Real computer geeks know that loved ones = data = posessions. Where else do you keep your beloved data except in your posessions?

Have a listen to alchemist, you might like them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3z9oeLreOc

You've got it backwards, one is the only thing that exists and everything else is illusion. We are all a single entity, a cosmic unity divided by holographic illusions. Any bong smoker will be able to tell you that.

Perhaps Lofti Zadeh has mod points?

Seeing 30/pi=9.549 that is a perfectly accurate measurement if we round to the nearest integer. There are plenty of places you can see the bible isn't correct (who did Cain marry?) but this isn't one of them.

I've got a smaller one again! Though not as legible: threepwood, and an italic one: thorpwood italic. Both are CC attribution only, so feel free to use them as you please.

To which party do you refer? the Democrats have had 60 odd successful filibusters and the Republicans 80-90 or so. Am I mistaken and this attack was against both parties or is your bias showing?

If the government had never sold Telecom we would be up shit creek without a paddle. Telecom were complete bastards, until competition appeared we had one of the most expensive and least useful telecoms networks in the world. We still have problems with price, but usability is slowly getting better (no thanks to Telstra though). Optic to the hub or home is an unrealistic dream for a country this fucking big. Demand for high speed optic fibre cable is 20 years old and was met in small island countries like Japan, Taiwan and Maylasia but has stagnated in our country which is as large as the USA but with less than a tenth of the population.

We could implement now what the progressive countries had in the 90s or we could try to embrace the future by investing in the private sector, and especially wireless which looks to be reaching 120mbps on 4G. In other words, the fibre network will be outpaced before it even gets laid as mobile speeds exceed those of the fixed lines. 'Redundant before it gets made' is not the technology that Australia needs to sink 43 billion+ dollars into.

There's nothing much stopping say a Chinese firm reverse engineering the current iPhone and replicating it using existing technology. In fact there's never been much of anything stopping individuals from recreating any patent, that is one of the intentions of patents after all. Thinking this would be the death of patents is like saying downloads are the death of copyright. Sure, the technology disrupts things but the legal system always finds a way to screw us over.

What's stopping someone from pirating the iPhone in 2050? How's $1 million in fines per infringing copy sound? I'm sure the legal minds will think of something.

I admire that you think we'll escape the IP trap so easily, as if technology were the only obstacle. Perhaps it's you thinking too small though, if we have replicators that can replicate an iPhone we should be also able make a replicator, and pretty much anything else to boot. We would be transitioning to a post-scarcity society. Would IP matter in such a world?

I prefer profiteers to tyrants, but either way the NBN is absolutely stupid and is no excuse to impose a load of bureaucratic totalitarian bullshit on Australia. We finally are rid of our old telecoms monopoly and what does the government do? Start a new one! They project demand at 80% of households when nowhere near that level of demand is present in the trials, and the only growth in the sector is in wireless not fixed lines. They expect 15 years at 80% will pay off half the costs. Do you really think this will be state of the art in 15 years? The private sector is the only solution to coping with the rapid technological change. The NBN will be a joke, a great example as what not to do when developing technology infrastructure.

Really? Can you name a single one? It's like saying modelling clay or a lathe is the death of patents, I'm just not seeing it.

Yeah, I'd say that IP breaks the 'nothing new under the sun' rule, and I fully support people who remix works while violating copyright, but to simply reproduce and violate is a step too far. What we need is copyright that lasts for a reasonable period of not more than a few years, and by few I mean two or three at most, with liberal fair use and allowing remixes alongside parodies.

Going back to my adolescent VHS and casette pirating years, I believe the loss of quality justified fair use of the medium, but with digital there is no loss. I know the music cartels are corrupt.

I feel we're a while away from a market based instead of a black market solution but we are getting there slowly. I do know that in 100 years they will wonder why the hell we didn't immediately embrace infinite reproduction to its fullest from the start.

Spot on. The error here is in our knowledge of what's happening, our RNA is functioning as intended.

From further down it states:

So it looks like they aren't quite a bank, they just need to keep any deposits in a real bank, seperate from their corporate account.

From their product disclosure page: "PayPal is licensed by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority as an authorised deposit-taking institution authorised to provide purchased payment facilities." So yeah, they're whatever that means.