Except that there was no sexual torture at that prison. Abuse maybe, but not torture. Torture has a specific meaning.
This is merely argument by definition. People were tortured at Abu Ghraib (and other US Military Prisons), tortured to death in fact. Face it, the whole world has seen the evidence of torture, the whole world knows that torture did take place (and is still taking place) and playing little word games is not going to make it otherwise.
This is simply a kind of obscene political correctness.
As I understand it the copyright aspects of the FTA dont mean squat to most Australias and the federal government cannot mandate legislation to the states
You've got that arse-end round. In any area where the Federal Parliament has competence, as it does under the foreign affairs power and possibly, (but probably not because of the Union Label case) under the copyright power, (see s51 plactita (xxix) and (xviii) respectively), the Commonwealth (ie Federal) law trumps the State law. The relevant constitutional provision, Section 109, reads as follows:
When a law of a State is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth, the latter shall prevail, and the former shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be invalid.
For completeness I ought to add that by virtue of s138(1) of the Evidence Act, the notion of unlawfully obtained evidence is captured by the term 'improperly obtained evidence.'
>Now that this Surveillance Devices Act allows police to obtain a warrant, does that mean that information obtained unlawfully won't stand in the court?
Information obtained unlawfully never stands in court. Because the Constitution is a living document that must be updated to take into account changing technologies, however, the definition of "unlawful" must change.
Where does the Constitution (the Australian Constitutions that is), say anything about "information obtained unlawfully?!"
The correct answer to the original posters question is that this Act will have no effect on the admissibility of improperly obtained evidence, for the simple reason that evidence obtained in conformance with its provisions will not have been improperly obtained.
Note that in Australia improperly obtained evidence will, in special circumstances, be admissible. The law of evidence in the Australian Federal jurisdiction is governed by the provisions of the Evidence Act 1995 (C'th).
Section 138 of this act stipulates that improperly obtained evidence "is not to be admitted unless the desirability of admitting the evidence outweighs the undesirability of admitting evidence that has been obtained in the way in which the evidence was obtained."
To find out what that rather vague statement actually means it is necessary to consult s138(3), but to summarise wildly, evidence which was obtained improperly (for which see s138(2)), should be admitted only when its probative value outweighs the impropriety with which it was obtained.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that is wrong.
No the kind of thinking that is wrong is the kind that simply dismisses the worst case scenarios and says "we simply don't know lets do nothing."
Global warming may make our planet into a paradise! We don't know!
We don't. But what if we combine all the climate effects that we do know (such as your rain pump), and that can be quantified, all the feedback mechanisms, positive and negative, and tried to make an educated guess as to what kind of climate (as opposed to weather) this would result in. This is basically what our computer models do.
The models we had at the end of the 80s predicted the kind of climatic changes and events we are observing today. In the intervening 10 years a lot more quantifiable knowledge about climate has been incorporated into these models. While we must always remember that they are only models, which is another way of saying or knowledge is always incomplete, it would be foolhardy in the extreme simply to ignore them.
We need to learn more, be able to really predict the true outcome!
We will always need to learn more, but we can only act on the knowledge we have at any given point in time. Risk management essentially requires us to plan for the contigency of the worst case scenario.
Global warming may make our planet into a paradise!
The models and paleo data do indicate that there will be winners as well as losers. In fact in the early days of the IPCC, a russian scientists by the name of Budyeko (sp?) got the science group chair, much to the constination of the scientific community. Budyeko was famous for espousing the paradise view, but what he was actually saying was that on balance Russia would be a winner.
However one thing that seems clear is that extreme weather events will become both more extreme and more frequent. Instead of talking of global warming, it would probably be better to talk about a High Energy Climate. In terms of extreme weather events we will (would) all be losers.
That's my only point, we don't know what we are doing.
We had a good idea in 1990, and we have a better idea in 2004, but ultimately you are correct, there's much more to learn. However, as I said, we can only act on what we know now. And it's not like we have time to sit around and wait, we are already 10 years behind.
As an example I live in a city which is already running out of water (Sydney, Australia)
Yes, but is there any conclusive or even convincing evidence that (a) this is due to global warming (natural or otherwise), (b) it is due to the greenhouse effect (natural or otherwise) (b) it is due directly to human activity (other than directly using up the water, which isn't a global warming or greenhouse effect issue), and (c) reducing greenhouse gases, fossil fuel use, or any other such change in our behaviour will in any way stop, slow, or reverse this process?
