Rupert Murdoch Wants To Destroy Australia's National Broadband Network 327
pcritter writes "With the Australian Federal Election looming, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Australia's biggest newspapers, is looking to unseat the incumbent Labor government over its centerpiece National Broadband Network policy. The media mogul sees the NBN as a threat to his media empire and has ordered newspapers to attack the project at every opportunity. The NBN seeks to bring 100Mbps Fibre-To-The-Premises internet to 93% of the country with wireless and satellite for the remainder. It currently reaches 4% of the population and is slated to complete in 2021. The conservative opposition has promised to dramatically scale back the project."
Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I'm sick of technological advances being blocked because it hurts someones bottom line. Something something stock whip makers.
If the NBN affects his business then his business is archaic and newscorp can adjust or die...preferably the latter
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, he probably sees the opportunities, but also realize he is not the best person to take advantage of them, so he must destroy it to avoid his betters from getting an advantage there, since they might use that to bring light to the places his media empire currently rules.
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:5, Interesting)
I was watching a Werner Herzog documentary about trappers in the Siberian taiga and, long story short, one trapper was complaining about trappers who will trap before some kind of critter's coat was really ready, on the basis that a few coins in his pocket now is better than someone else getting full price for the pelt later if they trap it instead of him. It's universal, and it's the reason why I'm a liberal and not an anarchist; without adequate restrictions on commerce it rapidly becomes first and foremost an instrument of tyranny. Kind of like now.
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:5, Interesting)
The success of anarchy depends on self discipline and voluntary cooperation. It is possible that such a thing is unattainable in this physical universe, but it would be nice to make the effort. It would mean we are becoming human. What you described is not anarchy.
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:4, Insightful)
We'll never have a worthwhile society until the average human is significantly more intelligent and ethical. Everyone is just too dumb and destructive on average to hope for much better right now.
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Political power in anarchist societies...
???
It's not a contradiction. Anarchists, or at least social anarchists, understand the need for some political organization. In fact anarchists don't believe in anarchy. It was a label slapped on them by those who didn't agree with their approach. After a while the anarchists got tired of fighting the label and just adopted it as their own. Unfortunately (and understandably) it's the source of much confusion.
Re: Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some relatively-parent poster hit on the core aspect, which is voluntarism, and is rightly now a +5 insightful. A ruler is someone who can force you to undertake certain behaviours, but the absence of a ruler doesn't restrict your ability to choose to follow someone, or to take their orders. Most apprentices are in this type of relationship with their mentors. They take instruction, and generally follow it, because they are confident in the topical authority of the mentor. If this confidence lapses, the apprentice finds a different mentor. If the apprentice successfully gains valuable experience, the relationship gradually shifts into a collaborative one based on equality and mutual respect.
Critically, the mentor's authority is always understood to be domain restricted. They are not a better or more worthy person – they are simply more knowledgeable and more experienced in a relevant area. Such individuals tend to accumulate followers quite naturally, and have no need to enforce their doctrines.
So, in practice, it might be better to reframe 'anarchists' as 'heterarchists' – highlighting transient, fluid, domain-restricted, and reciprocal hierarchies over entrenched asymmetrical trees with privilege, power, and authority accumulating at well-defined apical nodes.
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It's the word 'power'. It implies coercion, which does not exist in anarchy.
That is an incredibly, astoundingly, jaw-droppingly stupid thing to say. Perhaps you meant to include some qualifiers. There's no state-sponsored coercion, but there's no state-sponsored protection from coercion, either.
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It would mean we are becoming human.
There is something that I'm still not fully convinced (and therefore I welcome comments) but I don't think the terms human and humane convey the right meaning. We humans are by nature pretty fucked up, but culture and reason keeps us away from our primeval instincts (to the point most of us don't even acknowledge they're still there). You can argue that culture and reason is part of the human condition, but even so it is not enough to curb a significant part of our population. And even if it is ugly, you sh
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The hallmark of what it means to be human and not some other species is that we are not only capable of such things, but much better at doing it than any other. It is in our nature to improve ourselves through cultural and technological innovations. What you're thinking of is much more universal; merely 'animal' or 'mammalian'—perhaps 'great ape' at best. If anything deserves the title of 'human', it should be the struggle between the two.
