Using this argument, government run trains shouldn't charge passengers, since the tax payer has already paid for the infrastructure.

I don't see why the Australian government can't reclaim some of its initial investment by charging the consumer of the product, especially when most of the consumers are overseas.

These radar techniques were also pioneered by the CSIRO in their radar division. They clearly weren't trivial, since they took a decade of development.

Is it false advertising to sell a hair-dryer designed for 110v US power in Australia knowing full well that it won't work properly in Australia?

If the iPad doesn't work on Australia's 4G networks, it should not be sold as as 4G capable just because it can work in the US.

Either way, using a 9-symbol encoding, you could find every song in existence using this sequence.

If you drop all '1's from a random sequence, aren't you just moving to a numeric system based on 9 symbols instead of 10?

You can still encode every song in existence using this sequence, you'd just have to change the encoding method.

You could do something like removing every '1', which was preceded by an '8' in the sequence, but then its not a random sequence any more, because we've just added a regular pattern to it.

Considering that pi represented as a decimal number is infinitely long, it would eventually contain the encoding for every song in existence.

I am less likely to buy a product produced by Foxconn, and awareness of these issues have tarnished a few brand names to me.

Even a 1% drop in sales for a company like Apple would result in billions of dollars in lost sales.

Yeah, he's a bit more complex than people make out.

He's clearly very smart and excellent at playing the politics game, but he's very conservative (us versus them), and I think that sometimes he just enters this crazy "mention whatever comes to the top of my head" rant mode, where he talks about stuff like wanting to make Catholic religious school classes compulsory for all children.

His rants have come back to bite him more than a few times, but he's been better at keeping them under control lately.

I agree with you mostly. Except this:

>> You don't help the developing world by not buying from them.

An organised and targeted boycott of Apple or another manufactures product can force Apple and Foxconn to improve worker conditions. This negative publicity has already forced some basic changes, and well publicised boycotts have worked in other instances.

Chinese workers aren't allowed to unionise or strike to improve their conditions or they will go to jail, so a boycott is possibly the most effective way to improve worker conditions, and these kind of improvements could lead to better conditions at other facilities across China.

Education and science are different matters. If you as a scientist want to spend time trying to turn lead into gold, then go for it.

I don't want my child learning that it may or may not be possible to make a perpetual motion machine.

If every time a teacher covers a new topic or theory in a science class they have to cover all the niche alternate theories, then the student is not going to learn much in the limited learning time available.

(That's not to say that there's not room for a separate "History and Philosophy of Science" module within a science class, but these topics might be more valuable when placed in historical perspective).

I don't agree with everything that Greenpeace does, but in this case they've risk their lives to do a clear social good and exposed enormous security holes at nuclear sites. (They've risked their lives as other activists like Julian Assange do. They are not insane).

Would you rather that these kinds of problems are covered up until some kind of incident occurs? The French government should have been testing the security at their nuclear sites (or even providing some decent onsite security), but don't want to for political and cost related reasons.

Does the average user on either platform care that much about upgrading the OS?

Anyone who's going to go to the effort of upgrading their phone is probably going to replace it before it is 2-3 years old anyway.

Really neither of the rabid/cultish groups are worth listening to.

Both Apple and Android have OSes that are pretty user friendly and both work equally well. Both pretty much do the same thing, and there is very little difference between them, since as soon as either side brings in an interesting new feature or app, the other adopts it.

Just find the phone for the best price and the features that you want. It's only a damn phone, there will be a better one out in a month anyway.

I am not sure how this relates to an emission trading scheme. I agree that we don't want the cheapest solution (per tonne of CO2 removed), if it damages the environment in some other way (increases lead in the soil), but there are other environmental laws to prevent this kind of activity.

A market solution is clearly not the answer to every problem in the world and an emission trading scheme clearly needs to be well regulated.

The sulfur dioxide emission trading scheme in the US is widely considered to be a success.

I agree. An emissions trading scheme is by far and away the most economically efficient means of limiting CO2.

Let the markets decide how to economically provide solutions to the issue. It's much more efficient than having the Government fund people to put solar panels on their rooftops. The only solutions that the Government should be directly funding, is ideas in their very early (non-commercial) stages that can't get commercial funding.

The Earth can handle a drastic climate change no problems. The problem is that we as humans have never lived through these drastic climate changes, and especially now with a population of 7 billion and and agricultural system feeding these people optimized for a stable climate. Even a minor change such as a change in global rainfall patterns would be hugely damaging.