Posts by Andrew Fraser

Ok, fuck Canada

I am moving to Ireland! I wish the pollies back in Australia, or here in Canada looked half as good, and displayed at least a LITTLE bit of humanity.

Its good to see she is an actualy person, rather than a soul-less, ugly lawyer.

Australia lost its last hot pollie when Natasha Stott Despoja retired.

Juila Gillard is kind of hot, in a milf way, but she has gone down hill.

Vote 1 for hot pollies !

The problem is...

The lack of backhaul from the wireless AP, to the main network.

It's all well and good to upgrade the wireless data speeds, but as soon as it his the backbone, your speed takes a massive hit.

This is a marketing tool to get people to buty pretty phone data devices, and advertise speeds UP TO 7.2Mbps, when in reality, due to shitty backhaul bandwidth from the cell tower to the main network, you really only get 100-200Kbps

*yawn*

Paris, because she would know more about network management than these muppets

Keep watching the bastards...

I do not trust either side of politics in this bun fight.. well maybe the greens, god bless their furry tree hugging, freedom loving ways..

They will attempt to model the filter in such a way, that it doesn't require legislation or government oversight.... now... where have we seen this before?

Oh Wait... the UK IWF ! (Internet watch foundation)

Oh fuck.... please tell me they are not going down this path.

They will make the scheme "voluntary", but it will be an unwritten law, that if you want to maintain a business as an ISP, you must adhere to the "voluntary" scheme, or have your license revoked.

If they are going to maintian a blacklist at ALL, I want it directly government run, subject to FOI requests, and completely transparent. If a site is on the list, it should list exactly WHY it's on the list, and subject to court action.

None of this secret blacklist crap.

I am for no blacklist at all... and really happy I am living in Canada at the moment :D

It'll be as popular...

As the friends character of the same name..

Why not call it bork ? It'll reflect the status of the product much better.

Bork it !

Its completely borked !

Mines the one with the chef's hat in the pocket... bork bork bork !

@Uh

Qualifications to be a pilot/Space Monkey != Qualifications to run a massive Science and engineering organization.

NASA has a horrible reputation of going over budget, being expensive, and rockets exploding in space, on the way up, and on the way down.

Pardon me if I am wrong, but these are Engineering and Project management issues.... Surely to make NASA what it was, or to get it to do more with less, you would appoint an Engineer/Project Manager?

"...bachelor of science degree in electrical science from the United States Naval Academy in 1968, and a master of science in systems management from the University of Southern California in 1977"

If you look at what that degree entails... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_management

Congratu-freaking-lations.. your an IT Admin, Oh wait, that degree makes him an IT MANAGER, and we all know what the BOFH does to those.

"...He flew more than 100 sorties into North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, in the A-6A Intruder..."

Congratulations, you have shown a skill for not being shot down/Blown up... that has nothing to do with managing complex engineering projects. It just means you managed to dodge enemy fire, and not die. Your still doing better than John McCain though.

"...logged over 680 hours in space..."

Congrats, you survived NASA's rocket program, and didn't die

As for the technical assignments

Astronaut Office Safety Officer; - They put him on a rocket, it didn't blow up, therefore its safe.

Technical Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations; - He fetched him coffee and scotch, helped him trim the budget, and bumlick senators

Special Assistant to the Director of the Johnson Space Center; - See above

Astronaut Office Liaison to the Safety Reliability and Quality Assurance Directorates of the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Kennedy Space Center; - Middle manager between the Astronaughts and the Bass.

Chief of the Safety Division at JSC; - Middle manager charged with making sure fewer astronauts burned up on re entry

Lead Astronaut for Vehicle Test and Checkout at the Kennedy Space Center; - Senior Crash test dummy.

Assistant Deputy Administrator, NASA Headquarters... - He was a middle manager, most likely in cahoots with the bean counters.

In summary, I see NO project management, engineering, or serious science in his background, I see a middle manager, who licked all the right bumholes.

So..

