Of course, making their policies so easily accessible makes it easy to decide that it would be crazy for me to vote for the LDP above *any* of the major parties :).

Their perhaps laduable views on some social policy does not make up for their fetishization of property rights and the free market, along with their other economic views that they propound.

And indeed, in the last Australian Federal election, a minor party managed to win the seat of Melbourne demonstrating that a vote for them was definitely not wasted :).

(Sufficient people put them first on their voting papers that one of major parties was eliminated in the "instant-runoff" before them. Now the Greens are probably the biggest minor party and there were some details which favoured them, but nevertheless, Melbourne strikes me as the leftmost city in Australia, so the result doesn't appear too unusual.)

they've been educated stupid. ;-(

nice troll, but just to step up... are you SERIOUSLY attempting to suggest that Norway is a 3rd world country?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

which country is at #1 for 2011?

which country is at #4?

you noticed the bit where it said "Parliament has to consider the proposition," not "the proposition automatically becomes law", didn't you?

As noted by one of the article commentators, jointly holding a patent doesn't allow you to use it defensively against the other joint holders, and it might be difficult to use it to protect other manufacturers building, say, Android phones. So, this could be the reason that joint bidding was dimissed by google.

but as Reagan pointed out:
"80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees." Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, in 1979.
and
"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981
http://www.allhatnocattle.net/reagan%20quotes.htm

or you'll find yourself six feet under in depleted uranium boots sleeping with the mutant fishes in the nuclear waste dump.

according to testimony, on arriving home the girl said nothing to her parents about Polanski but told her boyfriend over the phone. her mother was listening in on the second line, and called the police.

that's actually completely incorrect. there's no suggestion at all of forcible assault or beating, nor has there ever been. read the case documents. they're all available online.

do you think ANYONE, let alone high profile politicians, would support Polanski if he had used violence? do you think his victim would be calling for an end to the witch hunt (as she has for over a decade now) if he'd used violence?

+1 to the Awesome bar from me :).

my biggest peeve with the Android security model from day #1 is that this kind of thing is even possible.

every Android application has to be specifically granted a set of permissions on installation, including "able to make phonecalls that cost you money", "able to access the internet", etc. the problem is that the user only ever see this list once, fleetingly, during installation, and as everyone knows, familiarity breeds contempt so after the first couple of apps, most people stop reading the list and just click "yes". even if they read the list, once it's been authorized the application can do anything on its permission list at any time, without user intervention. this opens the gate to applications that can take photos doing so silently while the screen is off, applications that can make phonecalls doing so invisibly and undetectably, applications that can use the internet and use gps phoning home at any time with your exact location, etc. it simply shouldn't be possible.

whenever an application attempts to perform a restricted task, the OS checks that it has been granted the permission to do so and either silently permits the task, or silently disallows it. that's great, but it shouldn't stop there. the first time it's attempted a dialog box should alert the user that "steamy windows is attempting to make a phone call to that can cost you money. do you want to authorize this? yes/no/ [ x ] remember my answer and don't ask me again".

clearly "steamy windows" is going to get a "no and don't let it do it in future response", whereas the user is likely to grant "mywonderSMSclient" indefinite permission.

if there's a reason why this isn't practical, i'd like to know about it.

Eh, Mr Jobs?