That's almost certain in AUD... but many Australians keep forgetting to make the distinction these days, because of the high exchange rate. It's 44 USD. The DSL tail has to fit in that, so most likely the data cost is only half that.
I'm on 20GB for $59 AUD (53 USD) with Internode, which suits my needs OK. Steam is mirrored locally on my particular ISP, as are Gentoo's portage repos, so no cost there and my rsync is snappy. I recently cut down from 40GB at $79 AUD (71 AUD) when the latest bandwidth shortages cut through the market and prices rose $10. I came to the realisation that I could now rent 3 DVDs out at a time for the price difference - entertainment dealt with.
I'd love to go back to the heady days of flat-rate pipes in 2004, but that ain't happening again. I'm just glad 2002's "3GB for $79" is never coming back.
Floating-point math doesn't fix itself. Let's not be hard on Microsoft when:
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Oct 30 2007, 13:54:11) [GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> 10.1-10-0.1 -3.6082248300317588e-16
The original reports noted that foobar2000 was just as affected as WMP. The problem occurs when the audio driver is in use. Interestingly, pausing foobar2000 seemed to release the audio driver (network performance went back to normal) while pausing WMP did not. VLC performs in a similar manner to foobar2000, although bypassing the audio device (decoding straight to a null device) results in no slow down.
So, no, it's not the checking for DRM while unwrapping the MP3 like you suggest. You can do that quite happily via VLC, provided you don't intend on HEARING it.;-)
Yes, Microsoft only have enough benchmarks to say that something "really surpasses the 5 benchmark by quite a lot". Apparently getting a 6 would require them to define what a 6 "meant" in terms of Windows usability, and beyond 5.9 they haven't thought of anything a more powerful machine could do better.
Frankly, I find the concept that Microsoft might run out of CPU-intensive eyecandy this quick to be pretty suspect. Having used Vista, I wouldn't have though it was possible to get it to run seamlessly any time in the next 3 years!
Well, at the time, maybe there wasn't a reason. However, maybe the mint was taking a long term view.
Tried buying anything from a vending machine recently? The $2 coin is small enough to routinely put two in your wallet, which should cover the cost of anything in a machine without a note reader. Note readers are also too large and complicated for parking meters, so without the small $2 coin you'd have to carry a pocket full of $1 coins. Eventually that's going to get as silly as carrying a pocket full of US quarters.
Overall, I think it makes sense for this application - 2x$1 would weigh 18g, while a $2 coin weighs 6.6g. The dimensions are also favourably smaller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_coins
The only downside is (as you've pointed out) that the maximum weight of coins you should end up from one transaction is ~54g instead of the 50g you'd have with a $2 note.
The amount is 2.7 billion USD. That's a lot of money here in Australia, which has (almost precisely) 10 times the GDP of Libya (US$64 billion). (For reference, the GDP of the US is $12 trillion.)
So assuming that you could simply compare percentages of GDP for hardship (which you shouldn't, but it provides a guide) that would be roughly equivalent to the US handing over US$504 billion. No way is that a token sum.
If you want to take it another way, the 2005 CIA-estimated budget expenditure of Libya was ~$15.5 billion. 17% of your annual budget for compensation ain't bad.
Oh, and just remember, the figure $2.7 billion because it's $10 million for every victim of Pan Am. That's never going to be enough for their families and doesn't excuse the act, but deaths due to state actions rarely attract that sort of compensation.
You're right that Libya & Gaddafi were state sponsors of terrorism against the US, UK & Israel, but that should be enough without you accusing them of being stingy too.
What you're missing is that the cost of that static address is administration (and pure profit), not rarity. Dynamic IPs on ADSL don't save ISPs all that much IP space. Most people have always-on routers these days, not USB modems, so 80%+ users are always connected. Your dynamic IP isn't NATed, so you might be using up as much as a 1/5th of an IP by buying a static one. Big deal, when that same IP could have been used up by somebody on a cheap entry-level plan that costs only slightly more than your $20/month.
The problem comes with ADSL is that you have to have the IPs to be in the game. You need static IPs for everybody (not because you couldn't NAT, but because users expect a REAL IP) which means a/16 only buys you about 65024 customers. (Some networks don't like you handing out IPs that look like broadcast or network addresses in a/24, so you'd be lucky to use the full 65536 IPs.)
So, even with migration from dialup, usage is going up, and if current trends continue then IP space is going to get rather tight from all the ADSL users.
