Yeah, I think we have moved on. Sad truth is that Slashdot is not the place it used to be.
For real news about stuff that matters, I now mostly rely on Ars Technica, Anandtech, LWN and The H. They pretty much cover most things I'm interested in between them.
And if Google Reader stats that I see are any indication, in terms of users and traffic, Slashdot is just a shadow of itself these days.
I've tried multiple graphical environments through the years, from Windows 3.1 and NeXT, to BeOS and XP and KDE (2, 3, 4) and Gnome 2. Every one of them introduced new concepts, some of which worked, some didn't, but I don't understand what the big deal is adapting to a new interface. For a long time, the the Windows 95 start menu concept was thought of as a solid, and KDE 2 and 3 and Gnome 2 to a certain extend, adapted it and enhanced it, but basically followed it. Usability studies are however showing that the whole layer under layer of options isn't the best way of organising things, which is the reason behind KDE 4's menue, Ribbon interface in Office, as well as launchers such as Launchy and Gnome-Do.
The other thing that power users are deriding is lack of options and customisability. Sure, options are good and power users like making their desktiop their own, but we have to realise that for a general purpose system, evey option has a cost. Cost in terms of support, cost in terms of number of things that can go wrong, or that the user can mess up. Now, I am not saying that we should remove all options and preferences, and sometimes systems go too far (for example Gnome 3 has gone too far in my opinion) but these things take time to settle down. Sometimes the bendulum swings too far one way, then the other, until a balance is found with which most users are happy. Give it time.
For a bunch of tech-savvy intelligent people, I find the slashdot crowd's utter resistance towards any UI change baffling. Rarely, even in corporate environments have I seen so much change resistance. It seems like some of us formed our UI habits in early 90s, and are so attached to them, we just can't think of anything different. It's just a new UI people! And it's a bit different, and it's not perfect, but surely, like everything Linux, it will get better overtime. Like it or not, trying new things is a sign of innovation, which is the sign of a healthy eco system.
I know you were trying to be funny, but GT3 RS with a sound system? Seriously?! It's like setting emacs with vi key bindings. Or setting bash as the default shell in NetBSD. It's travesty!
You pay $40,000 more than the normal GT3 for Porsche to rip out everything from the car to make it light, including the engine noise filters, GPS, adjustable seats, and the sound system. The engine and the chassis aren't that different between a normal GT3 and a GT3 RS. It's mostly the weight.
I assure you, that after you look at your bank balance and realise that it's $40,000 short cause you wanted to get rid of every last extra gram on your car, you will not be adding any weight to it. In fact, you'll soon be joining your local gym when you notice that you are not getting the claimed 0-60 times.
Oh well, I guess after 100,000 posts I still don't know that I shouldn't talk about cars here.
ChromeOS is a very good move for everyone involved. Remember, this OS and the devices it will run on are not targeting average slashdotters. I can personally vouch that I come across daily contact with people, business people not just teenagers, who don't use anything other than their browser. The worst aspect of a computer for them, is upgrading, updating all applications, viruses, malware, and general maintenance of the system. They nearly all fail in these, and after a year, they think their laptop is not usable anymore and go and buy a new one. They would LOVE this OS, and are they primary targets of it. Also, synchronisation between multiple computers is a bitch, that even they most fail at. And they hate leaving their documents here and there. Files and directories don't work for them, it's a broken metaphor for most people, and as much as love to organise my files in hierarchical directories, they simply don't care. They just want access to their information, when they need, as conveniently as possible.
I hate Web apps as much as the next guy on this forum, and even use my trusty IMAP client for fetching my emails from Gmail. But I can't deny that web apps are the future, specially when HTML 5 comes off age and becomes widespread. If you look back at what the Web looked like 5 years ago and compare it to now, you'll see that it will be irresistible in 5 years time. Have a look at http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ to get a taste of what we are looking at.
On a more general note, anyone who is comparing this to old failed projects based on thin clients, X terminals or net pcs, is missing the point. Yes, the technology behind this might be similar to those, but times are changing. On the one hand, people are getting used to ever-present always-available services. On the other hand, 3G is now widespread, affordable, and provides great utility for many. Laptops and phones are converging. 2007 was the year of netbooks, 2010 might be the year of smartbooks (running ARM processors). Smartphones are morphing into Internet tablets (e.g,, N900). These are very different, and interesting times.
Yes, this is cloud computing, and yes, it raises huge privacy issues. It is up to us the tech savvy crown to raise these issues and address them.
Slashdotters can always run their trusty Debian or Fedora or FreeBSD or on their computer. And they remain great choices. But Google is pushing applications to go online and cross browser. They are pushing for open source drivers. They are pushing for open standards and cooperation with upstream and downstream projects. This is a Good Thing (TM) for all of us, even if we are not the target consumers of this OS.
Well my user agent string right now is: (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.0.212.0 Safari/532.0), which says I'm running the latest Chrome very nicely on my Linux box.
It's daily builds of Chromium. I've been running it now for a week, and it has not crashed on me a single time. There is a x86 version, as well as a AMD64 version, and the 64-bit version is now true 64 bit, i.e., it does not depend on 32 bit libs.
It's stable and nearly feature complete. Supports all plugins (including Flash) out of the box, if they are installed on your machine. It imported all my settings and profile from Firefox. I like its original look, but it can now also use native Gtk themes of your system, so that it meshes really well with the rest of your system. It implements the one-process-per-tab architecture, and uses a *lot* less memory than Firefox. In fact, it is astonishingly more responsive and less memory-hungry than FF.
There are a few things left, for example printing doesn't work on it yet. Once they implement printing, I'm sure they will roll out the Beta.
Google is also working on an extension framework, so things as AdBlock will become a reality soon.
Excellent read. Full of information, with lots of insightful details. The Economist never disappoints, it's an awesome publication.
The fact that it publishes the content of its print edition online, one day BEFORE the print edition is delivered, and it has still been able to massively increase its subscriber numbers (doubled in the past 3 years), just shows to prove that even in this age of Internet, when everyone else in the newspaper industry is complaining about falling revenues, good journalism has its place, and will always be valued.
