The BBC is reporting on the current immigration fiasco over the wrongful detention of people – so it now appears that in addition to the almost 30 Australian citizens affected:
Two hundred foreigners were also wrongfully detained by the immigration department in the same period and the cases are now being investigated.
In February this year I wrote:
Once is a mistake (a severe & tragic one at that), twice is carelessness, but three?
How many more cases like this are there ?
Well it seems we finally have the answer.
26
That’s right – the Australian Government hasn’t just managed to lock up one of its own nationals as an illegal immigrant by mistake once, twice or three times (not to mention wrongfully deporting someone), it’s actually managed to do it an extra 26 times in the last 10 years.
Mr Georganas says the reply last week from the Attorney-General and former immigration minister Philip Ruddock confirmed most cases have been settled out of court.
“They have told us they’ve paid in excess of $800,000 for out of court settlements,” he said.
Just in on the ABC news:
Federal Human Services Minister Joe Hockey has signalled that private sector companies like banks and supermarkets may be given access to information stored on the Government’s “smart card”.
Joe Hockey says:
So a blanket policy saying that the private sector can have no access to the card, or a blanket policy saying that only certain government agencies can have access, or a blanket policy saying that individuals can or cannot change the information, I think is crazy at this particular point of time
No, Mr. Hockey, I think you’re crazy for considering letting private companies get access to this data!
My good friend Rich Boakes has blogged a powerful story about a man in Suffolk who is selling gallows to foreign states for a cool 12,000 GBP a pop – including such pillars of human rights as Zimbabwe.
Too many crims needing to be dealt with ? Well he can help you out, as the BBC says:
The execution equipment he says he sells ranges from single gallows, at about £12,000 each, to “Multi-hanging Execution Systems” mounted on lorry trailers, costing about £100,000.
As Rich puts it so succinctly:
This month Mr. Lucas is going to make a killing. Next month killing will continue, but Mr. Lucas will just have his regular customers; if they still want to do business with him.
Rich’s article has the details if, like me, you’d like to avoid doing any business with Mr David Lucas (below).
Ouch – http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_13965,00.html:
AMD has identified, and subsequently corrected, a test escape that occurred in our post-manufacturing product testing process for a limited number of single-core AMD Opteronâ„¢ processor models x52 and x54. No other single-core AMD Opteron processors, and no dual-core AMD Opteron processors, are affected.
[…]
You must be operating single-core AMD Opteron x52 (2.6 GHz) or x54 (2.8 GHz) processor-based systems, AND you must be running floating point-intensive code sequences.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=187001959:
Advance Micro Devices Inc. on Friday said that it has discovered a potential heat problem with a small percentage of Opteron chips run under extreme conditions, and said as many as 3,000 processors at customer sites could be affected.
Update: oops.. here’s an unfortunate advert to appear over the Information Week article.. 😉
Found on the Planetary Society Blog:
So far, it has generally been assumed that all comets originate from the other two known reservoir regions: the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt. The main asteroid belt is home to, well, asteroids, not comets. But Hsieh and Jewitt have proven that there are comets in the main asteroid belt, and that they almost certainly formed there.
Pretty interesting given that the current assumption is that all water on Earth arrived via cometary bombardment early on in the life of the solar system.
You can read more on Henry Hsieh’s website and peruse the abstract of their paper “A Population of Comets in the Main Asteroid Belt” from Science Magazine.
From the ABC:
Federal Cabinet has approved the introduction of a smart card for all people who use Government health and welfare services.
The card will include a photograph and personal details, and will be used to access Medicare rebates and family benefits. […]
Announcing the decision, Prime Minister John Howard says the Government has decided not to continue with a proposal for a national identity card for all Australians.
So if you want to be able to claim your Medicare for going to see the doctor, you will have to have one of these cards…
It would appear a coalition of the repressive wish to expand the remit of US Copyright law, including the DMCA, to make it even harder to do research, play media on any OS but those you have to payed Microsoft/Apple for, or defend yourself against damaging software they put on silver circles they claim to be (but are not) Compact Discs.
Jessica Litman, who teaches copyright law at Wayne State University, views the DMCA expansion as more than just a minor change. “If Sony had decided to stand on its rights and either McAfee or Norton Antivirus had tried to remove the rootkit from my hard drive, we’d all be violating this expanded definition,” Litman said.
Even the current wording of the DMCA has alarmed security researchers. Ed Felten, the Princeton professor, told the Copyright Office last month that he and a colleague were the first to uncover the so-called “rootkit” on some Sony BMG Music Entertainment CDs–but delayed publishing their findings for fear of being sued under the DMCA.
..and how do they propose to get this through ? Fear of course! That resurgent American political tool.
During a speech in November, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales endorsed the idea and said at the time that he would send Congress draft legislation. Such changes are necessary because new technology is “encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual-property theft,” Gonzales said, adding that proceeds from the illicit businesses are used, “quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities.”
Ed: my emphasis added
Clicking on the video link on this article I get a pop up that says (in an image, just to make it even dumber):
In text, it says:
PLUGIN WARNING
The CNN.com video experience is optimized for Windows Media Player 9 or above.
No Windows Media Player detected
They also give you a “GET THE PLAYER” link to click on and when I do, the Microsoft site helpfully tells me that:
Your operating system is not currently supported by Windows Media Player.
What a suprise.. I’ve sent a whinge to CNN to ask them to fix this bug and support more video codecs – be interesting to see what (if anything) happens..
The BBC is reporting that Scott Crossfield (84) has been killed flying a single engined aircraft in the US. He was the first person to fly at twice the speed of sound in the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket, the only time that particular aircraft did so (they’d had to specially tweak it):
In addition to adding the nozzle extensions, the NACA flight team at the HSFRS chilled the fuel (alcohol) so more could be poured into the tank and waxed the fuselage to reduce drag. With these preparations and employing a flight plan devised by project engineer Herman O. Ankenbruck to fly to an altitude of approximately 72,000 feet and push over into a slight dive, Crossfield made aviation history on November 20, 1953, when he flew to Mach 2.005 (1,291 miles per hour). He became the first pilot to reach Mach 2 in this, the only flight in which the Skyrocket flew that fast.