I'm sorry, but I did not mean to imply Syndey running out of water is the result of climatic change. What I was saying is we are already running out of water, what if the (presumably worst-case scenario) of 40% of current rainfall in 70 years (or even something substantially less than this scenario) comes to pass.
The cause of running out of water is mainly use, but also the fact that we have come an historical record breaking drought (the record here is only 200 years mind). However, if my memory serves me correctly there was a study perporting to show that this drought was demonstrably the result of climatic change. So maybe there is some evidence (conclusive, convincing or otherwise), but that was not what I was clamining. Sorry if I was unclear on that.
I have little faith in the accuracy of these predictions.... Obviously these models and the computer power haven't existed long enough to see how far in the future they can make accurate predictions.
Obviously. I'm not sure that anyone would claim to predict 70 years ahead accurately. However climatic change is already here, and where I reside, we are living it.
But don't you think that your hyperbole about making Earth's atmosphere resemble Venus is a little too sureal in the opposite direction?
Fair enough, would take a heap of methane to achieve that! What I was saying, less hyperbolically, is that the existence of natural cycles provides not imperative, nor excuse, actively to change the composition of the atmosphere. The surreality, I was referring to was that denial, or even just idle chatter, is being carried on, as if the problem was not already here. It's akin to sitting in a buring house and people debating the varicity of the sense organs, and whether we are really seeing fire, smelling smoke etc, or we only thing we are.
> The time for fart-arsing around about "legitimate philosophical questions" passed about 10 years ago.
Great. So does that mean you have the answers to them? If not, the time hasn't passed at all. If we don't answer them we are just as likely to do harm as to do good.
How? What harm? When it comes to practical examples you seem to be contradicting this. In any case, we no longer have time to go over these questions again and again. We must act, as we should have done 10 ago.
What I am trying to say is, people have made careers out of studying global warming. If they all suddenly came out with research showing that global warming doesn't exist or is naturally occurring, it would be the end of their careers. Grant money would dry up. Most people are unwilling to self-terminate their careers, so they engineer research (intentionally or not), that will assure them more grant money and continuance of their field of study.
As has been pointed out above, there is more money out there available to people to want to show that global warming is not a result of human activity. If you could come up with a plausible mechanism which explains the observed climatic changes, and totally discounts anthropogenic causes, you would not be wanting for funding.
In any case your reply is not really pertinent to my post. Your theory doesn't explain, for instance, the climatic change that has already been observed, nor why the insurance industry (which does not fund itself by grants) is so concerned about the impact of climate change.
Scepticism is ususally a very healthy thing. When it is coupled with a conspiracy theory, however, it can be pathological. It really is a bit late in the piece to be indulging in this kind of fantasy my friend.
"This seems to be a problem with the "chicken little's" of global warming. They report predictions that are easily dismissed as "so what?"... It's not like even the most extreme activist is predicting Waterworld or anything.
OK, so my personal opinions are not as "so what? But there is a valid point to these objections."
Maybe not Waterworld, but (extreme activists aside) some fairly conservative scientific models are predicting that large areas of inhabitable land will no longer be so in the next century. (Hint: don't buy land in Florida) As an example I live in a city which is already running out of water (Sydney, Australia), the computer models predict that in 70 years time rainfall will only be 40% or current levels (that is I think the worst case scenario, at least I hope it is). At the same time temperatures are going to (are already) soaring. We are seriously considering desalination plants down here. I think invading Canada would be more cost-effective, but anyway...
I sure hope that these predicitions are wrong, but here in Australia, hardly anyone whose job it is to investigate this hasa any doubt that global warming is already upon us. From the CSIRO Atmopheric Division, to the Insurance Industry, the Fire Service and even our conservative government, climate change (nor even its anthropogenic nature, simply isn't a matter of controversy. The only controversy is whether to sign Kyoto or not, which our government won't, despite claiming to meet our Kyoto goals (and the excuse we get isn't "China," its the "it doesn't go far enough" line).
I find all this talk about the "chicken little's" (sic), the scientific conspiracy (from others, not you), etc to be extremely surreal. Let alone an argument that because the climate has never been static it's just cool that we actively make Earth's atmosphere resemble Venus'! I mean, do you guys all live too far north of the equator, a different planet, or what?
The time for fart-arsing around about "legitimate philosophical questions" passed about 10 years ago. Right now the questions are how are we going to 1) Stop the burning of fossil fuels (which IMHO means going nuclear) and 2) Deal with the effects of climatic change that are already with us.