Taking part in the protests is the first (and very important step). Here is the list of places where protests will be held:
Melbourne:
Saturday 13 December
State Library
12pm-5pm
Sydney:
Saturday 13 December
Town Hall
11am-4pm
Brisbane:
Saturday 13 December
Brisbane Square
11am-3pm
Adelaide:
Saturday 13 December
Parliament
12pm-4pm
Hobart:
Saturday 13 December
Parliament Lawns
11am-1:30pm
Canberra:
Saturday 13 December
Garema Place, Civic
12pm-2pm
Please also consider taking the following actions:
1) Call Senator Conroy's office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.
2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it's between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn't have to be formal, and doesn't have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn't matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media's attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet. To find out who your local MP is click here.
4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn't know "Education Revolution" means censorship. Rudd's address is:
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia. Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.
6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn't matter if it's the Evil Telstra; on this, we're all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.
Don't just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!
The equivalent in Australia would be the Boxing Day (the day after Christmas). Especially the boxing day morning. There are long queues outside any retail shop in all major cities. Usually everything is sold out by midday. I lived in UK for a while and it's even bigger than the sale they have over there. Reading the Wikipedia page, it seems like the same phenomenon exists in Canada and South Africa as well, so it must have been a British Empire thing.
Very insightful argument. What is more and more pronounced everyday is the opportunity that Obama has to follow on FDR's footpath. FDR did exactly what you describe, getting around the reporting of his policies by newspapers, by his weekly radio broadcasts. Obama is reading a lot about former presidential transitions, he said on 60 minutes that he's reading a book on FDR's first 100 days in office, and I'm sure this wouldn't escape him.
A New Yorker reporter described the challenge of converting his huge online following during the campaign to be part of his government, to converting a population that had been mobilized for warfare to going back to civil industrial activity. It's not gonna be easy, and I think many people especially the youth who were part of the campaign and were energized and motivated by his campaign will switch off from politics again, simply because governing is more tedious and boring that campaigning.
But we don't know that yet, and this remains one of Obama's biggest challenges, how to keep people, and especially youngsters, engaged with him. That will be the major challenge of kicking the government, any government, into the 21st century, making it more open and transparent and eventually, more 'democratic'.
Dude, what's with the attitude? Calm down, it's Lego we are talking about.
Who is talking about "government keeping them in business" and "government forcing them to exist"? Which government are you talking about? They are a family owned business, and they've been profitable in the past two decades. Yes, they are facing rising competition from copy-cats, but they understand that that's their business. What's all this government nonsense you are talking about? Did you somehow think that everyone in Europe lives off government subsidies?
Fuck the town? Why? It's a small town, it's where Grandpa the Founder was born and grew up in. The town has grown with Lego. What's wrong with that?
I had been lucky to have observed Lego first hand for a couple of weeks, while I was working as a research assistant studying their IS project development methodologies. I thought since the discussion was about Lego, I'd share some of my stories here.
You wanna go and by cheap Lego-like bricks? Fine, who is stopping you? Good luck with your spaceship dude, and don't overreact to everything you hear please, it helps the conversation.
The problem is, Lego might be a household name, indeed in some countries it is a generic name for building blocks, but it is still a family-owned business. It's CEO and Chairman is a cool-looking grandson of the founder, and it resides in a rural town in Denmark called Billund, with a population of about 27,000 where nearly 90% of its manufacturing still occurs. The town is almost entirely dependent on Lego.
Lego is among the world's best employers (if not outright best). Equal opportunity in action. Employees, including the CEO, do not have reserved parking spots at the HQ's carpark, offices mostly resemble community areas rather than walled rooms, free food and drinks are all over the place, not to mention some of the best sporting and health facilities provided to employees. Blue collar workers receive the same treatment, for most things from gym membership to access to the health clinic, there is no difference between the executives and simple manufacturing employee. People don't wear name tags, they nearly always wear casual, unless they have a meeting with an outside party.
Lego has Idea Labs where people just experiment with new toys. It employs scientist, from chemists to child psychologists just to carry out all sorts of experiments. It is such a fun place, you'd be forgiven if you thought you where in Wonderland. It has a museum full of toys that it invented but failed to manufacture, mostly due to safety concerns. I can understand why some of them might have been thought of as dangerous, but boy are they cool!
Of course, with all the above, with the cost of employing and manufacturing in Europe, it can't compete with the cheapest-of-the-cheap Chinese factory which just mass produces plastic blocks. I understand that in this case, IP laws do not really cover its business, and anyone is legally able to copy them, but IMO it's rather sad to see that such companies can't really exist in this world, that consumers don't value the history and the culture of a company. They just look at a price tag and make their decision solely based on that.
Everyone I met at Lego is aware of these issues. They have carried massive restructuring plans since 2005, but they know they can't compete against most rivals whose costs are simply lower; yet they really want to preserve the unique culture that has made Lego, Lego for the past generations. Short of outsourcing manufacturing to some place in China, closing its museum and laboratory and airport and with it the town and becoming just another plastic manufacturer, I can't think of a way for them to survive. As I said, it's rather sad.
1) Call Senator Conroy's office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.
2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it's between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn't have to be formal, and doesn't have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn't matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media's attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet. To find out who your local MP is click here [aph.gov.au]
4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn't know "Education Revolution" means censorship. Rudd's address is:
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia. Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.
6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn't matter if it's the Evil Telstra; on this, we're all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.
Don't just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!
The only reason a government can get away with this is if we, the citizens, don't act, and let our liberties gradually slip away.
If you are an Australian, please take action:
1) Call Senator Conroy's office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.
2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it's between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn't have to be formal, and doesn't have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is: Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn't matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media's attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet.
To find out who your local MP is click here
4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn't know "Education Revolution" means censorship. Rudd's address is: PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia. Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.
6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn't matter if it's the Evil Telstra; on this, we're all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.
Don't just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!
Mod parent up. The summary is (as usual) inflammatory and misinformed. There is no scheme, legislation or proposal in Australia or any of its states for a national ID card.
