Australian government funded research organisation. Since it is never given enough money, it relies on patents such as these to fund basic and applied research.
Why should society recognise you? Why should we all say what a wonderful person you are?
You are part of a ruling elite that sits around wondering "Why isn't my genius praised?" while brighter, better people than yourself suffer hunger, violence and deprevation
You want me to take you seriously? Ditch the capitalistic darwinistic me-me-me anti-enlightenment bullshit and find something bigger than yourself to fight for.
Even fundamentalist christians display more charity than you. Get a life. Join an aid organisation. Join your brothers and sisters in fighting for justice and equality.
Recognize that the core reason why no-one cares for your unique talents is that under capitalism, you are only worth what you can sell those talents for. Got a talent for sport? Have millions. Got a talent for being nice to people? Sucker!
As has been mentioned before, NASA has an incredible handicap:
They can't let people die.
It would seem to me that NASA can indeed let people die - in fact it has let at least 14 people die in Shuttles alone...
How many people have died in the Soyuz? None!
Don't confuse the public relations mea culpa with actually listening to the damn engineers! Under capitalism the people with the money rank higher than the people with the knowledge - management will override those pesky engineers who point out costly inconveniences like bits falling off the wing...
Even on a modern anarcho-capitalist shoestring budget, the ex-Soviet space industry continues to show itself more innovative and flexible than the US system - where every major capitalist company involved has to be fed part of each contract; and where each company uses money earmarked for space for its own private research.
Whereas the US ended up with the expensive and dangerous Space Shuttle - now grounded indefinately - the USSR managed to design the simple, usable and much cheaper Soyuz.
Maybe this is because under capitalism every decision is a compromise between rival power structures, while good engineering is an open discource between co-operating equals? (Compare Windows vs. Open Source)
Good luck to the Russians! Maybe they can keep the dream of space alive until we get our act together and join them again - in the spirit of human expansion and scientific discovery.
Please don your Mao suit, and, armed with your vast and encyclopaedic knowledge of Chinese culture and history, let a hundred flowers bloom in your mind and tell me...
When, in its history, has China been an expansionist imperial power like France, England, Germany etc?
I seem to run into the occassional Chinese person in far flung places like Indonesia, Malaysia and so on... are these remnants of some Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere? Did the boundaries of the Chinese Empire reach Java?
Can you really invisage a China so outward focussed as to try to invade and conquer the world, like Germany and its Nipponese apprentices?
(and I'll keep my opinions of "borderline Marxist-Lenninist-Maoists" to myself)
Well, obviously Tibet and Taiwan are considered by the Chinese as part of China - re-incorporating them isn't expanding but rather consolidation.
The other countries are considered surrounding client states that sometimes have to be kept compliant - or at least stable.
After 1949 something happened, let me see if I can remember, why yes! The collapse of the institution of the Emperor, the rise (once again) of rival warlords, leading to the triumph of a single leader who was a magnificent strategic and tactical military leader but who was hampered by ideology and a desire to change things
After Mao died, the Chinese desire for order, with everything in harmonious balance was reasserted, and ideology slowly phased out.
Even at the height of Mao insanity, China did not invade any country it considered external. It may have helped neighbouring communist states and would be revolutions, but that is more an inward looking defensive posture.
The fact remains that the militarization is space is virtually inevitable - if not by us, by someone else.
[evil laugh] The fact remains that the domination of the world by a single power is virtually inevitable - if not by us, by someone else.[/evil laugh]
One of the reasons for the Chinese Shenzhou manned-spaceflight program is to put electronic and optical intelligence platforms in orbit... Chances are we'll see a new space race between the US and China, with the moon being the primary goal for both.
Why do people on Slashdot persist in seeing China as an agressive expansionist power in contradiction to its entire history?
Authoritarian, yes. Undemocratic, obviously. Expansionist? You have gotta be kidding!
The militarization of space has already happened - the spy sattelites are up there already taking photos of everything under the sun. The further militarization of space is indeed probably inevitable.