However, if you have all that processing power available, maybe RTS games could give the individual units a little more smarts.
Wouldn't it be nice to play an RTS where you could actually give orders to a group of units to entrench and have them make sure that there's no chinks in their defence. You shouldn't have to order individual units around when all you want is for the group to defend a pass.
Well, Sir James Lovelock (of "Gaia Theory" fame) has suggested the best way to preserve regions of high biodiversity (such as rainforests) is to do just that. The developers wouldn't touch the land (just imagine trying to sell it!) and the critters will only have slightly reduced lifespans - something that they are unlikely to appreciate or care about. Chernobyl is his example of just how well this works.
Of course, this is hardly a long term solution to waste management, as the only reason why it works as a deterant is that people know what it is, and that in a post-apocalyptic world these regions may very well be the best sources of food in the region.
To elaborate further, the Hyshot program is actually based out of the University of Queensland, (ie. Australia) and is very much NOT a British program. If anything, it's international. Yes, QinetiQ is a partner and did help, but the BBC isn't doing anything new by touting the local (to it) firm's part in things. The UQ website also notes USAF and CAF involvement.
The Hyshot Consortium partners include Astrotech Space Operations, DTI and GASL, QinetiQ, NASA Langley Research Center, Seoul National University, the DLR (German Aerospace Center), NAL (National Aerospace lab. Japan), AFRL (Air Force Research Laboratory, USA), Australian Space Research Institute (ASRI), Institute of Engineers Australia (IEAust), UniQuest and the Australian Department of Defence. Australian firms, Alesi Technologies, NQEA, AECA, Luxfer Australia and Jet Air Cargo, and BAE Systems Australia are also involved.
So, next time the BBC reports on something that's happening outside America, I hope somebody will do some research before they base the headline on the leading paragraphs.
Note: I'm a UQ past student (had Allan Paull as a first year subject coordinator) and employee, so I'm not short on local perspective/bias here.
What the parent means is that US Navy researchers believe they are replicating the Pons/Stanley claims of fusion at roughly room temperature, which is "cold" fusion. Were this the case, then we might even term "cold fusion" a science, once we have a model that explains why it happens (which we don't). Part of the problem is that the amount of byproducts that should result from fusion under current models aren't being found.
There's a bit of a leap from replicating an effect to using it. Hopefully it's not going to take as long as the time between electricity becoming science to the first electrically-lit streets. On the other hand, it is possible that the US Navy is developing it's first "cold fusion"-powered submarines as we speak and simply doesn't want to let Chinese/Russians/Europeans to know, but I rather doubt it.
Ah, no, Linus was definately not Tanenbaum's student. Quite aside from the fact that Tanenbaum taught in the Netherlands and Linus studied in Finland, we couldn't have this quote if he was:
I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design:-) --- Andy Tanenbaum
However, Linus did admit that at least one academic from his own university shared Tanenbaum's opinions, and thus he was unlikely to be getting high marks anyway.;-)
As has been pointed to before, you can find an abstract of the famous "Linus vs Tanenbaum" posts to comp.os.minixhere.
Definately the prophecy was incorrectly interpreted, but I don't think that was how Anakin forfilled it.
Note that compared to the all the material about how the Jedi Order under the Old Republic behaved, Luke Skywalker in RotJ is definately NOT a model jedi. He's just a little too passionate, and little too willing to bend the rules to resolve problems. At the end of RotJ, he's in no danger of falling to the Dark Side, but he's also not a jedi in the way the old Jedi Order would have accepted easily.
The balance was restored by Anakin when he ensured that the last surviving Jedi, the one that would build a new Order, would know how a good man could fall to the Dark Side and yet still be redeemed. If Luke had triumphed over the Sith without help, he would have made the same mistakes the old Order made, or alternately fallen to the Dark Side himself.
Instead, Luke was left with proof that total destruction of those that are Sith was not a good foundation to build a new Order on, and with a very good idea as to how to avoid the corruption of the Dark Side in the first place. A balanced approach.
It's always amusing to watch somebody not from Australia pull out the "settled by convicts" line, with the expectation that it will make Australians uncomfortable. It hasn't for about 30 years or more.
Seriously, which sorts of people do you think got transported to Australia? a) murderers and rapists b) political prisoners c) small-time theives and vandals d) bankrupts
If you answered a), and you are an American, you have a most astoundingly interesting view of the British justice system at the turn of the 19th century - especially in light of the fact that such people could be executed today if they were US citizens.