At some point in the future you are likely to want, or need, to muck with someone else's code, and that someone may have thought decorators were the cat's meow.
That's the rub of course. How likely it is, depends on how widely decorators will be adopted. It's also a bit of an old saw. It was practically the sole argument for rejecting PEP308 (ternary logical operator). My inconvenience in possibly having to read someone else's code which uses decorators is probably outweighed by the extra expressiveness those who imagine they need this 'feature.'
OK, the truth is I'm still pained by the inclusion of these @$#@*!! ugly decorators and I'm trying to be generous in an attempt to come to terms with my grief;)
I tend to think that decorators were added because there is a compelling need for them.
I've yet to be shown any reason that comes anywhere near 'compelling.'
After all, you have a pre-existing business relationship with them, right?
Jokes aside, the reason it is permitted is that the High Court has found an implied right to political communication in the Constitution. A federal law banning political spam would be invalid.
Inveterate Howard hater though I am, and as much as I dislike spam, I have to concede that it is his perfect right to do this, as it ought to be his right.
Ref. the creation of the += operator to bypass the (possibly mutating) hooks involved in a = a + b.
While I disagree with you about the niceness of Python hooks, I must agree that the specialised 'assingment' operators, as currently implemented, are a warts. IMO there should be no functional difference, for instance, between a = a + b and a += b
But note:
>>> a = [0] >>> b = id(a) >>> a = a + [1] >>> id(a) == b False >>> a = [0] >>> b = id(a) >>> a += [1] >>> id(a) == b True
I guess the latter almost makes sense, given lists are mutables, if it weren't for that fact that '+=' is masquerading as an assignment operator. Though this is a small (and perhaps pedantic) complaint regarding a language that serves me so well.
Still, I'd be interested in seeing an example of where += causes the meaning of a hook to "mutate".
I've come to the conclusion that the system does exactly what it says it does. In other words, don't play silly buggers with your vote, but simply list your candidates in oreder of preference.
Never simply list the candidates in the order of your preference! Play silly-buggers and make 'em earn their keep.:) For a start shouldn't vote for the party that you think will do the most good, you should vote against the party that will do the most harm.
Secondly, as I already pointed out, very different considerations come into play depending on whether you live in a marginal seat or not. Hint: You want to live in a marginal, if you don't, vote in the direction of making it so. (ie. put the incumbent last, disregarding which party you actually prefer.)
Finally, the primary vote, even of a party you know has no hope of making it, has the function of sending a message. Send it!
And make sure you vote below the line for the Senate!
As I said, directing it to the minor party means the ALP gets less primary votes, helping the Liberals win. If the race is close, the primary votes *might* make a difference.
And this is precisely where you fall into error. If party A has already won 51% of primaries, it matters not a bit whether party B wins 10% or 49% of primaries. As as previous poster pointed out the only way voting 1.Minor, 2. ALP will hurt the ALP is if the minor party actually wins, as happened when the Greens won the Cunningham by-election.
The way things are in Aust politics right now, the name of the game is to get the Libs out, which means voting for the only other party that's got a chance of winning.
Which you will accomplish just as effectively by voting 1.Minor Party, 2.ALP, 3.Libs as you would be voting 1.ALP, 2.Minor Party, 3.Libs. All that matters is that the Liberal preference comes below that of the ALP.
In any case, unless you live in a swinging seat you are not being asked to change the government (as far as lower house votes go). If you live in a safe seat the only logical thing to do is to vote agains the incumbent, whatever their party. Which is why I will preference the Liberals before the ALP, even though I think the current government is the worst Australia has had to suffer since that of Stanley Bruce.
That's how I used to vote too, but then I learned that that preferences only come into play when none of the parties in contention are able to get >=51% of the vote.
Now for your next trick try explaining how distributing preferences would have any effect, if one candidate had already secured >= 51% on primaries.
If you vote for the minor parties, and give only 2nd or lower preference to Labour, it's possible that Labour will lose simply because they didn't get enough of the first-preference votes.
You better rethink that. If the candiate you disliked the most (eg Liberal) got up on primaries, it wouldn't have made any difference if you had directed your 1st vote to the runner-up (eg. ALP), instead of a minor party, would it?
The best-selling author of "A Brief History of Time"
The "of" explicitly means that the book was best-selling, not the author.
