The Kyoto protocol was specifically designed to hamper american economic dominance, is it such a wonder that we didn't sign it?
Oh No! The Kyoto protocol is a big evil conspiracy theory to hamper American economic dominance.
Somehow I doubt it, but I guess it is easier to hide behind conspiracy theories than to face the truth that the USA is using an unsustainable amount of natural resources.
Apparently nothing as far as Microsoft was concerned. IE was originally a customized version of Spry Mosaic, as a part of one of the most monumental fleecings of all time (Altamira notwithstanding.) Microsoft promised to pay a portion of their profits to Spry in return for the browser code, and then gave it (IE) away. Any percent of zero is of course still zero.
It was Spyglass Mosaic, rather than Spry Mosaic that licensed their code to Microsoft.
It is a shame that they settled with Microsoft (for $8M) in 1997, becuse MS started claiming that IE was an intrinsic part of Windows soon afterwards, so Spyglass would have had a case that they deserved royalties from all copies of Windows sold.
It is called a "Conservative Government". The ratings system for games is outdated, based on the assumption that games are for kids (hence the highest classification is 15+), but there is no way that a Conservative Government would fix this, because they would be worried about newspaper headlines like "Government allows kids to play porno games". They have also done everything they can to stack the Office of Film and Literature Classification (which also rates games) with conservative cronies.
The Government has also realized that since computer games and the Internet are seen as "scary new-fangled technology" by many older and more technophobic Australians, that they can use them as a ploy to gain support. So, they are constantly announcing plans to "keep the kids safe from the evils of the Internet and computer games". This is definately a vote-winner, because given that Australia's population is skewed towards the older demographic, there will be a lot more people pleased by this policy than upset. Censorship is also an effective bargaining chip when trying to get ultra-conservtive independent politicians to help pass legislation.
The contrast comes in TV and radio. Any attempts to censor them would be met by outrage, because they are not a niche market like computer games. So, while the Government is trying to save us all from being morally corrupted by computers, prime-time TV and radio regularly feature profanity. Australia's TV censorship is self-regulated by the industry, so you will regularly hear "fuck" and "shit" on prime-time free-to-air TV chat shows, and all day on certain radio stations. Music is played uncensored on the Government-funded Triple J youth radio network, and radio hosts will regularly swear their heads off and frankly discuss sexual matters. The partly Government-funded SBS free-to-air TV network regularly features shows that could only be described as "European soft-core porn".
So, it is not that we are a country of prudes or anything like that, it is simply the case that computer games and the Internet have gained in popularity, and hence caught the eyes of regulators and lawmakers, while we have been suffering under a conservative Govenment.
Hopefully they will be voted out in tomorrow's elections, but that seems unlikely based on present polling.
Citizen's Electoral Council... They are pretty much the Left wing equivalent of the Family First (e.g. Family First if the Liberals aren't right enough for you. CEC if Labor, or even the Greens now, isn't quite left enough for you).
The CEC are anything but left wing. They are, in fact, a political cult formed around the conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. While it is true that LaRouche was at one stage a Marxist, he has since made the dizzying turn into far-right politics. He is anti-semitic, anti-British, and bases his politics around conspiracy theories that are, frankly, quite crazy. LaRouche's politics have been described as Fascist, and he has a bizarre fascination with the Nazi party. As such, the CEC (as his mouthpiece in Australia) is certainly not left-wing (although they draw their conspiracy theories from both the left and the right). In 1988 LaRouche was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax code violations, but he was released in 1994.
The CEC was originally established as an electoral front for the Australian League of Rights, an extreme right-wing group often described as being a "Neo-Nazi" organisation. In about 1996 the CEC was taken over by supporters of LaRouche, and the party is now more anti-semitic than ever, if that is at all possible.
While the party tries to cover its right-wing conspiracy theories with superficial left-wing policies, their real beliefs become apparent if you read their magazines (such as "New Citizen" and "Executive Intelligence Review") or talk to one of their members for too long. Here are some facts about the CEC:
They believe that the Anti Defamation Commission (which fights against anti-semitism) is "a front for Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council, the ruling body of the British Commonwealth."
The CEC claims there is a conspiracy of Jews, leftists and progressives to set up a world dictatorship which only LaRouche can stop.
His supporters believe that the Queen of England heads an international drug ring.
The CEC argues that Britain is run by a cabal of Jewish banking families called the Synarchy, located in a secret office in London.
In the 2001 Aston by-election in Victoria, the CEC was the only political party to give preferences to One Nation.
LaRouche is a misogynist who accuses women of causing male impotence and turning men into deviants and queers. In a 1998 article, LaRouche blames women for bipolar disorder and domestic violence. While campaigning in 2002, LaRouche made clear that he is against abortion.
LaRouche said history would not judge harshly if gay men were beaten to death with baseball bats to stop the spread of AIDS. In 1986, the LaRouche movement's California group PANIC sponsored a citizens-initiated referendum which, if passed, would have allowed forced AIDS testing and banned HIV-positive people from working in education or the food industry or from even attending a school.
In its 1997 article, "Land Rights: Prince Philip's racist plot to splinter Australia", the CEC characterised Aboriginal culture as "brutal". It claimed that Aboriginal land rights are a "plot to splinter Australia".
LaRouche calls environmentalists "terrorists with sinister ties to the British oligarchy and 'degenerate' 1960s culture."
