My favourite is urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com

I live in Melbourne too! I don't see why an Aussie conference can't be held in Aotearoa though? It's not like it's a long way ... closer than Perth I think. What confused me was the name of the conference: I first thought it was a domain name, but of course it's not. :-)

OT but re your sig which asks why linux.conf.au is actually in nz? Well, according to the website:

Wellington will charm you the moment you set eyes on it. A large part of the city's appeal stems from its natural setting: rugged hills rise above a busy harbour, buildings perch on hillsides, streets wind their way around the coast and into hidden valleys.

It's a compact city - the concentrated mix of business, the arts, sports, entertainment and café society add to Wellington's vibrancy and appeal.

What better environment in which to hold Linux.conf.au?

So I hope that's cleared it up for you: in short, it's because they have good coffee in Wellington.
Are you going? Don't miss the little blue penguins, if you do.

Because they're PIRATES goddammit!!! Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Actually the bottleneck has been the impossibility of bringing additional refining capacity online in the US.

True. And actually this isn't just the case in the USA; there are virtually no new refineries anywhere in the world.

But actually the main hurdle isn't the NIMBY syndrome or over-regulation - it's a simple matter of return on investment. No-one wants to build a refinery because they take a long time to build, and a long time to recoup your investment, and the world's oil supply is known to be running out. Globally, oil-fields are now considered to be at peak production levels; that's to say, it's unlikely that there will ever be more oil being pumped than there is today. So building new refining capacity is a poor investment. Instead, people are just making do with what there is. That's why Iran is now importing refined petroleum from Venezuela.

My handwriting was never that great. I taught myself to write rather than waiting to go to school, and though it got improved it was never that good. While I was at school they changed from teaching cursive script to a different script, which was more legible, but it would've been nice to have had some consistency. When I learned to touch type at about age 19 or 20 my handwriting deteriorated markedly. These days I'm hopeless ... I still know how words are spelled, but actually writing them down is a different matter. My handwriting is full of crossed out words and inserted or mangled letters.

Almost everything I write is done with a keyboard - writing anything by hand is rare for me.

Incidentally, I was amazed a few years ago to get an email from a 3-year old niece. She could type because she could recognise the letters on the keyboard. Her spelling wasn't great but it was OK. But she hadn't yet learned how to actually make the letter shapes herself.

As far as I'm concerned we should ignore their bluster about "we'll consider that an act of war" and shut down the little bit of trade they have remaining with the rest of the world.

You're comfortable with the US breaching its signed commitment not to do so? Breaching the formal armistice agreement would be quite literally an act of war, in law.

I'm sorry but I can't take you seriously if you are going to insist on turning this into a political rant about the prior administration.

Dude, it's got nothing to do with GWB personally - my point is that US military intelligence on the WMD capabilities of other countries has been proven in actual practice to be unreliable. That's an undeniable fact isn't it?

In which case talk of "good cause to believe" is a bit of pie in the sky IMHO.

In any case, it's not really the technical military capability that's at issue with North Korea - they undoubtedly do have WMD and have made no secret of it - they've announced it announced it again, and openly tested 2 nuclear devices. Again, this is indisputable. They've also launched ballistic missiles into the Pacific. Maybe their ICBMs aren't entirely ready just yet, but it's just a matter of time before they do have a capability to nuke a target anywhere in the globe. At most a couple of years. What's really at issue is whether their theoretical capability (and let's assumme they already had a small fleet of ICBMs) is actually a military threat to the US. My point is that it would not be a threat. They are not - ever - going to nuke the US for the same reason that the USSR never nuked the US (despite being far better armed than the DPRK will ever be). The only circumstance in which it could make sense would be in response to a first strike by the US. That is in fact what their nuclear arsenal is for - it's the same reason the Chinese and Russians have one - Mutually Assured Destruction.

Actually I'm sure the Pentagon strategists know it, too. The issue for the the US government isn't North Korea's "threat". That, as I said before, is just the face the State Dept like to put on it. The issue is nuclear proliferation per se. They don't want other states to acquire nukes - in general - because that's a strategic threat to US military hegemony. At present the US enjoys an enormous military superiority over every other state, but far more so over non-nuclear-armed states. The US can threaten Iran, or Iraq, or Venezuela, or whoever, and be taken seriously, but they can't threaten China or Russia. The Koreans have nukes but not yet a credible strategic rocket force, so they are still being brow-beaten (irrespective of administrations).

The US is trying to get them to drop their WMD program altogether (like Libya was forced to). But the US negotiators have never agreed to the North Korean's quid pro quo. The Koreans have consistently demanded a peace treaty and security guarantees and the US side has refused, saying that the Koreans must disarm first. That's the historical fact of the matter. Obviously the Koreans will not disarm first, so the options are either (1) that the US accepts their conditions and concludes a formal end to the Korean War, (2) launches a first strike against them, or (3) continues to bluster and threaten but eventually accepts them into the nuclear club. I hope that the first option comes to pass, but the third option is also good IMHO.

A war with North Korea would be a disaster for the US. The Koreans might take millions of casualties, but the US side would take a serious hit too. Who knows? The Koreans might well decide to drop their "no first use of nukes" policy if push came to shove, which would put paid to the US troops in the South. And the US would take an enormous hit politically and economically. China would be extremely pissed off in particular, and the US is now enormously dependent on China, as I'm sure you know.

