Friday, October 19, 2007

Labor has released its tax plan, following the announcement from the Liberal/National coalition that they would provide tax cuts costing AU$34 billion if re-elected. The government has placed pressure on Labor since their announcement on Monday, urging Mr Rudd to release the opposition’s tax plan.

Under Labor’s system, the government’s planned tax cuts for Australians earning more than $180,000 per year would be scrapped, saving $3 billion. The savings would be spent on health and education for working families.

Speaking in Canberra today, Mr Rudd announced that if elected he would spend $2.3 billion on tax rebates for parents with children in primary and secondary schools. The refunds would be available to those who are eligible for Family Tax Benefit A. Mr Rudd claims the plan would be available to around two million children.

A Rudd government would offer a 50 percent education rebate to parents, up to $750 per child for primary school aged children and up to $1500 for children in secondary school. The rebate could be used for a variety of purchases but not for school fees. Mr Rudd said the rebate would help to equip children for the digital age.

“If mum and dad are spending money on buying a laptop, spending money on buying a home computer, spending money on … purchasing internet connection, education software printers and books, those expenditures, (they) will be eligible to claim the 50 per cent education tax refund that we are putting forward,” Mr Rudd said.

“We need to equip our young people with the skills necessary to participate in the digital economy of the 21st century.”

Mr Rudd vigorously denied that he rushed the plan out after the government’s announcement. “We have been working on this education tax refund for the better part of four, five months,” Mr Rudd told reporters.

Labor would spend $400 million of the savings on Labor’s national health reform plan, while the remaining $200 million would go to the budget surplus.

Under the health reform plan, an elective surgery strategy would be implemented with the aim of reducing waiting times. Mr Rudd said the waiting times experienced by some Australians were unacceptable.

“We intend … to establish through the use of other funds as well a plan which would create a national elective-surgery strategy to reduce waiting times across the nation,” Mr Rudd said.

About 25,000 Australians are on waiting lists for elective surgery despite having passed the clinically acceptable waiting period, he said.

“That’s unacceptable,” he said.

Mr Rudd also said that Labor would embrace tax reform by flattening the number of tax rates from four to three, at 15, 30 and 40 percent by 2012-13. This contrasts to the government’s planned tax cuts bringing rates to 15, 30, 25 and 40 percent.

If Labor is elected, those paying the highest tax rate would pay around $10 a week more than they would under a Howard government. Mr Rudd said that he was not waging a class war and believed those paying the top tax rate wouldn’t mind investing in the country.

“If you’re on $180 grand and more, as people like myself are, I don’t think you really need it just now,” said Mr Rudd.

“What I say instead is that most people in that bracket wouldn’t mind an investment going into bridging the digital divide for the whole country.”

“If we were waging some sort of class warfare, we wouldn’t be in the business of outlining the long term goals that we’ve put forward – a flattening, prospectively, of the tax system down to three rates rather than four with a top marginal tax rate of 40.”

The government has criticised the plan, with Treasurer Peter Costello claiming that Mr Rudd copied “91.5 percent” of their tax policy. He accused the opposition of never having a tax plan.

“Mr Rudd talks about education – if he’d have brought his exam paper in after copying 91.5 per cent of the answers from the student sitting next to him, he would have got an F for fail.”

The Treasurer said that it would be unlikely that a Rudd government could deliver tax cuts as it could not manage the economy well enough to deliver them.

“Unless you can manage the Australian economy, these tax cuts will not be deliverable,” he said.

“Mr Rudd and Mr Swan do not understand the Australian economy. This is entirely clear from the fact they have spent four days copying 91.5 per cent of our tax plan.”

Mr Costello said that a Rudd government would have a dilemma if elected, in that he could not follow the coalition’s policies.

“He never had a tax policy,” Mr Costello said.

“He hadn’t done the work, five days after our tax policy, his great contribution to the tax debate in this country is to say ‘me too, but’.”

“The trouble with ‘me too, but’ is, it’s OK for Mr Rudd to say ‘me too, I’ll be like Howard and Costello and adopt their policies’, but if he gets in Howard and Costello won’t be there writing the policies.”

Mr Costello said that when Kevin Rudd runs out of ideas, the union movement would step in to provide guidance. “So who is going to say ‘me to, but’ to them? I think the union movement will be giving him a few ideas,” said Mr Costello.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Sahnoun Daifallah, of White City, Gloucester, was today remanded in custody by Cheltenham magistrates after being arrested for spraying a “foul-smelling, brown substance” from a sports bottle. The liquid is thought to have contaminated food, books, wine bottles, and other items across several stores in Gloucestershire.

Mr Daifallah, the court was today told, committed the offences over multiple days. The attack on a Tesco supermarket, where frozen chips and wine bottles were contaminated with what Tesco claims to be a “mix of human urine, faeces, and domestic products” happened on Friday. He is also accused of a similar offence in a Morrisons supermarket 4 miles away on the same day. Two days previously, Mr Daifallah is accused of spraying the substance inside a pub near Cheltenham, contaminating food, and contaminating over 700 books in a Waterstone’s bookstore in nearby Cirencester.

