Posts by Richard Freeman 72 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Apr 2007
“We considered the use of the religious holiday of Easter [Sic] to advertise a sex toy was likely to cause serious offence and concluded that it was therefore in breach of the Code,” the ASA added."
Really?
Not sure I understand this thinking, I would have thought Sex toys would have been entirely appropriate to the Eostre Festival, is it because Sex toys are thought to discourage skin on skin sex? I mean they could be used for fore play or something....
Apparently they could only handle 1,000,000 form submissions per hour, and it doesn't take a statistical genius to work out that more like, 10,000,000 people would log on after dinner, which would be probably between say 6:30pm (EST) and, well I guess most folk had given up by 7:30 pm (I am guessing word was out by then and SA, NT and WA didn't bother).
- I mean some people have real jobs and can't log in during the day like our PM evidently did.....
"Asked about the ability of the online census database to cope with such high traffic numbers, an ABS spokesman said online could handle "1,000,000 form submissions every hour. That's twice the capacity we expect to need.""
http://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/census-2016-chaos-for-australians-ahead-of-august-9-20160802-gqizw5.html
After all at the end of the Day the Shannon-Hartley still holds true, more services, more noise, less speed. This is why even under the current planned '100Mbps VDSL' roll-out services will be vectored to deliver no more than 15Mbps until such a time as NBN take-up in that area is complete at which time they will try and achieve higher speeds on a suck it and see basis....
While we are assuming, lets talk about the land of the 1/4 acre block, with typical 25 meter street frontage, so the 100 meter range gives us 4 houses up the street, and 4 houses down the street from your 'node'.
Ah lets still be generous and assume the street isn't 15 meters wide and include the houses on the other side of the street as well, now we are up to 16 premises per node.
Back-haul from the node is still likely to fiber, so it is difficult to see significant savings from fiber being dragged to a node every 16 houses, although I guess the node itself can be fairly compact and reverse power fed, Then maybe dropped down a cable pit, or stuck up a Power pole in the blazing hot sun.
" Let's assume that in the real world XG.fast delivers a gigabit per second."
Why would you assume that?
I mean you might achieve that on what? a perfectly balanced twisted pair, in Laboratory conditions, with no adjacent services also trying to achieve 1Gbps - oh, wait though, that is NOT the real world, and nowhere near the current state of the Copper infrastructure in many parts of Australia.
Apparently if you do enough inquiries and Audits, you eventually get the answer you want....
What are they up to now?
oh yes 5 Audits on the NBN, I guess they have nothing better to do I am surprised we haven't had a royal commission into it yet.
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/malcolm-turnbull-starts-fifth-nbn-audit-20140307-hvgmh.html?rand=1394401563433
Actually no, in an FTTP scenario there would be a passive optical splitter in an underground pit.
Of course if you had say, a petrol tanker come a cropper, it spill its fuel, and that fuel ran into the underground ducts and then caught fire.....
Big explosion - because the result would include a ball of flame.
NBN is being funded through the sale of Bonds - so not spending on the NBN does not automatically mean that the money will then be available for Health or education but is only available for "investments".
The plan is that the Interest on the Bonds will be paid from Income from the NBN.
One of the biggest Black holes is the 'private health insurance rebate' which appears to have done little or nothing to reduce waiting times etc but instead costs the Government Billions of dollars every year lining the profit margin of private health insurance companies.
Telco systems run on 48V so that will be usually (in compact form factor such as in a cabinet) 4 by 12V batteries and if they run a redundant power system make that 2 sets of 4 batteries (they may choose not to bother with redundant power for the relatively small exposure failure of a cabinet will cause) expected lifespan of the battery pack will be about 7 years.
However to be fair (not that the Liebral party know the meaning of the word) if the cabinets are powered from the same power as the houses in the area it serves, then chances are the houses will be without power also and all the smarty pants VOIP phones etc will also be out anyway so it could be argued that there is no point in backing up the cabinets anyway.
The FFTP plan will have a similar issue in that the VOIP phones and ONT will cease to function in the event of a power outage - however then the householder can either provide their own UPS or decide that as they already have a mobile phone that might suffice in emergencies.
