It makes no sense to me. You have by far the strongest military in the world. The USSR is gone. Ok, so there's China, but so far they have not made any seriously threatening moves. Who is left that is any threat?
I know 9/11 left some big scars on the collective psyche but seriously, it's been 10 years, you invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, killed Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Surely there's been enough restitution?
I worry that one day the rest of the world is going to have to unite against the US as you decide to pacify or nuke us all since we are deemed a threat to national security.
In my last job, the female service delivery manager was like a bulldozer, she managed to alienate most of the IT department. It's not just me saying this. I found the male management more receptive to input and more attuned to the feedback coming from staff.
I did find the banding together of male staff against her sexist, and I think there's sexist attitudes prevalent in the society where I live. But on the other hand I think if she were fairer and considered her underlings when making decisions she would have had a much better reception. I think people would have given her a fair go if she did the same.
One of my female coworkers continually put down people with sarcastic comments. She would deliberately make distracting noises when people were trying to concentrate (I'm not the only one to notice this). So not all female coworkers are soft and cuddly!
Then again, a male employee where I work now was the typical programmer with no social skills type - would jump down your throat at the slightest opportunity to prove his superiority. Had no sense of humour. Would condescendingly point out things that any moron would have picked up.
There's all sorts I guess:) But I do agree that in general where I live, the IT departments are macho and competitive because of the fact that they are mostly made up of men. So it would be harder being the stereotypical female in these places.
You know that Australian political parties outside of minority parties have had a habit of dumping a senior female politician into a dog's breakfast role so she can lose an election? (I strongly doubt this is the case here though.)
I don't envy Julia Gillard, Rudd has screwed Labour's popularity and I don't think they have a hope in hell of winning the next election. But she is smart enough to know this, so I guess she just thought she'd get in the history books as the first female PM and if she does manage to turn things around that will be even more impressive.
It seems from the outside that the easiest way to stifle a government project in the US is to label it "socialist". EG Obama's health plan.
We were talking about this on the weekend with my ex-US brother in law. It seems like you guys are indoctrinated in school with anti communist, pro US propoganda. This sounds as scary to me as the pro communist propoganda we always associate with China, USSR, North Korea etc.
iPhone 3GS in Australia on the 3 network, on a mobile broadband plan, tethering still works on 3.1. I don't know if 3 officially support the iPhone but I don't believe they offer it on any of their plans.
On an aside, I'm no smartphone expert but this iPhone beats the crap out of my Nokia N95. I could get something with more geek cred but I don't have the time any more to customise every single thing on all my tech devices. Happy to have something that works well and does everything I want it to do without much fuss.
Reminds me of the leak of the Windows 2000 code base, the subsequent analysis, and all the special cases for apps that relied on bugs or undocumented behaviour.
* for.NET development on windows, Visual Studio Express / SQL Server Express / SQL Server Management Studio Express * dynamic typed languages, PHP/Perl/Javascript, Komodo Edit (Linux and Windows) * MySQL - MySQL GUI tools (Linux/Windows) * Lightweight Windows text editor with rudimentary highlighting - PSPad (HTML, Javascript, C#/ASP.NET) * recently been getting into Qt/Linux and Qt Creator I am finding good for that - has its quirks but it's newish
Foundation and Earth, where Golan and his friends land on Solaria, and the Solarian robots' definition of "human" exclude the protagonists. The robots in this situation are quite willing to dispose of them.
You could just class the enemy as "not human". Pretty tricky to do I imagine, where do you draw the line - maybe a Bayesian spam filter:) I'm not going to volunteer to help train that one:)
My huntsman experience was not quite as bad... as a teen, I hadn't made my bed for a fair while. One night I lay down to sleep - put down my hand right on top of a huntsman. Instinctively picked up and threw.
Oh, the other fun thing is having a huntsman riding on the outside of a car. That's freaky enough, as they seem to be able to cling on despite the air flow, but one time it ended up right on top of the driver side door. After stopping the car I opened up the door and dived out as fast as I could, in one motion, the spider dropped onto the ground behind me and went on its way. Phew!
If I have to rent a VPN plan and connect to a server in the US to bypass this stupid filter, then I will. Is the Government going to block all VPN access too? How about the 1000's of businesses who use VPNs for linking remote offices together over the Internet?
This plan will never work. Any teenager will bypass this filter in 1/2 an hour. I guarantee it. I also guarantee that this filter will block legitimate content. And I also guarantee that this filter will slow down internet access for 1000s of users who never access illegal content.
I ask again, will the list of sites being blocked, be listed? Or will it be kept from the public "in their best interest"? How will we therefore know that the Government is not abusing this power? In fact I can tell you how... this list will be leaked and distributed on peer to peer networks. And I will publish it on my US based internet host. Along with 1000s of other savvy internet users.