In May 2003 the LaRouche on-line magazine praised the benefits of low-dose radiation, genetically engineered crops, food irradiation and nuclear power. The movement campaigns to lift the ban on the highly toxic insecticide DDT.
They believe that the Port Arthur massacre was "manufactured" by the Government and British intelligence to force Australians to give up their guns.
They believe that Sir Zelman Cowen (former Governor General, and a prominent Jewish Australian) is a member of the Synarchy, and helps organize their conspiracies in Australia.
I know this is noted above, but it is worth restating. Family First are in no way left wing. They are supporting Australia's conservative Government in the upcoming election, and directing their preferences against Australia's main left wing party (under Australia's preferential voting system).
They are socially conservative, being the political arm of one of Australia's largest evangelical groups, and have no real stance on economic issues. Their main aim is to move their evangelism into the political arena, and their political candidates are predominantly drawn from the Christian Right. The party generally agrees with the current conservative government, and they are vehemently opposed to the major left-wing parties in Australian politics (Labor and the Greens).
Luckily, although Australian nominally has a two-thirds Christian population, most people who describe themselves as Christian rarely go to church, and many don't really have any religious beliefs. The average "Christian" Australian only goes to Church for weddings, baptisms and funerals, but describes themself as "Christian" on the census, because they "were baptised that way". Many past Australian Prime Ministers have been atheist, agnostic or followed minor religions (e.g. Alfred Deakin was a "spiritualist"), and very few have professed strong religious convictions.
Politics in Australia have generally been a religion-free zone, apart from a few minor political parties, so the arrival of the cashed-up, conservative Family First party is a real worry. They are currently polling at anywhere from 2-5%, and mainly draw their support from members of Pentecostal chuches.
I really can't see how they could - in any way - be described as left-wing, and I thing the story poster was either: confused, uninformed, or trolling against left-wing Slashdotters. In any case, the story should be corrected. As it is, it implies that Family First have some connection with Labor, when they actually might cost them the election.
As far as I know, the free trade agreement between the two countries pretty much makes sure MPAA & friends have similiar power in Australia than they have in US.
I'm not too sure about that, but in any case, the FTA has not been enacted yet. IIRC, some enabling legislation still needs to be passed, and there is still some squabbling over pharmaceutical patent law.
I wonder what the MPAA found? A tar.gz file, an rpm? If their agents are so idiotic to chase after something called python-twisted-1.3.0-1.1.fc2.dag.i386.rpm without checking if it is a film then they should be made to suffer by forcing the issue into court.
Well, the RPM extension is not just used for the packaging format, the extension is also used for Realplayer movies. As a result, I could understand why a search agent would pick it up as being a movie.
What I can't understand is why the search agent does not check the file size. If a file is 100k or a couple of meg, there's a fair bet that it's not a movie. Of course, human checking of some kind would also be a good idea before sending out legal threats.
Similarly, in the Libertarian worldview, why is "Big Government" bad, while "Big Corporations" are fine. Ideally power shouldn't be centralized, but if it is going to be centralized somewhere, shouldn't it be in an institution that is directly accountable to the people, i.e. the Government?
On the bandwidth requirement fromt? Frankly, I don't u'stand why we don't have a good windowing environment atleast half as good as Citrix so far. The X-Damage stuff could be the ticket though.
Just compress the X connection with NoMachine's NX. I've been using the GPLed NX components to access my home desktop from work (over a dialup connection) for the past 6 months, and it works great. I recommend that you give it a shot if you require a low-bandwidth X connection.
Considering that there are only usually two cars on the train (I'm in a regional area), I doubt that they would take up the suggestion. It's a great idea though, and one that the rail authorities here in Australia should implement on the urban lines. I might take your advice and suggest it.
Actually, I would be happy even if they could just assign half of a car to be mobile-phone-free on the train that I catch. However, CityRail is notoriously slow to change. In fact, they only recently installed locking doors on the trains here so that people can't fall out while the train is in motion. Unfortunately, their man focus is Sydney, and we are mostly forgotten in regional areas.
More inane chatter. Mile high was one place where you were safe for a while from all the i-have-got-to-talk-on-my-cell-phone people. Damn.
In my opinion, the most annoying people are those that use their phone on the train. I commute by train for two hours a day, and I used to relieve the tedium by listening to my portable radio (usually tuning into Radio National). Then, a few years ago mobile phones started to gain popularity. Unfortunately, they also interfere with radio reception, so if there was someone nearby on the train chatting on their phone, I could not listen to the radio at all. This was not a big problem, I would simply get up and sit somewhere else.
However, in the last year, mobile phones have become so ubquitous that at any one time, about a quarter of the people on the train are chatting on the phone. It is now nearly impossible to find somewhere on the train where I can get radio reception, and when I finally do, a phone rings nearby. I have almost given up listening to the radio on the train, because most of the time it is an exercise in futility.
I understand that mobile phones are convenient for many people, but they are certainly an inconvenience for me.
But, by the same token, perhaps the Guardian doesn't need to look at whatever innocent glitches reversed the Korean flag and added a "Queen's Birthday" holiday for Uruguay and turn them into "STUPID COWBOY AMERICANS ARE IGNORANT AND NOW THE WORLD HATES THEM!!!!!!"
