Re: Turnbull may be the better politican (compared to Abbott)

Ye gods! Turnbull has dropped two catches in the slips, and managed an overthrow for more runs.

Obviously doesn't belong there. He should be either third man or twelfth man.

The big scam which is the NBN is the sheer grandiose scale of FTTH. The Coalition policy of expanding fibre through the backbone then going to the kerb, with scaled expansion would have cost approx AUD4-5Billion in 2007 dollars, when it was their election policy.

The Rudd-Conroy Axis of Stupidity decided that a logical, affordable, progressive rollout had to be trumped by big numbers - hence a figure out of the air - 42Billion, with a net cost of 26Billion (after private sector buy-in).

There was not even a back of the envelope costing or a Compaq table napkin business plan.

So Turnbull is attacking in the wrong place.

Either get him out of there, or get him better advice.

Re: @K Hey doc..

On catfood? That's probably done more than all the billions spent on "climate research" then. At least cats are companion animals that give their people the semblance of a pleasant lifestyle. :-)

We have simply GOT to build

a massive spaceship, call it the "B" Ark, and send at least a third of the population off towards Goldafrincham.

Given the half-life of C-14

your comment is a dangerous half-truth.

C-14 has a half life of approx 5700 years, right? 5730 to be precise, Thomson. Thank you Thompson.

C-14 radiometric dating is capable of reasonable dating within human history, because it can be cross-checked against external historical evidence.

It has it's limitations of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14 (Wikipedia for speed, only). So it cannot be extrapolated to millions or billions of years via the use of other isotopes.

Not my experience at work...

... for two weeks the ADSL2+ "service" from Telstra has been crawling and then stopping every half hour or so at worst, every two hours at best.

We have to go and power cycle the ADSL "modem" aka NTU and <sigh> whilst hoping that it somehow forces the service back on air.

Don't talk to me about Telstra - again!

I am just amazed at the loyalty of the techs who do a marvellous job, but they bust their guts for a service that totally sux where we are.

I think you miss the parent poster's point...

...which is that whatever the terminology used, the strategy seems to be a most effective way to undermine their opponents, by undermining the institution.

I disagree with what they are doing and with MS for supporting it, because I think it is an illogical (and deceptive) case, and the use of "equal rights" terminology is a false argument.

There are already restrictions on who can marry. The current laws in all jurisdictions do not simply allow any two (heteros, although NB this is NOT stated - more below) who love each other to marry.

There are limitations based on

a) existing married status

b) close blood/family relations (the taboos - usually listed) and

c) age

for example. The definition of marriage as between "a man and a woman, entered into exclusively for life" should preclude a lot of short term relationships too, but easy divorce has undone a lot of that.

Secondly, the argument as put is that marriage should be available to "any two people who love each other" rather than being restricted to "a man and a woman", but this shifts the basis from something biological (capable of scientific testing for example) to something emotional (consequently variable and impossible to assess, realistically speaking).

And looking at the emotional turbulence regularly portrayed in public, one has to wonder whether this represents a good move for a start, before we have even considered the children (won't somebody think of the children! There I said it for you all).

Thirdly, the definition does not say anything about heterosexuals or homosexuals, it simply requires that the two parties be one each of "man" and "woman" and that the relationship be exclusive. If the parties can't meet the definition, then marriage is not for them. But this is where the "gay lobbyists" are deliberately working to undermine the definition. However, they are sawing off the branch on the wrong side and they will go down once the saw cuts through (great cartoon humour, but there are serious repercussions to what they are doing).

The moral of the story is:

Be careful what you wish for: you may very well get it.

And a national/international employer too!

The argument runs a bit thin when MS has offices all over the blooming place.

If business is about business, then it has no business in social politics.

Oi! You're off yer bike!

Check this and follow the links:

http://catallaxyfiles.com/2011/12/30/laframboise-ipcc-audit-4-the-mcintyre-case/

And look for Donna Laframboise "The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert"

Kindle Edition here: http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top&tag=wattsupwithth-20

or

Amazon UK here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318550553&sr=8-1-spell

Someone may need to explain...

"research" to the complainants.

What ever happened to supplying the factual correction in a timely manner?

And thus winning the argument when the debate is on, rather than six months later.

Maybe the complainant/s couldn't...?

OT: "investing a crime"

Wot? D'ye mean that crime could pay if they just invested, right?

You can say it...

...but you will have created a simple error of chronology, by attempting to relate two separate and unrelated things. Have you seen someone about that cognitive dissonance problem of yours?

I am a Christian and no, I do not propose "going thermonuclear" - I will simply shake my head at the lengths some people go to in trying to discredit my beliefs.

Feeling D-valued?

N/T

Sounds like...

"unififed string theory" sounds like something the Goons would approve of - a tin whistle with only one note, played as the theme music for "The Great String Robbery" episode.

Whoa there, GOF

You said:

"The govt isn't holding a gun to your head and forcing you to upgrade to a faster internet..."

Well, how do you explain the big money being paid to shut down of the copper and HFC networks?

Missed ...

... your anti-depressants today, did you?

Deep Thought experiment?

Could it require seven and a half million years for this experiment?

@N'n'G

...for failure to dispose of now-useless scripts of Godspell , and lost towel.

Uh, no there it is - wrapped around the Sub-Ether Sens-O-Matic...

ALL?

What, you wanna give the winner the WHOLE island?

Finally! Something recognized from YOUR side of the pond...

The Ferranti, later swallowed up by ICT into what became ICL(IIRC).

The GEORGE series of OSs on 1900 range hardware had a lot of stuff that PCs took a long time to catch up on.

Virtual store, flat memory, device independence, workfiles, OS-level file versioning, user management and accounting. Ah, nostalgia: http://www.icl1900.co.uk/g3/index.html.

Sorry, bamalam but

...you are not aware that the capitalists had their arms twisted by governments (see Clinton) to grant housing loans to people who would otherwise not qualify - they were deficient in one or more of the 3 Cs: Character (thriftiness etc), Capacity (to pay back the loan), and Collateral (houses of poor value).

It was not a failure of free market capitalism, but the chickens coming home to roost after market-distorting government interference.

Fizackly, Ivan4!!

"he was Prof of Economics at Cambridge and the man who got Keynes into the subject."

That should disqualify him immediately.

The problem isn't ownership

but the mindset of the so-called "profession of journalism" around all the various media.

That mindset/world-view/philosophical framework is predominantly anti-conservative, anti-freedom and pro-totalitarian/centralism as compared to the population at large (qv. voters).

Historically inaccurate...

You said:

"The original PC design, which crippled all subsequent PCs until WinNT was released, only had 1 megabyte of RAM available for use,..."

which is both hystorically(sic) and hysterically inaccurate.

You conflate software and hardware, and you forget OS/2, and other OSs which also used a flat memory model (Linux, MacOS on the Motorola 68000 and mainframes too).

The hardware for a flat memory model in the PC era was available from the 386 chip onwards (realistically) although almost from the 186 in fact. It was only the 8086 which had "the problem".

You clearly were not around when...

... it took six weeks to get a simple telephone (POTS) installed.

Even then you were never guaranteed the number, so you couldn't print your business cards etc. ahead of time.

During this period, I was responsible for a small business Datel network (four branches 1200 baud only). It took us 3 months AFTER installation to get the lines "tuned" and that was only after my boss pulled some strings and got it done on a weekend.

The techs and linies were never the problem - it was always the b...y organisation gettting in the way.

I am not sanguine about this re-monopolisation of the telecoms infrastructure.