Does the preposition 'of' in the sentence The experienced trainer of newbies explicitly mean that the newbies are experienced? Of course not, it is the trainer who is experienced.
In the same way 'best-selling' in this construction does indeed refer to the author, not the book. Rather the use here is slightly idomatic, in that is refers to an author who sells, rather than an author who is sold (as the OP would have it). Where by saying an author sells we mean the author creates marketable work(s).
Thanks to the free trade agreement, Australia is now likely to get DMCA-like laws.
As I pointed out above, we already got these with Copyright (Digital Agenda) Amendment Act 2000. What we get with the FTA is the extended term of 'protection.'
Well actually it has. The Copyright (Digital Agenda) Amendment Act 2000, inserted DMCA like provisions into out copyright law. This was to done fullfill our obligations under TRIPS (the WTO intellectual property provisions).
As far as copyright law the only major impact I can see is the longer duration of protection, in line with the Sony Bono Act. But really, the more onerous provisions are already part of our law.
Interestingly the FTA doesn't seem to be extending the exceptions of Australian copyright law to match the relatively generous 'fair use' provisions our American cousins enjoy. Wonder why that is?
Re:Beware the French.....
on
Shrek 2 How-To
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He's probably talking about the story and the fact that it's aimed at people with an IQ of over the American average of 75.
Nonesense, the average IQ of 100 was defined with regard to the US population.
The problem, from the point of view of marketing, (and not just from the point of view of marketing;>), is that nearly half the population has below intelligence. Aim you stuff at people with an IQ of 70 and you have another 2 standard deviations of the population who can understand your product.
Of course this requires that intelligent people, should they wish to be entertained by this stuff, have to learn how to dumb down their sensibilities. Fortunately there is only little (new) product in the anglophone world that aims much higher, so most people don't have to know what they are missing. Ignorance is bliss.
The name of the party was Nationalsozialistische Deutche Arbeitspartei for crying out loud!
Bist Du aber ein bloeder Klotz!
If I called for the total abolition of private property, and I called myself a 'conservative.' That would make me a conservative, right?
Just take a look at their program! It has numerous leftist points in it (among others, nationalization of companies, profit-sharing, communal control of department-stores etc.)
Just remember they did none of these things. They were heavily funded by the large German corporations prior to taking power, and they sure rewarded those corporations when they got to power.
Moreover, what was the date of this program? Without knowing that it really is fairly meaningless. The NSDAP prior to Hitler joining it, (and even the party in 1924), was a very different party to the one that took office. I would be more surprised if you had of found this in the program outlined in Mein Kampf. But even there Hitler contradicts himself with a monotonous regularity. I haven't read the entire thing mind. Yeech!
Nazism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism are all left-wing ideologies in that they advocate increased government control over social and economic activities in the name of greater equality.
You really ought to study a little history.
Itatlian fascism became (it was originally merely an offshoot from the Socialist party) a movement whose primary function was to loosen socialist party and trade union control. The reason it was supported by the Industrialists and the large land holders was that it freed up their activities. If you don't understand Italian fascims as an anti-socialism which serving the interests of the Po valley landholders and the nothern industrialist, you simply do not understand Italian fascism!
Again the reason the National Socialists (gosh they called themselves 'socialists', that must mean they really were!) came to power was because all other attempts by the traditional right to suppress the communists and socialists had failed. The Nazi's with their 'extra-legal' methods of taking care of the left were seen as the only way to avoid a revolution. And Hitler was only offered the Chancellorship by his conservative allies, once they had exhausted all their own stallwarts. The Nazi's did affect economic activity, but not by inteferring with the control of Krups Stahl and the host of other German corporations (the Nazi's largest pre-dictatorship donors btw.). Rather they affected it by supressing trade-unions, supplying the corporations with Jewish Slave Labour, and by stimulating economic activity by tooling up (and building roads).
Now it is true that there were originally some more left-wing elements to the Party, by they were eliminated fairly effectively. As my grandmother (my Grandfather was an SA Gauleiter of a German City, but was killed in the war) said to me once in an unguarded moment, "THEY stole our revolution from us," they, being of course, the large corporations.
Finally your equating left-wing with government control of economic activity, is historically rather limited. Remember the idea to free up markets and get rid to the idea of the 'fair price' (as opposed to the market price), was originally left-wing. I wouldn't dare provide an alternative definition though... this is notoriously difficult.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that there was no sexual torture at that prison. Abuse maybe, but not torture. Torture has a specific meaning.