Exactly my point.
Don't be so cynical as to deny the natural legitimacy of your own idealism.
Not at all, my point is that the common use of the term reflects only the ideal, when it should also encompass the bad aspects of being human.
And it is in itself an instance of group thinking. We are humans, therefore human must mean something positive only.
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but culture and reason keeps us away from our primeval instincts
It's important to realise that culture and reason are equally the product of primeval instincts. We like to flatter ourselves into thinking that emotion is somehow primitive; however, if you think about it, you are /always/ high on your feelings. We all are. For example, consider that you only know something is correct because of how you feel when you reach the conclusion. "Reason" is couched thoroughly in those primeval instincts. As an AI researcher and life-long student of the mind, that is my opinion.
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Not a contradiction. "Murder" doesn't mean "kill", it means "kill without the approval of most of society". War isn't murder. Capital punishment is only murder in some societies. Same with killing teenagers wearing hoodies and armed with candy, or killing women who show their faces in public, or killing those of the wrong skin color or religion or sexual preference.
Sucky and misleading, perhaps, but not a contradiction.
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:4, Interesting)
Translation: We have to control commerce before the other guy does.
But I suppose that's what politics boils down to... each group jockeying for control over a market. You've got the early trappers who will lobby against rules on trapping so they can get an early pelt, and you've got the late trappers who will lobby for rules against early trapping so they can get a mature pelt.
I think simply being able and willing as a government to make such rules is the problem. People learn expect that rules can be made in favor of their particular group, and that's all they lobby for - like Rupert Murdoch.
I'd personally much rather see a natural fairness - early pelt trappers and a national broadband - than a contrived fairness: laws against them to "make things more fair".
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If one group can set the standard of working people to death, then why isn't that also fair?
"Your lucky to have a job"
"We have flex time, You can work any 80 hours a week you want"
and of course also...
"Full time is 30 hours a week here, so if you want to survive you better expect to work 60-90 hours a week at three different jobs. Heck- we've paired up with another business to employ you 30 hours a week if you work 30 hours a week here just to make it easy for you."
---
What is "fair" is ultimately up to the
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying it can't have good intentions. One reason I'm not a libertarian is the fact that I believe that there really is a class war going on. It's only big media and big people that say it's not real.
I also recognize that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If you start lobbying in mass for rules intended to hurt an opposing group it can come back upon you at a time when your group is weaker. Taken to the extreme it's mass rule and mass theft. Still.... in certain instances I must admit it makes sense. We just gotta not have that constant adversarial mindset with regards to public policy.
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A) I believe that there really is a class war going on.
B) We just gotta not have that constant adversarial mindset with regards to public policy.
Have to choose one or the other.
People have to hurt a lot more before they stop believing the propaganda they consume.
I've listened to an out of work man on the radio raging against unemployment when he self-admittedly was about to lose his house, his marriage, and everything he'd worked for.
I imagine if they brought of age discrimination, he'd have been against ro
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I was watching a Werner Herzog documentary about trappers in the Siberian taiga [imdb.com] and, long story short, one trapper was complaining about trappers who will trap before some kind of critter's coat was really ready, on the basis that a few coins in his pocket now is better than someone else getting full price for the pelt later if they trap it instead of him.
Indeed, tragedy [wikipedia.org] of the meta-trap [wikipedia.org].
It's universal, and it's the reason why I'm a liberal and not an anarchist; without adequate restrictions on commerce it rapidly becomes first and foremost an instrument of tyranny.
I'm with you.
Conceivably, a local game warden could enable the community to maximize their overall pelt yield — though, in this particular environment, I imagine that the pervasive threat of regulatory capture [wikipedia.org] could make the position cost-prohibitive to fill.
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Which is a main reason why many/most pure anarchy-theorems disavow personal-property, and share many similarities to socialism.
