I'm not aware that this is actually against (U.S.) law.

Except this is in Australia so its a matter of Aussie law. Oh wait, no you're right. That Free Trade Agreement means the two are a lot closer now, save for the Aussie laws removing any possible pesky free speech, satire or first right of sale "rights" - I mean: defenses ... no: loopholes. If its against US law then the FTA means its against Aussie law.

actually doesn't bother to distinguish between a creative work, and merely publishing a fact.

Ah, but train Sydney train timetables are a work of fiction, so the distinction is not necessary. In fact, they are a very creative and imaginative work.

Besides, RailCorp & CityRail are not government bodies and so the data is not Crown owned in any case. They are state owned corporations - just like the RTA - and so are companies in their own right. They are simply owned by the state. Carr's government instigated these changes around 1995 I believe.

That is what the G.G.P. was getting at. With the tag, you can upload a video to your web server, reference it in the HTML, and be done with it. Flash simply doesn't offer that.

Good point. I yield as you are absolutely right. Thanks for enlightening me.

The tag doesn't work like that. ... Your browser displays the UI for the video -- Flash isn't involved at all.

Yes, I understand the video tag downloads the video just as it does for images. But then it will hand off to a video player to play. By default (and most users use defaults) Flash videos (mime type "video/shockwave-flash" I think) will play in Flash.

The OGG file you referenced will be played in your OGG compatible video player, which could be just about anything if you have the OGG codecs installed. One can use an player to play Flash if one chooses using the FLV1 codecs, but that's a decision of each installation. By default - ie 95% of people - will use Flash. If you haven't installed Flash - or another compatible player then nothing will play.

So, no real difference to the way it is done now, right?

Flash? When HTML 5 is done they can use the tag.

How is a tag any better than the tag used now? The browser will still load Flash, because it will be a Flash file that is offered. It will be Flash file because everybody - and on Slashdot everybody means "at least 0.1% of the population" - and I mean everybody (ie, maybe 0.2% of people) uses Flash and only Flash.

The tag will just tell the browser to load a Video. It won't - and can't - mandate which client to use.

Seems to me YouTube isn't what young people use, it's what everyone uses.

Rubbish. Some people use YouTube. Some use Facebook, some use MySpace (still), some use torrents, some simply email. Oh, you and yours use YouTube. Well I guess that's everybody who is important then.

Saying, "The government should be forced to re-invent the wheel instead of using a popular free service" is silly. YouTube is perfectly acceptable in most respects.

This is simply about offering Flash videos on the governments website and not YouTube. How is having links to Flash videos off your own web site "reinventing the wheel" exactly? How is YouTube or Akami or anything else a better "distribution channel" than downloading directly from the source?

In the employee break room of a local grocery store, they have a prominent announcement on their bulletin board, very large lettering, which reads in effect that all employees should remember there are other people out there that need jobs.

Take the bulletin, photocopy it and stick it on the front door of the store. Give the customers a chance to be under impressed with the owners. If that doesn't work, stick it on every lamp post in the carpark and surrounding streets.

Needless to say, he got a very short interview and absolutely no consideration. When asked why, both myself and my coworker said 'Unprofessionalism'

Ah that old catch-cry of 'Unprofessionalism'. Very useful when you want to discredit or discount a colleague for no reason. It allows you to safely ignore competency, experience and education whilst claiming to be looking after the best interests of your firm.

Actually, that would be MS's fault. Whenever you flatten the learning curve you make it more accessible with less effort.

OK car analogy time:

Are Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes responsible for the significant drop in your average Joe's driving ability and road awareness?

After all, for a couple of decades they have been flattening the learning curve and dumbing down drivers by providing - even encouraging - cars with more abilities and safety features. A lot of drivers these days feel so safe in their cars they don't pay attention to the road or other cars. I'd also suggest a lot of mod cons encourage people who shouldn't be driving to drive.

Think power steering (cars without power steering a harder to drive for some folk); anit-lock brakes (I was taught how to brake safely without anti-lock - anybody else?); rear parking senses, air bags, not to mention the prevelance of indestructible 4wds. in fact, indestructibility was Volkswagen's main marketing message.

Without the presence of a good infrastructure you can't have nowhere for the flashy stuff to be developed/hosted/placed.

Very, very true. Which is why most people prefer other people work on the infrastructure. Own culture idolizes those that do the flashy stuff and gives little credit to those that do the hard invisible stuff, and so everybody wants to do the flashy stuff in order to be idolized. Most people would prefer to be racing car drivers than car mechanics, even racing car mechanics.