Russian email scammers have just bought facebook, and ALL the userdata contained there in ?

What if the Russian company bought FB, and was not restrained by US Data privacy laws?

I can hear the marketing and spam companies creaming their pants right now...

Paris.. just because.

Hmmm

@Andreas Johansson

I'll be putting my money in to Russian EMP industries then :D

Mines the one with the "Turing cops" Application form in the pocket :D

So many reasons...

to arrest Wacki Jaqui... but that would lead to a Prisoner style scenario...... hose downs, cat fights, shiving...

Must... bleach.... brain..

Dun dun dundadun

Aroooooo ! Werewolves of china... Arooooo !

Just doesn't sound the same.... give them British passports, and a visit to the UK :D

Yeah, I'll go, mines the one with the Warren Zervon CD in the pocket.

*deep breath*

*Warning- Bile filed content to follow*

"The caucus claims digital technology "holds the promise of a golden age for movies, music, video games and other forms of entertainment" and are key to American economic growth"

And why the fuck should other countries care about growth of a US industry?

I am sick and tired of studio's fucking complaining about this stuff, when piracy isn't anywhere near the cause of their issues;

The rampant abuse of IP to prevent smaller startups getting into the industry. - They buy a script/rights to a book and then just sit on it. They don't develop it, they buy it and sit on it, just to stop their competitors making, and to stop smaller players entering the market. They sue anyone who wants to a make a movie, that even sounds close to any of their scripts.

The deep commitment to churn out remake after remake after remake, after fucking remake. - Look at next years release list so far. Its all remakes, and reboots.

Their own stupid accounting system. - Look up "Hollywood Accounting"

Their flat refusal to join the modern market and embrace multiple distrubution models. - I want to be able to see a movie on DVD or on download, when it comes out, not sit in a cinema with a bunch of braindead, clueless, noisy, phone-using fucktards, and be charged $15 for the privilidge.

So what they are saying is....

When geeks DO get their end away, they do it right, and make sure the job is done proper.

But Fitness tards still get all the girls.

So when it comes to Looks Vs Brains, the girls are as deep as a toddlers pool.

They can have mind blowing satisifying sex with a geek, or a sad assed, pathetic shag with a hotbod. It seems that most of the time they choose the hotbod.

So really the study is a backhanded way of calling most women shallow, looks obsessed tarts?

Awesome, someone got paid for that :D

Paris, she is about as deep as most girls get.

Let me fix that....

"And it will have its own dedicated Single Point of Failure with two links to the power grid for redundancy."

If you have 1 sub station, it doesn't matter HOW many links you have past that, if the sub station shits-itself-and-dies, then its a moot point. It would be better to have two small sub stations, on opposite sides of the building, each with 2 links to the outside world. THAT would be proper redundancy. I never said it was cheap, but it would be close to failsafe as you could get.

So really, to take out an entire data centre, you throw a firebomb into the sub station, and watch the sparks.....

Mines the one with the molotov cocktail in the pocket.....

Back in the day...

Coffee Enema's were all the rage (cold coffee of course) Rumor has it, that the Royal's enjoyed their health benefits too.

Until the figured out that the coffee was sucking the K and Na from their systems, and causing more issues than they solved.

Too much Caffene is BAD kids ! ... No matter which way you injest it.

I allow myself 1 Red Bull /Day.

I don't drink coffee, and maybe 3L of Coke a week.

I hate oursourcing.. not indian guys

Out sourcing to india annoys the crap out of me, because of the low skill set, and service you get from the guys in the call centre. I only call them when I have a serious problem, and I always end up talking to the local guys anyway.

That being said, I have worked on deployment projects with some fantastic indian guys, as soon as you re assure them that its ok to have an opinion, show some brains, and take charge, they are brilliant. (Ratan, your still awesome mate ! :D )

I have worked with ex call centre outsourced guys, and its the environment they work in that does it. They are pretty much given a shock collar, and stopped from showing anything approaching brains.

