Thankfully in New South Wales we're a bit more sane with regards to speed cameras. All the fixed cameras are clearly signposted for usually a kilometre or so before the actual camera, with constant speed limit signs as well. Not to mention that our cameras only activate when you exceed the speed limit by more than 10%.
I do this too. Forefinger is used for left-clicking, scrolling, and middle-clicking, my middle finger is used for right clicking only. The way I hold my mouse makes middle finger scrolling ridiculously uncomfortable!
There is a fine line between scrolling a little faster and SCREAMING down to the bottom of the page. It's seriously annoying.
Are you using Win2k or XP? Windows 2000 has serious problems with the middle click scrolling, while Windows XP handles it in a much smoother way. I've used XP pretty much exclusively at work for years. Lately I went back to Windows 2000 for a couple of weeks while my machine was "upgraded", and the poorly handled middle-click scrolling drove me insane! If you're stuck with using Windows, try upgrading to XP, hopefully that will fix your problem!
Here in the state of New South Wales, our workplace surveillance laws have just been amended to specifically address this issue. By law, employers are now forbidden from carrying out covert surveillance of their employees, whether by email, phone, video camera, or anything else. They need a court order and a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing before an employee can be monitored. See the following report from AAP (Australian Associated Press).
NSW: Employers to risk charges for spying on worker's emails
Wednesday, 04 May, 2005
Content provided to you by AAP
SYDNEY, May 4 AAP - Employers who read workers' private emails may soon risk criminal charges with legal safeguards being introduced today by the NSW government.
NSW will be the first Australian state to outlaw unauthorised spying of employees using technologies including video cameras, email and tracking devices with the introduction of the Workplace Surveillance Bill 2005 to state parliament today.
The new laws will make it a criminal offence to take part in any form of covert surveillance unless an employer can prove they had reasonable suspicion of wrong doing by an employee.
"While some employers argue that this is necessary to protect their legitimate interests, employees expect that their private correspondence, like their private telephone calls or private conversations, should never be the subject of secret monitoring," NSW Attorney General Bob Debus said in a statement today.
"We don't tolerate employers unlawfully placing cameras in change rooms and toilets. "Likewise, we should not tolerate unscrupulous employers snooping into the private emails of workers."
The new laws will strike a balance between an employee's right to privacy and the legitimate needs of employers to protect their intellectual and commercial property, he said.
"Unless employers have a court order, they would need to give employees notice that surveillance will be conducted," Mr Debus said.
There's a plugin for Azureus that lets you specify an "auto-download" filter, that will automatically download any files matching that filter.
For example, I have "daily AND show" as one of my filters, so whenever the latest episode of The Daily Show turns up on the RSS feed, Azureus automatically grabs the torrent file, jumps on and starts downloading. Since TDS isn't aired until about 3pm the next day (I'm in Australia and so ~18 hours ahead), it usually finishes downloading just in time for me to get home from work.
I would gladly pay a small amount of money to do this 100% legally, with good quality rips and fast download speeds. Device shifting doesn't bother me, but if I want to transfer it to my phone or PSP, I should be allowed to. Or if I want to burn old episodes onto backup DVDs, nothing should stop me (a new 200 meg video file every day adds up very quickly!).
1. Companies are required BY LAW to give severance pay and/or notice when laying off employees. Employees can just up and leave any minute they choose for the most part. Not only that, a lot of employees that at least have the decency to give notice are usually an order of magnitude less productive in those last couple weeks. In the companies eyes it would have been less expensive to just leave and not give any notice.
Not here in Australia. Standard employment contracts require you to give anywhere between one and four weeks' notice of your intention to resign, depending on how long you've worked for the company. From memory, it's a week's notice for every year you've been at the company, up to a maximum of four weeks. The idea is that they have enough time to find and train a replacement.
The flipside is that we also have very employee-friendly dismissal laws. Unlike in the US, it's very difficult to fire someone for poor performance. Sure, it can still be done, but we have an independent tribunal known as the Industrial Relations Commission who (among other things) arbitrate on matters of unfair dismissal. If an employee makes an Unfair Dismissal claim against a previous employer, the employer must show that the employee was given fair warning their behaviour was unacceptable, and that the employee was given the opportunities to correct or repent their mistakes (eg training). This of course doesn't apply in situations where the employee is (or should be) aware that what they are doing is a sackable offence (eg surfing pr0n, sexual harassment). However, employers are not required to give severance pay, at least not as far as I'm aware.