This is merely argument by definition. People were tortured at Abu Ghraib (and other US Military Prisons), tortured to death in fact. Face it, the whole world has seen the evidence of torture, the whole world knows that torture did take place (and is still taking place) and playing little word games is not going to make it otherwise.
This is simply a kind of obscene political correctness.
Research my lad, research.
Physician heal thyself!
As I understand it the copyright aspects of the FTA dont mean squat to most Australias and the federal government cannot mandate legislation to the states
You've got that arse-end round. In any area where the Federal Parliament has competence, as it does under the foreign affairs power and possibly, (but probably not because of the Union Label case) under the copyright power, (see s51 plactita (xxix) and (xviii) respectively), the Commonwealth (ie Federal) law trumps the State law. The relevant constitutional provision, Section 109, reads as follows:
For completeness I ought to add that by virtue of s138(1) of the Evidence Act, the notion of unlawfully obtained evidence is captured by the term 'improperly obtained evidence.'
>Now that this Surveillance Devices Act allows police to obtain a warrant, does that mean that information obtained unlawfully won't stand in the court?
Information obtained unlawfully never stands in court. Because the Constitution is a living document that must be updated to take into account changing technologies, however, the definition of "unlawful" must change.
Where does the Constitution (the Australian Constitutions that is), say anything about "information obtained unlawfully?!"
The correct answer to the original posters question is that this Act will have no effect on the admissibility of improperly obtained evidence, for the simple reason that evidence obtained in conformance with its provisions will not have been improperly obtained.
Note that in Australia improperly obtained evidence will, in special circumstances, be admissible. The law of evidence in the Australian Federal jurisdiction is governed by the provisions of the Evidence Act 1995 (C'th). Section 138 of this act stipulates that improperly obtained evidence "is not to be admitted unless the desirability of admitting the evidence outweighs the undesirability of admitting evidence that has been obtained in the way in which the evidence was obtained."
To find out what that rather vague statement actually means it is necessary to consult s138(3), but to summarise wildly, evidence which was obtained improperly (for which see s138(2)), should be admitted only when its probative value outweighs the impropriety with which it was obtained.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that is wrong.
No the kind of thinking that is wrong is the kind that simply dismisses the worst case scenarios and says "we simply don't know lets do nothing."
Global warming may make our planet into a paradise! We don't know!
We don't. But what if we combine all the climate effects that we do know (such as your rain pump), and that can be quantified, all the feedback mechanisms, positive and negative, and tried to make an educated guess as to what kind of climate (as opposed to weather) this would result in. This is basically what our computer models do.
The models we had at the end of the 80s predicted the kind of climatic changes and events we are observing today. In the intervening 10 years a lot more quantifiable knowledge about climate has been incorporated into these models. While we must always remember that they are only models, which is another way of saying or knowledge is always incomplete, it would be foolhardy in the extreme simply to ignore them.
We need to learn more, be able to really predict the true outcome!
We will always need to learn more, but we can only act on the knowledge we have at any given point in time. Risk management essentially requires us to plan for the contigency of the worst case scenario.
Global warming may make our planet into a paradise!
The models and paleo data do indicate that there will be winners as well as losers. In fact in the early days of the IPCC, a russian scientists by the name of Budyeko (sp?) got the science group chair, much to the constination of the scientific community. Budyeko was famous for espousing the paradise view, but what he was actually saying was that on balance Russia would be a winner.
However one thing that seems clear is that extreme weather events will become both more extreme and more frequent. Instead of talking of global warming, it would probably be better to talk about a High Energy Climate. In terms of extreme weather events we will (would) all be losers.
That's my only point, we don't know what we are doing.
We had a good idea in 1990, and we have a better idea in 2004, but ultimately you are correct, there's much more to learn. However, as I said, we can only act on what we know now. And it's not like we have time to sit around and wait, we are already 10 years behind.
Atmosphere, not climate.
As an example I live in a city which is already running out of water (Sydney, Australia)
Yes, but is there any conclusive or even convincing evidence that (a) this is due to global warming (natural or otherwise), (b) it is due to the greenhouse effect (natural or otherwise) (b) it is due directly to human activity (other than directly using up the water, which isn't a global warming or greenhouse effect issue), and (c) reducing greenhouse gases, fossil fuel use, or any other such change in our behaviour will in any way stop, slow, or reverse this process?
