• 08:30 is.gd/M6Q NSW ALP looking to replace Iemma as Premier. #

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• 19:46 is.gd/LLl Victoria to build new "clean" brown coal power plant. Brown coal is NOT clean. #

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Cross-posted at Not a Hedgehog:

It’s interesting that moral relativism is acceptable for conservative loons - but only when it allows them to defend human rights abuses by the pillar of freedom. The concept of a higher standard does not apply. The notion that there are moral absolutes do not apply. Torture by the United States of America is acceptable because it’s not as bad as the torture done by Saddam Hussein and it’s not as bad as beheading people or flying planes into buildings. And besides, the United States saves the worst torture for the really nasty people.

Here’s an alternative view: for a country to refer to its President as “the leader of the free world”, it should show leadership, particularly in relation to freedom. It should not show contempt for the rule of law. It should not violate the most fundamental principles of treating one’s enemies decently, principles that were codified in response to the worst atrocities of the past century. It should act in a way that is consistent with the principles it argues the dark places of the world need to embrace.

And if it fails in holding to these standards, nobody should be foolish enough to defend it by claiming that there are worse places in the world.

Ed: This seems as apt a place as any to include a link to infamous atheist Christopher Hitchens’ article detailing his experiences with determining whether or not waterboarding is torture.

Jeremy at An Onymous Lefty has posted a few points regarding the mandates of the ALP to govern and the Greens to uphold their values and represent the people that voted for them. He points out the difference between negotiating with the government and rolling over in the face of power and urges the Greens to choose the former over the later while still remaining faithful to their electoral platform and pushing the agenda which garners support for them as a party. Referring to the demise of the Democrats, Jeremy points out the dangers of embarking upon a course of straying too far from one’s roots and platform and attempting to negotiate on unpopular policy.

I’ve begun reading a few books and discussion papers on proportional representation and the role of the Senate and Jeremy’s post helps confirm the idea that the Senate is a house of review which has a separate role to that of the House of Representatives. As Menzies and Whitlam were fond of saying, it is the House of Representatives in which governments are made and unmade. We expect that our political system provides the winner(s) of an election to govern. What we don’t expect of our federal political system is that it allows the government to govern unchecked.

The Senate and its committee structure is vital to our democratic polity, as Nick Minchin will tell you now that he’s in opposition. The minor parties have a role in this review and that role is variously to negotiate on good policy which can be improved and to reject bad policy. Many people, rightly or wrongly, view the demise of the Democrats as being triggered by Meg Lees’ negotiating the passage of the GST with John Howard. Others view their electoral downfall as being based on a drift to the left under Stott Despoja and Bartlett and that this alienated the classical liberals within the party’s elected Senators, rank and file membership and supporters in the electorate. Either tale is based on the notion of abandoning a set of principles and policies. Betraying one’s constituents is enough to cost a major party government but it can lead to the oblivion of a minor party.

As Jeremy concludes,

The Greens’ job isn’t to do what the ALP or Liberals want. It’s to do what they told their voters they’d do; to insist on the policies their voters want them to push. That’s why we voted for them. So long as they remember that, they will not share the Democrats’ fate.

http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/whats-on/events/talks#edge

By 2026 Brisbane may be home to 4.5 million residents and overtake Melbourne as the nation’s second largest metropolis.

Join Brendan Gleeson, one of Australia’s most outstanding urban planners, as he examines the impact of rapid growth on our cities and suggests solutions to make them better places to live and work.

Cities on the Edge sets the big picture agenda for a new generation of thinking about urban planning.

When Wed 16 Jul, 6.30pm-7.30pm
Where slq Auditorium 1, level 2
Tickets Free, bookings qtix 136 246

Presented by State Library of Queensland and Griffith Review

For my Honours final seminar I had made a few videos in MATLAB and used their default compression to reduce the animations down to a size which a reguar computer wouldn’t choke on when trying to play.  I took the videos home on a portable USB hard drive and went to check that they worked properly only to have Windows Media Player tell me that I didn’t have an appropriate codec (a piece of software that encodes and decodes a media stream) and that it would be happy to look for one for me.  I thought this would be fairly simple but Media Player told me that it couldn’t find a free codec and after a bit of reading I found that I’d have to download the Indeo 5 codec to be able to view my video.

No problem, right?  Indeo was developed by Intel and had been shipped with Windows for as long as I can remember.  Things have changed since Windows XP was released, though, and Indeo is no longer shipped by Microsoft nor owned by Intel.  Intel have sold the Indeo codec to Ligos who now charge $14.95 to download the codec which hasn’t been actively developed in years.  Charging the end user a fee to be able to use their media is completely ridiculous in my eyes; it’s the producer of the media who benefits more from compression technologies as it means smaller file sizes can be delivered using the same amount of disk space.  The end user (who may receive the file(s) on a CD) doesn’t gain a huge advantage from the compression except if they want to store millions of video files on their hard drive.

Microsoft stopped shipping the Indeo codec with Windows XP Service Pack 1.  This wasn’t a decision on the part of Indeo, who had said that they would honour Microsoft’s previous contract with Intel without changing a thing.  My guess is that Microsoft are looking to move towards their own homegrown codecs such as the various Windows Media audio and video codecs they’ve produced and that discontinuing Indeo allows them to backhandedly force media producers (whether commercial or home users with Windows Movie Maker) to use their codec which ships with Windows for free.  Microsoft have been in a bit of trouble before with the bundling of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system and I think a case could be made here that Microsoft are engaging in the same anti-competitive behaviour.  Yes, the argument can be made that companies are able (and meant) to use any competitive edge to gain a larger share of the market but Microsoft are engaging in very dodgy tactics here.