To at least reduce the desire to screw everyone else for your own benefit. But at mentioned in another comment, self-discipline is also necessary.
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Well, he probably sees the opportunities, but also realize he is not the best person to take advantage of them...
I don't think so. Murdoch might be an asswipe (except with the reservation that such an item is actually useful), but from his point of view, the NBN is a threat to his Poxtel network. There's no way he can abandon that, so he'll just swing his wrecking ball wherever it'll work. But let's face it, he's 80-something years old, and he has been solidly on the most extreme right-wing side of the fence for decades, so really there's nothing new to see here.
He has unlimited access to advertising space, which wi
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's almost more general competition. He controls a media empire: Television production, broadcast networks, newspapers. Maintaining an empire like that depends to some extent on barrier to entry and economy of scale considerations - no new startup channel is going to appear to compete with his own because they would be unable to afford to set up studios or license content, and even if they could they don't own huge cable networks or geostationary broadcast satellites, and even renting some capacity on his own networks costs a lot of money - there's a reason all those religious channels, shopping channels and very niche-interests live up in the 900s on the episode guide.
The internet changes that. Anyone with a little skill and some very affordable equipment can set up like That Guy With The Glasses or SF Debris did - all the time people spend watching videos off of such websites is time they might otherwise be spending watching television.
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Which Government. His media empire spans multiple continents.
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But the opportunities are not for him. The opportunities are for others to take a piece or the whole of his pie. The absolute most he could hope for, after a long and expensive shift, would be to be basically in the same position he is now, but in control of a internet based conglomerate instead.
There is no more money being made available by this, just a new chance at the same money that is already going to monopolies like RM. In fact demand, aka the wages of the working class (the ones who already spend 11
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I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones ---Linus Torvads
Why would Linus care about the limitations of 20 bit memory addressing, when he had a 386?
Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're trolling (especially on the 'piracy' thing), but why does 100 megabit internet have to be of economic use?
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Because that's the only reason the internet is allowed to exist these days. Limitless communication between individuals hurts the economy and the country. It's bad for business, and if not for the fact that businesses took advantage of that too, they would have lobbied to shut it down long ago.
That's why the new filters being debated in the UK will block forums and educational sites as well as illegal content. The only thing of value in life is business, everything else is bad for business.
At least that's t
Re:What is a 100Mbit connection good for? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what happened in Australia. The state education system ran their own book printing service as part of the national course syllabus. Then the private sector said, "Hey, we can do that more cost-effectively and make a profit at the same time". So it was privatized and the prices shot up.
In the UK, the "independent" TV companies used to be required by law to provide education programming for schools (as in the TV Ark archive). But then after several mergers, they said, "It's really too expensive for us in a modern competitive broadcasting environment", so they were successful in getting absolved of that responsibility. And no-one really watches those channels anymore.
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How is a 100 mb connection not of economic use? The market can only move as quickly as the information that flows through it, yes?
So essentially, he's hampering the ability of the market to gather information (reports) from official and unofficial sources, to disseminate them in a timely fashion, and to react to them. Since the market, in its non-corrupt form, likes to purge inefficiency (a dirty word these days, since it has been co-opted to have certain negative emotional connotations that it shouldn't...
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Why have more than 8Mhz and 640k memory - all it does is drive people to use graphical based pr0n. Won't someone think of the ascii pr0n industry.
Think what a home with say two adults and two teenagers might consume in parallel - each possibly watching their own content - thats just video/streaming. Then you have other applications that benefit from low latency and low jitter connections that can be offered with such fast stable networks (better conferencing, gaming etc). The increased upload capacity ca
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Obvious troll (or shill) is obvious. I'm not sure why anyone who seriously wondered about this would be the type of person who frequents /.
I have an 80+ connection via FIOS and I sometimes consider upgrading it to an even higher speed. I download ISO's frequently as well as other large software packages, mostly for work. People also share connections at home. My wife can be streaming Netflix while I download a Linux distro or some other large package and we both have the service we need.