Seeing as b), c) and d) were all transportable offences, which practically anybody's point of view - let alone an Australian's - is a little on the harsh side, why should anybody give a damn?
Today, it's considered a small matter of pride if you can prove that one of your ancestors was transported to Australia because of their part in an Irish rebellion, their theft of a loaf of bread, or their fall on hard times. Most of those offences practically scream "underdog" - a status that Australian politicians and sporting coaches scramble after to this day.;-)
CO2 emission can't continue unabated forever - after all, the credits have to run out eventually. Market forces will mean countries selling late are going to exact a higher price for their credits, so any Tier 1 nation wanting to buy credits like that would just be asking for trouble further along the track. Depending on the going price of credits, the GDP growth gained might even get cancelled out by the cost of buying credits. The initial glut of credits will be depleted soon enough, at which point everybody has to get serious.
The selling country doesn't have to be underdeveloped either. One of the key arguments here in Australia for ratifying has been that we could make a considerable sum by planting trees. Small industrialized coutries such as Japan are going to want a way to increase their industrial output at some point, and planting a forest here where there's plenty of space would allow them to offset the creation of a new factory. The net CO2 output would be zero, Japan gets their factory, and we get a paid-for forrest.
Yes, it does mean that if your coutry has cash, it can buy its way to meeting targets. But it also means that no country has an excuse for not meeting targets. The US could sign up and meet it's targets today... except that given its current situation, it would probably cause a financial crisis from increasing national debt to pay that much for carbon credits.
Unfortunately, this means the standard prefix actually changes for the more "engineering" of the two sizes, and I don't think it has a lot of acceptance.
What I meant was that the recruitment of somebody like Peter Garrett can't be seen as a favourable sign for the FTA. His primary use at the moment for the ALP is as a sign of the leadership direction. After all, he can't do much until he's elected.
The direction certainly points towards a more discerning set of trade and foriegn policys, and the FTA is definately not a good example of that sort of attitude.
Offtopic, I find the idea of him as a possible future Environment Minister to be quite appealing - rarely do competant people with knowlege in the area get that portfolio - although I'm sure there are quite a few industry and union groups that might think otherwise. He seemed pretty tame enough though when Kerry O'Brien interviewed him.
Who knows, maybe he'll come up with a replacement for "It's Time!"!
Perhaps. Going off the current figures from www.aph.gov.au, the current scoreboard is:
Government (Liberal & National) 34 Labour 28 Democrats 7 Greens 2 Progressive Alliance (Meg Lees) 1 One Nation (Len Harris) 1 Independants (Harradine & Murphy) 2 --- Total 75 + Casting vote of senate president (Lib)
The ALP currently look unlikely to vote for the FTA. The Democrats and Greens I believe have both stated they don't plan to vote for it either. This leaves the government *requiring* the four votes left:
Lees (South Australia) Harris (Queensland) Harradine (Tasmania) Murphy (Tasmania)
Harris *might*, but One Nation didn't like things like this previously, so he's iffy. Lees... was a Democrat once, but who knows now. And the two independants are also questionable.
The odds are against it at the moment, but a few letters to senators can't hurt: http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/senators/index.htm
The appropriate legislation needs to be passed in BOTH countries. Even if the US passes their side of the deal, they need the Australian senate to pass theirs too.
And if you live in Australia, you know that's far from a sure thing, and Peter Garrett is not going to make it any surer.
Having done some research into nuclear power before (admittedly with the intention of endorsing it) let me put forward some alternate viewpoints.
Firstly, the one thing most people overlook about nuclear fuel over fossil is a very simple observation - CO2 goes into the atmosphere as standard practice, but nuclear waste stays right where it is. While CO2 sequestration does change this, the reality is that it isn't a viable technology to use everywhere, because you need deep permiable rock/coal to sequest the CO2 into. So while you've got nuclear waste to deal with, it's exactly where you CAN deal with it.
Secondly, the reality is that current prices of uranium are so low that current reactors choose to use very inefficient models for the sake of safety. A pebble bed reactor is safer than a fast-breeder reactor, but it uses less than 10% of the total uranium fuel, versus 60% in the fast breeder. The fast breeder also has the advantage of being able to handle Thorium when correctly configured. The downside to fast-breeder reactors is a) they're inherently more dangerous, and b) by their very nature they'll produce more radioactive waste, because they use far more of the fuel.