Their plan does not even seem to include the cost of paying Telstra to take over the Copper Network.
FTTN was one of the plans originally considered by NBN but Telstra wanted way too much to allow them to take over the Copper and Legal advice indicated that they would need to Pay Telstra way more than it was worth to resume the Copper Network
This looks like a typical coalition disaster in the making.
It is not like the Coalition have a reliable track record of saving money -
Remember the Seasprite Debacle? $1 Billion spent and no flying helicopters at the end of it?
$300 million on the Joint strike fighter and how many of them do we have so far?
Eh?
this part doesn't ring true:
"Australia is claiming credit for the bust, with ACMA saying it received complaints from Australians listed on the Do Not Call register that prohibits unsolicited telemarketing calls. As it investigated those complaints,"
last time I contacted these (expletive) (expletive)s to complain about an unsolicited obvious scam call that I received they made it clear that they weren't in the slightest bit interested in my complaint and then proceeded to lecture me on the inadvisability of 'investing' with people I didn't know making offers of unbelievable returns (not sure why they thought I would ring to make a complaint if I were that gullible).
hmmm,
"He's never really under any stress. He works for a computer company in California. He does something with the Internet"
Not stressful? that counts out most Tech jobs, does something with the Internet, Comfortable with nudity?
Only one thing it could be!
He reviews Porn for a living!
Lucky bastard!
a brush fire in an uninhabited part of the world is fine if that is where it stays BUT Australian bush fires have a habit of growing and spreading rapidly and a smallish fire detected early out in the boondocks is much less difficult to deal with than a Large Bush fire with a front tens or hundreds of Kilometres wide threatening towns and other urban areas.
To be fair to the Tourists (or is that have some fun at their expense?) - a few unmentioned points:
1) it had rained every day of their 6 day Holiday, so maybe they just thought that Roads covered in Water were normal in Australia.
2) they thought the GPS was saying it would navigate them to a road
- while I am guessing that the GPS was saying to return to nearest Road they probably were not listening to it in Japanese and misunderstood its instruction as a promise.
3) they only got 500 meters but I bet if they had a longer run up and a more powerful car they might have got further, and after all there was probably only about 14,500 meters to go.
4) the rental agreements I have seen are not clear that Cars are not amphibious and in Australia everything is upside down and back to front so maybe they just expected (I couldn't very well say that they thought, could I?)
@ Mike Green
Borders is probably not a good example - even at their closing down sale, I could still get the same books for cheaper at the nearby QBD bookshop, next floor up in the same shopping centre....
In fact Borders is a very good example of the contempt some retailers have shown for the Australian public:
Their marketing strategy was sell books at a higher price than anyone else (even other bricks and mortar retailers), even above Australian RRP....
Borders failure was not really all that difficult to predict.
Another example of this was Starbucks, who sold bland flavourless 'Coffee' (not sure what I tasted there was really Coffee) at twice the price of anyone else (i.e. those folk who were selling real Coffee).
A couple of years later they are wondering why this marketing strategy was a complete failure and Starbucks never really took off in Australia.....
So it is good to see JB Hi-Fi taking on the distributors and now if the other retailers like Harvey Norman would stop moaning about the 10% GST and blaming the Government and follow suit (and maybe also look at what rent they are paying to Westfield et,al as well) and join in then maybe we would see some real change in Australia.
I have been saving up for a new Nikon but now I think it can wait a month or two,
Ok pass the Popcorn...
Telstra are always re-oranising as this is the only way most of their management team can justify their fat paychecks.
every 6 months is a minor re-org with major restructures occuring every 18 months to 2 years - this has been going on since at least the mid 90es.
sure most re-orgs bring more chaos and less efficency but that's ok as they are on to a new re-org or two by the time they work that out
I bet Turnbull is smart enough to know what is going on - but as he is in the opposition (and let's not forget they are the folk responsible for this mess - when they sold off Telstra without structural separation) he is not interested in reality, truth or honesty and is picking and choosing his Data to make the Government look bad.
Remember it's not dishonesty if it's just being politically astute....
hardly any surprise there - I mean after all they are the ignorant twonks who made the NBN a necessity when they sold Telstra without structural separation - which makes it rather hypocritical of them to be pretending to be worried about competition now....
