Australian Parliament Accepts EFA Statement

NickFitz writes "The Register is reporting that the Australian Parliament has accepted a statement by the Electronic Frontiers Australia association denying claims by Senators Harradine and Alston that the EFA sought information concening outlawed material in order to promote the offshore hosting of illegal porn, among other wild and specious allegations. The EFA's statement has now been included in Hansard, the parliamentary record, under a regulation allowing a right of reply to persons named in Senate."

Re:IT'S OFFICIAL!!

[ralphclark]

The article to which you refer said "More than 17 per cent of Australians", not "More than 47 per cent". You sad git.

worst sentence ever

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Register is reporting that the Australian Parliament has accepted a statement by the Electronic Frontiers Australia association denying claims by Senators Harradine and Alston that the EFA sought information concening outlawed material in order to promote the offshore hosting of illegal porn, among other wild and specious allegations."

Eh? Does anybody understand this sentence? What does it mean? Who did what to whom?

It's hsiloP

[metamatic]

I think the sentence was written by a FORTH programmer. You have to read it from the end to the beginning. Here it is turned around into a series of sentences you can read forwards:

"Senators Harradine and Alston [claimed] that the EFA sought information concerning outlawed material in order to promote the offshore hosting of illegal porn, among other wild and specious allegations."

"[T]he Electronic Frontiers Australia association [denied the] claims by Senators Harradine and Alston."

"[T]he Australian Par

Re:It's hsiloP

[NickFitz]

I think the sentence was written by a FORTH programmer

Spot on! I was a professional Forth programmer in the '80s, including implementing Forth on the Atari ST. Well spotted!

I hadn't realised the effect it seems to have had on my writing... I'll have to watch that :-)

Just to nitpick... it's "Forth" with initial capital, not "FORTH" all in caps.

Re:It's hsiloP

[metamatic]

To nitpick even further, it *was* actually FORTH in all caps, because the computer Chuck Moore was using only supported capital letters, and only allowed five characters in a filename.

Yeah, I'm old-school. My first computer didn't have lower case.

Re:It's hsiloP

[NickFitz]

Hmm... upon checking Thinking Forth by Leo Brodie, I see that the name is capitalised throughout, but in the foreword to Starting Forth [home.iae.nl], Chuck Moore, inventor of the language, refers to the origins of the name in capitals, but otherwise uses mixed case - as does Brodie for the rest of that book. So I suppose the point is moot :-)

OTOH, I seem to recall another book (possibly Forth on the BBC Microcomputer by Richard de Grandis-Harrison) being quite insistent on mixed-case spelling of the name, but I can'