Fortunately, it's always possible to build the former type of reactor, and then reprocess the spent fuel later for use with a fast breeder. By the time that fast breeder reactors become necessary, the concept will be over 50 years old, and hopefully there'll have been some progress towards making them safer.
What to do with the spent fuel? Ideally, you'd want to throw it into the sun, but realistically, that's not going to be viable for a century or so. Why not just store it? It only needs to be in a site stable for the next 1000 years or so, by which time we'll either have the technology to get rid of it for good, or we'll be in so much trouble that nuclear waste is the least of our problems. (That's a bit cold, but I think it's also true.)
Um, yeah, you're absolutely right. The OSNews phrase "D programs can import and link against C code and libraries" was a bit fuzzy, and my quick reading didn't pick up the distiction.
To be quite honest, I wasn't really interested in the extent of C compatibility when I posted. Can you use your C libraries with D? Yes - to an extent.
The in-built unit testing features are the parts I think are most useful. That, and support for the CONCEPTS of C et al. And garbage collection. All the things you need to lure C & C++ programmers to a new language.
It's not the first time or the last time that somebody has made a mistake on Slashdot though. And IMHO, this one's pretty minor compared to some!
It actually looks like a bigger, more sophisticated version of the HMAS Jervis Bay:
http://www.c7f.navy.mil/news/2000/09/16.html
If I remember correctly though, the RAN was never really keen on the idea. Militarily, it made sense. However the problem was that if it got hit - by just about anything - it was going to the bottom. Seeing as you couldn't escort the thing because it was faster than a warship, it made them a bit uncomfortable. Fast reaction ship that can't go anywhere where it might get shot. If not for East Timor, where a fast reaction force was needed but was unlikely to be opposed by air or naval forces, it might have looked like a mistake.
In the end, the RAN didn't build any more like her, and most talk has been about transports which can act as a landing platform fo about half a dozen helicopters in addition to carrying armoured ground forces.
Of course, if you had a navy the size of the US, then you could afford to build both couldn't you?
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, Australia has precisely the same requirement with encryption keys. It's not such an uncommon law.
That's almost certain in AUD... but many Australians keep forgetting to make the distinction these days, because of the high exchange rate. It's 44 USD. The DSL tail has to fit in that, so most likely the data cost is only half that.
I'm on 20GB for $59 AUD (53 USD) with Internode, which suits my needs OK. Steam is mirrored locally on my particular ISP, as are Gentoo's portage repos, so no cost there and my rsync is snappy. I recently cut down from 40GB at $79 AUD (71 AUD) when the latest bandwidth shortages cut through the market and prices rose $10. I came to the realisation that I could now rent 3 DVDs out at a time for the price difference - entertainment dealt with.
I'd love to go back to the heady days of flat-rate pipes in 2004, but that ain't happening again. I'm just glad 2002's "3GB for $79" is never coming back.
Yes, it still happens.
The original reports noted that foobar2000 was just as affected as WMP. The problem occurs when the audio driver is in use. Interestingly, pausing foobar2000 seemed to release the audio driver (network performance went back to normal) while pausing WMP did not. VLC performs in a similar manner to foobar2000, although bypassing the audio device (decoding straight to a null device) results in no slow down.
So, no, it's not the checking for DRM while unwrapping the MP3 like you suggest. You can do that quite happily via VLC, provided you don't intend on HEARING it. ;-)
The sort of geek that rounds to the nearest 0.1, and then doesn't define what is required to obtain a 6?
g es/458117.aspx
Check out:
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pa
Yes, Microsoft only have enough benchmarks to say that something "really surpasses the 5 benchmark by quite a lot". Apparently getting a 6 would require them to define what a 6 "meant" in terms of Windows usability, and beyond 5.9 they haven't thought of anything a more powerful machine could do better.
Frankly, I find the concept that Microsoft might run out of CPU-intensive eyecandy this quick to be pretty suspect. Having used Vista, I wouldn't have though it was possible to get it to run seamlessly any time in the next 3 years!
Well, at the time, maybe there wasn't a reason. However, maybe the mint was taking a long term view.
