
Once upon a time ...
Australia led the world in technology ...
335 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Dec 2012
@Dan
All that you say is very reasonable, and yet ...
Legislative controls are only going to be as good as the implementation and oversight of controls. In this case, it appears the AFP simply were not aware of their employee's previous and current relations with foreign nationals, multiple citizenships, previous employment with the armed forces of a foreign power, etc, etc. Given that he was previously employed in the counter-terrorism part of the AFP, this appears (to my simple mind) to be a complete failure of the security clearance process, to the point where I am doubtful that he indeed had any sort of clearance, and simply should not have been allowed access to any sort of sensitive data.
"A NASA team scrambled on the news, and will collect trucks in Brisbane before driving to Adelaide to assemble the rest of their team. They will then head for Queensland to try and recover “four tonnes of material”."
It seems an awfully long winded way to go about it ... wouldn't it be much easier to drive the trucks straight from Brisbane and let the Croweaters catch up with them somewhere en route?
Still, as MrDamage remarked ... Queenslanders ...
Yes, it is very sad that a nation has no other future than to serve as a gaol. Although much of Nauru's plight is self-inflicted, or rather government inflicted, (see http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/how-nauru-threw-it-all-away/5312714), it is hard to condemn Nauruans for taking this option - rather, the responsibility for this prison camp should be placed where it belongs, with Australia's last two governments, both headed by (supposedly) Christian prime ministers.
So, Apple would be ....
Britain! - huge empire, controlled by insisting everyone uses your own esoteric set of rules?
See here: http://spreadofcricket.weebly.com/reason-2---deliberate-export.html
So even though the press releases are flying, NBN Co itself doesn't yet know just where the pilot will take place.
Only slightly cynically, I'd say it will be in a marginal electorate critical to the Coalition winning the next election. Note that Queanbeyan and Bateman's Bay (in Eden-Monaro) are getting NBN before most of Canberra. How about Delegate as a prime location for the pilot?
If estimates of the advertising booked with Internet multinationals at AU$2.4 billion are accurate, they'd be asked to charge 4240 million in GST – however, much of this would be deducted by those booking the advertisements as an input cost, so the net to government would probably be far less.
Wouldn't the net revenue to the Federal Government be (very approximately) zero? Even if Google et al submit their BAS correctly, GST revenue all flows to state governments.
He cited a child abuse investigation in Europe, saying that in the UK around 25 per cent of suspects were convicted but in “Germany, which doesn't have metadata retention legislation, almost none of them were successfully prosecuted.”
This sort of begs the question "why doesn't Germany have metadata retention legislation?" ... is it because many Germans still remember the Stasi and the Gestapo?
there is a 1 to 5 per cent chance an immunized person could contract measles
Which makes me between 1-in-400 to 1-in-10,000 unlucky ... both my children contracted measles after being vaccinated. Fortunately no serious lasting damage to either, but (note to Richard Ball) measles is scary if it is your kid that is infected: the Dept is quite right to send out an alert.
I can't say I've even heard of any modern stories that can compare to the classic tragedies like Hamlet
How about Franz Josef I? ... Brother executed, son committed suicide, wife assassinated, nephew also assassinated, empire disintegrates in the bloodiest war ever seen ...
But, I'm sure Shakespeare would have written it better than what I do.
However, he said that while access to stored data is a “foundational” building block of investigations, it's impossible to stipulate how many convictions relied on it. The AFP's systems, he said, simply aren't configured to report the association between “metadata” and eventual convictions.
So, he doesn't actually know whether metadata is useful or not ... but he can still declare that it prevents 90% of terrorist attacks.
Probably this is why I'm not Commissioner of the AFP - when I talk bullshit, I blush.
Brend,
There's several of us around in Canberra. Not sure whether any are .net developers.
In general, though, it's a great place - especially if you have children. Schools and unis are excellent, there are plenty of opportunities for sport and/or cultural activities.
Unfortunately, Jim, if you object to being called a 'whingeing pom', it means you probably are one. My experience was that, if you take it on the chin and attempt to adjust to the local culture, Australians will accept you very rapidly. Although it can be difficult to adjust to some things - it was years before I felt at ease having Christmas in the middle of summer - the migration experience has been nearly all good for me (note: I have lived the past 30 years in Canberra, which as everyone now knows is the best place in the world1. So there.)
1 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/upshot/want-an-easy-life-try-canberra-australia.html?_r=0
A well deserved award, and I expect there's a lot more to discover about how this works.
I wonder, do these cells adjust if you move to a radically new environment? How long would it take?
Signed: an expatriate pom who spent his first 5 years in Aus thinking North was South and vice versa.
"62 per cent of respondents to its survey believe that retaining more data for longer will create security risks
And of the 38% who don't believe retaining data will create security risks, how many believe they have fairies at the bottom of their garden?
The more I think about this scheme, the harder it is to see any upside. Against the costs, risks to personal privacy and risk of administrative overreach is offset what? Where the claimed benefits are not vague, they have been specious.
"I visit some family down under, and to equate the two for diversity would be incorrect.
Hmmm ... not sure which part of Australia your family are in, but in my workgroup I can manage Malaysia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Malta, Singapore, Laos, Pakistan, China (mainland), PNG, Chile, Russia, Finland, Japan, Fiji, NZ and Iran. There is an Australian, but her parents are Greek too. Similar diversity around the street where I live.
I found some of the article familiar, some confusing (note: I'm a pom who made the reverse journey many years ago, after MHT kindly arranged to fund my passage).
Although I agree that there are many ways in which Australia lags behind Europe, in my field (I work in Local Government) it often seems the reverse is true.
As to the cultural experience, there are opportunities in both countries. Yes, from London you can get to Paris in a short time ... but from Australia you can go to many equally diverse places with relative ease. And, in many cases they're cheaper, they drive on the correct side of the road, plus (unlike Parisians) the locals will actually be polite to you.
I can't answer for what London is like now (it's a few years since I've been there), but if it's more diverse than Australia I would be very surprised - both in my workplace and around my home, I can think of at least a dozen different Asian, European and other nationalities represented.
Agree with Piers though that it is important to get out there and experience the world - whether you go from here to there or there to here, there will be new experiences and you will be the richer for it. But, be open and prepared to make adjustments - even between UK and Aus/NZ, there are cultural differences, which is one reason why so many poms fail to make a go of it here.