't quite understand what the big deal is.
Australians can get connectivity to overseas casinos - no problem. No blocking by ISPs, no need to create blacklists, etc.
The Australian Government, within the next six months, is required to implement additional legislation which will prohibit banks from honoring credit card debits originating from transactions with casinos. They'll still have to honor credits, though. You can tell whether a credit card has been issued by an Australian bank by looking at the first four digits.
When an Australian gambles at an overseas casino and wins, they'll get to keep their winnings, because the casino will post a credit to their credit card account. When they lose, though, the casino will attempt to post a debit transaction... which the banks will be required, by legislation, to dishonor.
So Australians will still be able to gamble, but they'll never lose.
So there's no need to prohibit Australians from visiting online casinos overseas, because online casinos overseas will simply refuse to do business with them. You have an Australian credit card number? Sorry, that card isn't accepted here.
This isn't a technological issue, it's a financial "solution" to the "problem" of online gambling. Why bother banning it when the casinos themselves will do it for you?
-----
Port Arthur in Tasmania hosted a "Model Prison", which was where all the axe-murderers and child rapists ended up. The entire prison was designed so that it was not possible for a prisoner to see another human being. Think solitary confinement for decades on end and you'll start to get an idea of what it would have been like.
It's restored as a tourist attraction now, believe it or not. Details like a chapel set up with screens so that it can be full of people who can't see each other, and cells with walls four feet thick so that sounds from the cells next door can't penetrate; truly bizarre.
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You're deluding yourself about the purity of their motives if you really think that'd make any difference at all.
-----
You can't escape US media, even if you're not in the US, so everyone in the world gets US election coverage. And one thing which has been stunningly clear has been the block-headed and hostile attitude which the Washington press corps has shown towards Gore.
Let's look at examples: During the first debate, when Bush was making it abundantly clear to anyone with a brain that he didn't understand his own health care policy, Gore demolished him, and all he could say in return was that Gore was using bogus figures. Did the press check to see whether that was true? Of course not, they swallowed the accusation lock stock and barrel and started dissembling about Gore's honesty!
If the press had performed its duty and actually investigated the controversy, they'd have found out that Gore's figures were true, and Bush was ignorant about his own policy's effects.
Then there are other cases where the press has absolutely slammed Gore for his honesty: He's been criticized for saying he was a role model for Love Story. Guess what? The book's author backs that up, but the press still, to this very day, uses that anecdote as an example of Gore's dishonesty.
Gore said he grew up on a farm, performing back-breaking farm labor. Another lie? The press would say, "Of course!" because he went to a Washington private school... but his parents lived on a farm, he spent summers there, and neighbors recount stories of the unbelievably hard chores his father would set for him to "harden him up." Does the press investigate that? No, they're too busy hooting about dishonesty.
The lullaby scandal? It was a joke, guys -- You can't watch the videotape of the speech he made without knowing that, but when it's reduced to dry print, the press has a field day with it, using it as another example of dishonesty.
The "invented the Internet" crap is the best one: When Gore says he "... took the initiative in Congress in creating the Internet..." luminaries of the 'net like Vint Cerf come out in support and confirm that the Internet would never have got to where it is today without Gore's work in congress. Does the press report that? Of course not, it's much more fun to have a good laugh at the things Gore never said, but which have been attributed to him anyway.
And throughout all this, Bush has had an easy ride: It doesn't matter that he doesn't know his own policies, it doesn't matter that he makes wild accusations about his opponent's honesty which are patently false, it doesn't matter that he "embellished" his military service record, it doesn't matter that he comes across as a bumbling illiterate fool -- It's almost as if those things are expected of Bush, because everyone knows he's stupid.
The first question I saw a Washington journalist ask of the local journo who uncovered Bush's DUI conviction was something along the lines of, "With all the controversy it's caused, do you wish you'd never found out about this?" OF COURSE SHE DOESN'T WISH THAT -- It's the biggest story of her life, she's a local journalist nobody has ever heard of who is having a noticible effect on the presidential campaign, why should she possibly feel guilty about doing her job?
Because the Washington press corps isn't doing theirs, I suppose, and they assume others should follow their example.
So -- Any claim of liberal bias from the press during this campaign is bullshit. They haven't had liberal bias, they've just had an attack of laziness and dishonesty. They've pigeonholed Bush as being "stupid", and Gore as being "dishonest", and they don't bother investigating or reporting any stories which might contradict the scripts they've already worked out for the candidates.
There's a web site which has lots of really breathtaking examples of press dishonesty during this campaign: www.dailyhowler.com. There are examples of press irresponsibility which benefit Bush and Gore, but the unavoidable conclusion is that the press has been overwhelmingly pro-Bush in an effort to create a close contest instead of the landslide for Gore people were predicting two years ago.
This is a distortion of democracy: People make their voting decisions based on what the press says, but the press is being outrageously dishonest. If I was actually living in the US, I'd be extremely concerned about the way the Fourth Estate has manipulated the result of this election.
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As of this particular point in time, it's legal to download MP3s from the Internet. More significantly, it's also legal to share your MPs as well.
The situation arose because the Government attached digital media copyright legislation to a bill which contained a number of unrelated provisions which the Australian Democrats, who hold the balance of power in the Senate, weren't prepared to vote for. And, rather than separate the digital media copyright legislation from the bill and send it to the Senate separately (which would have resulted in Digital Media Copyright passing and the other stuff which the Government wanted being voted down), the Government gambled that the Dems would vote for the whole package because they wouldn't want to vote against digital copyright.
The Democrats examined the situation, and concluded that if they voted for the package, they'd end up with a whole lot of legislation they weren't prepared to support, whereas if they voted against it they'd end up with the status quo being preserved: The country has survived without digital media copyright for this long, it can survive for a few more months until the Government tries the Bill again without the bits the Dems object to.
So, we're left with a new Copyright Act which passed last year, which carries a clause which specifically states that it's not intended to apply to digital media, because other legislation will deal with that -- But the proposed legislation has never materialized because the Democrats voted against it.
As a result, Australia is probably one of the most MP3-friendly countries in the world at the moment. Everyone thinks it's illegal, because it probably was under the old Copyright Act, but it isn't under the new Act. Share and enjoy!
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