Too Important To Discuss ?

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So the Liberals pushed through the bill for the sale of Telstra keeping discussion to a minimum. I thought democracy was about talking about things! If this goes horribly wrong (which it’s quite likely to) then it’ll be a case of “Act in haste, repent at leisure”. Except it’ll be the Australian public who suffer, even though 70% of Australians oppose the sale.

To sell off the telco, the Liberals:

  • Introduced the 5 bills to Parliament on Thursday;
  • Held a one day Senate inquiry on Friday, giving people about 12 hours to read the bills beforehand;
  • Brought the 5 bills to the Senate today and got them passed by supressing discussion through a guillotine motion.

This is the same company that has 14% of all phone lines faulty, admitted massively under-investing in its network and then its directors awarded themselves massive pay rises.

Melbourne Software Freedom Day 2005

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450 CDs given out in under 1 hour!

Today was Melbournes Second Software Freedom Day with members of Linux Users Victoria wandering through the CBD of Melbourne giving away copies of The Open CD and an Ubuntu Linux Live CD. There were about 8 people giving away CD’s and I took photos (53 of them by the look of it), which I’m now in the process of uploading for the organisers and I’ll also add into the photo gallery too!

Afterwards three of us headed over to ComputerBank’s event where they demo’d open source systems to visitors and gave a good talk and raised some very good questions from someone involved in a project to set up what sounded like a Linux based educational system at an orphanage in India (though I could have gotten those details wrong).

In Scotland there has been a motion lodged in the Scottish Parliament in support of Software Freedom Day.

How long can SCO last ?

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Here’s a fun quote from the IT Managers Journal:


The IBM case, which is likely to be the first one up, is not scheduled for trial until February 2007. Meanwhile, the company has less than $13 million of cash on hand, and is spending more than $2 million a month on average — you do the math.

But my favourite quote has to be:


Always the optimist, Darl McBride, president and CEO of The SCO Group, put on his rose-colored glasses and described the recent financials as “a productive quarter for SCO.” Unfortunately, SCO did not take questions during its conference call so no one could ask how he might define an “unproductive quarter.”

You know someone’s in trouble when even the serious journos are making fun of their company..

Preserved Ancient Documents

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I mentioned in my comment to the State of Massachusetts (which I’ve now put under a Creative Commons non-commercial share-alike licence) about the fact that the real treasure of archaeology are the written words that have survived down to our times from ages past.

Here are some links to give you an idea of the ones that I mention:

  • The Roman ink writing tablets from Vindolanda have been scanned and are online at Oxford University. Google for Vindolanda for more information.
  • There is a Wikipedia entry on birch bark letters such as those found at Novgorod which show a society where the majority of people were literate, when previously we thought only the highest classes of society would be taught to read or write.
  • Here is a lecture on Bactrian documents found in Afghanistan and what we’ve learned from them. Apparently it’s only been in the last 40 years that we’ve had anything asides from coins to go on!

But the quote that stood out to me as demonstrating the importance of these is from a webpage on Novgorod that says:


After a closer look, the roll appeared to
carry the text of letters, pressed into the bark. The sensation could be
compared with finding Troy, or the recovering of the Avesta. A whole city of
literate people, who just scratched notes to each other every now and then. Due
to these rolls the scientists were able to look into the everyday life of
ordinary people of which the chronicles had little to say.

I’ll leave you with words from two Romans, one writing a note for someone to possibly let them know what they’re in for and another on more prosaic matters.


“… the Britons are unprotected by armour (?). There are very many cavalry. The cavalry do not use swords nor do the wretched Britons mount in order to throw javelins.”


… I have sent (?) you … pairs of socks from Sattua, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants, two pairs of sandals … Greet …ndes, Elpis, Iu…, …enus, Tetricus and all your messmates with whom I pray that you live in the greatest good fortune.