Yeah, but is a good RTS game really possible on a console? Having played the Godawful ports of Command & Conquer to the PS1 back in the day, I'm not convinced that RTS can even be done with any degree of finesse. Any game that requires a point-and-click style functionality just doesn't work well on a console. That includes real-time strategy, first-person shooters, RPGs and Sims-type games as well. Analog console controllers lag far behind what's possible with a mouse and keyboard. IMHO, consoles are for sports, fighting, driving and Grand Theft Auto.
I've always had the idea in my head that evolution was a generally *slow* process. Sure, quick mutations are possible, but for them to propagate to a majority of the species takes time. A lot of time. In this sense, our own evolution should be imperceptible to us, as none of us are around for long enough to actually observe the evolution.
Our differences from apes like hair loss, bipedalism, community building, languages, opposable thumbs etc and so on all evolved over millions of years - to suggest that our evolution is now at a standstill simply because we haven't noticed any big changes happening lately seems quite naive. Note that I realise you weren't suggesting this, I'm just making a general point (also without RTFA).
How does Australian law differ from these provisions?
Basically, Australian copyright law gives no exceptions for fair use. The only exceptions that apply are when copyrighted material is used for genuine research, fair and accurate news reporting, and a couple of other unlikely scenarios. And thanks to the AU-US Free Trade Agreement, we're about to inherit the DMCA, all in the name of "harmonisation".
So we're about to have the DMCA, and worthless fair use provisions. Legally, the only music I'm allowed to have on my iPod is music I've composed myself.
I already do this. My phone is the Nokia 6600, which runs Symbian OS. About a year ago I purchased the SmartMovie software and XviD codecs from Handango plus a 1 gig MMC specifically so I could watch full-length movies on my phone, and let me tell you, it works a treat! The phone itself is now more than a year old, so it's processor isn't as quick as some of the newer models, but it manages to keep up for the most part. With a lot of compression, I've managed to get the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy onto my phone, at a watchable bitrate. Got ten minutes to kill? Whip out your phone and watch a bit of Eddie Murphy Delirious. Or something involving Paris Hilton! (not that I've ever done that..... it was my friend, honest)
The only downside is that the phone's audio hardware is mono, so no stereo MP3s or video:(
I've also used it to stream live TV to my phone - my provider (Optus) has pretty crappy GPRS bandwidth and pricing, but they offered the live TV service free for a couple of months, which rocked. They only streamed ABC (the Australian BC) and CNNi, but watching the news (or last night's Daily Show) on the train home from work is pretty cool!
I'm in pretty much the same situation. Currently I'm at level 39 and I hardly ever get ganked anymore. It's worst when you're in the 20s, because you're in places (for Alliance) like Redridge Mountains, Duskwood, Wetlands, Hillsbrad or (god forbid!) Ashenvale, which just attract lamers looking for easy PVP kills. Now that I've moved on to areas like Desolace, Thousand Needles, Dustwallow Marsh and Arathi Highlands, the ganking has gone down significantly.
I encounter horde constantly, we just leave each other alone. Essentially, you're both there for questing, and if you leave each other alone you get the quests done without frustration. Easiest thing to do is just/wave when you see the horde person. It'll be interesting to see how this changes when the Honor system comes in. I guess introducing a benefit for PVP means I'll probably fight a lot more often.
My MP3 player is the Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen. Older versions of this model have a common problem where the hard drive heads get stuck in the park position and the whole machine refuses to boot.
Whacking it against the palm of your hand or gently against a tabletop usually fixes it:)
their previous rock-solid product became an endless string of "emergency maintenance" announcements.
Apologies for going OT, but huh? Did you play the same WoW beta as me? The Beta days were *anything but* "rock-solid", the severe problems you're referring to didn't even really start until the holiday season in mid-December.