That's sad, cause I find the most joy in solving the hard problems that nobody ever hears about. How boring to be a racing car driver, I say. Any moron can drive around a track, as long as I make the car go fast and handle well enough.

Companies can't grow bigger indefinitely. At some point, a successful company should start generating a consistent revenue stream for its owners (shareholders).

Nope. Unfortunately that is not the way the economy works. Shareholders are not looking for revenue or profit (ie cash, dividends) from companies. They are looking for wealth. Specifically increases in the share price. That requires growth - or at least the appearance of it - and for that companies need to "invest" in new markets, technologies and products.

A steady revenue stream will not keep your share price up as lots of investors - particularly institutional investors which make up the far bulk of share ownership today - sell out and look for higher yield stocks. Our stock market does not look at the overall size or profitability of an organisation and certainly doesn't reward over all size. The important thing - the only thing - is growth.

And before anybody chimes in with the obvious, yes in today's downtrodden economy when most of the world is going backwards, just standing still and not shrinking is enough "growth" to stand out from your competitors.

Those that bother to look at the math instead of the politics, at the history instead of the hype, are agreed.

They are agreed that the Earth is warming up. What is not agreed is that human activity has anything at all to do with it.

If you look at a large range of history - ie tens of millions of years - historically the last hundred thousand years has been quite cool. Some estimates suggest that "normally" the Earth is 15 degrees warmer. Some even suggest that an "Ice Age" is defined as any period in which there is any ice on the planet even at the poles. This opinion suggest that the Earth will return to its normal state of all the ice melting on its own soon enough.

Maybe this "global warming" phase is just a return to normality for the planet.

Broadband saves times. Even the worst system where the connection is not really always on- but is on demand, take no more than 2 seconds to access the net, while dial up connections generally take a minimum of 30 seconds or more.

Rubbish. I have broadband and it can often take more than 2 seconds to check an email. Usually takes 5 - 10 seconds, and occasionally even 20 or 30. Don't know why, but it does. Sure it might be a bit faster than dial up, but not as much as you claim. Not for everybody.

Broadband systems do not block the phone lines, even temporarily. For an e-mail only user this can still make a difference, because when on dial-up then cannot afford to risk checking their email while expecting an important phone call, but nothing prevents them from doing that when they have dialup.

Rarely matters. Besides, we have a mobile when somebody urgently needs to call us. How often is the "Your dad just went to hospital" phone call going to come through when I'm checking email?

Keeping the computer patched is much easier on broadband than dial-up, and don't think that this is not important for those who only connect for short periods at a time. They can most certainly get infected.

Seems to me that there is much less chance of being infected if the computer is not always connected. And for the 10 minutes are day it is, how much chance is there of a bot net detecting its online, downloading itself and causing trouble? Some, but not much. I doubt dial up users are useful to a botnet. How much spam can you send over a dial up connection?

And I ain't getting broadband just so I can "patch" my computer all the time. I don't need new programs or operating systems and if it ain't broke why can't I just let it run as is for a while?

When their friends/family send them email with absurdly large photos attached, it does not take half an hour to download the message.

My family trades CDs and DVDs with videos and photos, by post if long distance. The internet is not the way to transfer large amounts of data, even with broadband.

You want more than that? Then you need the wealth the capitalist society generates, and you need the wealth you generate as a part of it. ... You can choose your level of participation in this horrible, nasty society of ours. Your trouble is you think you should be able to make that choice- how much to participate in what you lament- without giving ANYTHING up.

I don't think there is much opportunity to partially participate to a specific level you are happy with - until you've slaved for a number of years and managed some level of financial freedom.

You either drop out completely at an early age - and depending on your parents lifestyle you may already have dropped out before you were born - or you go to school, get a subsistence job at a fast food joint whilst working hard to be "better" at a college or some such (if you get that opportunity at all). And if you are really lucky you can "go all the way" to be a professional - ie a white collar slave.

And whilst you are working you need some of these "things of kings" that weren't around 100 years ago. Try living without a phone or a car (no public transport in 95% of cities in this world is woeful), a rented house or mortgage, electricity, water, gas, working clothes, a decent meal, and a few basic whitegoods. They are not luxuries in this world. You don't have them you can't get to work and earn anything, let alone as a professional. They take up quite a lot of disposable income.

So my choices are either drop out as a bum at 15 and skulk on the streets for my entire life, or load myself up with debt, work for 50 years fearing for my job and life, or step off the planet. Middle class is disappearing and so are the levels of participation as you put it.