You forget it was the gross incompetence of our last Government that unleashed Telstra by making them a private company answerable to no one but themselves.
when you vote remember a couple of things:
1) it was the Liberal Govt who decided to Sell Telstra without breaking them up first which exacerbated this whole debacle....
2) a large chunk (if not all) of the NBN is being funded by the 'Future fund' i.e. the money they got from selling Telstra (ironic that really)
3) at least the NBN proposal (GPON) looks technically viable and quite a sound plan unlike the coalitions pipe dream of using 3G (just because it is cheap).....
I mean seriously - its within a fraction of an octave to 2.4Ghz so any user inside a house is likely to lose connectivity when they use their microwave oven, you will suffer signal loss when it rains or is foggy (I guess you get that with microwave links anyway).
Below 2Ghz spectrum is probably worth money but above 2Ghz??
I always used to wonder what sort of loser would line up all night to be the first to purchase a new Microstuft Software release - especially as any sane person would 6 to 9 months for the worst bugs to be fixed.
But what sort of complete and utter Loser would hold a windows 7 Party?????
This is all part of a plot dating back to the years when Bob 'silly old bugger' Hawke was prime minister - as he was infamous for saying 'Australia is a primary producer - we don't need to worry about that Technology stuff'
Of course this attitude has been carried on by subsequent prime ministers with some of the worst damage done in recent years by Johnny Howl-hards anti education revolution (what spend money on Education when it could be better spent on tax cuts of maybe 50c a month??).
AWA, BWD, Applied Technology (Microbee), JNA etc. - all once (almost??) household names* for Australian technology now no longer exist - partly due to poor management decisions but also significantly due to lack of encouragement and support by successive governments.
Recently however there have been very embarrassing revelations that the core technologies used in wireless LANs was developed by the CSIRO which is not only Australian but (worse still) a Government body!
This has caused much consternation in the government, resulting in increasingly desperate attempts to prove that Australia has no idea about all this Technology stuff such as the great firewall/filter of Oz and now this - just further attempts to prove we don't have a clue....
*amongst Techs anyway - probably almost unheard of outside Australia, because, well we are great at exporting dirt, mutton, wool, even rice and cotton (how does an arid country sanely grow rice and cotton???)
Err so its an SLR without the optical view finder.....
or an expensive camera they have saved a few pennies on
unfortunately I have found that while you may not use an optical view finder often, when you need one you really need one (especially out in full sunlight in summer).
Don't think I will be rushing out to buy one any time soon
While I had difficulty understanding the dialogue the story line seems to be that:
three young Girls are playing together at a school (a fourth turns up somewhere I did not quite spot where - this is probably mentioned in the dialogue) when they are stalked by a predatory pineapple.
The girls decide to head for open ground so they can spot the lurking Anana and climb a hill to get warning of its approach.
The prickly fruit pursues them so they call for reinforcements (another friend turns up) decide to go on the offensive chasing the Pineapple down the street and throwing a ball at it.
Unfortunately the Pineapple mistakes the ball as a gift and promise of undying love and wiats until nightfall before heading over to the Girls house to play - finding the girls not there (they are inside going to bed) he decides to play on the Trampoline in the hope they will come outside to play but the girls complain to their parents about the Barmy Bromeliad that has been bothering them all day so the parents (and an Uncle who was visiting at the time) Go out and delivery afruit.. righteous beating to the prickly Paedophile....
So it wasn't a robbery after all
Um so let me get this right Hugh Laurie says that only Twits Twit on Twitter - that almost rhymes doesn't it?
Could we make it into a tongue twister perhaps?
twenty two twisted twits, twitting together on twitter, twittering their days away ...
No sorry that all became too banal and I ran out of inspiration although it does sound like something out of a kids ABC book.
I'll get me coat then - that one there the one with the cuffs tied together...
"Stephen Conroy, the Australian Minister for Internet Censorship, is claiming that the published list is not the official government blacklist."
It is pretty well irrelevant what Stephen Conroy claims (after all he is a Politician....), until or unless he is prepared to prove otherwise we have no proof that the list is not at least as deeply flawed as the one published.
This of course is the problem with Secret lists....