The closest it got to being implemented was in 1985 during the Hawke government's Australia Card bill. This was at the height of the Hawke Labor government's popularity, and it got the government into so much trouble and lost the government huge capital clout. Hawke dissolved the parliament and held new elections, but still was unable to pass the bill. Later on, a Royal Commission heavily criticised the idea and put the mater to rest. See this for more details.
ANPR is right now, a "scoping study". Australia is nowhere close to perfect, but it has strong civil institutions, and you can make sure that heads will roll and blood will spill if this gets anywhere close to being proposed as a bill.
Since then the law has moved in the complete opposite direction. The Privacy Act (1988) specifically mentions that no unique identifier issued by a government agency or corporation can be used by another entity for the purpose of identification. In practice, this means things such as driver's license number, a Tax File Number (equivalent to U.S SSN), or the medicare number can not be used by any corporation or agency other than the one which issued it in the first place, for identification.
Right now, this is a classic example in Australia of the state vs. individual liberties, taught in any university course about identity and privacy. I've met many 'ordinary' (read: not politically active) people across all fields of society, from social workers to lawyers and IT managers, and even the newer generation who is too young to remember the debate first hand (like myself) is definitely acquainted with the subject and its implications. So, unless the poster somehow managed to time travel from 1985, "public support for national card in Australia is wanning" is like saying "public support for Hillary's health care bill is wanning" or "public support for president Nixon is wanning".
The issue did come to surface once again, after former Liberal (which here means Conservative) Prime Minister Howard made some comments about it in 2005 after the London bombings, but even then it was heavily frowned upon and both parties knew better than to include it into their agenda.
Australia is nowhere close to perfect, but it has strong civil institutions. This is a "scoping study". The moment the study is published, if it recommends anything remotely close to implementing CimTrack's ANPR, you can make sure that heads will roll and blood will spill in the electorate.
It didn't work, but the strategy was the work of a genius, and gave the Whigs an actual chance of winning the race in a year they really couldn't have won, and shouldn't have been this close to winning.
Van Buren was too popular. He was Jackson's VP (founder of the Democratic Party) who was still revered around the country by those who loved the Jacksonian/Jeffersonian vision for it.(BTW, Van Buren is the only American president not to speak English as his native language, he grew up speaking Dutch).
Anyway, the Whigs had absolutely no platform. Their whole raison d'etre and the reason for the formation of the party was to oppose Jacksonian Democracy. They were not a national party in '36 (and some might say they never became a national party), and the only way to stop the Democrats was the multiple-candidate tactic that they tried.
That tactic was based on lack of information. This of course is the pre-telegraph era, so the Whigs' tactic was plausible. It was thought that most people would not know/care who the candidate in another state was, and would vote for the candidates in their own state. The Whigs ran William Henry Harrison in most states, but ran local heros in states they thought Harrison couldn't win. If the result of an election doesn't give any candidate a majority of the electoral votes, the matter is referred to the House of Reps. Since the Whigs held the Congress, they argued that using this tactic would enable them to elect/select Harrison.
However, once it became known that the party was running other candidates in other states, many Whig voters felt cheated and deserted the party. Of course, that's why it has never been tried again. And in today's world of instant availability of information, it wouldn't work.
Harrison ran against Buren again in '40, and this time he won; only to die about 30 days later in the office. His VP who then became president deserted the Whigs and the party slowly disintegrated (over the issue of slavery) eventually giving rise to Lincoln and the Republican Party.
A bit offtopic maybe but I couldn't let this one pass. V4?
V4s are sometimes used in motorcycles, but I've never seen a V4 in my life. Wikipedia tells me that Lancia used to make some up until the '60s.
Nearly all 4-cylinder cars use the arrangement known as inline-4 or straight-4. Indeed the V arrangement has many downsides and some manufacturers (including BMW and Porsche) do not even use V arrangement in their 6-cylinder vehicles (Porsche uses the flat-6 arrangement, BMW a more simple Straight-6)
With 8-cylinder, the games changes a bit. There are probably as many straight-8s around, as there are V4s.
Assuming all engines are arranged in V is as much a sin in car enthusiast community as thinking everyone uses Windows is here.
Any old-time Unix admin has probably read the "Unix Haters Handbook" a couple of times, and knows that the authors of that book, along with its accompanying usenet group, were Unix lovers deep down. Most of the problems in the original hate book where with sed and awk and sh, tools that at the time were worshipped by their users but have since been supplemented/supperceded by perl and newer shells. I'm sure Linux can use a hatebook just like it's grandpa did at its hayday.
You would need much more than $100,000 to get that into Australia.
You would need to add the %10 vehicle import tax on top of it, then add the 33% Luxury Car Tax (as it costs more than $57,000) and then add the %10 GST on top of all.
And I'm probably forgetting a couple of taxes as well.
I was looking for a second hand Jaguar XKR the other day, the 1999 to 2000 models are going for about £12,000 to £15,000 in the UK (accident-free examples with about 60,000 miles on them). Then I looked at the Aussie market, and the same car is on the market, here, from about $85,000 to $120,000.
Consider the GBP to AUD exchange rate of 1 to 2, and you can see why Australia is still very protective of its car industry, via various hidden taxes such as the LCT.
Yes, the UN is extremely flawed. It is outdated, bureaucratic, non-representative, ineffective. FLAWED.
Yet, it is the closest thing we have to a world governing council. It needs to be reformed; It needs to be shaken; It needs to be revitalised; but it should not be given up.
All our international organisations, from WTO, IMF, World Bank to OECD and NATO need to reform to reflect current times and ideology. But they are important. Hugely important. This is what this week'sThe Economist had to say on why they are important:
"...this is not the 19th century. Then governments had few means other than gunboats to settle their differences. There are plenty of guns about these days, but also many other ways to settle the world's disputes."
Of course it should. We should also be engaged with Saudi Arabia. But there is no one-size-fits-all approach for solving these issues. Burma and Zimbabwe have internationally recognised democratic leaders who have had their election win stolen and are suppressed. Compared to its Persian Gulf neighbours, Iran has relatively robust civil institutions and outspoken youth (witness the blogsphere). N Korea and Saudi Arabia on the other hand seem to lack any element of a civil society. Certainly these issues need to be addressed, but in different ways. Maybe the best course of action in Saudi Arabia's case would be academic engagement, giving young Saudis a disproportionate number of bursaries in law and civil-related subjects.
