The previous chair of the ACCC (Allan Fells) wasn't popular with business, which in my view, meant that he must have been doing something right. The current chair (Graeme Samuel) doesn't seem to be so so proactive (or controversial), so they may adopt a wait and see approach. In any case, I am wondering if what the SCO group are attempting to do could best be covered by Fair Trading laws which, in Australia, are administered by the State governments. I guess the anti-competition aspect of SCO's behaviour could give the ACCC jurisdiction.
They are affiliated with ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) and funded by record companies. So we are talking about a raid by a private organisation. Bizarre. Their contact details (if anyone fancies dropping them a line, ahem) are here
The ARIA press release is available here if anyone wants evidence that FUD isn't confined to Microsoft and SCO.
So in essence the MIPI is an organisation set up by the music industry to investigate alleged music piracy. I would have thought that carrying out the raid would have been the responsibility of the police or other government agency, rather than an industry association, but apparently jackboots are more freely available here than I thought (Godwin's Law notwithstanding).
And let's not forget that the Beagle 2 was really a last minute 'add on' to the main mission - the orbiter. Poor Mars Express seems to be lost in the media coverage of the of the Beagle.
Done on the cheap and quickly, the real surprise would have been if it landed successfully.
Kudos to the ESA for trying something as ambitious as this in their relatively early days of solar system exploration and lets hope we get great science from Express and the US landers.
Slashdot Mirror
The previous chair of the ACCC (Allan Fells) wasn't popular with business, which in my view, meant that he must have been doing something right. The current chair (Graeme Samuel) doesn't seem to be so so proactive (or controversial), so they may adopt a wait and see approach. In any case, I am wondering if what the SCO group are attempting to do could best be covered by Fair Trading laws which, in Australia, are administered by the State governments. I guess the anti-competition aspect of SCO's behaviour could give the ACCC jurisdiction.
The ARIA press release is available here if anyone wants evidence that FUD isn't confined to Microsoft and SCO.
So in essence the MIPI is an organisation set up by the music industry to investigate alleged music piracy. I would have thought that carrying out the raid would have been the responsibility of the police or other government agency, rather than an industry association, but apparently jackboots are more freely available here than I thought (Godwin's Law notwithstanding).
"Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort"
What about the exploration of the (possible) oceans on Europa? The rest of the solar system? The Terrestrial Planet Finder?
There's more to space than Mars.
And let's not forget that the Beagle 2 was really a last minute 'add on' to the main mission - the orbiter. Poor Mars Express seems to be lost in the media coverage of the of the Beagle. Done on the cheap and quickly, the real surprise would have been if it landed successfully. Kudos to the ESA for trying something as ambitious as this in their relatively early days of solar system exploration and lets hope we get great science from Express and the US landers.