It's the Guardian. They are second to none in many regards, and I am glad that they are continuing to provide an independent voice in the media. However, they realise that most of their readership is anti-American, and pander to it by reinforcing these beliefs.
The Guardian is unusually good on science articles (especially biotech and environmental science). However, they need a good tech editor, because they are always messing up whenever a story involves computers or the internet.
I posted this information in the earlier (less specific) story about the FTA's impact on Australian software development, but we really need to take action to let the media and politicians know that this is a big issue.
One of the best tactics is to send letters to newspapers. The FTA is a hot topic in the news right now, so there's a good chance that letters relating to it will be accepted. You can send letters to the editor at the following addresses: The Australian Sydney Morning Herald The Age
You can also let your feeling be known to the shadow minister for the Arts, Sport and Information Technology (Senator Kate Lundy). Her contact details are here. Be sure to mention that this issue will affect your vote.
The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts have so far brushed off any suggestion that Australia's software industry will be harmed by the FTA, and really do not seem to understand the issues. However, you can contact them here, and the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts here. Once again, be sure to mention that this will affect your vote.
You can also find out which electorate you are in, if you don't already know, and send your local federal MP a message about how disappointed you are over the FTA's impact on the IT industry.
Australians are protected by *some* fair use provisions (primarily for education/research purposes), but nowhere near those that the US have.
Looking at the copyright.org.au site that you quoted, two documents are especially interesting:
This document details the fair use provisions for CDs. In short, there are essentially none outside of the educational/research domain. If you rip MP3s from a CD you own, copy songs onto your iPod, or make a backup copy, you are violating copyright, and can be prosecuted.
Another document details fair use provisions for taping shows from the TV. Again, this is a violation of copyright.
Unless I am mistaken, the USA has fair use provisions for these activities, while Australia does not. In fact most of the activities that Australians take for granted as "fair use" are actually prohibited.
I got a last cubicle wall comment from someone who is actually a lawyer... If there is any actual case law which shows that (legal term) "reasonable" reproduction has been deemed illegal, please put it forward; I have created a small storm in the office with this topic, I must say...
Making copies of a non-infringing copy of computer software is SPECIFICALLY ALLOWED for the purposes of backup and interoperability (amongst other things).
It appears that there are two distinct interpretations of the law here. One is the line that is spun by the copyright holders, and reported by the media (in articles I have read in SMH, The Australian, The Age and APC over the last few months) - that you can not make copies under any circumstances. This is also the advice which I received when inquiring with an IP lawyer here at the University where I work.
The second line is that "it needs to be tested by a court case", which I have heard several times, and is the advice that you appear to have received from your legal department. The specifically prescribed ability to copy software for backups is a new interpretation that I have not heard before.
I am not sure which story to believe, but personally I would prefer not to be the one who finds out the answer by going through the courts.
In any case, I think that this is something that needs to be clarified by legislation, rather than existing in a dubious grey area of legality, where not even IP lawyers can agree on an interpretation.
Here is a pdf from the Australian Copyright Council which is the deinitive statement on this issue. It explicitly states (on pages 2 and 3) that you are not allowed to make MP3s from a CD you own.
Did you know that it is not even permitted to tape shows from the TV to watch later?
Hopefully this information is enlightening. When I first found out that Australia didn't have "fair use" rights, I was shocked.
dont know where the "no fair use protection" crap comes from either; Fair Use (not by that name) is implicit in Australian civil law, particularly as relates to consumer products. Our copyright law in particular has strong fair use protection.
In the USA, you can make a copy of a CD for your car, copy it onto your iPod, or make MP3s for personal use without breaking the law. You can also make backups of software to protect the original media from being damaged. The courts have also been lenient to circumvention measures that allow people to do this.
In Australia this is all illegal. If you make an MP3 of a CD you own, you are breaking the law. If you make a backup of some software you bought (reportedly including copying Windows CAB files onto the HDD), you are committing a crime. In fact, despite 100,000 iPods being sold in Australia, there are very few legal uses for them.
This is what is meant by Australia having very little "Fair Use" protection.
The opposition has attached two non-negotiable conditions to their support of the "Free" Trade Agreement legislation.
If the deadlock is never resolved the legislation might die a natural death.
This has only come up since I submitted the story this afernoon, but this is all the more reason to write letters to newspapers and politicians to let them know how you feel about the FTA. If we stay quiet, the issues with the FTA will continue to be ignored. If we make our opinion known (loudly), then maybe it will become an issue in future negotiations.
So, please people, don't sit back and hope that the FTA is stalled by parliament. Take action, make it known that Software Patents and anti-circumvention laws are a Bad Thing, and hopefully politicians and the media will stop ignoring this issue.
I think that all Aussies with an interest in being able to use their computers unencumbered should really make their frustration over this deal known now. While it may be too late to stop the FTA, we still might be able to make a difference. Hopefully if we make enough noise the media and politicians will stop ignoring the IP aspects of the FTA.
So, start sending letters to newspapers. The FTA is a hot topic in the news right now, so there's a good chance it will be accepted (see letter second from the bottom).
If US Slashdotters are keen, they could even send a "letter to the editor" detailing the problems with the DMCA and software patents that Australia will now face.
You can also let your feeling be known to the shadow minister for the Arts, Sport and Information Technology (Senator Kate Lundy). Her contact details are here. Be sure to mention that this issue will affect your vote.
