Emphasis added.

This is part of the problem I have with NoSQL. It is a great solution to certain types of problem, but a lot of data is structured. Medical records are extraordinarily structured and should be stored as such. Structured medical records means portability, easy epidemiological research, better use by consumers, finer control of authorities...

Structuring medical data is hard, no doubt. But that doesn't make it unstructured data. The benefits of structure are significant. Use NoSQL for things it's good at - like storing Facebook messages - but please don't restructure your problems to fit it. Structure is good!

My passwords are PBKDF2'd with SHA512, unique salts and unique random iteration counts (5000 - 15000) per password. Because I'm not a chump. So you go right ahead. This technology isn't new. PBKDF2 was published in 2000.

Iterations: 14823
Salt: 8ee4c41a6dc73b1d 8f555cecd2139110 569204e61d18fd65 fe408c793707cdc9 ffe09a277924212a 14b0cb81e5e672e2 9049cb7832f801db 6230355718ae2b14
Hash: 4070b74d2d419b5d aee4457c6bb154f7 e5596191e3729031 227789d03e861013 d37297b846e56ae1 3eebac6b786e3813 9b3635d66482efd1 3af10d03a25478cf

I am not a lawyer, but I am just about to finish law school, so should be in the next eighteen months at the outside, in Australia no less. But you still shouldn't trust me ;).

All true. The problem is none of these rights are constitutional. Whereas the government can never take away these rights in the US, thanks to the 4th amendment, they can be removed in Australia. All that's needed is for Parliament to pass a law. As we know, when it comes to law-and-order stuff, that's stupidly easy. All that's protecting us from tyranny is the goodwill of our leaders. That's why we need to complain about reform like this.

Also true. But the rulings are always on the basis of interpreting legislation to be consistent with those rights where possible. We have supremacy of Parliament: if they pass a law changing the rules of evidence, the courts can't stop them. The big exception to this is political speech (and voting); these rights are guaranteed by the constitution. Limits on these can (and have been!) struck down by the courts: the Communist Party Case and just last year in Rowe v Electoral Commission. Search and seizure though are absolutely at the discretion of Parliament.

This supremacy of Parliament is why it's so important to be careful about who we elect, and to stop them from pulling shit like this.

Identical flow in Australia. IRC - ICQ - MSN - Facebook.

Not the Chief of Police, but the head of the cybecrime unit. Yeah.

I can't be the only one who sees the irony in the URL being /news/opinion/...

You know, like @Area51 or a Facebook page for The Marines or whatever. This is what organisations do.

I have given access, using rssh to limit capacity to rsync, scp and sftp. I'll monitor how it's used, can kill it instantly if I need.

The step up is, as was originally identified, that RSVPs and event information are centralised. Instead of sending out updates to everyone, you place the information in a central location and people choose how they use it.

For example, when I'm invited to a facebook event it sends me an email (because I've asked it to). When I put myself down as attending, the event then appears on my calendar (because I've asked it to). If the time changes, it sends me an email but it also automatically changes on my calendar. If I decide not to go, I say "not attending" and it removes itself from my calendar. The organiser has a list of "yes", "no" and "maybe" attendees that can be used for a door list. The organiser can send a message just to the "maybes" a week out and say "hey, in or out, I need to know." All of this without having to duplicate information or use a data source that might be out of date. Sounds like an advance to me.

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?