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Comment Stop Press: Wikileaks has stopped the war (Score 1) 1088

Wikileaks have succeeded where all others have failed, simply by burying everyone in 91,000 documents looking for easter eggs!

Really, the amount of time spent trying to get a name out those docs before they died of old age, even with such helpful categorisation would surely be enough to completely disable any real activity.

It seems to be spin however tenuously tied to the truth to destroy the validity of Wikileaks and any info they receive that they then release which is in some way embarrassing.

Comment queensland is not part of oz (Score 1) 714

Queensland is NOT part of Australia, and any sort of intelligence fled during the Joh Bjelke-Petersen years when he kept telling everyone "d d d dont you worry bout that now!" in response to any questions from the media. Intelligent design is just the usual Queensland double speak dialect for being told to do and believe what you are told or face the consequences of just what happens with that there banjo.
Open Source

Open Source Developer Knighted 101

unixfan writes "Georg Greve, developer of Open Document Format and active FOSS developer, has received a knighthood in Germany for his work. From the article: 'Some weeks ago I received news that the embassy in Berne had unsuccessfully been trying to contact me under FSFE's old office address in Zurich. This was a bit odd and unexpected. So you can probably understand my surprise to be told by the embassy upon contacting them that on 18 December 2009 I had been awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon (Verdienstkreuz am Bande) by the Federal Republic of Germany. As you might expect, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I was, in fact, rather shaken. You could also say shocked. Quick Wikipedia research revealed this to be part of the orders of knighthood, making this a Knight's Cross.'"
Cellphones

Mexico Will Shut Down 25.9 Million Cell Phones 370

Several months ago, as a way to prevent the use of cellular phones in criminal activities, the government of Mexico started a program to require all phone owners to register cell phones in their own names. The registry associates each phone with the listed owner's Clave Unica de Registro de Poblacion (CURP) [CURP, in English], which is supposed to be a unique ID for every Mexican citizen. Now, as nanahuatzin writes, Yesterday the timeline to register the cell phones expired, and there are [approx 26] million cell phones yet unregistered (English translation of the Spanish original). While the procedure is simple, sending a text message with the CURP to a special number, most people do not want to register: some are wary of the uses to which the government will put the data; others did not understand or did not know the procedure. So far, only 69% have registered, most of them in the last few days, while the system to register has been oversaturated. So in an unprecedented move for any country, the Mexican government is announcing the shutdown of 25.9 million cell phone lines. Meanwhile, as a measure of protest, hundreds of people have registered their cell phones in the name of the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, to show how pointless is the registry."

Comment Re:Deliver the audio via FM-radio (Score 1) 438

Perfect way to have your own music server turned radio station, when there is no ethernet and lotsa wifi interference or range problems, can be a great way for getting your own music to the shed down the back of the yard.

The main downside is in only being able to control playlists etc from one central location - if you have some means of doing this(ie a netbook,computer or other device, you have enough network to setup something like the squeezebox. Still, setup a big playlist and just tune in to your own station.

You could also use this as a way of extending your squeezebox based music network as well, you can setup your own stream. I needed to put the output from an eeepc through an amplifier before putting the signal into the fm transmitter, but it worked very well.

For whole of house music it actually works better than software based syncronisation of the music servers, which can be be annoyingly a little out of sync due to network and cpu performance.

Just be careful of the amount of gain vs fm transmission laws, fines can be large for what could be taken as running a pirate radio station.

It actually works best in lower population density areas, as in the big cities there may not be a clear enough area available in the FM band for a reliable signal.

Something like this is great for getting the signal to the studio out the back tho....

http://www.fordray.com.au/Products/fmt_lp/fmt_lp.html

Comment Not Soon Enough, and add in rule syntax as well (Score 1) 334

There are already a number of semi-automated legislation interpreters in the rule engine field, albeit like early OCR systems, but the application and testing of formal logic to new or amended acts cannot come soon enough! I can just imagine future proposals requiring successful test runs of existing and new test scenarios before voting proceeds.

Comment Shareholders do not define executive rewards (Score 1) 357

This seems to ignore the director circuit - directors on the boards of large companies is a very small, close-knit group that often make decisions to further their own group.

Have a look at the list of boards that a director of a large public company is on, ostensibly as proof of their capability, but also representative of the highly inbred and insular nature of the group.

This group evolves from and rewards the executives who it sees as supporting the group, not some blind egalitarian principle of capitalism.

Shareholders provide the funds, and this is controlled by majority shareholders, and, yup, the same directors again on different boards.

Bit like the way government works I suppose.

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