Your example of looking at countries as allies or foes is still deeply rooted in the Westphalian outlook towards nation states. The problems we are facing today makes nation states irrelevant, climate change, illegal immigration, spread of diseases such as SARS, energy security... these are all global problems requiring global cooperation. The world population will rise to about 10 billion by 2075, which will only increase our competition for the scarce resources available if we continue to act in the same way. Until we stop forming our gentleman's clubs and look at this world as a single unified entity, we will not succeed.
Of course Israel and India need to sign the NPT. Of course American needs to once again become the bacon of democracy that it once was. But these are besides the point.
I did not accuse Obama of isolationism (though some of his populist mantra on trade is a bit alarmist) but there are certain elements within the Democratic party, specially a couple of his vice-presidential candidates (read: Jim Webb) who are genuinely isolationist. I hope these elements do not come to fore.
The last time America fought a war which was mostly thought as needless and useless (the Great War) and then went into protectionist mode in the '20s and '30s, we saw what happened afterwards.
The new bill proposes death penalty for "disturbing the nation's psychological security", a broad, catch-all phrase that also specifically includes "establishing websites and blogs distributing un-islamic and indecent material" (i.e., porn, or anything that can be tagged 'un-islamic').
The bill already has 180 signatures on it (including that of the Speaker of the House), and with the current parliament's setup, is guaranteed to pass. Even the minority so-called 'reformists' are likely to vote for it considering the consequences of not doing so.
Fact: Already, Iran has the second highest rates of capital punishment after China, and by far the highest rate of capital punishment per capita in the world.
Fact: The Islamic regime still executes children (i.e., those under 18). At times, it waits until they are 18 before carrying out the execution, at times (like last month) it even doesn't follow that.
Fact: After years of pressure, the Islamic regime still carries out capital punishment by the mediaeval and inhumane way of stoning the condemned, for certain crimes such as adultery.
Fact: Ethnic minorities (Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs) are heavily discriminated against in Iran. They absolutely have zero representation in the government, even in the local governments of the provinces where they form the majority of the population.
Fact: Iran, despite artificial appearances, is NOT a representative democracy. All candidates for all elections are vetted by a 12-member Council of Guardians, which defeats the purpose of an election. That is how the regime has kept power in its grips for the past 3 decades.
The international community (including the ineffective and outdated Security Council) which claim to have adopted the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect in 2005, need to define the criteria that would trigger a response from the international community. Does this doctrine only apply to cases where hundreds of thousands of people die? (i.e, Darfur? even in that case the international community is only grudgingly and hesitantly acting). Isn't jailing, torturing and killing of hundreds of journalists, labour union leaders, students, ethnic minorities, EVERY YEAR FOR THE PAST 30 YEARS, enough to trigger a response? (I am not in favour of bombing ANY country, as that will not solve any problem, but surely something has to be done, no?)
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocratic quasi-communist authoritarian rule of a select few with military and economic might and power, over the a population of 70 million which have been suffering with no respite. We need to put aside our 16th century nation states ideas and stop turning a blind eye to such cases of cruel injustice. It is the duty of each and every single one of us, as citizens of this world, to actively seek to terminate the ruling arrangements in countries such as Iran, Burma, North Korea and Zimbabwe. A a democratic and prosperous Iran is a key to a long-lasting Middle East solution. A well-governed Zimbabwe is an absolute ingredient of the global fight against HIV. We need to realise that we are citizens of the same world, that we all face the same problems, including climate change, proliferation of nuclear arms and fundamentalist terrorism, to name a few. We need to realise that it is our responsibility, as citizens of this world, to act in cases of humiliation (Iran) and starvation (N.Korea) of a nation by its corrupt government.
We need to remind the Republicans, that military operations are not the only solution, and we need to remind the Democrats, that isolationism is a self-defeating answer.
Mod parent up. ACCC has shown time and time again that it is on the consumers' side; the eBay ruling and iPhone distribution just go a long way in proving this.
3 of the 4 major networks in Australia (Optus, Vodafone and Telstra) are now offering iPhone, both pre-paid and post-paid, and unlocked. Optus has just released their prices: the 8GB version costs $729 and the 16GB one $849. This price includes $400 worth of call credits and unlimited data until August 31.
Compare the total cost of ownership of that, with the 2 year AT&T contract consumers are forced to enter in the US, and the difference is crystal clear.
Thanks ACCC.
PS: Prices in Aussie Dollar. 1 AUD is now 96 US cents.
Indeed many rights thus guaranteed in the US Bill of Rights are absent in many democratic countries. In Australia, not only don't we have a constitutionally entrenched Right to Free Speech, we also for example, have the concept of "fair use" in our Copyright law. Australian lawyers can (and do) argue for fair use using a variety of different court rulings and precedents, but can't simply resort to "fair use".
In this instance though, there are court rulings (as well as a NSW Act if I am not mistaken) that state that truthfulness is now a sufficient requirement to squander any libel claim.
Of course, all this is irrelevant as NZ is not an Australian state, and their laws do differ in many instances.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I think we have moved on. Sad truth is that Slashdot is not the place it used to be.
For real news about stuff that matters, I now mostly rely on Ars Technica, Anandtech, LWN and The H. They pretty much cover most things I'm interested in between them.
And if Google Reader stats that I see are any indication, in terms of users and traffic, Slashdot is just a shadow of itself these days.
Am I the only one here who actually likes Unity?
I've tried multiple graphical environments through the years, from Windows 3.1 and NeXT, to BeOS and XP and KDE (2, 3, 4) and Gnome 2. Every one of them introduced new concepts, some of which worked, some didn't, but I don't understand what the big deal is adapting to a new interface. For a long time, the the Windows 95 start menu concept was thought of as a solid, and KDE 2 and 3 and Gnome 2 to a certain extend, adapted it and enhanced it, but basically followed it. Usability studies are however showing that the whole layer under layer of options isn't the best way of organising things, which is the reason behind KDE 4's menue, Ribbon interface in Office, as well as launchers such as Launchy and Gnome-Do.
