I had to provide ID to Virgin Mobile before they'd even sell me a prepaid SIM card, some 6-7 years ago. Though I don't know if that was legislation or their own policy. I don't remember if Telstra required ID but I certainly had to provide details to activate.
On the other hand, in New Zealand I was able to get a Vodafone SIM card, put it in my mobile and use it right away. That may have changed by now, though I doubt it because I'm not really sure that terrorists would want to attack New Zealand anyway.
In any case, isn't it possible to get a rough location of a mobile anyway? If it's being used in a single location for long enough then it's probably enough for authorities to track down the address. Besides, terrorists (and criminals) will just resort to identity fraud, so overall it's pointless and will just mean that law abiding citizens are the ones being denied privacy/anonymity if they desire it.
Oh and so much to reply to my own post but I didn't quite notice when I posted. That link was from a press release issued on 29th July 2002, which related to a previous ruling in the Federal Court. Sony since appealed in the Federal Court and Stevens managed to appeal to the High Court.
Except that it's from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the watchdog responsible for matters that are our equivalent to that of 'antitrust'.
We get the same myth here in Melbourne. Our population densities are probably very similar to US cities so the same probably applies there. The truth is that public transport can work in places with lower population densities.
The problem with using apache+webdav is that you can't really query a given time to see if anything else is scheduled. In fact, looking at iCal, I think it only appears that you can publish a calendar or subscribe read-only. You can't retrieve a calendar and make changes then republish.
Are you saying that we should just continue with belching out green house gases as though there's no tomorrow?
The political messages and such from greenpeace may be strong but perhaps that's the only way to get people to listen. But so far no one has been listening. So much for countries like the US and Australia pulling out of Kyoto.
Our climate is fragile so we do need to look after it. Even if these changes can occur naturally.
I don't think the Australian Federal Government would have the power to do that. Each state of Australia would have to join independently or merge to become one state and then join. Though that doesn't stop the US excerpting control over us with FTA, etc.
Try buying a PC laptop without an OS tax. It's impossible unless you can get some custom thing which will probably end up costing more anyway. I may be wrong though, there may be a few reasonable offerings for laptops without an OS or linux laptops. Though in any case you're sacrificing a lot of choice in hardware to go down that road.
Nothing annoys me more than all the web sites out there that are out of date. However, if it's clearly out of date then is that really false advertising? Perhaps I just have a sense of what is out of date (well some of these web sites will have shocking 10 year old looking HTML so I'll disregard the information within seconds). Though if the web site owner were place a disclaimer saying "Prices current as of ", I don't see why they'd be liable 2 years later when they've forgotten to update prices. In any case, it probably makes sense for businesses to date any prices they publish, even in fine print. I'm guessing that the web site in question didn't do this.
What really annoys me more though is computer retailers who advertise online prices that are discounted to compensate for postage but when you walk into their store the prices are completely different. Perhaps I ought to tell 'em next time I notice that they're probably breaking fair trading laws and follow it up with the ACCC if they don't honour their prices.
If it's a civil case I don't think they could claim anymore than profit that they would otherwise have forgone. That's not to say you could argue that if you downloaded it because it was free and you wouldn't otherwise have purchased it. However, if you're purely downloading music, I don't think they could claim more than retail value of the music you have downloaded plus legal costs. If you're redistributing it, it's a different matter, they'd be able to claim for each copy you distributed.
I may be wrong though in any case, going after the end user is never going to be effective. At worst they might attempt it on a small proportion if they can to try and scare others.
Before they can do anything they'd have to prove that you have the files. That'd be quite impossible to prove from the logs alone, nor would the logs be considered sufficient evidence for them to obtain a warrant to search your property (if that can be done).
But as cinema release dates for the big global productions inch ever closer to each other all over the globe, this reason is going away fast - leaving the only "good" thing of the region codings that they can charge more in Europe.
I'm still using a LaserJet 4. Was originally an office printer, though I've had it for over 3.5 years now. It's incredibly reliable, though we did have trouble with it jamming up, that turned out to be because other users in the house were doing a clumsy job of loading the paper. Have only ever needed to replace the toner cartridge once in that time. I imagine we'd get several years from the cartridge now, at least.
Maybe so but DMCA doesn't exist in Australia. Infact our law was explicity changed to allow reverse engineering since Microsoft weren't being nice to Australian companies.
Not really.... Jabber is going through the IETF process so it'll be just as standard as SIMPLE. The question will be which gets implemented the most....
At least in Australia, the IM market has changed hands at least once, only it was ICQ to Microsoft! I don't see why it can't change hands to Jabber if we provide what users want (we'll need to make it easy for them and we'll need a fancy looking client of which RhymBox already is).
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I had to provide ID to Virgin Mobile before they'd even sell me a prepaid SIM card, some 6-7 years ago. Though I don't know if that was legislation or their own policy. I don't remember if Telstra required ID but I certainly had to provide details to activate.
On the other hand, in New Zealand I was able to get a Vodafone SIM card, put it in my mobile and use it right away. That may have changed by now, though I doubt it because I'm not really sure that terrorists would want to attack New Zealand anyway.
