There’s a manky bug in QT 3.3.3 that causes my mailer to convert tabs to spaces. Needless to say that’s a little annoying. It’s fixed in QT 3.3.4.

I got sick of waiting for the official 3.3.4 Debian packages so I rolled my own. These aren’t Debian Packages®™, they’re packages for debian, or in other words they work for me and other than that I wouldn’t know.

Get ‘em for x86 here.

ps. Before you say anything, my sources tell me this bug doesn’t affect fvwm so you’re safe.

I was at Uni the last time Voluntary Student Unionism was on the Senate’s table, and I protested against it. I’d do the same again.

Firstly let’s clarify that Student Unions are not “Unions”, they are student bodies. They provide students with cheap food, drinks, entertainment, fitness facilities, health services, representation within the University bureaucracy, and they help make Universities centres of culture in a way that the local TAFE never is. The proper term for the fees should be GSF, General Services Fees.

Martin makes the analogy to Tax, although I would argue that it isn’t an analogy, but that the GSF are the equivalent of taxation on University campuses.

I also think that it’s absolutely valid for those fees to go to clubs and societies, especially sporting clubs.

As usual I disagree with Chris, =D. The reason Student Unions complain about HECS and not the GSF is because the sums involved are vastly different. HECS fees can be anywhere up to $10,000 a year, whereas the GSF in my time was about $200 and as far as I’m aware hasn’t increased significantly.

I also can’t agree with Chris’ argument that if the services provided thanks to the GSF are sufficiently good, people will pay for them voluntarily, that’s just daft. Isn’t us lefties who are supposed to be all naïve about the world?! Come on, if people don’t have to pay for things they won’t, you might get 1% of people paying out of altruism but that’s not going to work.

At the end of the day the attack on VSU, and Universities in general, simply comes down to a belief within the government that Universities are a breeding ground for Liberal thought. And that is something to stamped out.