Tried buying anything from a vending machine recently? The $2 coin is small enough to routinely put two in your wallet, which should cover the cost of anything in a machine without a note reader. Note readers are also too large and complicated for parking meters, so without the small $2 coin you'd have to carry a pocket full of $1 coins. Eventually that's going to get as silly as carrying a pocket full of US quarters.
Overall, I think it makes sense for this application - 2x$1 would weigh 18g, while a $2 coin weighs 6.6g. The dimensions are also favourably smaller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_coins
The only downside is (as you've pointed out) that the maximum weight of coins you should end up from one transaction is ~54g instead of the 50g you'd have with a $2 note.
The amount is 2.7 billion USD. That's a lot of money here in Australia, which has (almost precisely) 10 times the GDP of Libya (US$64 billion). (For reference, the GDP of the US is $12 trillion.)
So assuming that you could simply compare percentages of GDP for hardship (which you shouldn't, but it provides a guide) that would be roughly equivalent to the US handing over US$504 billion. No way is that a token sum.
If you want to take it another way, the 2005 CIA-estimated budget expenditure of Libya was ~$15.5 billion. 17% of your annual budget for compensation ain't bad.
Oh, and just remember, the figure $2.7 billion because it's $10 million for every victim of Pan Am. That's never going to be enough for their families and doesn't excuse the act, but deaths due to state actions rarely attract that sort of compensation.
You're right that Libya & Gaddafi were state sponsors of terrorism against the US, UK & Israel, but that should be enough without you accusing them of being stingy too.
What you're missing is that the cost of that static address is administration (and pure profit), not rarity. Dynamic IPs on ADSL don't save ISPs all that much IP space. Most people have always-on routers these days, not USB modems, so 80%+ users are always connected. Your dynamic IP isn't NATed, so you might be using up as much as a 1/5th of an IP by buying a static one. Big deal, when that same IP could have been used up by somebody on a cheap entry-level plan that costs only slightly more than your $20/month.
/16 only buys you about 65024 customers. (Some networks don't like you handing out IPs that look like broadcast or network addresses in a /24, so you'd be lucky to use the full 65536 IPs.)
The problem comes with ADSL is that you have to have the IPs to be in the game. You need static IPs for everybody (not because you couldn't NAT, but because users expect a REAL IP) which means a
So, even with migration from dialup, usage is going up, and if current trends continue then IP space is going to get rather tight from all the ADSL users.
However, if you have all that processing power available, maybe RTS games could give the individual units a little more smarts.
Wouldn't it be nice to play an RTS where you could actually give orders to a group of units to entrench and have them make sure that there's no chinks in their defence. You shouldn't have to order individual units around when all you want is for the group to defend a pass.
Well, Sir James Lovelock (of "Gaia Theory" fame) has suggested the best way to preserve regions of high biodiversity (such as rainforests) is to do just that. The developers wouldn't touch the land (just imagine trying to sell it!) and the critters will only have slightly reduced lifespans - something that they are unlikely to appreciate or care about. Chernobyl is his example of just how well this works.
Of course, this is hardly a long term solution to waste management, as the only reason why it works as a deterant is that people know what it is, and that in a post-apocalyptic world these regions may very well be the best sources of food in the region.
To quote from a SpaceDaily article at the time of the last test:
The Hyshot Consortium partners include Astrotech Space Operations, DTI and GASL, QinetiQ, NASA Langley Research Center, Seoul National University, the DLR (German Aerospace Center), NAL (National Aerospace lab. Japan), AFRL (Air Force Research Laboratory, USA), Australian Space Research Institute (ASRI), Institute of Engineers Australia (IEAust), UniQuest and the Australian Department of Defence. Australian firms, Alesi Technologies, NQEA, AECA, Luxfer Australia and Jet Air Cargo, and BAE Systems Australia are also involved.
So, next time the BBC reports on something that's happening outside America, I hope somebody will do some research before they base the headline on the leading paragraphs.
Note: I'm a UQ past student (had Allan Paull as a first year subject coordinator) and employee, so I'm not short on local perspective/bias here.
(Technology => Science) != (Science => Technology)
What the parent means is that US Navy researchers believe they are replicating the Pons/Stanley claims of fusion at roughly room temperature, which is "cold" fusion. Were this the case, then we might even term "cold fusion" a science, once we have a model that explains why it happens (which we don't). Part of the problem is that the amount of byproducts that should result from fusion under current models aren't being found.