Outsourced call centres are all about call volume per worker.. not resolution time or customer happiness.

Quick !

Everyone in France start torrenting Linux Distro's, creative commons, and your own licensed work !

When the bastards cut you off, sue them into the ground, with complete logs of everything you file shared, showing NO piracy at all.

Make the bastards pay the court costs, as it's their fault for not doing their homework.

Wash, lather, repeat, until bastards are broke.

I am hoping the French upper house has some brains, and s**tcans this bill.

Meh

It's a testing thing, I don't pay for my bandwidth anyway (Thankyou cluess neighbour with wireless), and I have auto updates set to notify.

I installed W7RC1, on my crappy 18 month old lenovo, and I have to say, I am pleasantly suprised. After an update to grab all the drivers it needed, it functions fine, it's responsive and does what it should.

I am not a hater of an OS, I am a firm believer in "Horses for courses*" But after the crapfest that was Vista, W7 is looking good so far.

*Horses allocated as follows;

* Department mainly draws pretty pictures, or develops synergies - Mac

* Need a reliable, web facing server, that will be exposed to the Net - Linux

* Office work, games, protected by 7 firewalls and IDS's - MS boxes

Silk ?

I remember reading somewhere that silk had very good anti fire properties, as well as a very high tensile strength, hence why they used it in parachutes back in the day?

So maybe we can get the pilots into some new silky underthings, and prehaps have a calender, and model show, to offset the cost to the goverenment?

Mines the one with the Victoria's secret catalouge in the pocket..

*Yawn*

OhNoes! Rootkit Explotz!!1!

Oh wait.. it requires physical access to the machine, to boot it off another device (USB, Floppy, CD etc)

Unless its remotely execute-able, I am less alarmed.

I am sure this is of concern to your high level government types, who are prone to leaving their laptops on trains and buses, but really doesn't rate that high.

Although, I could see a Sneakers ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/ ) like situation, where you sneak into a bank, boot the work stations off a CD, Install the rootkit, and sniff, then dump out of the system.

But that would require a pretty retarded IT department, who didn't have a super duper locked down firewall... oh wait..

Ponder this

I blame Vista for this... and before you start egging me, let me explain...

While Vista was/is a steaming pile of crap for many reasons, in a lot of respects it was hardened against malware, to a better extent than XP was.

Because Vista WAS such a steaming pile of tripe, people held onto their XP boxes much longer, and thus gave a greater pool of boxes to infect with the plague.

Now that Win 7 has come out, and actually looks like it has legs, hopefully we will start seeing all the older XP boxes start to get replaced, and a slight drop in the pool of pwned machines.

I know I am dreaming, but its nicer in my dream world, now I will go back to getting my massage from Keria Knightley, and Kate Moss.

Mines the one with the Win 7 RC 1 DVD in the pocket...

Naaww.. Hedley

@Hedley

The first people in the chair catapult should be the marketing team for Vista, the dev team was doing what they were told.

We could have marketing Skeet shooting ! It would lower the head count (Literally) AND improve morale !

Wow !

Broadcom are still around ?

I remember using thier god-awful kit back in 2001, with firmware that was buggier than Jane Goody's corpse, (oops too soon?) And they had the sheer gall to make you pay for upgrades to fix said bugs.

Paris, because she would be cheaper to woo..

Wow...

I used to do IT for a certain pivate hospital group whom I will not mention (But who share the name of a famous english chef) .

We ran gen tests once a month, for each site, without fail. Everything critical had its own battery attached, so in the even that the gen set didn't fire up, we could flick back to the mains, and no one would notice.

There is no excuse for a multi million dollar data centre NOT doing this gen-set testing once a god damn month, especially if they are confident that their UPS system is up to par.

Here is a really easy system guys...

Step 1) Flick off mains

Step 2) See if the gen system kicks off

If Gen system fails

Then Turn mains back on AND fix gen system

Repeat until gen system works.

If your power systems are designed correctly, you should be able to do this, with no one the wiser, as your UPS will cover the 30 seconds or so it takes for your gen systems to notice the loss of power.