You can also find out what electorate you are in, if you don't already know, and send your local federal MP a message about how disappointed you are over the FTA's impact on the IT industry.
While the timing of the posting of this story on Slashdot wasn't ideal (most Aussie Slashdotters won't be awake for another 5 or 6 hours), hopefully a reasonable number will read this in the morning and take action.
I think it's great. This is big news for me (I live in Newcastle, one of the rollout areas). If you don't like it, don't click on "Read More". I like it being on the front page, since I wouldn't see it if it was elsewhere.
However, maybe Slashdot needs checkboxes for geographical locations (similar to the current topic ones), so that we can choose not to see stories from other areas if we want to. That way, you can choose not to see Australian stories, and we don't have to read your whining.
There are several very good reasons to use your own email server instead of your ISPs:
1. You can use any domain name(s) you want so you don't every have to change your address as you change ISPs.
You can do this easily with email forwarding by your domain registrar. Most charge less than $10/year for the service. As an added bonus, if your mailserver machine goes down for whatever reason, you will still get your mail. If your domain registrar doesn't offer this, you could easily get it from somewhere like DynDNS.
2. Your ISP (or anyone else) can't read your mail while it's sitting on your own server. They can read it when it sitting on their server.
If you're really worried, you will use PGP or GPG. If your ISP is intrusive enough to read your email, then they can just as easily read it as it comes into your private mailserver.
3. SPAM prevention. when you run your own server you can alias your account as many times as you wish, and are able to add/delete aliases instantly and at will. When you give a unique address to each entity. If you get spam on an address, you delete it and create a new one.
The aforementioned email forwarding services do this too.
4. No limits on message content or size. Many ISPs limit the size of attachments. Granted, SMTP is not meant as a file transfer protocol, but that's not a reason to arbitrarily limit the size of messages.
Not only is it bad netiquette to send massive attachments, but most servers will block them at the other end. I see attachments over 5MB as tantamount to DOS attacks. A company I worked for used to have a policy of unlimited sized attachments, until lusers started attaching 500MB files.
5. Notification. When you own the server and new mail comes in you have have the server forward the mail to multiple places, or run scripts to notify you on a pager, via telephone, etc.
Have you heard of fetchmail?
6. Reliability. At least with My ISP, my mail server has a higher availability than theirs. Because of the load on the server from SPAM, it goes down fairly regularly and is frequently backlogged. Sure this is just poor admin on their part, but with my own server it doesn't affect me.
I'd quickly find a new ISP if this was the case. I know that my ISP's mail server certainly has higher availability than any PC in my house - although that is mainly because blackouts are more frequent here than in most places, and because ISDN is the best connection available here. However, if your ISP has less than 99% availability on their mailservers, there is something very wrong.
This is why "the universal language is American English" - Britian spread English throughout the world during it's rampant empire building in the 15th and 16th centuries, and because of the distances involved British "english" evolved and the rest of the world was largely uneffected by the changes.
Then how come we write and speak "British English" (aka Commonwealth English) in Australia, New Zealand, and most other nations of the Commonwealth, despite the fact that we are far more geographically separated from Britain than the USA is?
Another thing that is strange is that (Australian) historic documents from the 1700s and 1800s use something much closer to Commonwealth English than American English.
Commonwealth English is far more widespread than American English worldwide (despite American English being the de-facto standard language of the Web).
Even the link you provided to Wikipedia claims that "language reforms [in America] were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers". It also explains that "Webster's particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster."
It does, however state that "standard American English of the upper Midwest has a sound profile much closer to seventeenth century English than contemporary speech in England". However, this is not referring to spelling and grammar.
So, American English is a version of English that is peculiar to the United States, and is far from a "traditional" approach (it was unilaterally changed by Webster to appear different from British English), and it certainly has no historical claim to be "the universal language".
"$3500 per month for 1GB per month" Now surely that's in Australian currency, but that still sounds expensive to me.
From what I can see, $3,464 is the annual cost for an entire town to join the RuralLink network. It would be expected that the costs would then be dispersed among "member institutions" within the town (e.g. schools, libraries, and other public institutions).
Once it is shared across a group of institutions, the cost is not all that prohibitive, although it is $171 per month extra for a 3 gigabyte limit, and $150 per gigabyte after that.
Also, the usage is subsidised so that it is virtually free for the first year, and significantly cheaper for two years after that.
This is not targetted at home users. It is for small towns who currently have no other option than dial-up. It is certainly expensive compared to what is available in most parts of Australia, but there are few other options available for institutions in "outback" towns to get high-speed internet.
The RTl8181 driver for Linux has been a seperate binary driver for some time
What's worse, is that (if the linked forum posts are to believed) the RTl8181 driver is not actually a kernel module. It is linked directly into the kernel, and relies on some modified core kernel files (mm.o kernel.o mm.o fpu_emulator.o).
The source for the modified files, and the driver itself, have not been released. This looks like a violation of the GPL to me, as these files are linked directly into the kernel.
One of the posters in the forum has promised to take this up with the FSF and Realtek, and it would be interesting to see what the results are.
Slashdot Mirror
The Kyoto protocol was specifically designed to hamper american economic dominance, is it such a wonder that we didn't sign it?