Initial shipments of the game were very limited for the precise reason of stopping new account bottlenecks. However, the second wave of shipments coincided with the Christmas break, so suddenly hundreds of thousands of new people are joining, in addition to the existing players who suddenly have more free time (due to work/college/school holidays).
The three weeks between launch and the second shipment was probably the most stable period the game has enjoyed, while the beta was most definitely the opposite of "rock-solid".
This has happened before. A few years ago, a businessman based in Melbourne, Australia successfully sued the New York Times for defamation as their website was available in Melbourne (where his reputation was damaged).
I don't have a link available, but this was covered extensively on/. at the time. Do a google search for Joe Gutnick and you'll probably find some links to the case.
There's actually a really interesting documentary floating around that looks at the idea of a corporation as a psychopath. In the documentary, a psychiatrist lists out the common attributes of psychopaths (warped sense of right and wrong, inability to feel remorse or responsibility, sole fixation on a goal, manipulators, etc), and corporations basically fulfill them all.
Highly recommended viewing. There's also a book based around the same ideas, check the following links for more info.
Hollywood files more Web lawsuits
Studios sue traders of illegally copied films traded online, seek up to $150,000 per download....
The civil suits against unnamed "John Doe" defendants seek up to $1,500,000 per download
The age of consent for male-female sex is 16, for male-male sex it's either 16 or 18, depending on which state you're in. According to the law, there is no age of consent for female-female sex, go figure.
I'm not aware of any specifics relating to age of consent for photography, though I've no doubt they exist. I would imagine it depends on which state or territory you're in.
Slashdot Mirror
Thankfully in New South Wales we're a bit more sane with regards to speed cameras. All the fixed cameras are clearly signposted for usually a kilometre or so before the actual camera, with constant speed limit signs as well. Not to mention that our cameras only activate when you exceed the speed limit by more than 10%.
I do this too. Forefinger is used for left-clicking, scrolling, and middle-clicking, my middle finger is used for right clicking only. The way I hold my mouse makes middle finger scrolling ridiculously uncomfortable!
There is a fine line between scrolling a little faster and SCREAMING down to the bottom of the page. It's seriously annoying.
Are you using Win2k or XP? Windows 2000 has serious problems with the middle click scrolling, while Windows XP handles it in a much smoother way. I've used XP pretty much exclusively at work for years. Lately I went back to Windows 2000 for a couple of weeks while my machine was "upgraded", and the poorly handled middle-click scrolling drove me insane! If you're stuck with using Windows, try upgrading to XP, hopefully that will fix your problem!
Here in the state of New South Wales, our workplace surveillance laws have just been amended to specifically address this issue. By law, employers are now forbidden from carrying out covert surveillance of their employees, whether by email, phone, video camera, or anything else. They need a court order and a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing before an employee can be monitored. See the following report from AAP (Australian Associated Press).
NSW: Employers to risk charges for spying on worker's emails
Wednesday, 04 May, 2005
Content provided to you by AAP
SYDNEY, May 4 AAP - Employers who read workers' private emails may soon risk criminal charges with legal safeguards being introduced today by the NSW government.
NSW will be the first Australian state to outlaw unauthorised spying of employees using technologies including video cameras, email and tracking devices with the introduction of the Workplace Surveillance Bill 2005 to state parliament today.
The new laws will make it a criminal offence to take part in any form of covert surveillance unless an employer can prove they had reasonable suspicion of wrong doing by an employee.
"While some employers argue that this is necessary to protect their legitimate interests, employees expect that their private correspondence, like their private telephone calls or private conversations, should never be the subject of secret monitoring," NSW Attorney General Bob Debus said in a statement today.
"We don't tolerate employers unlawfully placing cameras in change rooms and toilets. "Likewise, we should not tolerate unscrupulous employers snooping into the private emails of workers."
The new laws will strike a balance between an employee's right to privacy and the legitimate needs of employers to protect their intellectual and commercial property, he said.
"Unless employers have a court order, they would need to give employees notice that surveillance will be conducted," Mr Debus said.
There's a plugin for Azureus that lets you specify an "auto-download" filter, that will automatically download any files matching that filter.