Generators can't just sit there until you need them. They are complex machines that need monthly testing and checking.

Can I have my multi zero consultancy fee please?

Mines the one with the pliers and the voltmeter in the pocket....

Prank with goats and sheep

Off topic, but a friend of mine told me the most brilliant prank, played at a school for muck up.

They released 4 sheep into the school, and spray painted each sheep with a number.

1, 2, 3, 5

The School spent 2 days looking for number 4, before the students owned up to how many there actually were.

Mines the one made of damp wool.....

Uni ? Pah!

My story is similar..

I graduated in 1996, with TER of about 50 (Australian Uni System) So I was middle of the road..

I took a year off and worked, to save for my uni days..

I started Uni in 98, enrolling in a BSc (Chemistry). I really loved it, I have always beena huge science nut, and I really liked the course.

The problem I ran into, was despite the hype, really I had three career paths.. Uni Lecturer... Science teacher, or research.

This is back in 98-99, when the Howard government cut the R&D taxbreak for all companies, and killed science research in Australia, outside of Govt funded places.

So on good advice from working scientists, I dropped the Chem course, kicked about and did a Diploma Course in Networking, IT was my other great love.

I never looked back. I have been able to travel the world, and earn enough money now at 30, to make most science teachers (my age) cry.

Unless your doing Law or Med, or something of high study level, go for a more practical course, or become a tradie, plumbers, electrican's and the like, will always be in demand.

my 0.02

@Mike

What does the US actually produce these days ?

They outsourced most everything to China and India, and the few industries they do have *cough*car*cough* are in the process of going titsup.

The US has gutted all their manufactuing and service industries, which seems to be at the heart of their debt problem. They don't produce anything, just just buy it in with increasingly crappier US dollars. Its sad that I see the UK and Australia (yes I am an Aussie) following them down the same road to the bankrupt cul de sac. I am happily up here in Canada, and staying here.

I saw your UK budget, and I really do feel for you, I expect our will be just as hairbrained, but at least we will have a faster fibre system than you.

All the Yanks produce these days is debt, and ways to loose wars slowly..

Mine's the one with "Made in China" on the label..

So ?

If the app is able to execute code, thats all well and good, but as long as the app can't make Admin level calls, where is the issue?

If this were on an MS box, I would be more worried, but because its on a Linux box, its unlikely they will have the ability to exploit the box, unless they have secondary exploit to give themselves greater access.

I suspect there is some bias on the Secunia team, to try and equate Linux exploits on the same level as MS box pwnage..

Paris, she knows all about being exploited

Hmm a new defence plan ?

Maybe they are trying to harness the success of Google, and Ballmer's chair throwing ability, and create some sort of high velocity, chair based super weapon.

It could be the new US super weapon ! Every time Google succeeds at something, they tell Ballmer, and he can take out an enemy spy sat!

@Wize

Bastard ! Thats another keyboard destroyed !! Red Bull is so hard on them

Paris, because she loves a good pork sausage

South park reference...

Flying pig flu ?!?!

no !!

It has aspects of pig, bird AND human flu there fore its....

*drumroll*

It's ManBirdPig !!... flu

Only Al Gore can save us now !

On the back page

It's has noticed that Apple has retained the services of the Fat Lady Singing Troupe, to be deployed on short notice in the next 12 months.

Steve, is slowly and painfully carking it methinks, and Apple PR are keeping him out of the spotlight to calm investors in this rough economic period.

Paranoia, the real life game

You seem unhappy citizen.. Would you like some drugs?

Happiness is mandatory! Unhappiness is treason!

Our scans indicate that you are partaking in subversive activities, and you have been flagged as a terrorist, please stay still while we execute you.

Your Friend, the Computer err UK government

If you Don't get the reference

look here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)

And here

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/5/10/11618/3836

Staying in Canada

Yep, glad I left, and I am staying over here.