The other thing that power users are deriding is lack of options and customisability. Sure, options are good and power users like making their desktiop their own, but we have to realise that for a general purpose system, evey option has a cost. Cost in terms of support, cost in terms of number of things that can go wrong, or that the user can mess up. Now, I am not saying that we should remove all options and preferences, and sometimes systems go too far (for example Gnome 3 has gone too far in my opinion) but these things take time to settle down. Sometimes the bendulum swings too far one way, then the other, until a balance is found with which most users are happy. Give it time.
For a bunch of tech-savvy intelligent people, I find the slashdot crowd's utter resistance towards any UI change baffling. Rarely, even in corporate environments have I seen so much change resistance. It seems like some of us formed our UI habits in early 90s, and are so attached to them, we just can't think of anything different. It's just a new UI people! And it's a bit different, and it's not perfect, but surely, like everything Linux, it will get better overtime. Like it or not, trying new things is a sign of innovation, which is the sign of a healthy eco system.
Try NewsRob. It syncs with Google Reader and is just a pleasure to use.
I know you were trying to be funny, but GT3 RS with a sound system? Seriously?! It's like setting emacs with vi key bindings. Or setting bash as the default shell in NetBSD. It's travesty!
You pay $40,000 more than the normal GT3 for Porsche to rip out everything from the car to make it light, including the engine noise filters, GPS, adjustable seats, and the sound system. The engine and the chassis aren't that different between a normal GT3 and a GT3 RS. It's mostly the weight.
I assure you, that after you look at your bank balance and realise that it's $40,000 short cause you wanted to get rid of every last extra gram on your car, you will not be adding any weight to it. In fact, you'll soon be joining your local gym when you notice that you are not getting the claimed 0-60 times.
Oh well, I guess after 100,000 posts I still don't know that I shouldn't talk about cars here.
ChromeOS is a very good move for everyone involved. Remember, this OS and the devices it will run on are not targeting average slashdotters. I can personally vouch that I come across daily contact with people, business people not just teenagers, who don't use anything other than their browser. The worst aspect of a computer for them, is upgrading, updating all applications, viruses, malware, and general maintenance of the system. They nearly all fail in these, and after a year, they think their laptop is not usable anymore and go and buy a new one. They would LOVE this OS, and are they primary targets of it. Also, synchronisation between multiple computers is a bitch, that even they most fail at. And they hate leaving their documents here and there. Files and directories don't work for them, it's a broken metaphor for most people, and as much as love to organise my files in hierarchical directories, they simply don't care. They just want access to their information, when they need, as conveniently as possible.
I hate Web apps as much as the next guy on this forum, and even use my trusty IMAP client for fetching my emails from Gmail. But I can't deny that web apps are the future, specially when HTML 5 comes off age and becomes widespread. If you look back at what the Web looked like 5 years ago and compare it to now, you'll see that it will be irresistible in 5 years time. Have a look at http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ to get a taste of what we are looking at.
On a more general note, anyone who is comparing this to old failed projects based on thin clients, X terminals or net pcs, is missing the point. Yes, the technology behind this might be similar to those, but times are changing. On the one hand, people are getting used to ever-present always-available services. On the other hand, 3G is now widespread, affordable, and provides great utility for many. Laptops and phones are converging. 2007 was the year of netbooks, 2010 might be the year of smartbooks (running ARM processors). Smartphones are morphing into Internet tablets (e.g,, N900). These are very different, and interesting times.
Yes, this is cloud computing, and yes, it raises huge privacy issues. It is up to us the tech savvy crown to raise these issues and address them.
Slashdotters can always run their trusty Debian or Fedora or FreeBSD or on their computer. And they remain great choices. But Google is pushing applications to go online and cross browser. They are pushing for open source drivers. They are pushing for open standards and cooperation with upstream and downstream projects. This is a Good Thing (TM) for all of us, even if we are not the target consumers of this OS.
Well my user agent string right now is: (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.0.212.0 Safari/532.0), which says I'm running the latest Chrome very nicely on my Linux box.
If you are using Ubuntu, I suggest you give this PPA a try: https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa
It's daily builds of Chromium. I've been running it now for a week, and it has not crashed on me a single time. There is a x86 version, as well as a AMD64 version, and the 64-bit version is now true 64 bit, i.e., it does not depend on 32 bit libs.
It's stable and nearly feature complete. Supports all plugins (including Flash) out of the box, if they are installed on your machine. It imported all my settings and profile from Firefox. I like its original look, but it can now also use native Gtk themes of your system, so that it meshes really well with the rest of your system. It implements the one-process-per-tab architecture, and uses a *lot* less memory than Firefox. In fact, it is astonishingly more responsive and less memory-hungry than FF.
There are a few things left, for example printing doesn't work on it yet. Once they implement printing, I'm sure they will roll out the Beta.
Google is also working on an extension framework, so things as AdBlock will become a reality soon.
Give it a try, it's very impressive.
Excellent read. Full of information, with lots of insightful details. The Economist never disappoints, it's an awesome publication.
The fact that it publishes the content of its print edition online, one day BEFORE the print edition is delivered, and it has still been able to massively increase its subscriber numbers (doubled in the past 3 years), just shows to prove that even in this age of Internet, when everyone else in the newspaper industry is complaining about falling revenues, good journalism has its place, and will always be valued.
Taking part in the protests is the first (and very important step). Here is the list of places where protests will be held:
Melbourne:
Saturday 13 December
State Library
12pm-5pm
Sydney:
Saturday 13 December
Town Hall
11am-4pm
Brisbane:
Saturday 13 December
Brisbane Square
11am-3pm
Adelaide:
Saturday 13 December
Parliament
12pm-4pm
Hobart:
Saturday 13 December
Parliament Lawns
11am-1:30pm
Canberra:
Saturday 13 December
Garema Place, Civic
12pm-2pm
Please also consider taking the following actions:
1) Call Senator Conroy's office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.