I currently work for an unamed large geotechnical company with HQ in Holland. Their bonehead corporate ICT network routes all traffic through a global gateway in either Holland or the US. I work in Perth, Australia. To access a server on the floor below, the packets are going 1/2 way around the world and back. And its fscking slow.
How many businesses rely on VPNs to connect their remote offices? How many sysadmins use SSH to remotely connect to their unix systems? If the government moved to outlaw VPNs and SSH, there is no point having an internet any more. If the government did this there would be a major backlash from the business community. It would be political suicide, if the current plan isn't already.
My internet connection is paid for by my current employer so I can (a) telecommute (VPN) (b) remote administer systems in case of problems (VPN, SSH). Its a home internet plan, so they could not simply limit this block to home internet users.
I repeat my point... if the Aussie government starts blocking every protocol that can be used to bypass their stupid filter, there is no point having an internet. Australia will be back to the stone age.
It appears to me as a fairly long term, casual SL user, that people who make money in Second Life are obsessive enough to take the extreme lengths of time it takes to make a perfect skin / item of clothing / dance animation / etc, and are talented enough to make something that people want.
Or they got in there first, eg xcite and sensations for sex attachments, who have been around for years.
Or got there first before the "gold rush" days and bought up huge amounts of land and now make money renting to suckers or casual users.
On the other hand, there appear to be poor saps who get suckered in to paying huge amounts of money for a sim or an island. They build a club with the standard host / DJ / dancer setup, pay them virtual currency, and hope to get people who come and tip their dancers and their club, and then...??? Profit! I DJ at one of these clubs and I can't see how they ever hope to make any money. We tried building a club. But unless you have the time to spend 10+ hours a day in Second Life, there's no way it can work, and I can't see how people can live doing that.
In summary, the Second Life economy is funded by poor saps who fork out huge amounts of real currency to either pay pittances to virtual employees, who therefore don't really give a fuck, and just do it for fun, or pay the long established people who have all the land or have cornered the virtual niche market.
The people who profit out of this are the long time users or talented people, and of course, Linden Labs, who provide the land and rent out the servers.
and every other bill payment that I can, then I pay it all off at the regular time.
My card has 40 days interest free. All the purchases I make are budgeted, so there's always enough to pay the balance. My pay goes into a high interest, internet only account, where interest is calculated daily and credited monthly.
* I earn reward points, enough to pay the yearly credit card fee and maybe a little bit extra. * I have to pay one regular bill rather than 4 or 5. * I don't have to worry about having money in my bank account. * The money can stay as long as possible in the internet only account and earn more interest. * I get to keep my money a little longer.
The article (and ATO website) are a little misleading - the software is "web based" only as far as it uses HTTPS to send the info to the ATO. This is in the FAQ on the site which has firewall config instructions. The actual application is a Windows app (and has been for a couple of years).
Did my tax return this weekend using CxOffice 4.2. No problems apart from the help links which didn't launch, but that is ok, because all of the info is easily found on the ATO website.
My job right now is sysadmin of a web based GPS tracking system. There are terminals available that will track using GPS, sending the information back via a service provider, either satellite or some sort of mobile device (GPRS or SMS). However I can't see how Coke would fit this sort of thing inside a Coke can! The terminals we use are ~2x5x10cm. Also as someone else has pointed out, for satellite comms to work you need to be outside, although GPRS would work indoors. This all applies to Australia, not sure what sort of mobile technology you could use in the US.
GPS by itself is only accurate to ~10m. So you wouldn't want to rely on it for positioning your car on the road! To get better accuracy you need Differential GPS but then you are looking to pay for the service as well as a new black box.
Plus if you used GPS then you would be relying on the accuracy of maps etc, which in our application is pretty bad - the road lines layers sometimes shows roads going over water, for example...
In this novel the Columbia breaks up or crashes on re-entry (can't remember which) which is a prelude to NASA being mothballed. Although I can't see this happening in real life, it was either a shrewd guess (Columbia being the oldest Space Shuttle) or just a coincidence, but sure is freaky. A review of the novel here, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes no sense to me. You have by far the strongest military in the world. The USSR is gone. Ok, so there's China, but so far they have not made any seriously threatening moves. Who is left that is any threat?
I know 9/11 left some big scars on the collective psyche but seriously, it's been 10 years, you invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, killed Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Surely there's been enough restitution?
I worry that one day the rest of the world is going to have to unite against the US as you decide to pacify or nuke us all since we are deemed a threat to national security.
In my last job, the female service delivery manager was like a bulldozer, she managed to alienate most of the IT department. It's not just me saying this. I found the male management more receptive to input and more attuned to the feedback coming from staff.