Australia just keeps throwing up more and more reasons for me not to come back.

The sad thing is, BOTH parties (labor and "liberal") want this filter. Liberal party has only ever objected on technical grounds, never on the idea of a filter.

Thats the distrubing part.

So if anyone wants my spot in Australia, your more than welcome to it.

Mine's the one with the Canadian citizenship papers in the pocket.

IBM... Naah bro

We dropped IBM at the last position I was in, because as soon as they outsourced the parts manufacture to China, the server quality dropped like a rock.

Servers that would either fail out of the box with bad controllers, and broken mainboards. Or servers that would run fine, until you put them under load, then crap out consistantly.

We swapped to HP, and all those issues disappeared. The HP's were similar in price, and in some cases cheaper.

Even if they were a bit more pricey, it was worth it for the complete lack of problems we had.

HP even offered to buy our faulty IBM boxes off us, if we replaced them whith HP's.

IBM reps still come around and take us out to lunch, and we always promise to start buying IBM, when the quality improves. Still yet to happen .

Yay !

I am happy about this, because its one of the rare instances that the IP system works properly.

For those who are un aware, the background is this;

CSIRO develops the core technologies of WiFi, and offers it as a standard, on the agreement that they will patent it, and licence it back for a small fee.

Big business agrees

*time passes*

CSIRO contacts big business, and reminds them of the agreement, to which big businesses reply with a dismissive hand wave. They failed to uphold their end of the agreement, and they were making money hand over fist with the new kit.

CSIRO politely reminds them for 5 years, that they owe them money, to which big business replies with the same dismissive hand wave

CSIRO unleashes the lawyers. This is a big risk for CSIRO, as they are a small organization, and it could be an expensive case.

Big Business, suddenly realising they are in the poo, and that they owe CSIRO a LOT of money now, attempt to have the patent invalidated via various means.

It seems they have now realized they have been caught with their d**ks in the cash drawer, and rather than have the CSIRO slam the drawer, they have settled.

This will be a boon for science, as CSIRO comes up with some neat stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRO#Notable_Inventions

They ran the 4th ever computer in the world (On display in Melbourne Museum)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRAC

This isn't a case of patent trolling. This is a case of an organization following all the rules, and big businesses trying to shaft them on it.

Remove your head from your A**..

Geeze, Ballmer must have been really busy throwing chairs, not to have seen this coming. The fact he can't understand why Oracle did this, truely shows how thick he is.

Apart from giving Oracle a buttload of IP, it protects its Java interests, and gives it a top to bottom solution for business. They can provide the OS, the hardware, the apps, and the support all in one spot. Oracle is very smart about making the most of its aquistions, once the aquisitions stop thrashing and bend over and accept it of course.

I never understood why MS feels the need to "F'ing bury Google"

MS is going to try and go toe to toe with Google, and loose. They have NEVER done search very well. I think Google's long term plan is to take the Viet cong approch, and watch MS bleed themselves dry.

Forget about the search market MS, and concentrate on doing things you do well. I expect to see "Ballmer chair airways" launched very soon.

Mines the one with the "MySQL for dummies" book in the pocket

Devil is in the details

Well I am a vocal critic of the net filter plan by our idiot Comms minister, but if you look at the details, this is not a way to sneak filtering it.

What this is about, is breaking the back of our incumbent monolopy (Telstra), and updating our infrastructure to something close to the 21st century.

Telstra owns all the last mile copper, and has been abusing thay monolopy something awful. Now what the government has done, is sidelined them completely, while laying new fibre which we badly need. Every other ISP and provider is cheering at the announcement.

The plan is to provide a wholesale fibre backbone to all comers. It's still up to individual ISP's as to what filtering, (if any) they want to implement.

Conroy's Great barrier firewall is dead in the water, or so we hope. If he has to do a deal with Senator Fielding, The Senator for Religious wankers, to get the thing through the senate, then things may change, but I doubt that.

Rudd has the support of the greens, and the one lone independant they need, won't be hard to win over.