Oh No! The Kyoto protocol is a big evil conspiracy theory to hamper American economic dominance.
Somehow I doubt it, but I guess it is easier to hide behind conspiracy theories than to face the truth that the USA is using an unsustainable amount of natural resources.
Apparently nothing as far as Microsoft was concerned. IE was originally a customized version of Spry Mosaic, as a part of one of the most monumental fleecings of all time (Altamira notwithstanding.) Microsoft promised to pay a portion of their profits to Spry in return for the browser code, and then gave it (IE) away. Any percent of zero is of course still zero.
It was Spyglass Mosaic, rather than Spry Mosaic that licensed their code to Microsoft.
It is a shame that they settled with Microsoft (for $8M) in 1997, becuse MS started claiming that IE was an intrinsic part of Windows soon afterwards, so Spyglass would have had a case that they deserved royalties from all copies of Windows sold.
Sheesh, what is up with Australia?
It is called a "Conservative Government". The ratings system for games is outdated, based on the assumption that games are for kids (hence the highest classification is 15+), but there is no way that a Conservative Government would fix this, because they would be worried about newspaper headlines like "Government allows kids to play porno games". They have also done everything they can to stack the Office of Film and Literature Classification (which also rates games) with conservative cronies.
The Government has also realized that since computer games and the Internet are seen as "scary new-fangled technology" by many older and more technophobic Australians, that they can use them as a ploy to gain support. So, they are constantly announcing plans to "keep the kids safe from the evils of the Internet and computer games". This is definately a vote-winner, because given that Australia's population is skewed towards the older demographic, there will be a lot more people pleased by this policy than upset. Censorship is also an effective bargaining chip when trying to get ultra-conservtive independent politicians to help pass legislation.
The contrast comes in TV and radio. Any attempts to censor them would be met by outrage, because they are not a niche market like computer games. So, while the Government is trying to save us all from being morally corrupted by computers, prime-time TV and radio regularly feature profanity. Australia's TV censorship is self-regulated by the industry, so you will regularly hear "fuck" and "shit" on prime-time free-to-air TV chat shows, and all day on certain radio stations. Music is played uncensored on the Government-funded Triple J youth radio network, and radio hosts will regularly swear their heads off and frankly discuss sexual matters. The partly Government-funded SBS free-to-air TV network regularly features shows that could only be described as "European soft-core porn".
So, it is not that we are a country of prudes or anything like that, it is simply the case that computer games and the Internet have gained in popularity, and hence caught the eyes of regulators and lawmakers, while we have been suffering under a conservative Govenment.
Hopefully they will be voted out in tomorrow's elections, but that seems unlikely based on present polling.
The CEC are anything but left wing. They are, in fact, a political cult formed around the conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. While it is true that LaRouche was at one stage a Marxist, he has since made the dizzying turn into far-right politics. He is anti-semitic, anti-British, and bases his politics around conspiracy theories that are, frankly, quite crazy. LaRouche's politics have been described as Fascist, and he has a bizarre fascination with the Nazi party. As such, the CEC (as his mouthpiece in Australia) is certainly not left-wing (although they draw their conspiracy theories from both the left and the right). In 1988 LaRouche was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax code violations, but he was released in 1994.
The CEC was originally established as an electoral front for the Australian League of Rights, an extreme right-wing group often described as being a "Neo-Nazi" organisation. In about 1996 the CEC was taken over by supporters of LaRouche, and the party is now more anti-semitic than ever, if that is at all possible.
While the party tries to cover its right-wing conspiracy theories with superficial left-wing policies, their real beliefs become apparent if you read their magazines (such as "New Citizen" and "Executive Intelligence Review") or talk to one of their members for too long. Here are some facts about the CEC:
They believe that the Anti Defamation Commission (which fights against anti-semitism) is "a front for Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council, the ruling body of the British Commonwealth."
The CEC claims there is a conspiracy of Jews, leftists and progressives to set up a world dictatorship which only LaRouche can stop.
His supporters believe that the Queen of England heads an international drug ring.
The CEC argues that Britain is run by a cabal of Jewish banking families called the Synarchy, located in a secret office in London.
In the 2001 Aston by-election in Victoria, the CEC was the only political party to give preferences to One Nation.
LaRouche is a misogynist who accuses women of causing male impotence and turning men into deviants and queers. In a 1998 article, LaRouche blames women for bipolar disorder and domestic violence. While campaigning in 2002, LaRouche made clear that he is against abortion.
LaRouche said history would not judge harshly if gay men were beaten to death with baseball bats to stop the spread of AIDS. In 1986, the LaRouche movement's California group PANIC sponsored a citizens-initiated referendum which, if passed, would have allowed forced AIDS testing and banned HIV-positive people from working in education or the food industry or from even attending a school.
In its 1997 article, "Land Rights: Prince Philip's racist plot to splinter Australia", the CEC characterised Aboriginal culture as "brutal". It claimed that Aboriginal land rights are a "plot to splinter Australia".
LaRouche calls environmentalists "terrorists with sinister ties to the British oligarchy and 'degenerate' 1960s culture."
In May 2003 the LaRouche on-line magazine praised the benefits of low-dose radiation, genetically engineered crops, food irradiation and nuclear power. The movement campaigns to lift the ban on the highly toxic insecticide DDT.