There's a bit of a leap from replicating an effect to using it. Hopefully it's not going to take as long as the time between electricity becoming science to the first electrically-lit streets. On the other hand, it is possible that the US Navy is developing it's first "cold fusion"-powered submarines as we speak and simply doesn't want to let Chinese/Russians/Europeans to know, but I rather doubt it.
Ah, no, Linus was definately not Tanenbaum's student. Quite aside from the fact that Tanenbaum taught in the Netherlands and Linus studied in Finland, we couldn't have this quote if he was:
However, Linus did admit that at least one academic from his own university shared Tanenbaum's opinions, and thus he was unlikely to be getting high marks anyway. ;-)
As has been pointed to before, you can find an abstract of the famous "Linus vs Tanenbaum" posts to comp.os.minix here.
Note that compared to the all the material about how the Jedi Order under the Old Republic behaved, Luke Skywalker in RotJ is definately NOT a model jedi. He's just a little too passionate, and little too willing to bend the rules to resolve problems. At the end of RotJ, he's in no danger of falling to the Dark Side, but he's also not a jedi in the way the old Jedi Order would have accepted easily.
The balance was restored by Anakin when he ensured that the last surviving Jedi, the one that would build a new Order, would know how a good man could fall to the Dark Side and yet still be redeemed. If Luke had triumphed over the Sith without help, he would have made the same mistakes the old Order made, or alternately fallen to the Dark Side himself.
Instead, Luke was left with proof that total destruction of those that are Sith was not a good foundation to build a new Order on, and with a very good idea as to how to avoid the corruption of the Dark Side in the first place. A balanced approach.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics begs to differ on the supposed "rapidly rising crime rate".
It's always amusing to watch somebody not from Australia pull out the "settled by convicts" line, with the expectation that it will make Australians uncomfortable. It hasn't for about 30 years or more.
;-)
Seriously, which sorts of people do you think got transported to Australia?
a) murderers and rapists
b) political prisoners
c) small-time theives and vandals
d) bankrupts
If you answered a), and you are an American, you have a most astoundingly interesting view of the British justice system at the turn of the 19th century - especially in light of the fact that such people could be executed today if they were US citizens.
Seeing as b), c) and d) were all transportable offences, which practically anybody's point of view - let alone an Australian's - is a little on the harsh side, why should anybody give a damn?
Today, it's considered a small matter of pride if you can prove that one of your ancestors was transported to Australia because of their part in an Irish rebellion, their theft of a loaf of bread, or their fall on hard times. Most of those offences practically scream "underdog" - a status that Australian politicians and sporting coaches scramble after to this day.
CO2 emission can't continue unabated forever - after all, the credits have to run out eventually. Market forces will mean countries selling late are going to exact a higher price for their credits, so any Tier 1 nation wanting to buy credits like that would just be asking for trouble further along the track. Depending on the going price of credits, the GDP growth gained might even get cancelled out by the cost of buying credits. The initial glut of credits will be depleted soon enough, at which point everybody has to get serious.
The selling country doesn't have to be underdeveloped either. One of the key arguments here in Australia for ratifying has been that we could make a considerable sum by planting trees. Small industrialized coutries such as Japan are going to want a way to increase their industrial output at some point, and planting a forest here where there's plenty of space would allow them to offset the creation of a new factory. The net CO2 output would be zero, Japan gets their factory, and we get a paid-for forrest.
Yes, it does mean that if your coutry has cash, it can buy its way to meeting targets. But it also means that no country has an excuse for not meeting targets. The US could sign up and meet it's targets today... except that given its current situation, it would probably cause a financial crisis from increasing national debt to pay that much for carbon credits.
Already done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte
Unfortunately, this means the standard prefix actually changes for the more "engineering" of the two sizes, and I don't think it has a lot of acceptance.
1 KiB = 2^10 B
1 MiB = 2^20 B
1 GiB = 2^30 B
etc.
They are rather fun to say though.
Doesn't EnigMail handle GPG encryption/decryption and signing?
Or have I been using vaporware for the last year?
What I meant was that the recruitment of somebody like Peter Garrett can't be seen as a favourable sign for the FTA. His primary use at the moment for the ALP is as a sign of the leadership direction. After all, he can't do much until he's elected.
The direction certainly points towards a more discerning set of trade and foriegn policys, and the FTA is definately not a good example of that sort of attitude.