In any case, isn't it possible to get a rough location of a mobile anyway? If it's being used in a single location for long enough then it's probably enough for authorities to track down the address. Besides, terrorists (and criminals) will just resort to identity fraud, so overall it's pointless and will just mean that law abiding citizens are the ones being denied privacy/anonymity if they desire it.
Sounds at least a little unethical to me. Shouldn't they have been arrested in their own state and extradited if need be?
Here in the land of Aussie coke apparently does have real sugar in it. Must be the different regulations or something.
Curious. Apple seem to only let you change the DVD region several times in their PCs. I wonder if I could complain somewhere?
Oh and so much to reply to my own post but I didn't quite notice when I posted. That link was from a press release issued on 29th July 2002, which related to a previous ruling in the Federal Court. Sony since appealed in the Federal Court and Stevens managed to appeal to the High Court.
Except that it's from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the watchdog responsible for matters that are our equivalent to that of 'antitrust'.
So they're about to offer the same thing that OpenOffice.org has offered for ages?
But you can already write to them with acrobat professional.
Why doesthe news article say Sydney when it happened in Warrnambool?
Myth: Viable public transport requires high population densities
We get the same myth here in Melbourne. Our population densities are probably very similar to US cities so the same probably applies there. The truth is that public transport can work in places with lower population densities.
Looks interesting. I wonder if it'll integrate with Jabber.
The problem with using apache+webdav is that you can't really query a given time to see if anything else is scheduled. In fact, looking at iCal, I think it only appears that you can publish a calendar or subscribe read-only. You can't retrieve a calendar and make changes then republish.
Are you saying that we should just continue with belching out green house gases as though there's no tomorrow?
The political messages and such from greenpeace may be strong but perhaps that's the only way to get people to listen. But so far no one has been listening. So much for countries like the US and Australia pulling out of Kyoto.
Our climate is fragile so we do need to look after it. Even if these changes can occur naturally.
I don't think the Australian Federal Government would have the power to do that. Each state of Australia would have to join independently or merge to become one state and then join. Though that doesn't stop the US excerpting control over us with FTA, etc.
This graph shows that the Howard economic rhetoric is completely false:/ mikesgraph/
http://www.greens.org.au/blog/ElectionBlog/images
Try buying a PC laptop without an OS tax. It's impossible unless you can get some custom thing which will probably end up costing more anyway. I may be wrong though, there may be a few reasonable offerings for laptops without an OS or linux laptops. Though in any case you're sacrificing a lot of choice in hardware to go down that road.
Nothing annoys me more than all the web sites out there that are out of date. However, if it's clearly out of date then is that really false advertising? Perhaps I just have a sense of what is out of date (well some of these web sites will have shocking 10 year old looking HTML so I'll disregard the information within seconds). Though if the web site owner were place a disclaimer saying "Prices current as of ", I don't see why they'd be liable 2 years later when they've forgotten to update prices. In any case, it probably makes sense for businesses to date any prices they publish, even in fine print. I'm guessing that the web site in question didn't do this.
What really annoys me more though is computer retailers who advertise online prices that are discounted to compensate for postage but when you walk into their store the prices are completely different. Perhaps I ought to tell 'em next time I notice that they're probably breaking fair trading laws and follow it up with the ACCC if they don't honour their prices.
If it's a civil case I don't think they could claim anymore than profit that they would otherwise have forgone. That's not to say you could argue that if you downloaded it because it was free and you wouldn't otherwise have purchased it. However, if you're purely downloading music, I don't think they could claim more than retail value of the music you have downloaded plus legal costs. If you're redistributing it, it's a different matter, they'd be able to claim for each copy you distributed.
I may be wrong though in any case, going after the end user is never going to be effective. At worst they might attempt it on a small proportion if they can to try and scare others.
Before they can do anything they'd have to prove that you have the files. That'd be quite impossible to prove from the logs alone, nor would the logs be considered sufficient evidence for them to obtain a warrant to search your property (if that can be done).
But as cinema release dates for the big global productions inch ever closer to each other all over the globe, this reason is going away fast - leaving the only "good" thing of the region codings that they can charge more in Europe.
And even more in Australia!
I'm still using a LaserJet 4. Was originally an office printer, though I've had it for over 3.5 years now. It's incredibly reliable, though we did have trouble with it jamming up, that turned out to be because other users in the house were doing a clumsy job of loading the paper. Have only ever needed to replace the toner cartridge once in that time. I imagine we'd get several years from the cartridge now, at least.
Maybe so but DMCA doesn't exist in Australia. Infact our law was explicity changed to allow reverse engineering since Microsoft weren't being nice to Australian companies.
Well try more like a million people who will have heard about it in The Age/SMH today and thousands of Aussie slashdot readers.
Not really.... Jabber is going through the IETF process so it'll be just as standard as SIMPLE. The question will be which gets implemented the most....
At least in Australia, the IM market has changed hands at least once, only it was ICQ to Microsoft! I don't see why it can't change hands to Jabber if we provide what users want (we'll need to make it easy for them and we'll need a fancy looking client of which RhymBox already is).