They believe that the Port Arthur massacre was "manufactured" by the Government and British intelligence to force Australians to give up their guns.
They believe that Sir Zelman Cowen (former Governor General, and a prominent Jewish Australian) is a member of the Synarchy, and helps organize their conspiracies in Australia.
They believe
I know this is noted above, but it is worth restating. Family First are in no way left wing. They are supporting Australia's conservative Government in the upcoming election, and directing their preferences against Australia's main left wing party (under Australia's preferential voting system).
They are socially conservative, being the political arm of one of Australia's largest evangelical groups, and have no real stance on economic issues. Their main aim is to move their evangelism into the political arena, and their political candidates are predominantly drawn from the Christian Right. The party generally agrees with the current conservative government, and they are vehemently opposed to the major left-wing parties in Australian politics (Labor and the Greens).
Luckily, although Australian nominally has a two-thirds Christian population, most people who describe themselves as Christian rarely go to church, and many don't really have any religious beliefs. The average "Christian" Australian only goes to Church for weddings, baptisms and funerals, but describes themself as "Christian" on the census, because they "were baptised that way". Many past Australian Prime Ministers have been atheist, agnostic or followed minor religions (e.g. Alfred Deakin was a "spiritualist"), and very few have professed strong religious convictions.
Politics in Australia have generally been a religion-free zone, apart from a few minor political parties, so the arrival of the cashed-up, conservative Family First party is a real worry. They are currently polling at anywhere from 2-5%, and mainly draw their support from members of Pentecostal chuches.
I really can't see how they could - in any way - be described as left-wing, and I thing the story poster was either: confused, uninformed, or trolling against left-wing Slashdotters. In any case, the story should be corrected. As it is, it implies that Family First have some connection with Labor, when they actually might cost them the election.
As far as I know, the free trade agreement between the two countries pretty much makes sure MPAA & friends have similiar power in Australia than they have in US.
I'm not too sure about that, but in any case, the FTA has not been enacted yet. IIRC, some enabling legislation still needs to be passed, and there is still some squabbling over pharmaceutical patent law.
I wonder what the MPAA found? A tar.gz file, an rpm? If their agents are so idiotic to chase after something called python-twisted-1.3.0-1.1.fc2.dag.i386.rpm without checking if it is a film then they should be made to suffer by forcing the issue into court.
Well, the RPM extension is not just used for the packaging format, the extension is also used for Realplayer movies. As a result, I could understand why a search agent would pick it up as being a movie.
What I can't understand is why the search agent does not check the file size. If a file is 100k or a couple of meg, there's a fair bet that it's not a movie. Of course, human checking of some kind would also be a good idea before sending out legal threats.
Similarly, in the Libertarian worldview, why is "Big Government" bad, while "Big Corporations" are fine. Ideally power shouldn't be centralized, but if it is going to be centralized somewhere, shouldn't it be in an institution that is directly accountable to the people, i.e. the Government?
On the bandwidth requirement fromt? Frankly, I don't u'stand why we don't have a good windowing environment atleast half as good as Citrix so far. The X-Damage stuff could be the ticket though.
Just compress the X connection with NoMachine's NX. I've been using the GPLed NX components to access my home desktop from work (over a dialup connection) for the past 6 months, and it works great. I recommend that you give it a shot if you require a low-bandwidth X connection.
Considering that there are only usually two cars on the train (I'm in a regional area), I doubt that they would take up the suggestion. It's a great idea though, and one that the rail authorities here in Australia should implement on the urban lines. I might take your advice and suggest it.
Actually, I would be happy even if they could just assign half of a car to be mobile-phone-free on the train that I catch. However, CityRail is notoriously slow to change. In fact, they only recently installed locking doors on the trains here so that people can't fall out while the train is in motion. Unfortunately, their man focus is Sydney, and we are mostly forgotten in regional areas.
More inane chatter. Mile high was one place where you were safe for a while from all the i-have-got-to-talk-on-my-cell-phone people. Damn.
In my opinion, the most annoying people are those that use their phone on the train. I commute by train for two hours a day, and I used to relieve the tedium by listening to my portable radio (usually tuning into Radio National). Then, a few years ago mobile phones started to gain popularity. Unfortunately, they also interfere with radio reception, so if there was someone nearby on the train chatting on their phone, I could not listen to the radio at all. This was not a big problem, I would simply get up and sit somewhere else.
However, in the last year, mobile phones have become so ubquitous that at any one time, about a quarter of the people on the train are chatting on the phone. It is now nearly impossible to find somewhere on the train where I can get radio reception, and when I finally do, a phone rings nearby. I have almost given up listening to the radio on the train, because most of the time it is an exercise in futility.
I understand that mobile phones are convenient for many people, but they are certainly an inconvenience for me.
Java is the new COBOL. No, I mean that quite seriously.
Well, considering what COBOL programmers are earning these days, Java might be a valuable skill in the future.
But, by the same token, perhaps the Guardian doesn't need to look at whatever innocent glitches reversed the Korean flag and added a "Queen's Birthday" holiday for Uruguay and turn them into "STUPID COWBOY AMERICANS ARE IGNORANT AND NOW THE WORLD HATES THEM!!!!!!"
It's the Guardian. They are second to none in many regards, and I am glad that they are continuing to provide an independent voice in the media. However, they realise that most of their readership is anti-American, and pander to it by reinforcing these beliefs.