Mr Daifallah today confirmed that he was at the locations stated, however he indicated he will be pleading not guilty to the charges. He has been remanded in custody until May 28th, when he will appear before Stroud magistrates via videolink to be committed to Gloucester Crown Court – a decision made by magistrates after the estimated damage by the defendant was given at over £10,000, plus cleaning and replacement expenses.

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

File:European-parliament-strasbourg.jpg

The European Parliament has rejected the directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions (software patent directive) sustained by lobbies of large software publicists such as the corporations Microsoft, Siemens, Nokia and Alcatel, grouped under the title of the European Information & Communications Technology Industry Association (EICTA, [1]). The directive involved the granting of software patents.

648 MEPs out of 680 rejected the text, 18 voted for and 14 abstained.

A rejection vote became the expected outcome when the European People’s Party, initially in favour of the directive, decided to reject it.

The European Greens, Socialist Group and European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party also voted for rejection of the directive for heterogeneous reason. Michel Rocard, author of a number of amendments to the original directive, said that the majority of the modifications were unlikely to be supported by the Commission and Council, with whom the Parliament would have had to enter a Conciliation procedure if it had voted for maintaining the directive in moditifed form. “Better have no text at all than a bad one”, he added.

Before the vote, Rocard pointed at the irritation of the Parliament towards the Commission: “There is collective anger throughout the Parliament because of the way the directive was handled by the Commission and the Council”.

During the debate on Tuesday, Commissioner Joaquín Almunia told MEPs: “Should you decide to reject the common position, the Commission will not submit a new proposal.”.

The rejection was welcomed by small and medium software companies, as well as by Free Software supporters. The Directive had been subject to an intense campaigning, within the Parliament, in the news media and on the Internet. The supporters of the Council position appear to have spent several ten millions, hiring prestigious PR agencies with at least 30-40 lobbyists who roamed the halls of the Parliament every day for 3 months, and many full-page advertisements in EU newspapers such as European Voice, EU Reporter etc. The opponents of software patentability (that is supporters of the position taken by the European Parliament in its 1st reading of 24 September 2003), coordinated under the roof of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), also had several lobbyists stationed in Brussels, conducted several conferences and demonstrations and published some newspaper advertisements, with a total budget of nearly 100,000 eur apart from countless unpaid working hours of a dedicated supporter base, consisting mainly of programmers and software entrepreneurs.

Monday, June 16, 2008

The Canadian Environmental Law Assocation and the Canadian organization Environmental Defence jointly conducted a study that was released to the public on Thursday, saying that chemicals released by new vinyl curtains may pose a significant health risk.

The study noted that many shower curtains contain more than 100 volatile organic compounds (VOCs), phthalates and organotins, some of which may be released into the air when first taken from a package. These chemicals, responsible for the characteristic smell of new vinyl, may cause damage to kidneys, the liver and the central nervous systems, respiratory problems, nausea, headaches and loss off coordination, according to the report.

These vinyl curtains are also said to contain traces of metals like lead, cadmium and mercury.

Jennifer Foulds of Environmental Defence advises consumers to seek alternatives to new vinyl products such as shower curtains and table cloths. Older products are thought to be safe, as they have already released most of the allegedly dangerous chemicals.

Critics of the study have called it “fear-mongering”, and some health professionals agree that the risk is being overblown. Warren Foster, a professor in the obstetrics and gynecology department at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario points out that, “the difference between hazard and risk is great, and without knowing the actual human exposure, it’s premature to make any judgement.”

Foster further commented that the study was not performed in a rigorous manner by not having controls or random sampling.

Five brands of shower curtain were examined in the study; they were purchased from American stores including Bed Bath & Beyond, Kmart, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart. Curtains of the same brand are also available in major Canadian stores.

Marion Axmith, director general of the Vinyl Council of Canada calls the report a “blatant attempt to manipulate consumers and retailers into thinking shower curtains pose a danger, and they don’t.” She noted that, “as far as we know, nobody’s ever been harmed by a shower curtain.”

Vinyl has long been a point of dispute between environmentalists and those in the chemical industry. A chemical used to make vinyl is known to be a risk for liver and other cancers for chemical plant workers, and the phthalates in vinyl products have been linked to interference with normal male hormone production.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Domas Mituzas is a Lithuanian software developer recently given a temporary position on the Wikimedia Foundation‘s board. The position lasts until June this year, after which he has stated he will decide whether he will run for a full term of two years. As well as working for the Wikimedia Foundation, he is employed by MySQL AB.

In light of his recent appointment to the board, Wikinews conducted the following interview with Domas Mituzas.

((WN)) Congratulations on your new board position! Can you tell us a bit about your background – previous work with the Foundation, what you do with MySQL AB etc?