But shouldn't America be using its power in the world to slow, or halt this process? Shouldn't it take advantage of its hegemony to restrict the military use of space, rather then gleefully leaping to the front of the pack, just like all the other countries?
A person (including a carrier or carriage service provider) who provides facilities for making, or facilitating the making of, a communication is not taken to have authorised any infringement of copyright in a work merely because another person uses the facilities so provided to do something the right to do which is included in the copyright.
In non-lawyer speak, this approximately means that you can't go after an ISP merely because its users mis-use the service to breach copyright - any more than you can go after the telephone company providing the local loop that all those dial-up accounts go through.
So ARIA can huff and puff, but this house ain't coming down...
While we're celebrating, let's not forget the language that XEROX Parc wrote to help them program the Alto - the language that was used for the demo that Steve Jobs saw when he popped in for a visit...
The real discussions on Slashdot usually only interesting to a few people:)
Cornell LII isn't directly affiliated with AustLII the way, say CanLII (Canadian law) is, but they keep in touch...
CanLII is actually funded by a levy on the practicing certificates of Canadian lawyers, which is a perfect example of law firms doing an end-run around the legal publishing monopolies.
Btw, check out WorldLII, which contains stuff from most of the common law world (minus US) as well as links to stuff from all over. Much better then Findlaw:)
Numbered paragraphs is part of a raft of publications standards we brought in over the last couple of years - the other part is the citation [2002] HCA 56, which is given to the publication by the courts (in this case the [H]igh [C]ourt of [A]ustralia) and not by any particular legal publisher.
[2002] HCA 56 means that this is the 56th case handed down by the High Court in the year 2002.
This was in a large part driven by AustLII which publishes for free on the WWW all Australian case-law and statutes.
The US is still quite a way behind on this, in part because much of the case-law is tied up with specific commercial legal publishers who own the citation mechanisms (and also often have exclusive publishing deals).
I found your comment on the judgment style quite interesting - not coming from a US background it as always seemed normal to me;)
Lawyers that represent clients in the wrong, are in the wrong themselves. No excuses.
Who decides that the client is in the wrong? I would prefer to have a lawyer defend me in court to the best of his or her ability and have the judge decide whether I am guilty then be convicted by default because no lawyer will touch my case.
Look up the Cab Rank Rule at your nearest Bar Association, then read through history of lawyers defending people who everyone knew were guilty; until the trial, that is.
Until a judge and a jury of peers convicts me, I am entitled to a presumption of innocence and legal representation.
In the 19th and early 20th century, at the heart of the industrial revolution, working conditions were appalling. There were no government restrictions on what employers could require from employees.
As a result of the socialist labour movements, both through their political arms and through strikes and other actions, work place reforms were put in place.
Age limits were raised, limitations on salary cutting was introduced and dangerous machinery was forced to be made safer.
Now, at the beginning of the 21C, we have forgotten those gains and how they were made. We have forgotten that employers must be kept in check by organized employees.
If you stand alone, they will monitor every aspect of your lives, from email to web surfing, to drug use. The actions in this article are only the beginning.
Remember that old saying, which is now so relevant - in Union is Strength.
Under state capitalism, the state intervenes with force to support the ownership of the capitalist ruling class (ie the mega-corps and their copyright ownership)
Under socialism, the community owns and controls property through the state (ie they pay taxes to sponsor arts/software etc). This doesn't have a good track record, as the state is too easily corrupted!
Under communism, the community rather than the state owns property. This is possible with open source! No one owns Linux, neither Microsoft or the US Government, nor even Linus. Everyone can use and develop Linux free from government or capitalist interference!
This won't work for the same reasons that RIAA won't succeed in stopping music sharing, and Microsoft won't stop people from pirating Office: in a competitive capitalist economy, the natural price of an item is the marginal cost of reproduction.
For digital information, the marginal cost of reproduction is $0 - nil - nada. So no matter how low the price of my software gets, I can always get it from another provider (like Gnutella) for free.
Lowering the price won't help. Copy protection won't help.