I did find the banding together of male staff against her sexist, and I think there's sexist attitudes prevalent in the society where I live. But on the other hand I think if she were fairer and considered her underlings when making decisions she would have had a much better reception. I think people would have given her a fair go if she did the same.
One of my female coworkers continually put down people with sarcastic comments. She would deliberately make distracting noises when people were trying to concentrate (I'm not the only one to notice this). So not all female coworkers are soft and cuddly!
Then again, a male employee where I work now was the typical programmer with no social skills type - would jump down your throat at the slightest opportunity to prove his superiority. Had no sense of humour. Would condescendingly point out things that any moron would have picked up.
There's all sorts I guess :) But I do agree that in general where I live, the IT departments are macho and competitive because of the fact that they are mostly made up of men. So it would be harder being the stereotypical female in these places.
You know that Australian political parties outside of minority parties have had a habit of dumping a senior female politician into a dog's breakfast role so she can lose an election? (I strongly doubt this is the case here though.)
I don't envy Julia Gillard, Rudd has screwed Labour's popularity and I don't think they have a hope in hell of winning the next election. But she is smart enough to know this, so I guess she just thought she'd get in the history books as the first female PM and if she does manage to turn things around that will be even more impressive.
It seems from the outside that the easiest way to stifle a government project in the US is to label it "socialist". EG Obama's health plan.
We were talking about this on the weekend with my ex-US brother in law. It seems like you guys are indoctrinated in school with anti communist, pro US propoganda. This sounds as scary to me as the pro communist propoganda we always associate with China, USSR, North Korea etc.
Same problem I have with OpenDNS - being from Australia, the physical location of the servers is an issue here.
Besides, my ISP doesn't do anything evil with its DNS servers.
Can't see the point of this Google.
From what I see they are just for transient things such as Twitter or blog posts - why would someone permanently link using one of these services?
When will Antarctica get their turn? *brrr*
iPhone 3GS in Australia on the 3 network, on a mobile broadband plan, tethering still works on 3.1. I don't know if 3 officially support the iPhone but I don't believe they offer it on any of their plans.
On an aside, I'm no smartphone expert but this iPhone beats the crap out of my Nokia N95. I could get something with more geek cred but I don't have the time any more to customise every single thing on all my tech devices. Happy to have something that works well and does everything I want it to do without much fuss.
"Are we not human? If we pick do we not bleed?"
Reminds me of the leak of the Windows 2000 code base, the subsequent analysis, and all the special cases for apps that relied on bugs or undocumented behaviour.
This could be averted by having a mirror attached to the bike, pointed at the ground.
I believe this would cause the cyclist to be annihilated in a flash of light, but at least the rest of us would retain our eyesight.
* for .NET development on windows, Visual Studio Express / SQL Server Express / SQL Server Management Studio Express
* dynamic typed languages, PHP/Perl/Javascript, Komodo Edit (Linux and Windows)
* MySQL - MySQL GUI tools (Linux/Windows)
* Lightweight Windows text editor with rudimentary highlighting - PSPad (HTML, Javascript, C#/ASP.NET)
* recently been getting into Qt/Linux and Qt Creator I am finding good for that - has its quirks but it's newish
Foundation and Earth, where Golan and his friends land on Solaria, and the Solarian robots' definition of "human" exclude the protagonists. The robots in this situation are quite willing to dispose of them.
You could just class the enemy as "not human". Pretty tricky to do I imagine, where do you draw the line - maybe a Bayesian spam filter :) I'm not going to volunteer to help train that one :)
Disclaimer: Thought experiment only.
My huntsman experience was not quite as bad... as a teen, I hadn't made my bed for a fair while. One night I lay down to sleep - put down my hand right on top of a huntsman. Instinctively picked up and threw.
Oh, the other fun thing is having a huntsman riding on the outside of a car. That's freaky enough, as they seem to be able to cling on despite the air flow, but one time it ended up right on top of the driver side door. After stopping the car I opened up the door and dived out as fast as I could, in one motion, the spider dropped onto the ground behind me and went on its way. Phew!
Gratuitous Chaser post for some Aussie humour: Tourist ad campaign
I wrote to my local Federal Minister about these concerns. She replied to my original letter, and now I am about to send this reply back to her:
Dear Minister,
I have read a lot of press recently from senior ISP staff who think the plan will not work. Here is the latest example.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/biztech/net-censorship-plan-backlash/2008/11/11/1226318639085.html
If I have to rent a VPN plan and connect to a server in the US to bypass this stupid filter, then I will. Is the Government going to block all VPN access too? How about the 1000's of businesses who use VPNs for linking remote offices together over the Internet?