2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it's between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn't have to be formal, and doesn't have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn't matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media's attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet. To find out who your local MP is click here.
4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn't know "Education Revolution" means censorship. Rudd's address is:
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia . Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.
6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn't matter if it's the Evil Telstra; on this, we're all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.
Don't just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!
The equivalent in Australia would be the Boxing Day (the day after Christmas). Especially the boxing day morning. There are long queues outside any retail shop in all major cities. Usually everything is sold out by midday. I lived in UK for a while and it's even bigger than the sale they have over there. Reading the Wikipedia page, it seems like the same phenomenon exists in Canada and South Africa as well, so it must have been a British Empire thing.
Very insightful argument. What is more and more pronounced everyday is the opportunity that Obama has to follow on FDR's footpath. FDR did exactly what you describe, getting around the reporting of his policies by newspapers, by his weekly radio broadcasts. Obama is reading a lot about former presidential transitions, he said on 60 minutes that he's reading a book on FDR's first 100 days in office, and I'm sure this wouldn't escape him.
A New Yorker reporter described the challenge of converting his huge online following during the campaign to be part of his government, to converting a population that had been mobilized for warfare to going back to civil industrial activity. It's not gonna be easy, and I think many people especially the youth who were part of the campaign and were energized and motivated by his campaign will switch off from politics again, simply because governing is more tedious and boring that campaigning.
But we don't know that yet, and this remains one of Obama's biggest challenges, how to keep people, and especially youngsters, engaged with him. That will be the major challenge of kicking the government, any government, into the 21st century, making it more open and transparent and eventually, more 'democratic'.
Dude, what's with the attitude? Calm down, it's Lego we are talking about.
Who is talking about "government keeping them in business" and "government forcing them to exist"? Which government are you talking about? They are a family owned business, and they've been profitable in the past two decades. Yes, they are facing rising competition from copy-cats, but they understand that that's their business. What's all this government nonsense you are talking about? Did you somehow think that everyone in Europe lives off government subsidies?
Fuck the town? Why? It's a small town, it's where Grandpa the Founder was born and grew up in. The town has grown with Lego. What's wrong with that?
I had been lucky to have observed Lego first hand for a couple of weeks, while I was working as a research assistant studying their IS project development methodologies. I thought since the discussion was about Lego, I'd share some of my stories here.
You wanna go and by cheap Lego-like bricks? Fine, who is stopping you? Good luck with your spaceship dude, and don't overreact to everything you hear please, it helps the conversation.
The problem is, Lego might be a household name, indeed in some countries it is a generic name for building blocks, but it is still a family-owned business. It's CEO and Chairman is a cool-looking grandson of the founder, and it resides in a rural town in Denmark called Billund, with a population of about 27,000 where nearly 90% of its manufacturing still occurs. The town is almost entirely dependent on Lego.
Lego is among the world's best employers (if not outright best). Equal opportunity in action. Employees, including the CEO, do not have reserved parking spots at the HQ's carpark, offices mostly resemble community areas rather than walled rooms, free food and drinks are all over the place, not to mention some of the best sporting and health facilities provided to employees. Blue collar workers receive the same treatment, for most things from gym membership to access to the health clinic, there is no difference between the executives and simple manufacturing employee. People don't wear name tags, they nearly always wear casual, unless they have a meeting with an outside party.
Lego has Idea Labs where people just experiment with new toys. It employs scientist, from chemists to child psychologists just to carry out all sorts of experiments. It is such a fun place, you'd be forgiven if you thought you where in Wonderland. It has a museum full of toys that it invented but failed to manufacture, mostly due to safety concerns. I can understand why some of them might have been thought of as dangerous, but boy are they cool!
Of course, with all the above, with the cost of employing and manufacturing in Europe, it can't compete with the cheapest-of-the-cheap Chinese factory which just mass produces plastic blocks. I understand that in this case, IP laws do not really cover its business, and anyone is legally able to copy them, but IMO it's rather sad to see that such companies can't really exist in this world, that consumers don't value the history and the culture of a company. They just look at a price tag and make their decision solely based on that.
Everyone I met at Lego is aware of these issues. They have carried massive restructuring plans since 2005, but they know they can't compete against most rivals whose costs are simply lower; yet they really want to preserve the unique culture that has made Lego, Lego for the past generations. Short of outsourcing manufacturing to some place in China, closing its museum and laboratory and airport and with it the town and becoming just another plastic manufacturer, I can't think of a way for them to survive. As I said, it's rather sad.
If you are an Australian, please take action:
1) Call Senator Conroy's office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.
2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it's between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn't have to be formal, and doesn't have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn't matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media's attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet. To find out who your local MP is click here [aph.gov.au]
4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn't know "Education Revolution" means censorship. Rudd's address is:
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia . Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.
6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn't matter if it's the Evil Telstra; on this, we're all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.
Don't just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!
The only reason a government can get away with this is if we, the citizens, don't act, and let our liberties gradually slip away.
If you are an Australian, please take action:
1) Call Senator Conroy's office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.
2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it's between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn't have to be formal, and doesn't have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn't matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media's attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet. To find out who your local MP is click here
4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn't know "Education Revolution" means censorship. Rudd's address is:
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia . Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.
6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn't matter if it's the Evil Telstra; on this, we're all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.
Don't just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!
Mod parent up. The summary is (as usual) inflammatory and misinformed. There is no scheme, legislation or proposal in Australia or any of its states for a national ID card.
The closest it got to being implemented was in 1985 during the Hawke government's Australia Card bill. This was at the height of the Hawke Labor government's popularity, and it got the government into so much trouble and lost the government huge capital clout. Hawke dissolved the parliament and held new elections, but still was unable to pass the bill. Later on, a Royal Commission heavily criticised the idea and put the mater to rest. See this for more details.
ANPR is right now, a "scoping study". Australia is nowhere close to perfect, but it has strong civil institutions, and you can make sure that heads will roll and blood will spill if this gets anywhere close to being proposed as a bill. Since then the law has moved in the complete opposite direction. The Privacy Act (1988) specifically mentions that no unique identifier issued by a government agency or corporation can be used by another entity for the purpose of identification. In practice, this means things such as driver's license number, a Tax File Number (equivalent to U.S SSN), or the medicare number can not be used by any corporation or agency other than the one which issued it in the first place, for identification.