There are only two ways to ensure the creation of quality information, art and software:
The state capitalist approach (fascism): The government removes free competition through laws like copyright backed by state force.
The open source approach (communism): The state gets the hell out and allows all information to be free - owned and controlled by no-one, not by the state, not by mega-corporations, but by the community as a whole
Shareware is just a temporary path on the road to open source - no matter how many copy protection methods it uses to prop itself up with.
Under capitalism you have to sell your life to your employer - unpaid overtime anyone?
Under communism you are guaranteed a job, so the power of the capitalism employer is broken.
You only have to work part of the time, and have free time to create, enjoy and live. Look at socialist France - the 35 hour week is enshrined in legislation; compare their wonderful and diverse cinema industry with the schlock that Hollywood churns out.
The problem with the article is that it doesn't consider the underlying economic pressures on labor movement.
The rate of Ausbergers in the Silicon Valley tech industry is probably higher then the BBC figures because those people make ideal corporate slaves... just fill them up with Jolt and watch them code!
Talk about pollution etc is just a red herring - look for the economic incentives.
Of course Silicon Valley has a lot of geeks with Ausbergers - Capitalism loves workers with Autism.
Microserfs work hard, and as long as you keep them supplied with Jolt Cola (TM) they won't start asking questions like "Why am I here?"
Don't worry about Art, Music, Social Interaction, Sex, just keep drinking the Cola and writing that accounting code. We'll do all the thinking for you; we'll provide you with a nice cubical and keep all the nasty social interaction away from you.
Keep coding for the man! It's the code that matters! Don't question who you are or what you are doing! You only exist to work!
The end of this successful mission should bring our minds back to the fact that this was only possible through government funding and control.
Pure capitalism would never be able to make these bold steps into the future.
If we were to spend more time organising ourselves rationally through our government, and less time irrationally competing to produce slightly differently branded soft drinks, we would by now have a colony on Mars...
Slashdot Mirror
Australian government funded research organisation. Since it is never given enough money, it relies on patents such as these to fund basic and applied research.
So tell me, what's the weather like in Melbourne nowdays?
You are part of a ruling elite that sits around wondering "Why isn't my genius praised?" while brighter, better people than yourself suffer hunger, violence and deprevation
You want me to take you seriously? Ditch the capitalistic darwinistic me-me-me anti-enlightenment bullshit and find something bigger than yourself to fight for.
Even fundamentalist christians display more charity than you. Get a life. Join an aid organisation. Join your brothers and sisters in fighting for justice and equality.
Recognize that the core reason why no-one cares for your unique talents is that under capitalism, you are only worth what you can sell those talents for. Got a talent for sport? Have millions. Got a talent for being nice to people? Sucker!
They can't let people die.
It would seem to me that NASA can indeed let people die - in fact it has let at least 14 people die in Shuttles alone...
How many people have died in the Soyuz? None!
Don't confuse the public relations mea culpa with actually listening to the damn engineers! Under capitalism the people with the money rank higher than the people with the knowledge - management will override those pesky engineers who point out costly inconveniences like bits falling off the wing...
And what is going to be increasingly more important to advanced economies - software and space, or pig iron and textiles?
The more advanced we get, the greater the advantage socialism has over capitalism...
Whereas the US ended up with the expensive and dangerous Space Shuttle - now grounded indefinately - the USSR managed to design the simple, usable and much cheaper Soyuz.
Maybe this is because under capitalism every decision is a compromise between rival power structures, while good engineering is an open discource between co-operating equals? (Compare Windows vs. Open Source)
Good luck to the Russians! Maybe they can keep the dream of space alive until we get our act together and join them again - in the spirit of human expansion and scientific discovery.
...all of which is moving off the topic.
Please don your Mao suit, and, armed with your vast and encyclopaedic knowledge of Chinese culture and history, let a hundred flowers bloom in your mind and tell me...
When, in its history, has China been an expansionist imperial power like France, England, Germany etc?
I seem to run into the occassional Chinese person in far flung places like Indonesia, Malaysia and so on... are these remnants of some Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere? Did the boundaries of the Chinese Empire reach Java?
