Thirty years after a bunch of hippies brought flower power to bear on a plan for a military camp in southern France, 100,000 ecologists and campaigners against global trade rules returned to the site yesterday for a festival aimed at putting the world to rights. The militant farmers’ leader José Bové was at Larzac then, and he is there now
US District Judge Joseph Tauro has rejected an attempt by the recording industry to uncover the names students suspected of online music piracy
When 15 students from the University of Newcastle were caught plagiarising other people’s work, they not only passed — some even got credits and distinctions
Israel’s Parliament has passed a law preventing Palestinians who marry Israelis from living in Israel. The move was denounced by human rights organisations as racist, undemocratic and discriminatory. And the homophobic the retarded monkey boy said he remained firmly opposed to gay marriages and that administration lawyers were working to ensure that the term marriage would cover only unions between men and women. A stance that has created a backlash against the Vatican
The FBI is so scared that Internet telephone calls are fast becoming a national security threat that must be countered with new police wiretap rules. Yet another intrusion into your privacy
Safecom has released the photographs from the Children Overboard scandal that the public were not allowed to see, in keeping with the brief issued by Operation Relex’ Canberra Command Centre — at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet‘s office — which stipulated explicitly to ‘not humanise the asylum seekers’
Welcome to a police state. The FBI has started harassing people for reading politically incorrect articles in public. That guy who reads over your shoulder on public transport may be a police informant rather than just an annoying prat
If you or your family don’t say what the party wants to hear you say in public, then they’ll happen to mention in the press that you’re an operative. There goes the job, and if you happen to be on assignment at the time, there goes your life as well. It won’t be Bush Inc pulling the trigger, but you’re still just as dead
Another successful Slashdot — the Feds are talking with the major free email providers in the hope of making it easier to trace suspects who use the accounts for crimes like fraud and paedophilia. Which really means they are using the paedophile card as a means to invade the privacy of everyone
Landover Baptist Church offers yet another amusing and enlightening article from the Pastor Deacon Fred on ridding your community of the scourge of athetists
Reacting to the new federal surveillance systems which have been set up in the US, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have set up a web site that will let US citizens create dossiers on government officials
PETA has filed a lawsuit against KFC, accusing the company of making misleading statements on its Web site regarding how the chickens it sells are treated
The Family Court dismissed an application by Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock to keep five children in a detention centre after a ruling they should be set free
A series of legal skirmishes over who owns the real estate on a computer user’s screen is turning into a war. With companies like Gator happy to facilitate serving ads on rival sites
Where an enlightened post-Soviet era government believes the Internet is essential for life in the 21st century and backs that up with legislation declaring Internet access is a human right. Estonia is a country where hot, running water was a luxury a decade ago. It’s now a place where farmers have broadband Internet, 80% of the people use online banking, Internet usage and broadband penetration rates are comparable to Western Europe, and the government conducts most business virtually through a system of networked computers. Not bad for a country that only ten years ago was a crumbling, bankrupt mess with a network infrastructure to match
British transsexuals will have the legal right to marry and have their gender changed on their birth certificate under new laws. A move that should also enable intersex children to live a normal life
Speaking days after the case against a multiple sclerosis sufferer accused of supplying cannabis was abandoned, Lord Prosser, a former High Court judge in Scotland, said the current laws on the Class B drug were unenforceable and should be scrapped. He has called for cannabis to be legalised and the drug supplied in the same way as alcohol and tobacco
Australian federal politicians will soon debate proposed legislation that will make open-source software the first choice for Commonwealth departments and agencies. Australian Democrats senator Brian Greig has announced his intention to introduce a private members’ bill into the Senate that may see federal agencies forced to justify their expenditure on proprietary software
Sydney police have arrested a man who allegedly used home PCs to create
hundreds of forged documents using stolen identities. They must be on a roll, having discovered what they believe to be another counterfeiting ring which had been producing imitation drivers licences, birth certificates, group certificates and tax returns
The California Supreme Court has ruled that a former employee of Intel was free to send email messages to current company employees, overturning a lower court’s injunction. The court rejected Intel’s argument that the messages represented illegal trespassing into its computer systems
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