Right now, this is a classic example in Australia of the state vs. individual liberties, taught in any university course about identity and privacy. I've met many 'ordinary' (read: not politically active) people across all fields of society, from social workers to lawyers and IT managers, and even the newer generation who is too young to remember the debate first hand (like myself) is definitely acquainted with the subject and its implications. So, unless the poster somehow managed to time travel from 1985, "public support for national card in Australia is wanning" is like saying "public support for Hillary's health care bill is wanning" or "public support for president Nixon is wanning".
The issue did come to surface once again, after former Liberal (which here means Conservative) Prime Minister Howard made some comments about it in 2005 after the London bombings, but even then it was heavily frowned upon and both parties knew better than to include it into their agenda.
Australia is nowhere close to perfect, but it has strong civil institutions. This is a "scoping study". The moment the study is published, if it recommends anything remotely close to implementing CimTrack's ANPR, you can make sure that heads will roll and blood will spill in the electorate.
It didn't work, but the strategy was the work of a genius, and gave the Whigs an actual chance of winning the race in a year they really couldn't have won, and shouldn't have been this close to winning.
Van Buren was too popular. He was Jackson's VP (founder of the Democratic Party) who was still revered around the country by those who loved the Jacksonian/Jeffersonian vision for it.(BTW, Van Buren is the only American president not to speak English as his native language, he grew up speaking Dutch).
Anyway, the Whigs had absolutely no platform. Their whole raison d'etre and the reason for the formation of the party was to oppose Jacksonian Democracy. They were not a national party in '36 (and some might say they never became a national party), and the only way to stop the Democrats was the multiple-candidate tactic that they tried.
That tactic was based on lack of information. This of course is the pre-telegraph era, so the Whigs' tactic was plausible. It was thought that most people would not know/care who the candidate in another state was, and would vote for the candidates in their own state. The Whigs ran William Henry Harrison in most states, but ran local heros in states they thought Harrison couldn't win. If the result of an election doesn't give any candidate a majority of the electoral votes, the matter is referred to the House of Reps. Since the Whigs held the Congress, they argued that using this tactic would enable them to elect/select Harrison.
However, once it became known that the party was running other candidates in other states, many Whig voters felt cheated and deserted the party. Of course, that's why it has never been tried again. And in today's world of instant availability of information, it wouldn't work.
Harrison ran against Buren again in '40, and this time he won; only to die about 30 days later in the office. His VP who then became president deserted the Whigs and the party slowly disintegrated (over the issue of slavery) eventually giving rise to Lincoln and the Republican Party.
A bit offtopic maybe but I couldn't let this one pass.
V4?
V4s are sometimes used in motorcycles, but I've never seen a V4 in my life. Wikipedia tells me that Lancia used to make some up until the '60s.
Nearly all 4-cylinder cars use the arrangement known as inline-4 or straight-4. Indeed the V arrangement has many downsides and some manufacturers (including BMW and Porsche) do not even use V arrangement in their 6-cylinder vehicles (Porsche uses the flat-6 arrangement, BMW a more simple Straight-6)
With 8-cylinder, the games changes a bit. There are probably as many straight-8s around, as there are V4s.
Assuming all engines are arranged in V is as much a sin in car enthusiast community as thinking everyone uses Windows is here.
Any old-time Unix admin has probably read the "Unix Haters Handbook" a couple of times, and knows that the authors of that book, along with its accompanying usenet group, were Unix lovers deep down. Most of the problems in the original hate book where with sed and awk and sh, tools that at the time were worshipped by their users but have since been supplemented/supperceded by perl and newer shells. I'm sure Linux can use a hatebook just like it's grandpa did at its hayday.
You would need much more than $100,000 to get that into Australia.
You would need to add the %10 vehicle import tax on top of it, then add the 33% Luxury Car Tax (as it costs more than $57,000) and then add the %10 GST on top of all.
And I'm probably forgetting a couple of taxes as well.
I was looking for a second hand Jaguar XKR the other day, the 1999 to 2000 models are going for about £12,000 to £15,000 in the UK (accident-free examples with about 60,000 miles on them). Then I looked at the Aussie market, and the same car is on the market, here, from about $85,000 to $120,000.
Consider the GBP to AUD exchange rate of 1 to 2, and you can see why Australia is still very protective of its car industry, via various hidden taxes such as the LCT.
Yes, the UN is extremely flawed. It is outdated, bureaucratic, non-representative, ineffective. FLAWED. Yet, it is the closest thing we have to a world governing council. It needs to be reformed; It needs to be shaken; It needs to be revitalised; but it should not be given up.
All our international organisations, from WTO, IMF, World Bank to OECD and NATO need to reform to reflect current times and ideology. But they are important. Hugely important. This is what this week'sThe Economist had to say on why they are important:
"...this is not the 19th century. Then governments had few means other than gunboats to settle their differences. There are plenty of guns about these days, but also many other ways to settle the world's disputes."
Of course it should. We should also be engaged with Saudi Arabia. But there is no one-size-fits-all approach for solving these issues. Burma and Zimbabwe have internationally recognised democratic leaders who have had their election win stolen and are suppressed. Compared to its Persian Gulf neighbours, Iran has relatively robust civil institutions and outspoken youth (witness the blogsphere). N Korea and Saudi Arabia on the other hand seem to lack any element of a civil society. Certainly these issues need to be addressed, but in different ways. Maybe the best course of action in Saudi Arabia's case would be academic engagement, giving young Saudis a disproportionate number of bursaries in law and civil-related subjects.
Your example of looking at countries as allies or foes is still deeply rooted in the Westphalian outlook towards nation states. The problems we are facing today makes nation states irrelevant, climate change, illegal immigration, spread of diseases such as SARS, energy security... these are all global problems requiring global cooperation. The world population will rise to about 10 billion by 2075, which will only increase our competition for the scarce resources available if we continue to act in the same way. Until we stop forming our gentleman's clubs and look at this world as a single unified entity, we will not succeed.