Can you really invisage a China so outward focussed as to try to invade and conquer the world, like Germany and its Nipponese apprentices?
(and I'll keep my opinions of "borderline Marxist-Lenninist-Maoists" to myself)
Well, obviously Tibet and Taiwan are considered by the Chinese as part of China - re-incorporating them isn't expanding but rather consolidation.
The other countries are considered surrounding client states that sometimes have to be kept compliant - or at least stable.
After 1949 something happened, let me see if I can remember, why yes! The collapse of the institution of the Emperor, the rise (once again) of rival warlords, leading to the triumph of a single leader who was a magnificent strategic and tactical military leader but who was hampered by ideology and a desire to change things
After Mao died, the Chinese desire for order, with everything in harmonious balance was reasserted, and ideology slowly phased out.
Even at the height of Mao insanity, China did not invade any country it considered external. It may have helped neighbouring communist states and would be revolutions, but that is more an inward looking defensive posture.
Read up yourself.
The fact remains that the militarization is space is virtually inevitable - if not by us, by someone else.
[evil laugh] The fact remains that the domination of the world by a single power is virtually inevitable - if not by us, by someone else.[/evil laugh]
One of the reasons for the Chinese Shenzhou manned-spaceflight program is to put electronic and optical intelligence platforms in orbit... Chances are we'll see a new space race between the US and China, with the moon being the primary goal for both.
Why do people on Slashdot persist in seeing China as an agressive expansionist power in contradiction to its entire history?
Authoritarian, yes. Undemocratic, obviously. Expansionist? You have gotta be kidding!
The militarization of space has already happened - the spy sattelites are up there already taking photos of everything under the sun. The further militarization of space is indeed probably inevitable.
But shouldn't America be using its power in the world to slow, or halt this process? Shouldn't it take advantage of its hegemony to restrict the military use of space, rather then gleefully leaping to the front of the pack, just like all the other countries?
Or would that be bad for business?
Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s39B says:
A person (including a carrier or carriage service provider) who provides facilities for making, or facilitating the making of, a communication is not taken to have authorised any infringement of copyright in a work merely because another person uses the facilities so provided to do something the right to do which is included in the copyright.In non-lawyer speak, this approximately means that you can't go after an ISP merely because its users mis-use the service to breach copyright - any more than you can go after the telephone company providing the local loop that all those dial-up accounts go through.
So ARIA can huff and puff, but this house ain't coming down...
While we're celebrating, let's not forget the language that XEROX Parc wrote to help them program the Alto - the language that was used for the demo that Steve Jobs saw when he popped in for a visit...
Smalltalk
The real discussions on Slashdot usually only interesting to a few people :)
Cornell LII isn't directly affiliated with AustLII the way, say CanLII (Canadian law) is, but they keep in touch...
CanLII is actually funded by a levy on the practicing certificates of Canadian lawyers, which is a perfect example of law firms doing an end-run around the legal publishing monopolies.
Btw, check out WorldLII, which contains stuff from most of the common law world (minus US) as well as links to stuff from all over. Much better then Findlaw :)
Numbered paragraphs is part of a raft of publications standards we brought in over the last couple of years - the other part is the citation [2002] HCA 56, which is given to the publication by the courts (in this case the [H]igh [C]ourt of [A]ustralia) and not by any particular legal publisher.
[2002] HCA 56 means that this is the 56th case handed down by the High Court in the year 2002.
This was in a large part driven by AustLII which publishes for free on the WWW all Australian case-law and statutes.
The US is still quite a way behind on this, in part because much of the case-law is tied up with specific commercial legal publishers who own the citation mechanisms (and also often have exclusive publishing deals).
I found your comment on the judgment style quite interesting - not coming from a US background it as always seemed normal to me ;)
Who decides that the client is in the wrong? I would prefer to have a lawyer defend me in court to the best of his or her ability and have the judge decide whether I am guilty then be convicted by default because no lawyer will touch my case.