The Guardian is unusually good on science articles (especially biotech and environmental science). However, they need a good tech editor, because they are always messing up whenever a story involves computers or the internet.
I posted this information in the earlier (less specific) story about the FTA's impact on Australian software development, but we really need to take action to let the media and politicians know that this is a big issue.
One of the best tactics is to send letters to newspapers. The FTA is a hot topic in the news right now, so there's a good chance that letters relating to it will be accepted. You can send letters to the editor at the following addresses:
The Australian
Sydney Morning Herald
The Age
You can also let your feeling be known to the shadow minister for the Arts, Sport and Information Technology (Senator Kate Lundy). Her contact details are here. Be sure to mention that this issue will affect your vote.
The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts have so far brushed off any suggestion that Australia's software industry will be harmed by the FTA, and really do not seem to understand the issues. However, you can contact them here, and the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts here. Once again, be sure to mention that this will affect your vote.
You can also find out which electorate you are in, if you don't already know, and send your local federal MP a message about how disappointed you are over the FTA's impact on the IT industry.
Australians are protected by *some* fair use provisions (primarily for education/research purposes), but nowhere near those that the US have.
Looking at the copyright.org.au site that you quoted, two documents are especially interesting:
This document details the fair use provisions for CDs. In short, there are essentially none outside of the educational/research domain. If you rip MP3s from a CD you own, copy songs onto your iPod, or make a backup copy, you are violating copyright, and can be prosecuted.
Another document details fair use provisions for taping shows from the TV. Again, this is a violation of copyright.
Unless I am mistaken, the USA has fair use provisions for these activities, while Australia does not. In fact most of the activities that Australians take for granted as "fair use" are actually prohibited.
I got a last cubicle wall comment from someone who is actually a lawyer... If there is any actual case law which shows that (legal term) "reasonable" reproduction has been deemed illegal, please put it forward; I have created a small storm in the office with this topic, I must say...
Making copies of a non-infringing copy of computer software is SPECIFICALLY ALLOWED for the purposes of backup and interoperability (amongst other things).
It appears that there are two distinct interpretations of the law here. One is the line that is spun by the copyright holders, and reported by the media (in articles I have read in SMH, The Australian, The Age and APC over the last few months) - that you can not make copies under any circumstances. This is also the advice which I received when inquiring with an IP lawyer here at the University where I work.
The second line is that "it needs to be tested by a court case", which I have heard several times, and is the advice that you appear to have received from your legal department. The specifically prescribed ability to copy software for backups is a new interpretation that I have not heard before.
I am not sure which story to believe, but personally I would prefer not to be the one who finds out the answer by going through the courts.
In any case, I think that this is something that needs to be clarified by legislation, rather than existing in a dubious grey area of legality, where not even IP lawyers can agree on an interpretation.
ripping to mp3 hasnt, AFAIK, ever been tested against this standard, let alone been defeated.
That is certainly not the case.
Here is an article from the SMH about this.
Here is a pdf from the Australian Copyright Council which is the deinitive statement on this issue. It explicitly states (on pages 2 and 3) that you are not allowed to make MP3s from a CD you own.
Did you know that it is not even permitted to tape shows from the TV to watch later?
Hopefully this information is enlightening. When I first found out that Australia didn't have "fair use" rights, I was shocked.
dont know where the "no fair use protection" crap comes from either; Fair Use (not by that name) is implicit in Australian civil law, particularly as relates to consumer products. Our copyright law in particular has strong fair use protection.
In the USA, you can make a copy of a CD for your car, copy it onto your iPod, or make MP3s for personal use without breaking the law. You can also make backups of software to protect the original media from being damaged. The courts have also been lenient to circumvention measures that allow people to do this.
In Australia this is all illegal. If you make an MP3 of a CD you own, you are breaking the law. If you make a backup of some software you bought (reportedly including copying Windows CAB files onto the HDD), you are committing a crime. In fact, despite 100,000 iPods being sold in Australia, there are very few legal uses for them.
This is what is meant by Australia having very little "Fair Use" protection.
The opposition has attached two non-negotiable conditions to their support of the "Free" Trade Agreement legislation.
If the deadlock is never resolved the legislation might die a natural death.
This has only come up since I submitted the story this afernoon, but this is all the more reason to write letters to newspapers and politicians to let them know how you feel about the FTA. If we stay quiet, the issues with the FTA will continue to be ignored. If we make our opinion known (loudly), then maybe it will become an issue in future negotiations.
So, please people, don't sit back and hope that the FTA is stalled by parliament. Take action, make it known that Software Patents and anti-circumvention laws are a Bad Thing, and hopefully politicians and the media will stop ignoring this issue.
I think that all Aussies with an interest in being able to use their computers unencumbered should really make their frustration over this deal known now. While it may be too late to stop the FTA, we still might be able to make a difference. Hopefully if we make enough noise the media and politicians will stop ignoring the IP aspects of the FTA.
So, start sending letters to newspapers. The FTA is a hot topic in the news right now, so there's a good chance it will be accepted (see letter second from the bottom).
You can send letters to the editor at the following addresses:
The Australian
Sydney Morning Herald
The Age
If US Slashdotters are keen, they could even send a "letter to the editor" detailing the problems with the DMCA and software patents that Australia will now face.
