Auspundits

Georgia Down

I mean an FAA air-traffic control system located in the United States' state of Georgia. Major disruptions to air traffic. I'll given even odds of Russian hacker activity.

Meanwhile, the USAF is considering the plight of its Cyber Command.

Disgraceful Censorship

So a guy puts together a 15 minute film on the Qur'an, keeps the content under wraps, buys hosting space and then is told by the hosting company that it will not host his site due to its "objectionable material". Precisely how is the hosting company to know what objectionable content is in the film? It hasn't been released yet! Craven dhimmitude.

In contrast the film's producer, Dutch MP Geert Wilders, has indicated he would take to The Dam and hand out DVDs himself. Despite the many death threats against him.

Wilders: P2P/BitTorrent dude. Then let's see them take it down.

Update: Dutch Protestant Churches join the ranks of craven dhimmitude. Rather than defend the freedoms which the church espoused and on which it grew strong, it rails against them like a child spoilt by a doting mother.

iPhone - Loose Reporting

The iPhone is scheduled for release in Austraila sometime this year.

That is a loose reporting from News.com.au. There is nothing "scheduled" about the iPhone's Australian release. As I have noted in a previous post, it would be reasonable to assume a late 2008 release date for the iPhone given that a 3G version of the gadget is likely to be produced sometime mid year.

iPhone Release Last This Year?

According to a broker report, the 3G version of the Apple iPhone is due to be released mid-year. Given that some legal research indicates an exclusive deal with one of the carriers on the EDGE network (Telstra with current model iPhone handset) would breach Australian competition laws, does this mean that Australia should take delivery of these wonderful gadgets toward the end of the 2008?

iPhone - Hang Up In Australia?

According to this report, the iPhone's bundling to one carrier may breach Australia's competition laws:

If Apple...lock the iPhone to a single network in Australia it could fall foul of the Trade Practices Act provision dealing with third-line forcing.

This could cause delays in the iPhone's Australian release. Similar legal issues were encountered by Apple in Europe where the iPhone is now available on any network in France after initially being tied to one provider. I've seen so many of these gadgets (imported from the U.S.) walking about in Australia that its painful.

Australia Wants the F-22

In his meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary, Bob Gates, new Australian Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has indicated that Australia will lobby Congress, and Congressman Obey in particular, to relax the restriction on the sale of the F-22 Raptor fighter to Australia.

This came a few days after Fitzgibbon launched a review into the purchase of 24 Boeing Super Hornets at $US220 million a pop to fill a gap in air fighter capability between 2010 and 2015. Australia is set to buy approximately 100 of the next generation F-35 fighters when they enter service in 2015 (if on time) at approximately $US160 million each.

Moral Equivalence In Space?

America's "dangerous display of space warfare"! (quotes made up!):

Thomas P.M. Barnett makes the following point in the post linked above:

Chinese shoot down satellite and we see threat. We do same and it's just a "routine safety issue."

Rewind a couple of months.

Leopard has landed

Leopard has landed onto my desktop.

Leopard shipping today

My order of Mac OSX 10.5 is being shipped today, with delivery expected sometime tomorrow morning.

Yay!

Update 25/10/2007 16:00 AEST: I just received the following email from lg_do_not_reply (@) asia.apple.com:

Dear Apple Customer,

We are pleased to inform you that we have shipped your Leopard OS order and delivery is expected on Oct 26.

Delivery to locations outside metropolitan areas and major regional centres will require an additional 2 working days.

Thank you for choosing Apple!
Sincerely,
Apple Store Customer Support
Note: This is an auto-generated email, please do not reply to this email address.

Briefly: Firefox 3.0 Mac Nightly Build

So I downloaded and installed the latest Firefox 3.0 nightly build for Mac and it has now corrected the font rendering problems that have plagued Firefox on Mac. Tip: use the beautiful new Microsoft Truetype Fonts.