I'm sorry, but I did not mean to imply Syndey running out of water is the result of climatic change. What I was saying is we are already running out of water, what if the (presumably worst-case scenario) of 40% of current rainfall in 70 years (or even something substantially less than this scenario) comes to pass.
The cause of running out of water is mainly use, but also the fact that we have come an historical record breaking drought (the record here is only 200 years mind). However, if my memory serves me correctly there was a study perporting to show that this drought was demonstrably the result of climatic change. So maybe there is some evidence (conclusive, convincing or otherwise), but that was not what I was clamining. Sorry if I was unclear on that.
I have little faith in the accuracy of these predictions. ... Obviously these models and the computer power haven't existed long enough to see how far in the future they can make accurate predictions.
Obviously. I'm not sure that anyone would claim to predict 70 years ahead accurately. However climatic change is already here, and where I reside, we are living it.
But don't you think that your hyperbole about making Earth's atmosphere resemble Venus is a little too sureal in the opposite direction?Fair enough, would take a heap of methane to achieve that! What I was saying, less hyperbolically, is that the existence of natural cycles provides not imperative, nor excuse, actively to change the composition of the atmosphere. The surreality, I was referring to was that denial, or even just idle chatter, is being carried on, as if the problem was not already here. It's akin to sitting in a buring house and people debating the varicity of the sense organs, and whether we are really seeing fire, smelling smoke etc, or we only thing we are.
> The time for fart-arsing around about "legitimate philosophical questions" passed about 10 years ago.
Great. So does that mean you have the answers to them? If not, the time hasn't passed at all. If we don't answer them we are just as likely to do harm as to do good.
How? What harm? When it comes to practical examples you seem to be contradicting this. In any case, we no longer have time to go over these questions again and again. We must act, as we should have done 10 ago.
What I am trying to say is, people have made careers out of studying global warming. If they all suddenly came out with research showing that global warming doesn't exist or is naturally occurring, it would be the end of their careers. Grant money would dry up. Most people are unwilling to self-terminate their careers, so they engineer research (intentionally or not), that will assure them more grant money and continuance of their field of study.
As has been pointed out above, there is more money out there available to people to want to show that global warming is not a result of human activity. If you could come up with a plausible mechanism which explains the observed climatic changes, and totally discounts anthropogenic causes, you would not be wanting for funding.
In any case your reply is not really pertinent to my post. Your theory doesn't explain, for instance, the climatic change that has already been observed, nor why the insurance industry (which does not fund itself by grants) is so concerned about the impact of climate change.
Scepticism is ususally a very healthy thing. When it is coupled with a conspiracy theory, however, it can be pathological. It really is a bit late in the piece to be indulging in this kind of fantasy my friend.
"This seems to be a problem with the "chicken little's" of global warming. They report predictions that are easily dismissed as "so what?" ... It's not like even the most extreme activist is predicting Waterworld or anything.
OK, so my personal opinions are not as "so what? But there is a valid point to these objections."
Maybe not Waterworld, but (extreme activists aside) some fairly conservative scientific models are predicting that large areas of inhabitable land will no longer be so in the next century. (Hint: don't buy land in Florida) As an example I live in a city which is already running out of water (Sydney, Australia), the computer models predict that in 70 years time rainfall will only be 40% or current levels (that is I think the worst case scenario, at least I hope it is). At the same time temperatures are going to (are already) soaring. We are seriously considering desalination plants down here. I think invading Canada would be more cost-effective, but anyway ...
I sure hope that these predicitions are wrong, but here in Australia, hardly anyone whose job it is to investigate this hasa any doubt that global warming is already upon us. From the CSIRO Atmopheric Division, to the Insurance Industry, the Fire Service and even our conservative government, climate change (nor even its anthropogenic nature, simply isn't a matter of controversy. The only controversy is whether to sign Kyoto or not, which our government won't, despite claiming to meet our Kyoto goals (and the excuse we get isn't "China," its the "it doesn't go far enough" line).
I find all this talk about the "chicken little's" (sic), the scientific conspiracy (from others, not you), etc to be extremely surreal. Let alone an argument that because the climate has never been static it's just cool that we actively make Earth's atmosphere resemble Venus'! I mean, do you guys all live too far north of the equator, a different planet, or what?
The time for fart-arsing around about "legitimate philosophical questions" passed about 10 years ago. Right now the questions are how are we going to 1) Stop the burning of fossil fuels (which IMHO means going nuclear) and 2) Deal with the effects of climatic change that are already with us.