For example, I have "daily AND show" as one of my filters, so whenever the latest episode of The Daily Show turns up on the RSS feed, Azureus automatically grabs the torrent file, jumps on and starts downloading. Since TDS isn't aired until about 3pm the next day (I'm in Australia and so ~18 hours ahead), it usually finishes downloading just in time for me to get home from work.
I would gladly pay a small amount of money to do this 100% legally, with good quality rips and fast download speeds. Device shifting doesn't bother me, but if I want to transfer it to my phone or PSP, I should be allowed to. Or if I want to burn old episodes onto backup DVDs, nothing should stop me (a new 200 meg video file every day adds up very quickly!).
I have the same problem with Samuel L Jackson, I always think of him as Jules in Pulp Fiction (or maybe Ordell from Jackie Brown).
Every time he spoke in EpIII I was expecting hear something like "Use the force, motherf**ker, before I bust a cap in yo punk ass!"
What do you think those infinite number of monkeys are doing when not trying to bang out Shakespeare?
Chatting on IRC?
1. Companies are required BY LAW to give severance pay and/or notice when laying off employees. Employees can just up and leave any minute they choose for the most part. Not only that, a lot of employees that at least have the decency to give notice are usually an order of magnitude less productive in those last couple weeks. In the companies eyes it would have been less expensive to just leave and not give any notice.
Not here in Australia. Standard employment contracts require you to give anywhere between one and four weeks' notice of your intention to resign, depending on how long you've worked for the company. From memory, it's a week's notice for every year you've been at the company, up to a maximum of four weeks. The idea is that they have enough time to find and train a replacement.
The flipside is that we also have very employee-friendly dismissal laws. Unlike in the US, it's very difficult to fire someone for poor performance. Sure, it can still be done, but we have an independent tribunal known as the Industrial Relations Commission who (among other things) arbitrate on matters of unfair dismissal. If an employee makes an Unfair Dismissal claim against a previous employer, the employer must show that the employee was given fair warning their behaviour was unacceptable, and that the employee was given the opportunities to correct or repent their mistakes (eg training). This of course doesn't apply in situations where the employee is (or should be) aware that what they are doing is a sackable offence (eg surfing pr0n, sexual harassment). However, employers are not required to give severance pay, at least not as far as I'm aware.
But of course, IANAL.
Yeah, but is a good RTS game really possible on a console? Having played the Godawful ports of Command & Conquer to the PS1 back in the day, I'm not convinced that RTS can even be done with any degree of finesse. Any game that requires a point-and-click style functionality just doesn't work well on a console. That includes real-time strategy, first-person shooters, RPGs and Sims-type games as well. Analog console controllers lag far behind what's possible with a mouse and keyboard. IMHO, consoles are for sports, fighting, driving and Grand Theft Auto.
Yeah, but do you actually put the food on your desk, or do you eat out of a container of some sort?
Pressure sensitive buttons does sound like a good idea, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that.
Pressure sensitive buttons have been around for quite awhile - they're on the PS2 controllers, for example.
I've always had the idea in my head that evolution was a generally *slow* process. Sure, quick mutations are possible, but for them to propagate to a majority of the species takes time. A lot of time. In this sense, our own evolution should be imperceptible to us, as none of us are around for long enough to actually observe the evolution.
Our differences from apes like hair loss, bipedalism, community building, languages, opposable thumbs etc and so on all evolved over millions of years - to suggest that our evolution is now at a standstill simply because we haven't noticed any big changes happening lately seems quite naive. Note that I realise you weren't suggesting this, I'm just making a general point (also without RTFA).
Y'know, I would've thought maybe the idea of putting SOUND into movies had more of an impact than Star Wars, but there you have it....
How does Australian law differ from these provisions?
Basically, Australian copyright law gives no exceptions for fair use. The only exceptions that apply are when copyrighted material is used for genuine research, fair and accurate news reporting, and a couple of other unlikely scenarios. And thanks to the AU-US Free Trade Agreement, we're about to inherit the DMCA, all in the name of "harmonisation".
So we're about to have the DMCA, and worthless fair use provisions. Legally, the only music I'm allowed to have on my iPod is music I've composed myself.