Of course Israel and India need to sign the NPT. Of course American needs to once again become the bacon of democracy that it once was. But these are besides the point.
I did not accuse Obama of isolationism (though some of his populist mantra on trade is a bit alarmist) but there are certain elements within the Democratic party, specially a couple of his vice-presidential candidates (read: Jim Webb) who are genuinely isolationist. I hope these elements do not come to fore.
The last time America fought a war which was mostly thought as needless and useless (the Great War) and then went into protectionist mode in the '20s and '30s, we saw what happened afterwards.
The new bill proposes death penalty for "disturbing the nation's psychological security", a broad, catch-all phrase that also specifically includes "establishing websites and blogs distributing un-islamic and indecent material" (i.e., porn, or anything that can be tagged 'un-islamic').
The bill already has 180 signatures on it (including that of the Speaker of the House), and with the current parliament's setup, is guaranteed to pass. Even the minority so-called 'reformists' are likely to vote for it considering the consequences of not doing so.
Fact: Already, Iran has the second highest rates of capital punishment after China, and by far the highest rate of capital punishment per capita in the world.
Fact: The Islamic regime still executes children (i.e., those under 18). At times, it waits until they are 18 before carrying out the execution, at times (like last month) it even doesn't follow that.
Fact: After years of pressure, the Islamic regime still carries out capital punishment by the mediaeval and inhumane way of stoning the condemned, for certain crimes such as adultery.
Fact: Ethnic minorities (Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs) are heavily discriminated against in Iran. They absolutely have zero representation in the government, even in the local governments of the provinces where they form the majority of the population.
Fact: Iran, despite artificial appearances, is NOT a representative democracy. All candidates for all elections are vetted by a 12-member Council of Guardians, which defeats the purpose of an election. That is how the regime has kept power in its grips for the past 3 decades.
The international community (including the ineffective and outdated Security Council) which claim to have adopted the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect in 2005, need to define the criteria that would trigger a response from the international community. Does this doctrine only apply to cases where hundreds of thousands of people die? (i.e, Darfur? even in that case the international community is only grudgingly and hesitantly acting). Isn't jailing, torturing and killing of hundreds of journalists, labour union leaders, students, ethnic minorities, EVERY YEAR FOR THE PAST 30 YEARS, enough to trigger a response? (I am not in favour of bombing ANY country, as that will not solve any problem, but surely something has to be done, no?)
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocratic quasi-communist authoritarian rule of a select few with military and economic might and power, over the a population of 70 million which have been suffering with no respite. We need to put aside our 16th century nation states ideas and stop turning a blind eye to such cases of cruel injustice. It is the duty of each and every single one of us, as citizens of this world, to actively seek to terminate the ruling arrangements in countries such as Iran, Burma, North Korea and Zimbabwe. A a democratic and prosperous Iran is a key to a long-lasting Middle East solution. A well-governed Zimbabwe is an absolute ingredient of the global fight against HIV. We need to realise that we are citizens of the same world, that we all face the same problems, including climate change, proliferation of nuclear arms and fundamentalist terrorism, to name a few. We need to realise that it is our responsibility, as citizens of this world, to act in cases of humiliation (Iran) and starvation (N.Korea) of a nation by its corrupt government.
We need to remind the Republicans, that military operations are not the only solution, and we need to remind the Democrats, that isolationism is a self-defeating answer.
Mod parent up. ACCC has shown time and time again that it is on the consumers' side; the eBay ruling and iPhone distribution just go a long way in proving this.
3 of the 4 major networks in Australia (Optus, Vodafone and Telstra) are now offering iPhone, both pre-paid and post-paid, and unlocked. Optus has just released their prices: the 8GB version costs $729 and the 16GB one $849. This price includes $400 worth of call credits and unlimited data until August 31.
Compare the total cost of ownership of that, with the 2 year AT&T contract consumers are forced to enter in the US, and the difference is crystal clear.
Thanks ACCC.
PS: Prices in Aussie Dollar. 1 AUD is now 96 US cents.
1 Lithuania 126.79
2 Iceland 49.5
3 Luxembourg 38.02
4 Switzerland 37.52
5 Norway 36.37
6 Slovenia 35.57
7 Finland 33.96
8 Faeroe 33.84
9 Estonia 33.67
10 Liechtenstein 31.92
11 Germany 30.77
12 Singapore 29.43
13 Netherlands 27.7
14 Sweden 27.55
15 Austria 27.19
16 Denmark 26.11
17 USA 25.99
18 Hong Kong 25.04
19 Canada 24.43
20 Ireland 23.16
21 Hungary 22.99
22 Bulgaria 22.46
23 Australia 22.19
24 Poland 21.54
25 Bermuda 20.71
26 Belgium 20.53
27 UK 20.32
28 Latvia 19.66
29 Israel 19.58
30 New Zealand 19.19
31 Spain 18.33
32 Czech 18.11
33 Malta 17.87
34 Antigua & Barbuda 17.86
35 Romania 15.78
36 Andorra 15.69
37 France 15.67
38 Barbados 15.31
39 Qatar 15.17
40 Slovakia 15.05
41 Aruba 14.58
42 Greece 13.77
43 Anguilla 13.54
44 Maldives 13.35
45 Croatia 13.31
46 Italy 13.16
47 Chile 12.8
48 Portugal 12.68
49 Cyprus 12.1
50 Taiwan 11.3
51 Japan 10.77
52 UAE 10.52
53
Indeed many rights thus guaranteed in the US Bill of Rights are absent in many democratic countries. In Australia, not only don't we have a constitutionally entrenched Right to Free Speech, we also for example, have the concept of "fair use" in our Copyright law. Australian lawyers can (and do) argue for fair use using a variety of different court rulings and precedents, but can't simply resort to "fair use".
In this instance though, there are court rulings (as well as a NSW Act if I am not mistaken) that state that truthfulness is now a sufficient requirement to squander any libel claim.
Of course, all this is irrelevant as NZ is not an Australian state, and their laws do differ in many instances.