Why would we hit them first if we didn't have good cause to believe that they were about to hit us? If we did have good cause to believe that then it's arguably better to hit them first and take out most of missiles than allow them all to be launched.

You mean like the "good cause" that Colin Powell had to believe that Saddam's WMD were a threat?

Even if North Korea did pose a threat to the US (which I personally think is laughable, but never mind that for now)

You probably wouldn't find it laughable if you lived in Guam, Hawaii or Alaska. Think the Americans living those regions regard our research into missile defense as a waste of money?

I don't know; there are probably some Americans living there who feel threatened by North Korea. They may well regard missile defense as a good thing, too, for all I know. It would be a delusion though - North Korea is definitely not going to launch a nuclear first strike against any US territory. That would be the utmost folly, and people who think it might come to pass (because Kim Jong-Il is "mad") are IMHO victims of their own government's war propaganda.

If the choice is between pissing off the rest of the world and losing one or more American cities then I'm going to select option A for the win.

But in fact the choice isn't between those two options - in fact, option B is a ludicrous scenario. The choice is actually between pissing off the rest of the world and NOT pissing off the rest of the world.

You really think the rest of the world is going to abandon their trading relationships over us if we took out North Korea's weapons systems? I find it unlikely.

I'd find that unlikely too, and if you read my message more carefully you'd see that's not what I said.

You are also ignoring the fact that we have the capability to largely disarm them with conventional weaponry -- no nukes required.

No I don't think this is true... at least not without taking signifant losses in retalation, at least to US troops stationed in the South.

We wouldn't have to contemplate a first strike if they were behaving according to the norms of civilized world.

Try putting yourself in their shoes. Their enemies are contemplating a first strike against them - will they perceive that as civilized? You can say you "have" to consider attacking them because they're uncivilized, but looked at from their perspective, your threats to attack are just as uncivilized as anything you might say about them. Especially considering that US troops have fought against them in Korea, and US bombs have destroyed their cities in the past, whereas the reverse is not the case.

Civilized nations do not threaten to unleash a nuclear holocaust on a weekly basis.

Actually, North Korea's military doctrine includes the commitment not to use nuclear weapons first. Whereas the military doctrine of the United States of America does envisage first-use of nukes (and always has). Interestingly, the Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War had a first-use doctrine (certainly during the early part of Kruschev's regime), but the doctrine was later revised to preclude nuclear first strikes (and I think this was even under Kruschev, but it could have been during Brezhnev's time). After the collapse of the USSR, the Russian military doctrine remained essentially the same in this respect until 2000, when it was changed to something like the current American doctrine (is this the "civilizing" influence of the USA?).

Civilized nations do not send raiding parties into neighboring countries that attempt to assassinate the leaders thereof.

... like Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba, you mean?

I guess you've never heard of radar and infrared? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that an inflatable rubber "missile" doesn't have the same IR signature and radar cross section that a real missile does.

I have no idea, though I don't see why this is necessarily the case. An aluminum lining, a thermostatic heating unit ... why not? But presumably they have some value or the Russians would not actually be using them.

But the rubber missiles are just one example. The real point is that there's no way you can guarantee detection and location of every last missile. The real missiles could be disguised as oil-tankers, logging trucks; grain silos, clock-towers and other buildings; railway carriages, etc. A successful first strike against a nation armed with nuclear ICBMs would require destroying all of these, just on the off-chance. How long would it take your enemy to start launching? Minutes? Then you have to carpet bomb the entire country in minutes. In other words, the only way to do it is to launch a nuclear first strike and flatten the entire country, incidentally killing millions of people, and exposing billions more to harmful radiation.

Even if North Korea did pose a threat to the US (which I personally think is laughable, but never mind that for now), how would this "pre-emptive strike" fare in the international community? You think the rest of the world would be happy about it? Put it this way: I wouldn't expect the US dollar to remain that strong.

The world's greatest superpower who has nevertheless continually refused to exercise any semblance of the imperialism of its predecessors. Germany, Japan, Iraq, and more are all testaments to the devotion our country has to peace. It ain't a perfect nation, but it's a damned good one.

Wish I had the mod points to mod this "funny".

It sends a strong message to the DPRK military: "Get cracking on your ICBMs, you slackers - what good are your nukes if you can't deliver them?".

And we blow up any ICBMs they have that are above, or below, ground.

<sarcasm>
Sure you will! And you'll have no problem getting every last one, because they'll all be fixed in place, in plain view, and coated in fluorescent yellow paint. Plus there'll be enormous signs painted on the ground saying "bomb here".
</sarcasm>
Alternatively, for a very small investment, your enemies can make it impossible to detect all their nukes. You may be hubristic enough to risk a first strike against a nuclear power, but thank God the US President appears to have a few more clues.

My point is, with this and smart bomb technology at the level America has it, no bunker is safe anymore, not at any depth. This has an immense geopolitical effect.

You bet it does. It sends a strong message to the DPRK military: "Get cracking on your ICBMs, you slackers - what good are your nukes if you can't deliver them?".

The day the US military starts dropping these things on nuclear-armed states is the day that millions of Americans move to Canada and Mexico.

Glaciers are not permanent structures. So what?

Neither are planets.