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"What great new applications does a household ADSL connection permit? I am genuinely curious. The best I can think of is widespread piracy. As for audio, people are willing to tolerate a few kilobit, 128k audio. Even flac only needs 1000 kilobit. Verizon Fios has been offering 512k and 1 megabit connections, for at least a few years. At least of few million people in America have access to such connections. If there was an obvious economic use of ADSL internet connection, some people would be aware of it by now."
Are you quoting someone? Verizon FIOS supports up to 300 Mb/s (and possibly more). Video streaming (by multiple clients)was the killer app for a while--I'm not sure why any one household would need more than thirty or forty megabits per second, but I don't have the bandwidth to find out.
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He is a shill.
There's only a few applications now that I can think of offhand: 1) backup (this is a pretty important one; it takes forever to back up a 1TB drive over the internet at current speeds; 100Mb/s or even 1Gb/s would greatly improve this, making whole-drive backups feasible over the internet to remote providers. 2) video-on-demand. Netflix is great, but the quality is a little low, and it always has problems on Friday and Saturday nights for me during peak hours. 3) Home servers would be nice to
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You have to include the $30 line rental or compare the Naked ADSL prices in your comparison.
The whole point of NBN other than fast speeds, is that gets rid of the broadband lottery. So that 25/5Mbps plan gives you 25/5Mbps, not 1.8Mbps. The opposition's FTTN will not with download speeds varying depending on how far you live from the node.
Quite honestly most people who oppose the NBN oppose it because it's a Labor project and would just as readily oppose FTTN it if the parties' chosen technologies were reve
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Some history. Until around 1991 Australian telecommunications was provided by a single government owned business - Telecom (formerly Post Master General, then later Telstra). Telstra practically owned all the in ground infrastructure including the last mile copper to practically every phone in the country. Any hint of competition was crushed with obstruction, anti-competitive wholesale practices etc. Other players came in and grew some of their own infrastructure, extra long haul fibre mostly, but sti
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:5, Insightful)
Accurate and widely available information about reality is a mortal threat to your business model.
What does that say about what you do for a living?
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I don't trust the government as far as I could spit but the advantages afforded by 100mbit fibre to the home is worth picking the lesser of two evils (or incompetents as the case may be. BTW, my election preferences go way beyond fast internet, although it is a consideration)
Also, even though a government may be inefficient it takes a government with no expectation (or requirement) to make a profit to implement a scheme such as this. A private company needs to make money to survive and can't bear the debt a
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:4, Insightful)
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you'd think any politician who wants business to flourish
To the politician, it depends on which businesses are lining his/her pockets. /cynical
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Given how little of this continent is settled and the distances between major population centres, high speed internet also provides opportunities for tele-medicine and education to be delivered to remote rural communities at a greatly reduced cost.
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at's a good idea are fools that thing government is always good
also fools : people who think the government is always wrong, or after them. you generalise too much.
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:5, Insightful)
Government does, on the other hand, understand infrastructure needs. Matters such as minimum standards, right of way and others help to prevent cherry-picking businesses from servicing and improving only the most profitable areas which leads to all manner of growth and development problems not the least of which are population densities in small and concentrated areas (which leads to high real estate/housing, high violent crime and many other problems) and extremely underdeveloped areas where the population cannot participate in modern life.
At first basic needs included roads, then sewage, then public water (not so sure that's as much of a great thing these days), then electricity, then telephone. We all agree these things are not just good, but necessary for a civilized area to exist today. And the internet? I think we've gone far beyond it being considered a novelty and no one uses FAX machines any more... (okay, almost no one) As far as I'm concerned, it's as much of an infrastructure/utility need as the rest and internet needs to replace the telephone and it cannot do that without first having efficient and usable broadband. Also, we need some open standards for internet telephony that doesn't mean paying someone or something like Skype or other commercial entities.