Black helicopters ? well - I hear the distant sound of Black hawks doing 'anti terrorist exercises' up and down Pitt St*, so I am off to my Blue mountains bunker complex for a few Coopers*1 and a lie down....
*Pitt St - one of the main streets through the CBD of Sydney - a street down which Helicopters with known 'power droop' issues are known to be flown (between buildings) at high speed in the name of 'anti terrorist' exercises - in actual fact we are in much more danger from these exercises than any mythical Terrorists....
*1 Coopers - a beer that is significantly better than Fosters (not that this is at all difficult - in fact I do not know anywhere in Sydney that you could even buy Fosters as this is just an awful Beer we export to give foreigners a bad opinion of Australian Beer...)
Instead of "Microsoft Huh? so it's pretty easy to use" - shouldn't that have been:
Microsoft huh? so your machine is about to crash... "
And I am glad to hear Miles (red shirt man) has opened up and come out of the closet - I have to admit that despite being 'Dad' I had my suspicions at the beginning of the ad when I first saw him....
Other than that pretty nauseating Ad really.
at which he promised sunlit meadows...
I watched the inauguration, and the weather is still crap. Where's the lovely weather we citizens of Earth were promised, eh?
Ah - it all got delivered Down South - we seem to have too much Sun down here in Australia at the moment..... the blasted courier driver has delivered your Sun to the wrong place and now we have too much, do you want to come and pick it up?
The issue with Flash is that the write cycle is too slow for use as Regular memory.
It sounds like this memory is going to be fast enough to use as Regular computer memory so Standby mode will not need to power the memory and as the Greenies say 'a milliwatt-hour saved is one less picogram of CO2 in the atmosphere'....
No seriously - the less that needs to be powered up when a computer is in standby the smaller the battery that is needed and think about being able to turn your computer on and not having to wait interminably for it to boot up (because it is still booted up).
"I understand that guns are currently outlawed in Britain. What are the chances that law-abiding folks will ever be allowed to defend themselves there?"
Less Guns means they don't need to...
Lets look at the numbers:
Gun crime in the USA for 2006
(Population 301,139,947)
Source US dept of justice
Crimes committed involving firearms:
388,897 or 1,291/Million
Murders
11,566 or 38.4/Million
Robberies
188,804 or 627/Million
Aggravated assaults
188,527 or 626/Million
Gun Crime in the UK for 2006
(Population 60,776,238)
Source UK Home office
Crimes committed involving firearms:
18,489 or 304.2/Million
Murders
59 or 0.97/Million
Robberies
3,979 or 65.47/Million
Serious injury (not including death)
507 or 8.34/Million
Which looks safer - A country where everyone can have a gun?
or a Country where you cannot carry a gun?
I was wondering how it was going to cost so much until I saw:
'plans to set aside $1m to pay for consultants and upgrades to the network.'
So in other words that would be $999,997:50 for the consultants and $2:50 for a new Patch cable....
I think the picture of the faceless, mindless CON-sultant fits best here
Why not?
30 Seconds on Google gives me:
62% of the students at Bryan Adams are economically disadvantaged, 14% enroll in special education and 21% are considered "limited English proficient
Bryan Adams High School was rated Academically Acceptable by the Texas Education Agency in 2007
Was that a Catholic Lamp-Pole being abused by a Polish Hoover?
or a Bicycle Poling a Polish Lamp Pole?
or a Lamp Pole, Poling a Catholic Hoover on a Bicycle?
or a Pole Poling a Lamp Pole on a Hoover?
or a Hoover sucking a Lamp Pole on a polish Bicycle?
Oh stuff it I think thats blown my tiny little mind...
- Yep thats my coat there - the one with the Outraged public decency in the pockets.....
hmm Let see now they make it sound so easy:
Account can be hacked with:
paper clip - simple item to get hold of
Pin - simple item to get hold of
then 'a small recording device' - this is the bit that is considerably more complex and not as easy to get/make/steal as you might think.
while I admit that I am a bit surprised it is that easy - at this stage I doubt many crooks have access to the Technical capability of obtaining a 'small recording device'
Don't think it will keep me up at night (although maybe I should check any eftpos machine I use for pins or paper-clips.
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