The Russian government’s decision to approve the Kyoto climate change treaty has been hailed by the European Union and environmental groups. The cabinet has sent it to parliament to be ratified, where President Putin’s supporters hold a two-thirds majority
The NSW Department of Commerce has released its eagerly anticipated Linux tender, calling for a panel of suppliers to provide enterprise-level software and services for government agencies. The contract, reportedly worth $40 million, is seen as a major step forward for open source lobbyists, as it requests suppliers to provide Linux software for both desktop and server environments
Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed an anti-spyware bill banning unauthorised installation of deceptive software that hides in personal computers and secretly monitors user activity. The bill clears the way for consumers to sue responsible parties for actual damages
Liberal party stooges and professional religious loons, Family First, want an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level. And I’m sure that their idea of censorship would include a whole raft of things that wouldn’t be offensive to that vast bulk of society
Former President Jimmy Carter says that despite changes designed to eliminate voting problems in Florida — where the disputed 2000 presidential election was decided by only a few hundred votes — conditions for a fair election in that state still don’t exist
eBay has come under the scrutiny of the Australian Taxation Office as part of its crackdown on evasion in the cash economy. The tax office believes unregistered micro-businesses
are a big source of untapped tax revenue and has made tracking them down one of its highest compliance priorities this year. The ATO has written to eBay asking for details of power sellers — eBay users with sales of at least $2000 a month
The FTC is considering imposing a bounty on spammers. They are guessing it would take between $100,000 to $250,000 to get people to rat out their friends and coworkers. Interestingly enough is that it is higher than rewards in most high-profile criminal and terrorism cases. For example, the FBI pays $50,000 for tips leading to the arrests of most of its top 10 fugitives
A new plan would make Oregon the first Western state to independently accept the return of wolves. The plan, created by a panel of experts which included Amaroq Weiss, western director of species conservation for Defenders, could provide protections for several breeding pairs of wolves in the state. Many biologists feel that it is only a matter of time until wolves migrate from Idaho and elsewhere to reclaim their historical range in Oregon
Having sex with corpses is now officially illegal in California after Schwarzenegger signed a bill barring necrophilia. The new legislation marks the culmination of a two-year drive to outlaw necrophilia in the state and will help prosecutors who have been stymied by the lack of an official ban on the practice, according to experts. I’m a little bemused to hear that there are necrophilia experts
The Greens have launched their new donations web site, www.democracy4sale.org. At last, you can find out who is making big donations to the main political parties at the press of a button. Follow the money trail of over $100,000,000 of donations made to political parties since 1999, when the Australian Electoral Commission first started recording them electronically
Labor has called for an investigation into John Howard‘s use of unsolicited email. Mr Howard has hired his son Tim’s company, Net Harbour, to spam voters in the prime minister’s blue ribbon Sydney seat of Bennelong. Labor’s technology spokeswoman Kate Lundy said the government’s own laws, which came into effect four months ago, banned commercial spamming. But the laws exempt political parties and charities from using spam, which has become a crucial tool in communicating with voters. The prime minister has breached the spirit, if not the letter of anti-spam laws,
Senator Lundy said
The Tories provoked a barrage of criticism yesterday after they signalled that the Human Rights Act would be scrapped or overhauled by a government led by Michael Howard
Senator Edward Kennedy was turned down for a flight from Washington, DC to Boston because his name turned up on the TSA No-Fly list. He eventually got on a flight, but was again denied on his way back to DC. It took three weeks of calls to Tom Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security for the ordeal to get straightened out. But what are ordinary citizens supposed to do if the Secretary of Homeland Security won’t take their calls?
The California Supreme Court voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages sanctioned in San Francisco this year and ruled unanimously Thursday that the mayor overstepped his authority by issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Proving that homophobic fundie scum aren’t just an American phenomenon, the sheep in the Australian Parliament happily introduced a ban on same-sex marriages in Australia [BugMeNot] that went over like a bucket of day old fish
The NSW Government is on the verge of putting its government-wide Linux plans into action, preparing to go to tender for a raft of enterprise Linux products to be used across state agencies in a project worth up to $50 million. The tender will cover the provision of enterprise level Linux system software, application software and associated services for desktop and server environments
on a whole-of-government basis, according to the NSW Department of Commerce, which runs both the state’s procurement and IT policy — via Triode Internet
Moronic Trade Minister Mark Vaile, a man up to his neck in dodgy deals with big business, has opened the door to Federal Government departments offshoring IT services work, telling a Sydney function that a vibrant economy and flexible workplace arrangements
would keep Australia competitive
John Howard is threatening to take his bat and ball and go home. The whiny little prick wants to suspend talks [BugMeNot] with East Timor over billions of dollars of oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea until after the election, after Labor leader Mark Latham said he could restart negotiations
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to drop Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the eastern United States, despite the fact that the removal of protections would likely preclude the return of wolves to their historical range in the Northeast. Although wolves in the upper-Midwest have made many gains, and now number more than 3,000 in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, wolf experts believe that the Northeast has prime wolf habitat and could support a population of the canines. The new plan would make it difficult to either reintroduce wolves in the Northeast, or protect those that naturally migrate from Canada
Charleston City Council apologised to two protesters who were arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts to the president’s 4 July rally at the West Virginia Capital — via Meta-Roj Blog
A Sydney public relations firm, led by a former Labor staffer, has taken responsibility for a contentious web site critical of John Howard. But despite howls of protest from the Government, johnhowardlies.com appears to be gathering momentum, with its subscribers now numbering in the thousands
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