Anyway... I have too much to say on the subject, but while I agree we can expect waste and mismanagement from government, you have to understand it goes back to the motives of government. Ideally, government should not be for profit. (Invariably it is because business people help get government into office which supports their business interests... a whole other discussion)
Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are open standards for telephony, SIP for instance... You can call someone over SIP like an email address, e.g. user@sip.domain.com etc...
The problem is there is no profit in open SIP federation, it's far more profitable to keep users locked in to your own proprietary service (and new ones seem to keep cropping up all the time).
That anti-government bullshit is not relevant (Score:3)
The entire thing is being done to repair an earlier government mistake anyway - of giving a communications monopoly away with not strings attached so the best way for that monopoly to make money was just sit on it and patch bits that broke since 1996.
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I live in former Pacific Bell territory, and in the boonies to boot. I can't get DSL because they're still patching bits that broke since the 1980s in my neighborhood.
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"The entire thing is being done to repair an earlier government mistake anyway ..."
So taxpayers are on the hook twice for governmental error? Count yourself lucky it's only two so far.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sheesh! (Score:5, Funny)
I thought they did things "upside down" not "backwards" in Australia.
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Re:Sheesh! (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, from what I just read, it shows the press council got three complaints in 2011, about three articles during June and July. The complaint was that the articles were inaccurate and misleading.
The press council agreed the articles were inaccurate and misleading, although the articles were full of verifiable facts. So now, stating facts in a news article is misleading. Using the latest published numbers is misleading. Quoting a customer, who when asked agrees with the tone of the usage of his words, is mi
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Selectively telling the truth is one of the most time-tested effective ways to tell a lie - just spin a good narrative and leave out the parts of the truth that prove your position to be false.
So no, "having lots of facts" does not even come close to showing that something is not inaccurate and misleading. (Discalimer: I have no idea what the truth of the matter in this instance was, just stating a general trend)
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Well, from what I just read, it shows the press council got three complaints in 2011, about three articles during June and July.
OK, well here's some much more recent and relevant food for thought:
Murdoch sends trusted general 'Col Pot' to bring down Rudd over NBN [theage.com.au]
Is that specific enough for you?
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Quoting customers can be misleading.
For example, there is a propaganda piece called 180 made in 2011 which has, as a central premise, the idea that people today are already forgetting who Hitler was. Soon after it opens there is a montage of interviews, as person after person is asked and claims no knowledge of the name or the events of world war 2.
Misleading, of course - because what the producer actually did was interview many, many, many people and only show those interviews which agree with his point. F
Re:"Attack the project" unsubstantiated (Score:5, Insightful)
The only correct response to this... (Score:4, Funny)
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The only correct response to this... (Score:2)
...nationalise his media conglomerate in Australia and break it up.
No single person should be able to decide who will or won't be the next government.
why bother? (Score:2)
The whole thing is likely going to collapse under its own weight anyway.
Australian federal election announced today (Score:5, Informative)
The timing of this post on the front page is a little too timely. The prime minister Kevin Rudd today announced the date the federal election is to be held. It will be September 7th. Me thinks the poster is quite possibly a card carrying Australian Labor Party (ALP) member.
There seems to be a lot of scaremongering going on in regards to the Liberal National coalition's NBN policy. The ALP is promising fibre to the building in all cases except for where it is completely infeasible (e.g. remote towns out in the desert etc.). Sounds great but it will be expensive. Probably somewhere well over $50 billion. The coalition is promising fibre to the node with fibre to the building available at cost to the user for those that need it. Coalition's will be a fair bit cheaper as it won't be funding fibre to every building.
The ALP's NBN policy page [howfastisthenbn.com.au]
The Liberal National coalition's NBN policy page [liberal.org.au]
Debate over which of the two policies is superior is healthy but blatant biased scaremongering is not.
That's only a Sydney solution (Score:4, Interesting)
The main purpose of the NBN as far as I see it is to do an end run around Telstra who is just happy to sit on infrastructure that hasn't changed much since 1996 and not let anyone else do anything better. Most of the vast cost of the NBN is about buying off Telstra. It's about fixing a mess that was dumped on the country in a desire for short term gain with a fire sale in times when the government didn't really need the cash. If Telstra had a board of better quality than a politician's wife, a failed historian and a union busting failed farmer things may have been different, but it's about sitting on stuff and not letting anyone else in instead of competing on the basis of improvements or service.