So what’s the solution?  Open and free codecs such as Ogg Vorbis can do away with a lot of compatibility problems by allowing programmers to compile binary codecs for any operating system on any architecture. One of the hallmarks of late 1990s and early 2000s computer video was that it was next to impossible to get a Windows Media file to play on a Macintosh and Apple’s .mov movie format didn’t play well with Windows until Apple released Quicktime.  These issues have been resolved, for now, with Flip4Mac and bundles of codecs available for Linux but the proprietary nature of these codecs mean that often years are spent waiting for a simple task to be completed because it’s not a high priority for Microsoft (or any other large company) to make their software available for uses other than those which they envisage.

Computers, which are sold on the basis of making communication easier and multimedia simpler to produce, can provide major problems for those without the technical know-how to get around the issues arising from proprietary stream decoders.  It doesn’t do the companies any good to force the end users to pay a fee to access a video that someone else was responsible for creating.  How can we fulfil the ideals of user-generated web (and TV) content when the barriers to entry involve almost abandoned pieces of software with restrictions for use?  Imagine picking up a copy of the Dune II video game and being asked to buy a manual to get past the anti-piracy questions.

I am incredibly unhappy with Ligos for charging $15 for access to a piece of software that they didn’t create and don’t update.  What could possibly justify charging this fee?  The overheads for a large company hosting a codec on their website can’t be all that large to justify such a fee.  They even recognise that it’s a “legacy” codec which, to me, means that it’s not in active production and thus should be available for free.  If the Indeo codec were a book, it would be able to be legally reproduced because it’s the equivalent of being “out of print”.

In my mind, this is a clear example of how intellectual property rights for software needs to be drastically reformed in order to be fair for consumers.  Both Microsoft and Ligos are engaging in behaviour which can quite simply be described as “greedy” rather than “driven by the profit motive and engaging in honest work to improve their market share”.  The behaviour of both of these companies is shameful.

• 10:33 Downer finally buggering off tinyurl.com/5azbd3 (via @monkeyjedi) #
• 11:21 is.gd/JgN Britain to spend $200b on greening up the nation including 15% MRET. #

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• 21:24 snurl.com/2rgvy Rudd concedes computers plan "flawed". I wish he’d recognise that about the internet filtering plan. Remember that? #

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• 15:24 is.gd/I7Q Environmental Defenders Office encourages Queenslanders to get involved with their local council’s planning processes. #

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Come July 1st the Federal Senate will lose a party who, for 31 years, have fought for the environment, minority rights, peace, and strengthening of our democratic institutions.  The Democrats, founded as a response to the Liberal Party’s lack of liberalism, failed to win a Senate seat at last year’s federal election and as such will bow out of the political arena, at least for now.

Natasha Stott Despoja, the former leader of the party who was famous for wearing Doc Marten boots to Parliament, did not contest her seat at the last election, choosing to spend more time raising her child.  Noting in her final speech that Parliament House has a workforce more than 3000 strong yet no child care services, Stott Despoja says that Parliament is still the realm of white, middle-aged men but that the Democrats have tried to change that by voting for leaders of varying ethnicities, gender and sexuality (the Parliamentary leadership is chosen by the rank and file).

Stott Despoja is out for now, but she may be back.  Still one of the youngest Senators, she could feasibly take ten to fifteen years off from parliament and return as either a member of another party or leading a recreated Democrats.  I have a feeling that time away from the Senate won’t cool Stott Despoja’s political opinions or desire to effect change.

Queensland Senator Andrew Bartlett has confirmed that he will continue blogging after June 30 which sure is a relief because he’s always got something interesting to say.  While we will no longer be able to rely on him for an analysis of the exact proceedings of various Senate sub-committees I don’t doubt that he’ll keep the Australian blog community a richer and more vibrant place with his analysis of events.

The passing of the Democrats leaves a bit of a power vacuum.  The balance of power, which the Democrats held for so long, now passes to five Greens, Independant Nick Xenophon and Family First’s Steven Fielding.  The Labor government will have no end of trouble getting legislation passed due to the fact that the Greens and Family First have quite different views and will push for amendments in opposite directions.  The ALP might have to rely on support from the Liberals or Barnaby Joyce on a certain issue where previously the governments under Hawke and Howard could negotiate directly with the Democrats.  Will the Greens be as open to negotiation as the Democrats were or will they be as unyielding as the media paint them?

With the ALP now becoming a more centrist party than centre-left, moving to the right to combat Howard, the position which the Democrats held doesn’t lend itself well to replacement.  A centrist government will have to negotiate with a party on the left (Greens), one on the right (Family First) and an independant whose positions are not well known.  In Western Australia, a former Liberal Shadow Minister has joined with Family First to create a new party “WAFamilyFirst.com” (no prizes for guessing where their website is).  The Democrats were also created by the fusion of a minor party with a former high profile Liberal so it will be an interesting development to watch, particularly since Western Australia is due for an election soon and the ALP and Liberals are both plagued by scandal.  Could WAFF be a new Democrats-style party?