Offtopic, I find the idea of him as a possible future Environment Minister to be quite appealing - rarely do competant people with knowlege in the area get that portfolio - although I'm sure there are quite a few industry and union groups that might think otherwise. He seemed pretty tame enough though when Kerry O'Brien interviewed him.
Who knows, maybe he'll come up with a replacement for "It's Time!"!
Perhaps. Going off the current figures from www.aph.gov.au, the current scoreboard is:
x .htm
Government (Liberal & National) 34
Labour 28
Democrats 7
Greens 2
Progressive Alliance (Meg Lees) 1
One Nation (Len Harris) 1
Independants (Harradine & Murphy) 2
---
Total 75
+ Casting vote of senate president (Lib)
The ALP currently look unlikely to vote for the FTA. The Democrats and Greens I believe have both stated they don't plan to vote for it either. This leaves the government *requiring* the four votes left:
Lees (South Australia)
Harris (Queensland)
Harradine (Tasmania)
Murphy (Tasmania)
Harris *might*, but One Nation didn't like things like this previously, so he's iffy. Lees... was a Democrat once, but who knows now. And the two independants are also questionable.
The odds are against it at the moment, but a few letters to senators can't hurt:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/senators/inde
But it hasn't happened yet.
The appropriate legislation needs to be passed in BOTH countries. Even if the US passes their side of the deal, they need the Australian senate to pass theirs too.
And if you live in Australia, you know that's far from a sure thing, and Peter Garrett is not going to make it any surer.
There's still time to stop it.
Having done some research into nuclear power before (admittedly with the intention of endorsing it) let me put forward some alternate viewpoints.
Firstly, the one thing most people overlook about nuclear fuel over fossil is a very simple observation - CO2 goes into the atmosphere as standard practice, but nuclear waste stays right where it is. While CO2 sequestration does change this, the reality is that it isn't a viable technology to use everywhere, because you need deep permiable rock/coal to sequest the CO2 into. So while you've got nuclear waste to deal with, it's exactly where you CAN deal with it.
Secondly, the reality is that current prices of uranium are so low that current reactors choose to use very inefficient models for the sake of safety. A pebble bed reactor is safer than a fast-breeder reactor, but it uses less than 10% of the total uranium fuel, versus 60% in the fast breeder. The fast breeder also has the advantage of being able to handle Thorium when correctly configured. The downside to fast-breeder reactors is a) they're inherently more dangerous, and b) by their very nature they'll produce more radioactive waste, because they use far more of the fuel.
Fortunately, it's always possible to build the former type of reactor, and then reprocess the spent fuel later for use with a fast breeder. By the time that fast breeder reactors become necessary, the concept will be over 50 years old, and hopefully there'll have been some progress towards making them safer.
What to do with the spent fuel? Ideally, you'd want to throw it into the sun, but realistically, that's not going to be viable for a century or so. Why not just store it? It only needs to be in a site stable for the next 1000 years or so, by which time we'll either have the technology to get rid of it for good, or we'll be in so much trouble that nuclear waste is the least of our problems. (That's a bit cold, but I think it's also true.)
Um, yeah, you're absolutely right. The OSNews phrase "D programs can import and link against C code and libraries" was a bit fuzzy, and my quick reading didn't pick up the distiction. To be quite honest, I wasn't really interested in the extent of C compatibility when I posted. Can you use your C libraries with D? Yes - to an extent. The in-built unit testing features are the parts I think are most useful. That, and support for the CONCEPTS of C et al. And garbage collection. All the things you need to lure C & C++ programmers to a new language. It's not the first time or the last time that somebody has made a mistake on Slashdot though. And IMHO, this one's pretty minor compared to some!
It actually looks like a bigger, more sophisticated version of the HMAS Jervis Bay: http://www.c7f.navy.mil/news/2000/09/16.html If I remember correctly though, the RAN was never really keen on the idea. Militarily, it made sense. However the problem was that if it got hit - by just about anything - it was going to the bottom. Seeing as you couldn't escort the thing because it was faster than a warship, it made them a bit uncomfortable. Fast reaction ship that can't go anywhere where it might get shot. If not for East Timor, where a fast reaction force was needed but was unlikely to be opposed by air or naval forces, it might have looked like a mistake. In the end, the RAN didn't build any more like her, and most talk has been about transports which can act as a landing platform fo about half a dozen helicopters in addition to carrying armoured ground forces. Of course, if you had a navy the size of the US, then you could afford to build both couldn't you?