I already do this. My phone is the Nokia 6600, which runs Symbian OS. About a year ago I purchased the SmartMovie software and XviD codecs from Handango plus a 1 gig MMC specifically so I could watch full-length movies on my phone, and let me tell you, it works a treat! The phone itself is now more than a year old, so it's processor isn't as quick as some of the newer models, but it manages to keep up for the most part. With a lot of compression, I've managed to get the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy onto my phone, at a watchable bitrate. Got ten minutes to kill? Whip out your phone and watch a bit of Eddie Murphy Delirious. Or something involving Paris Hilton! (not that I've ever done that..... it was my friend, honest)
:(
The only downside is that the phone's audio hardware is mono, so no stereo MP3s or video
I've also used it to stream live TV to my phone - my provider (Optus) has pretty crappy GPRS bandwidth and pricing, but they offered the live TV service free for a couple of months, which rocked. They only streamed ABC (the Australian BC) and CNNi, but watching the news (or last night's Daily Show) on the train home from work is pretty cool!
I'm in pretty much the same situation. Currently I'm at level 39 and I hardly ever get ganked anymore. It's worst when you're in the 20s, because you're in places (for Alliance) like Redridge Mountains, Duskwood, Wetlands, Hillsbrad or (god forbid!) Ashenvale, which just attract lamers looking for easy PVP kills. Now that I've moved on to areas like Desolace, Thousand Needles, Dustwallow Marsh and Arathi Highlands, the ganking has gone down significantly.
/wave when you see the horde person. It'll be interesting to see how this changes when the Honor system comes in. I guess introducing a benefit for PVP means I'll probably fight a lot more often.
I encounter horde constantly, we just leave each other alone. Essentially, you're both there for questing, and if you leave each other alone you get the quests done without frustration. Easiest thing to do is just
My MP3 player is the Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen. Older versions of this model have a common problem where the hard drive heads get stuck in the park position and the whole machine refuses to boot.
:)
Whacking it against the palm of your hand or gently against a tabletop usually fixes it
What is the biggest email sin/heresy/faux pas?
Using HTML.
their previous rock-solid product became an endless string of "emergency maintenance" announcements.
Apologies for going OT, but huh? Did you play the same WoW beta as me? The Beta days were *anything but* "rock-solid", the severe problems you're referring to didn't even really start until the holiday season in mid-December.
Initial shipments of the game were very limited for the precise reason of stopping new account bottlenecks. However, the second wave of shipments coincided with the Christmas break, so suddenly hundreds of thousands of new people are joining, in addition to the existing players who suddenly have more free time (due to work/college/school holidays).
The three weeks between launch and the second shipment was probably the most stable period the game has enjoyed, while the beta was most definitely the opposite of "rock-solid".
This has happened before. A few years ago, a businessman based in Melbourne, Australia successfully sued the New York Times for defamation as their website was available in Melbourne (where his reputation was damaged).
/. at the time. Do a google search for Joe Gutnick and you'll probably find some links to the case.
I don't have a link available, but this was covered extensively on
There's actually a really interesting documentary floating around that looks at the idea of a corporation as a psychopath. In the documentary, a psychiatrist lists out the common attributes of psychopaths (warped sense of right and wrong, inability to feel remorse or responsibility, sole fixation on a goal, manipulators, etc), and corporations basically fulfill them all.
Highly recommended viewing. There's also a book based around the same ideas, check the following links for more info.
The Corporation - IMDB
The Corporation - Official Site
The Corporation (book)
Hollywood files more Web lawsuits Studios sue traders of illegally copied films traded online, seek up to $150,000 per download. ...
The civil suits against unnamed "John Doe" defendants seek up to $1,500,000 per download
*blink*
That's an awful lot of inflation.
I know! That would be why I distinguished between them...
The age of consent for male-female sex is 16, for male-male sex it's either 16 or 18, depending on which state you're in. According to the law, there is no age of consent for female-female sex, go figure.
I'm not aware of any specifics relating to age of consent for photography, though I've no doubt they exist. I would imagine it depends on which state or territory you're in.
Sit on slashdot and whine about congress, corruption, and big money - you loose.
;)
Oh well, I guess that's better than losing