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Keep following the money. Government doesn't do this out of the kindness of its heart regardless of the pleasing meme wrapper around it.
Other predictions: It will have greater overuse clogging issues (rationing creeping in) even as it costs more than private will. Don't mod me down. Just file it away and watch as history unfolds yet again. Maybe I'll be wrong. But history does not support that.
slightly off topic (Score:2, Interesting)
He will no doubt enlist the help of the country's (Score:5, Insightful)
religious fanatics by pointing out that a high speed broad-band network will be primarily used to speed the delivery of pornography to children.
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The UK has fixed that. If we had such a program in America we could ensure that at least 50% of Internet content was evangelical preaching.
Re:He will no doubt enlist the help of the country (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US we have at least 50% of TV and radio broadcast time and bandwidth dedicated to preaching (some of which is presented in the form of right-wing political propaganda), the remainder is divided between singing contests and "news" about the Kardashians.
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They already have an internet filter so that argument won't work.
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Ah, but we know full well that such filtering doesn't actually work and never has.
What, then why do we have it? That's not the topic under discussion here, next question please.
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Until the religious fanatics realise that it is far easier to pass a law imposing mandatory filtering on a government network than it would be to impose the same filter on a private network. I imagine "No tax money for porn!" would be a good rallying cry.
Of course he hates it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is nothing stopping Foxtel being offered over the NBN - what he hates is the hint of competition that it would bring compared to the current cable/satellite monopoly.
That's nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
Here in the USA he is trying to destroy the entire country.
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Didn't he already destroy USA? Look at it!
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Your foreign policy did that many years ago, as well a pricing higher education out of the majority's financial means, and then some for health care.
At least two out of those three were aided and abetted by Murdoch's American "news" operations.
O RLY? (Score:2)
current war (Score:3)
One part of many. Whether it's tobacco companies, the sugar industry, the media moguls - if you haven't realized that we live in the middle of a war between capitalism and humanity, you're living under a rock.
Corporations intentionally damage us, for profit. We are sold products known to damage our health because it's profitable. We have patent and copyright laws that are batshit crazy, because corporations think this will save their monopoly rents. In the US, corporations are fighting local governments who want to provide their citizen with services that the corporations fail to offer (like broadband in the hinterlands). All over Europe, we sold the public companies that our parents and in some cases grandparents had built up and paid for with tax money to private companies, and in most cases the results were rising prices and dropping quality. There are a number of movements to buy it back - that alone should tell you how successful the whole thing was for the public.
William Gibbson said in an interview that he stopped writing cyberpunk stories because if he had written what is reality today as fiction back then, people would've called him insane.
These are the final days of mankind. Not in an apocalyptic sense but in the sense of the end of our reign as the supreme creatures on this planet. Our overlords will be creatures we created, but it won't be robots or Skynet, it'll be virtual entities like corporations, governments and other faceless entities that you can't kill with a shotgun. The fringe-liberals are misguided, stockpiling food and ammo won't do you any good in this war, because it's not fought that way.
RM will shrivel up and die eventually.... (Score:3)
In the meantime, always oppose all things Murdoch.
I so look forward to that evil turd dropping dead so I can dance on his grave.
No level of hell is too deep for this pathetic sociopath.
He might be a mogul, but he will always suck ass like a loser.
Has Murdoch ever? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am curious to know if Rupert Murdoch has ever done anything good - or even tried to.
Re:Labor Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? The coalition's plan is "Let's take the Labor Party's plan, and shave a couple percent off the price by dropping the most important bit of the project!" (ie, converting from FTTH to FTTN and leaving everyone stuck with telstra's awful ancient copper system connecting to a large and unsightly roadside active cabinet)
If the NBN is going to get done, lets get it done properly, instead of doing some half-hearted poor job of it.