Domas Mituzas: Thanks! Though my first edits to Wikipedia were in 2003, I became actively involved in site technology back in 2004. Then I was working for a major IT company in the Baltic States, and was leading the systems group there. Back then I could apply quite a bit of practice I had from my job to maintain Wikipedia in its technology infancy. It became increasingly involving, and eventually the things we started doing became far more complex, especially when the exploding growth hit us. Managing the growth and sustaining the site up was quite stressful at that time, and we started both lots of optimization and resource expansion work. Eventually I got involved in the MySQL community, and was suggested to apply for a job in MySQL AB. There I work in services division, assisting our customers with their problems, helping to grow their operations. Now as part of company acquisition I’m joining Sun Microsystems, and I’m eager to see what possibilities can that provide.

Back in my childhood I was deep into encyclopedias, first dead tree ones, later CDs and online version of Britannica. I had a dream, that once I get my own home, I’ll get full dead-tree version of Britannica on my bookshelves. It didn’t happen, as I got into Wikipedia the same year I bought my apartment. Life is full of irony 🙂

Actually, back in 2000 I approached university professor and tried to explain him a concept of dynamically edited news repository, where every concept could be explained deeper and deeper into elemental knowledge particles, and later that can be assembled in many dynamic ways. His first question was “Is that some kind of website?”, and I was angry at him for not getting the generic concept of knowledge at all. Year or two afterwards I was discussing same concepts with a colleague, and he provided with far more practical visions of all that. Seeing Wikipedia for the very first time was a dejavu, so it was easy to get into the project. That is different from what I imagined, but far more useful.

((WN)) Why do you think you were chosen for this position, and what do you think you can contribute?

DM: One of reasons was both my long-term presence in site operations and communicating about our work, spreading our ideology, providing opinions. I try to be able to explain difficult topics in human language, and that is quite well appreciated. Additionally, I was being a bit of outsider – more of a reader than writer, so I feel that my views are slightly less community centric, more of value centric. My experience in a technology team is quite similar to what I expect to see in the board – wide array of issues to work on, and maintaining consensus is incredibly important to keep the productivity high. So even though I have deep roots in the project, I feel that I can bring in lots of fresh ways to the board. Of course, I will try to provide best possible technology advise, if the board needs it.

((WN)) Will you continue doing your previous technical work at the same time? If you do, how will you find a balance?

DM: I would really avoid to do all previous work – but it is not needed any more. Years ago we were monitoring the site 24/7, shortage of resources was causing all sorts of difficult problems. Now everything is way more steady and reliable, so I have way much more free time. I used to do lots of other activities too, so I think I can scale my time just fine. And still, of course, I’ll provide as much work to technical part as needed, it just isn’t as demanding as it used to be, and we’re really happy about that.

((WN)) What major actions do you expect to come your way during your term in office?

DM: Though my term is quite short for now (until June elections), the biggest work will be done in understanding how the foundation should function to establish a really long-term presence, to support the projects far into the future. It may need changes in how we get external experience, how we interact with other organizations, how we do interact with office staff and each other. Foundation did lots of work to get to stable and reliable state, now it is time to think more about the future sustainability and expansion.

I have operations experience, so of course I will want to maintain high efficiency of overall operation, but on the other hand I want to work on scaling other parts of the foundation – especially reach out, evangelism, and of course – fundraising.

((WN)) Do you expect any major upgrades to be needed to hardware or software anytime soon, and if so what?

DM: Projects are always growing – pages, pageviews, revisions, users, media, archives – to facilitate that there will always be major upgrades. We still have some of the solutions that allowed us to survive for years, but are not suitable for a whole millennium. There will always be new features, that will need more resources, so we definitely won’t stop improving our hardware or software platform. I have to take off the board member hat to answer these questions, as they should be really directed to technology team, instead of board. I won’t mention exact projects, but we have a trail of features that have to be implemented, and will be, soon. But indeed, that is very much operational issue, that the technology team and foundation staff is known to handle well.

((WN)) What do you expect lies ahead for the Foundation in the long run – say, the next ten years?

DM: My generation is already forming the ‘Wikimedia Alumni’ – the readers, consumers of our content love us. It is amazing to realize what powers they may have in the next ten years, and how they will be able to assist us.

The biggest work to be done – maintaining the loyalty of our community, continue being the good guys of the Internet. Next ten years will be years of continued Internet penetration, and us being the major beneficial part of that process is especially exciting.

I really want to believe, that our offline activities will be just an intermediate step, and we will have whole world using our online resources, and of course – contributing to them.

Also, I’m not sure if we will be capable to achieve in next ten years, but besides digital divide, we will have to break information isolationism that certain countries or communities maintain – and the best way to achieve it is by providing the best knowledge resource possible. Opening up communities and having them work together may really become the next great wonder of the world. Who doesn’t want to be part of that? 🙂