By 15 votes to 6.. in Dixville, New Hampshire, the first place to declare a result.. π
Still it’s promising if you’re an Obama supporter..
And the count is a real shocker, as just read on CNN: Obama 15 votes, McCain six votes — in a place that has only voted Democratic once in the 50 years they’ve been doing this tradition.
Just wrote an email to an old friend in the UK and this is what I wrote about the SBS docco “First Australians” that has just finished. If you’ve not watched it already please go and watch it on the SBS website or pick up the DVD when it hits the SBS shop in December.
There’s been a really good series on TV here called “First Australians“, it gives the indigenous point of view of their history since the British landed and it’s been pretty heavy stuff. Whilst I knew a bit about the colonisation, killings, poisonings, repression, racism and the Stolen Generation the sheer scale of what was done is still shocking. Donna has been telling me that in school they were never taught at all about the sort of things that happened, just really skipped over the whole issue.
This is really the first time it’s been so publicly presented and I think it’s shocked a lot of people about what has been done by non-indigenous Australia. To their credit SBS (which is sort of like Channel 4 back there) has put it up on the ‘net and allows people to comment on it and it’s interesting, inspiring and depressing to see the various reactions it has had from disbelief and sadness through to denial, revisionism and anger.
I’ve ended up with tears in my eyes after most shows, it’s really quite affected me as I have to acknowledge that I come from the country that was responsible for this. There are stories of resilience, strength, solidarity, courage and dignity in it and also some rare examples of colonists who have seen indigenous people as people and who have stood besides them in mutual respect.
Hmm, that’s all a bit heavy, sorry! That’s because we’ve just watched the final episode about Mabo vs Queensland, the case that finally extinguished the doctrine of Terra Nullis – the myth that Australia was unpopulated before the English arrived because the indigenous people didn’t count and laid the way for indigenous land rights claims. That was only in 1992 when we were both in Aberystwyth! It’s crazy, they were only allowed to vote in federal elections in 1962 and were only really counted as citizens in 1967 after a referendum to change the constitution.. π
Here is what my wife, Donna, wrote about this series.
For any CoC fans out there, Ars Technica has The Call of Cthubuntu that was published for Halloween.
His howl transformed into maniacal laughter and then became a rhythmic chant. He recited the entire manual page for the UNIX sed command and then slumped to the floor, completely exhausted by the ordeal.
π
Sometimes when you ask for something to be translated to a language you don’t know it’s a good idea to get the resulting translation translated back into your own language.. π
English: No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only
Welsh: I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated
(Via)
Now this is a monopoly lock in at work..
MICROSOFT will rip an estimated $70 million out of the aged care sector’s IT budget over the next 18 months as it forces users to pay full commercial rates for previously discounted software. Aged care providers are shocked by Microsoft’s decision to revoke their not-for-profit status, which gave them access to its products at a heavily discounted rate. As a result, Microsoft’s Office, Sharepoint and SQL server products are firmly entrenched in the sector’s IT infrastructure.
D’oh!
Reported at the BBC, talking about Afghan asylum seekers held under the Pacific Solution by the former government:
they were assured by Australian immigration officials that it was safe for them to return home, and told that they would be held in detention for the rest of their lives if they failed to do so.
Sadly these assurances of safety were pure illusion, and it appears that this deception led to a number of those who did return being murdered by the Taleban:
It documented the deaths of nine of the failed asylum seekers at the hands of the Taleban and believes the true figure is actually closer to 20.
The current minister has asked for more information whilst the former minister takes spin and a lack of empathy to new depths:
“It is the case that Afghanistan is a dangerous place but the [United Nations] Refugee Convention does not say you cannot be returned to a dangerous place,” Mr Ruddock said. “The fact that somebody might tragically die [in Afghanistan] may well be as tragic as a road accident in Sydney.”
Hmm, road accident versus murder.. Yes, both tragic, but not quite the same..
Good to see it took the Atheist Bus Campaign just 10 hours to raise all the money necessary for this!
With your support, we hope to raise ΓΒ£5,500 to run 30 buses across the capital for four weeks with the slogan: Γ’β¬ΕThereΓ’β¬β’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.Γ’β¬Β Donate online now!
It really riles me to hear folks say that you have to have religion to have a moral compass, It smacks of a desire to inspire fear in those who don’t believe. I feel there is plenty of evidence that religion itself can result in people doing things that are immoral (( No, I’m not saying that it’s always a bad thing )).
I’ve gone through a number of different belief systems in my time but in the long term none of them made any sense to me in terms of gods; in the end it just wasn’t logical to me that supernatural being(s) exist, there’s just no evidence for them and they seem to me to be entirely superfluous.
I concur pretty much with what Alec has to say about things, I’ll just carry on trying to be good to people and treat them as I’d wish to be treated (hopefully succeeding sometimes).
(Via)
This has to be the best Schneier Fact. Ever.
So it appears there will be no way to escape from being blocked from seeing sites that are false positives due to buggy & broken filters or incorrectly classified, etc.. π
Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.
According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,000 Web pages from one million.
I guess if John Howard was still around he’d want us to be blocked from seeing un-American content too.
At work we’ve been interested in the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (Dell’s answer to the eeePC), especially as everywhere you go you’ll read about it being shipped with Ubuntu Linux, which was great news.
Unfortunately I’m sad to say that my sources in Dell have told me that it’s only going to be available in Australia with Windows XP, no Linux version for Australia. π