Significant whitespace sucks? Blasphemy.
It sure is if you are a Whitespace programmer!
At some point in the future you are likely to want, or need, to muck with someone else's code, and that someone may have thought decorators were the cat's meow.
That's the rub of course. How likely it is, depends on how widely decorators will be adopted. It's also a bit of an old saw. It was practically the sole argument for rejecting PEP308 (ternary logical operator). My inconvenience in possibly having to read someone else's code which uses decorators is probably outweighed by the extra expressiveness those who imagine they need this 'feature.'
OK, the truth is I'm still pained by the inclusion of these @$#@*!! ugly decorators and I'm trying to be generous in an attempt to come to terms with my grief ;)
I tend to think that decorators were added because there is a compelling need for them.
I've yet to be shown any reason that comes anywhere near 'compelling.'
I'm so not happy with the way python development is going. I'm seriously thinking of moving to another scripting language.
Yes decorators are a major wart, but who says you have to use them? You don't even need to update to 2.4.
After all, you have a pre-existing business relationship with them, right?
Jokes aside, the reason it is permitted is that the High Court has found an implied right to political communication in the Constitution. A federal law banning political spam would be invalid.
Inveterate Howard hater though I am, and as much as I dislike spam, I have to concede that it is his perfect right to do this, as it ought to be his right.
This announcement has been brought to you by GNAA, the Grammar Nazi Association of American
Of American what? 'American' means ... nah forgit it
Ref. the creation of the += operator to bypass the (possibly mutating) hooks involved in a = a + b.
While I disagree with you about the niceness of Python hooks, I must agree that the specialised 'assingment' operators, as currently implemented, are a warts. IMO there should be no functional difference, for instance, between a = a + b and a += b
But note:
I guess the latter almost makes sense, given lists are mutables, if it weren't for that fact that '+=' is masquerading as an assignment operator. Though this is a small (and perhaps pedantic) complaint regarding a language that serves me so well.
Still, I'd be interested in seeing an example of where += causes the meaning of a hook to "mutate".
I've come to the conclusion that the system does exactly what it says it does. In other words, don't play silly buggers with your vote, but simply list your candidates in oreder of preference.
Never simply list the candidates in the order of your preference! Play silly-buggers and make 'em earn their keep. :) For a start shouldn't vote for the party that you think will do the most good, you should vote against the party that will do the most harm.
Secondly, as I already pointed out, very different considerations come into play depending on whether you live in a marginal seat or not. Hint: You want to live in a marginal, if you don't, vote in the direction of making it so. (ie. put the incumbent last, disregarding which party you actually prefer.)
Finally, the primary vote, even of a party you know has no hope of making it, has the function of sending a message. Send it!
And make sure you vote below the line for the Senate!
Absofrigginlutely!
As I said, directing it to the minor party means the ALP gets less primary votes, helping the Liberals win. If the race is close, the primary votes *might* make a difference.
And this is precisely where you fall into error. If party A has already won 51% of primaries, it matters not a bit whether party B wins 10% or 49% of primaries. As as previous poster pointed out the only way voting 1.Minor, 2. ALP will hurt the ALP is if the minor party actually wins, as happened when the Greens won the Cunningham by-election.
The way things are in Aust politics right now, the name of the game is to get the Libs out, which means voting for the only other party that's got a chance of winning.
Which you will accomplish just as effectively by voting 1.Minor Party, 2.ALP, 3.Libs as you would be voting 1.ALP, 2.Minor Party, 3.Libs. All that matters is that the Liberal preference comes below that of the ALP.
In any case, unless you live in a swinging seat you are not being asked to change the government (as far as lower house votes go). If you live in a safe seat the only logical thing to do is to vote agains the incumbent, whatever their party. Which is why I will preference the Liberals before the ALP, even though I think the current government is the worst Australia has had to suffer since that of Stanley Bruce.
That's how I used to vote too, but then I learned that that preferences only come into play when none of the parties in contention are able to get >=51% of the vote.
Now for your next trick try explaining how distributing preferences would have any effect, if one candidate had already secured >= 51% on primaries.
If you vote for the minor parties, and give only 2nd or lower preference to Labour, it's possible that Labour will lose simply because they didn't get enough of the first-preference votes.
You better rethink that. If the candiate you disliked the most (eg Liberal) got up on primaries, it wouldn't have made any difference if you had directed your 1st vote to the runner-up (eg. ALP), instead of a minor party, would it?