Look up the Cab Rank Rule at your nearest Bar Association, then read through history of lawyers defending people who everyone knew were guilty; until the trial, that is.
Until a judge and a jury of peers convicts me, I am entitled to a presumption of innocence and legal representation.
Don't forget the legal representation bit.
Sheesh, enough with the lawyer bashing already.
Lawyers are just people like the rest of us with a job to do - sometimes their clients are wrong, sometimes right.
Next time you're up against the RIAA in court, I'd like to see you decline a lawyer on the grounds that the job is of "dubious ethical value".
I know it's oh so trendy to constantly attack the legal profession, but really. Grow up.
In the 19th and early 20th century, at the heart of the industrial revolution, working conditions were appalling. There were no government restrictions on what employers could require from employees.
As a result of the socialist labour movements, both through their political arms and through strikes and other actions, work place reforms were put in place.
Age limits were raised, limitations on salary cutting was introduced and dangerous machinery was forced to be made safer.
Now, at the beginning of the 21C, we have forgotten those gains and how they were made. We have forgotten that employers must be kept in check by organized employees.
If you stand alone, they will monitor every aspect of your lives, from email to web surfing, to drug use. The actions in this article are only the beginning.
Remember that old saying, which is now so relevant - in Union is Strength.
Actually I'd call that socialism.
Under state capitalism, the state intervenes with force to support the ownership of the capitalist ruling class (ie the mega-corps and their copyright ownership)
Under socialism, the community owns and controls property through the state (ie they pay taxes to sponsor arts/software etc). This doesn't have a good track record, as the state is too easily corrupted!
Under communism, the community rather than the state owns property. This is possible with open source! No one owns Linux, neither Microsoft or the US Government, nor even Linus. Everyone can use and develop Linux free from government or capitalist interference!
This won't work for the same reasons that RIAA won't succeed in stopping music sharing, and Microsoft won't stop people from pirating Office: in a competitive capitalist economy, the natural price of an item is the marginal cost of reproduction.
For digital information, the marginal cost of reproduction is $0 - nil - nada. So no matter how low the price of my software gets, I can always get it from another provider (like Gnutella) for free.
Lowering the price won't help. Copy protection won't help.
There are only two ways to ensure the creation of quality information, art and software:
Shareware is just a temporary path on the road to open source - no matter how many copy protection methods it uses to prop itself up with.
Not at all!
Under capitalism you have to sell your life to your employer - unpaid overtime anyone?
Under communism you are guaranteed a job, so the power of the capitalism employer is broken.
You only have to work part of the time, and have free time to create, enjoy and live. Look at socialist France - the 35 hour week is enshrined in legislation; compare their wonderful and diverse cinema industry with the schlock that Hollywood churns out.
The problem with the article is that it doesn't consider the underlying economic pressures on labor movement.
The rate of Ausbergers in the Silicon Valley tech industry is probably higher then the BBC figures because those people make ideal corporate slaves... just fill them up with Jolt and watch them code!
Talk about pollution etc is just a red herring - look for the economic incentives.
Of course Silicon Valley has a lot of geeks with Ausbergers - Capitalism loves workers with Autism.
Microserfs work hard, and as long as you keep them supplied with Jolt Cola (TM) they won't start asking questions like "Why am I here?"
Don't worry about Art, Music, Social Interaction, Sex, just keep drinking the Cola and writing that accounting code. We'll do all the thinking for you; we'll provide you with a nice cubical and keep all the nasty social interaction away from you.
Keep coding for the man! It's the code that matters! Don't question who you are or what you are doing! You only exist to work!
The end of this successful mission should bring our minds back to the fact that this was only possible through government funding and control.
Pure capitalism would never be able to make these bold steps into the future.
If we were to spend more time organising ourselves rationally through our government, and less time irrationally competing to produce slightly differently branded soft drinks, we would by now have a colony on Mars...
I have just arrived at Slashdot, and will be spending the next few weeks spreading the Revolution, through my 5 week plan.
Remember, use Linux (TM) the Communist OS (TM)!!!
Have a nice day!