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What's a lie, that the Labour NBN policy is a good idea, or that Murdoch uses his media empire to oppose a policy that he thinks will hurt his business?
As an American, I don't know enough about the NBN program to say. If Labour sucks then let Australian voters throw them out.
Murdoch is another story. Excessive media consolidation is a major problem, and Murdoch's tentacles are not confined to your continent. The US used to have regulations that limited the extent of media consolidation, and ensured greater
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They were mostly designed to prevent foreign ownership which is why Murdoch is now a US citizen. The corporation itself is still technically foreign and based in Bermuda or somewhere to avoid US tax but that doesn't matter if a US citizen is in charge.
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Re:Labor Lie (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're trying to outdo us Yanks in corruption, forget it. Murdoch became a naturalized US citizen by an act of congress, rather than following the path that tens of millions of people who don't have lots of money to bribe congress have followed over the last few centuries. He became a citizen (in name only obviously) because there is/was a law that only a US citizen could own a US TV station.
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If you have a tech question have a text/google search of the NBN section at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/142 [whirlpool.net.au]
Re:Labor Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
As an American, I don't know enough about the NBN program to say.
In a nutshell, the NBN is a plan to deliver fibre-optic telecommunications infrastructure to most of the country. It will build (and own) the physical infrastructure upon which retail ISPs will deliver their products.
If Labour sucks then let Australian voters throw them out.
Labor does, indeed, suck, and Australian voters are probably going to throw them out. The problem is if they do they're going to replace them with a party that takes everything that sucks about Labor, and says: "You boys are just playin'. Let's crank this shit up to 11!".
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The problem we have here in Australia is that both choices in party suck, it's like choosing between syphallis and herpes. You don't want either of them, but once you've got em, they don't go away.
Australia. You mean the country/continent in the Southern Hemisphere, right? Because it really sounds like you're talking about America.
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Australia. You mean the country/continent in the Southern Hemisphere, right? Because it really sounds like you're talking about America.
For nearly twenty years Australian political leaders have looked to America and thought "that's awesome, we need some of that over here".
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FTTN will need power and optical rolled out into suburbia.
Each node will be ejecting fancy new vectoring or better tech into existing final very old copper runs of 200~2000m.
Australia will have have to look hard at each adsl user. That long run of existing adsl copper from the 500m-4 km exchange/rim (~digital loop carrier) will have fight with the new nodes.
What will a new 300m-2km run of vectoring copper do to existing adel 1/2 users?
Hint - every user will have to get a node connecti
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The coalition's NBN policy is realistic and more affordable than the labour fantasy which is completely unaffordable.
The Coalitions NBN policy is to deliver yesterday's solution, tomorrow, for marginally less than it would cost to do it properly.
Actually that describes most of their "policies" (such as they are).
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Democracy or policy set by Murdoch? The conservatives are all for it because they know, if Murdoch really wants it he'll give them every media opportunity they need while denying everyone else except maybe unfavourable attention.
Welcome to Australia the Italy of the East. I'm waiting with amusement for the australian variant of "tutti frutti".
To me, as an American, that's the real issue. I don't know, and frankly am not terribly concerned, about Australian NBN. Murdoch as the latter day Hearst [wikipedia.org] is another story.
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I find it weird that with most of the public able to gain access to so many news sources that papers under the Murdoch banner would dare to publish the rubbish they have been. It's rather easy to loose a consumer and extremely difficult to attain one, publishing false information in a news source is the best way to create a situation where the populous decides at whole to boycott the publications and to even go further and mock those around them until they follow suit. Being scared of loosing market share and doing the actions they are would seem to me a reason for them to loose it. [emphasis added]
Hardly. Most people watch/read whatever news source feeds their biases. It can become a vicious cycle too where people's bias inclines them to a certain source, that source then feeds their biases and makes them more biased, etc.
I'm not saying that I'm above watching/reading news sources that feed my biases, but I at least try to sample the other side once in a while, and listen to counterarguments against my side's positions. I personally know plenty of people on the other side who do likewise.
However, for