This plan will never work. Any teenager will bypass this filter in 1/2 an hour. I guarantee it. I also guarantee that this filter will block legitimate content. And I also guarantee that this filter will slow down internet access for 1000s of users who never access illegal content.
I ask again, will the list of sites being blocked, be listed? Or will it be kept from the public "in their best interest"? How will we therefore know that the Government is not abusing this power? In fact I can tell you how... this list will be leaked and distributed on peer to peer networks. And I will publish it on my US based internet host. Along with 1000s of other savvy internet users.
Best regards,
(name and address included)
I currently work for an unamed large geotechnical company with HQ in Holland. Their bonehead corporate ICT network routes all traffic through a global gateway in either Holland or the US. I work in Perth, Australia. To access a server on the floor below, the packets are going 1/2 way around the world and back. And its fscking slow.
Thank god for our hosting networks ;)
How many businesses rely on VPNs to connect their remote offices? How many sysadmins use SSH to remotely connect to their unix systems? If the government moved to outlaw VPNs and SSH, there is no point having an internet any more. If the government did this there would be a major backlash from the business community. It would be political suicide, if the current plan isn't already.
My internet connection is paid for by my current employer so I can (a) telecommute (VPN) (b) remote administer systems in case of problems (VPN, SSH). Its a home internet plan, so they could not simply limit this block to home internet users.
I repeat my point... if the Aussie government starts blocking every protocol that can be used to bypass their stupid filter, there is no point having an internet. Australia will be back to the stone age.
It appears to me as a fairly long term, casual SL user, that people who make money in Second Life are obsessive enough to take the extreme lengths of time it takes to make a perfect skin / item of clothing / dance animation / etc, and are talented enough to make something that people want.
Or they got in there first, eg xcite and sensations for sex attachments, who have been around for years.
Or got there first before the "gold rush" days and bought up huge amounts of land and now make money renting to suckers or casual users.
On the other hand, there appear to be poor saps who get suckered in to paying huge amounts of money for a sim or an island. They build a club with the standard host / DJ / dancer setup, pay them virtual currency, and hope to get people who come and tip their dancers and their club, and then...??? Profit! I DJ at one of these clubs and I can't see how they ever hope to make any money. We tried building a club. But unless you have the time to spend 10+ hours a day in Second Life, there's no way it can work, and I can't see how people can live doing that.
In summary, the Second Life economy is funded by poor saps who fork out huge amounts of real currency to either pay pittances to virtual employees, who therefore don't really give a fuck, and just do it for fun, or pay the long established people who have all the land or have cornered the virtual niche market.
The people who profit out of this are the long time users or talented people, and of course, Linden Labs, who provide the land and rent out the servers.
It's all hype driven.
and every other bill payment that I can, then I pay it all off at the regular time.
My card has 40 days interest free. All the purchases I make are budgeted, so there's always enough to pay the balance. My pay goes into a high interest, internet only account, where interest is calculated daily and credited monthly.
* I earn reward points, enough to pay the yearly credit card fee and maybe a little bit extra.
* I have to pay one regular bill rather than 4 or 5.
* I don't have to worry about having money in my bank account.
* The money can stay as long as possible in the internet only account and earn more interest.
* I get to keep my money a little longer.
It works for me, YMMV.
The article (and ATO website) are a little misleading - the software is "web based" only as far as it uses HTTPS to send the info to the ATO. This is in the FAQ on the site which has firewall config instructions. The actual application is a Windows app (and has been for a couple of years).
Did my tax return this weekend using CxOffice 4.2. No problems apart from the help links which didn't launch, but that is ok, because all of the info is easily found on the ATO website.
My job right now is sysadmin of a web based GPS tracking system. There are terminals available that will track using GPS, sending the information back via a service provider, either satellite or some sort of mobile device (GPRS or SMS). However I can't see how Coke would fit this sort of thing inside a Coke can! The terminals we use are ~2x5x10cm. Also as someone else has pointed out, for satellite comms to work you need to be outside, although GPRS would work indoors. This all applies to Australia, not sure what sort of mobile technology you could use in the US.
Satellite comms examples: Inmarsat C/D+, Startrack (flash site).
GPS by itself is only accurate to ~10m. So you wouldn't want to rely on it for positioning your car on the road! To get better accuracy you need Differential GPS but then you are looking to pay for the service as well as a new black box.
Plus if you used GPS then you would be relying on the accuracy of maps etc, which in our application is pretty bad - the road lines layers sometimes shows roads going over water, for example...
In this novel the Columbia breaks up or crashes on re-entry (can't remember which) which is a prelude to NASA being mothballed. Although I can't see this happening in real life, it was either a shrewd guess (Columbia being the oldest Space Shuttle) or just a coincidence, but sure is freaky. A review of the novel here, for example.