Ashby is not a champion of free speech in Australia. He publicly made false allegations with the intent of destroying Slipper's career. Seems like a straightforward case of defamation. I'm ok with having a law to protect against this sort of thing.

Back on topic - the internet trolling stuff is ridiculous! Farah needs to harden the fuck up. I can't believe a footballer would be such a princess. I doubt there will be any anti-troll laws either. It's just talk to try and get political advantage at this point (doubtful whether the NSW or federal governments are succeeding).

On a flight I was on recently I heard the following announcement as we were approaching the runway to land: "There is interference in the cockpit. Could everyone switch off their electronic devices immediately". This was only a minute before we touched down and they had already made the standard announcement & checks several minutes earlier.

As the sibling poster mentions that article you link from Boeing contains several reliable reports of PEDs causing interference in actual flights. Boeing has not been able to reliably reproduce the issue in their labs.

I thought Android phones sold because they were roughly as good as the iPhone but you're not paying hundreds of dollars extra for the shiny white logo on the back.

To prove the GP wrong, all the parent post had to do was provide one specific case where troops were put at risk due to leaked documents. Because the parent waffled in generalities, he doesn't have that one counter-example that would have proved his point.

Coffee is popular in warm climates too. There's a big cafe culture in Australia. It's a popular drink all around the Mediterranean sea. The arabs invented the drink.

I think we do need gender specific recruitment. The argument goes a little something like this:
1. 50% of the population is female.
2. 50% of good scientists should also be female (assuming an even distribution).
3. Much less than 50% of current scientists are female.
Therefore there are women who would be good scientists that are not choosing to do science.

... The leading one. A common enough programming trick .. sometimes a bug.

Not a bug. The system is working as intended.

Those rounded corners rulings have eventually been overturned pretty much everywhere. The only problem for Apple's competitors in those cases is that until the ruling is overturned they're losing sales to Apple.

You didn't get the funny points because the timing was all wrong.

Oh great, I can decide what to hear and don't have to manage my own collection! (Some time in the future) Oh wait, there was this song I particularly liked. Where has it gone? Maybe I should have my own collection again. Damn, the RIAA no longer allows me to own!

That time is now. I recently switched my spotify account's location from the USA to Australia and some albums have disappeared.

I think streaming is great, but I don't see it as a replacement for a CD collection. It supplements it and lets you check out some new artists.

Where are you getting 8% p.a. interest?

The lower case t for the Christian cross is because the Romans hung a sign above his head saying 'king of the Jews'. Clearly Jesus couldn't have been crucified on a capital T shaped cross if there's a sign above his head.

The debate isn't around understanding a tax system or not. The question is the following: "Is the tax system fair when a corporation can pay as little as $74000 tax on local sales of $1,000,000,000?"

I'm from Australia and I've never heard that.

Not that nonce is a word you hear much anyway, regardless of the meaning.

I don't think people handled the transition to motor vehicles well 100+ years ago. There is always a subset of humanity that will complain about new technology.

An example of not handling the new cars well is this bit of trivia - the first drivers licence belonged to Herr Benz for his first motorwagen. He had written to the local duke asking for a permit to operate the vehicle because he was worried about people being offended by the sound and smoke from the thing.