You can also let your feeling be known to the shadow minister for the Arts, Sport and Information Technology (Senator Kate Lundy). Her contact details are here. Be sure to mention that this issue will affect your vote.
You can also find out what electorate you are in, if you don't already know, and send your local federal MP a message about how disappointed you are over the FTA's impact on the IT industry.
While the timing of the posting of this story on Slashdot wasn't ideal (most Aussie Slashdotters won't be awake for another 5 or 6 hours), hopefully a reasonable number will read this in the morning and take action.
I think it's great. This is big news for me (I live in Newcastle, one of the rollout areas). If you don't like it, don't click on "Read More". I like it being on the front page, since I wouldn't see it if it was elsewhere.
However, maybe Slashdot needs checkboxes for geographical locations (similar to the current topic ones), so that we can choose not to see stories from other areas if we want to. That way, you can choose not to see Australian stories, and we don't have to read your whining.
There are several very good reasons to use your own email server instead of your ISPs:
1. You can use any domain name(s) you want so you don't every have to change your address as you change ISPs.
You can do this easily with email forwarding by your domain registrar. Most charge less than $10/year for the service. As an added bonus, if your mailserver machine goes down for whatever reason, you will still get your mail. If your domain registrar doesn't offer this, you could easily get it from somewhere like DynDNS.
2. Your ISP (or anyone else) can't read your mail while it's sitting on your own server. They can read it when it sitting on their server.
If you're really worried, you will use PGP or GPG. If your ISP is intrusive enough to read your email, then they can just as easily read it as it comes into your private mailserver.
3. SPAM prevention. when you run your own server you can alias your account as many times as you wish, and are able to add/delete aliases instantly and at will. When you give a unique address to each entity. If you get spam on an address, you delete it and create a new one.
The aforementioned email forwarding services do this too.
4. No limits on message content or size. Many ISPs limit the size of attachments. Granted, SMTP is not meant as a file transfer protocol, but that's not a reason to arbitrarily limit the size of messages.
Not only is it bad netiquette to send massive attachments, but most servers will block them at the other end. I see attachments over 5MB as tantamount to DOS attacks. A company I worked for used to have a policy of unlimited sized attachments, until lusers started attaching 500MB files.
5. Notification. When you own the server and new mail comes in you have have the server forward the mail to multiple places, or run scripts to notify you on a pager, via telephone, etc.
Have you heard of fetchmail?
6. Reliability. At least with My ISP, my mail server has a higher availability than theirs. Because of the load on the server from SPAM, it goes down fairly regularly and is frequently backlogged. Sure this is just poor admin on their part, but with my own server it doesn't affect me.
I'd quickly find a new ISP if this was the case. I know that my ISP's mail server certainly has higher availability than any PC in my house - although that is mainly because blackouts are more frequent here than in most places, and because ISDN is the best connection available here. However, if your ISP has less than 99% availability on their mailservers, there is something very wrong.
This is why "the universal language is American English" - Britian spread English throughout the world during it's rampant empire building in the 15th and 16th centuries, and because of the distances involved British "english" evolved and the rest of the world was largely uneffected by the changes.
Then how come we write and speak "British English" (aka Commonwealth English) in Australia, New Zealand, and most other nations of the Commonwealth, despite the fact that we are far more geographically separated from Britain than the USA is?
Another thing that is strange is that (Australian) historic documents from the 1700s and 1800s use something much closer to Commonwealth English than American English.
Commonwealth English is far more widespread than American English worldwide (despite American English being the de-facto standard language of the Web).
Even the link you provided to Wikipedia claims that "language reforms [in America] were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers". It also explains that "Webster's particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster."
It does, however state that "standard American English of the upper Midwest has a sound profile much closer to seventeenth century English than contemporary speech in England". However, this is not referring to spelling and grammar.
So, American English is a version of English that is peculiar to the United States, and is far from a "traditional" approach (it was unilaterally changed by Webster to appear different from British English), and it certainly has no historical claim to be "the universal language".
"$3500 per month for 1GB per month"
Now surely that's in Australian currency, but that still sounds expensive to me.
From what I can see, $3,464 is the annual cost for an entire town to join the RuralLink network. It would be expected that the costs would then be dispersed among "member institutions" within the town (e.g. schools, libraries, and other public institutions).
Once it is shared across a group of institutions, the cost is not all that prohibitive, although it is $171 per month extra for a 3 gigabyte limit, and $150 per gigabyte after that.
Also, the usage is subsidised so that it is virtually free for the first year, and significantly cheaper for two years after that.
This is not targetted at home users. It is for small towns who currently have no other option than dial-up. It is certainly expensive compared to what is available in most parts of Australia, but there are few other options available for institutions in "outback" towns to get high-speed internet.
More pricing information is available here
The RTl8181 driver for Linux has been a seperate binary driver for some time
What's worse, is that (if the linked forum posts are to believed) the RTl8181 driver is not actually a kernel module. It is linked directly into the kernel, and relies on some modified core kernel files (mm.o kernel.o mm.o fpu_emulator.o).
The source for the modified files, and the driver itself, have not been released. This looks like a violation of the GPL to me, as these files are linked directly into the kernel.
One of the posters in the forum has promised to take this up with the FSF and Realtek, and it would be interesting to see what the results are.