Moral: KEEP VOTING THAT WAY!
Does the preposition 'of' in the sentence The experienced trainer of newbies explicitly mean that the newbies are experienced? Of course not, it is the trainer who is experienced.
In the same way 'best-selling' in this construction does indeed refer to the author, not the book. Rather the use here is slightly idomatic, in that is refers to an author who sells, rather than an author who is sold (as the OP would have it). Where by saying an author sells we mean the author creates marketable work(s).
As I pointed out above, we already got these with Copyright (Digital Agenda) Amendment Act 2000. What we get with the FTA is the extended term of 'protection.'
Well actually it has. The Copyright (Digital Agenda) Amendment Act 2000, inserted DMCA like provisions into out copyright law. This was to done fullfill our obligations under TRIPS (the WTO intellectual property provisions).
As far as copyright law the only major impact I can see is the longer duration of protection, in line with the Sony Bono Act. But really, the more onerous provisions are already part of our law.
Interestingly the FTA doesn't seem to be extending the exceptions of Australian copyright law to match the relatively generous 'fair use' provisions our American cousins enjoy. Wonder why that is?
s/below intelligence/below average intelligence/
He's probably talking about the story and the fact that it's aimed at people with an IQ of over the American average of 75.
Nonesense, the average IQ of 100 was defined with regard to the US population.
The problem, from the point of view of marketing, (and not just from the point of view of marketing ;>), is that nearly half the population has below intelligence. Aim you stuff at people with an IQ of 70 and you have another 2 standard deviations of the population who can understand your product.
Of course this requires that intelligent people, should they wish to be entertained by this stuff, have to learn how to dumb down their sensibilities. Fortunately there is only little (new) product in the anglophone world that aims much higher, so most people don't have to know what they are missing. Ignorance is bliss.
The name of the party was Nationalsozialistische Deutche Arbeitspartei for crying out loud!
Bist Du aber ein bloeder Klotz!
If I called for the total abolition of private property, and I called myself a 'conservative.' That would make me a conservative, right?
Just take a look at their program! It has numerous leftist points in it (among others, nationalization of companies, profit-sharing, communal control of department-stores etc.)Just remember they did none of these things. They were heavily funded by the large German corporations prior to taking power, and they sure rewarded those corporations when they got to power.
Moreover, what was the date of this program? Without knowing that it really is fairly meaningless. The NSDAP prior to Hitler joining it, (and even the party in 1924), was a very different party to the one that took office. I would be more surprised if you had of found this in the program outlined in Mein Kampf. But even there Hitler contradicts himself with a monotonous regularity. I haven't read the entire thing mind. Yeech!
Nazism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism are all left-wing ideologies in that they advocate increased government control over social and economic activities in the name of greater equality.
You really ought to study a little history.
Itatlian fascism became (it was originally merely an offshoot from the Socialist party) a movement whose primary function was to loosen socialist party and trade union control. The reason it was supported by the Industrialists and the large land holders was that it freed up their activities. If you don't understand Italian fascims as an anti-socialism which serving the interests of the Po valley landholders and the nothern industrialist, you simply do not understand Italian fascism!
Again the reason the National Socialists (gosh they called themselves 'socialists', that must mean they really were!) came to power was because all other attempts by the traditional right to suppress the communists and socialists had failed. The Nazi's with their 'extra-legal' methods of taking care of the left were seen as the only way to avoid a revolution. And Hitler was only offered the Chancellorship by his conservative allies, once they had exhausted all their own stallwarts. The Nazi's did affect economic activity, but not by inteferring with the control of Krups Stahl and the host of other German corporations (the Nazi's largest pre-dictatorship donors btw.). Rather they affected it by supressing trade-unions, supplying the corporations with Jewish Slave Labour, and by stimulating economic activity by tooling up (and building roads).
Now it is true that there were originally some more left-wing elements to the Party, by they were eliminated fairly effectively. As my grandmother (my Grandfather was an SA Gauleiter of a German City, but was killed in the war) said to me once in an unguarded moment, "THEY stole our revolution from us," they, being of course, the large corporations.
Finally your equating left-wing with government control of economic activity, is historically rather limited. Remember the idea to free up markets and get rid to the idea of the 'fair price' (as opposed to the market price), was originally left-wing. I wouldn't dare provide an alternative definition though ... this is notoriously difficult.