Posts by Mark 65 3439 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
i don't quite agree with your comments about 500GB being enough. Certainly is for web perusers and emailers but anyone who has hopped on the HD bandwagon in the last couple of years and bought a camcorder will have noticed that they piss through disk storage like no tomorrow. HD camcorders are probably what keeps large disk sales going for everyday users.
It only took utter fiscal devastation and the near bankrupting of the country and all in it for common sense to finally prevail. Why wouldn't they look for a "good enough" solution in the first place rather than something highly bespoke? It's not like they're in an IT arms-race, only a pissing contest with neighbouring authorities.
Not battery life, battery levels - as in the indications you get on the Mac-end. If you've ever had the pleasure of owning one of these things you will notice after a period of ownership that the battery level reading becomes highly erratic. Brand new batteries like the ones it came with and within 5 minutes they're reading 85%, then the next day it's down to 60%, then 2 days after it's 20%, then back up to 70+%. It goes all over the shop. F*cking hopeless is the best review I could give it.
"400kg is well withing the range of a fork-lift.... Maybe you have a REAL problem with the idea (as it is the only viable solution I have seen)?"
Doesn't deal with how these garages charge the bastards though does it? 32A times how many packs once more established?
Anyone seen any articles on how much upgrade would be required to the UK power infrastructure to cope with these if they become really popular? I'm guessing a fair bit for peak draw and that'll go on everyone's bill.
Isn't the main fuse in the UK home the canister fuse supplied/maintained by the electricity board which is rated at 100A - I know because one went in a friends how when I was there (dodgey wiring job) and they came out and replaced it.
Are you referring to some kind of safety switch etc on a RCB switchboard? Maybe new builds have a different supply but a lot of post-wars have the 100A canister.
If you mean the Liberals will lose because of their opposition to the NBN then I think you're wrong. What I think the Australian Public will want is for the Nation's flood damage to be sorted out before people start trying to buy votes with a poxy fast connection to Farmer Giles. "Fast connection or all your local infrastructure back working mate?". Jesus, priorities people. Has everyone just been taken over by the "a fast connection will somehow make my futile worthless existence become utopian" fever?
Wouldn't the correct way to go about this be to hook up fibre to the cabinet then see if it's worth doing the final bit (or even just delaying it until a better time)? Especially when Mother Nature has just invoked all her ire at you.
"What's more, Google is not receiving any money to list a website as part of their general results. It's an indexing service - it's free."
Err, no. You see they sell ads, and adwords etc in a supposedly fair auction then got and stick their own services at the top of the search. Whilst I would expect to see Googles own services listed somewhere on the search page (maybe to one side?) I don't expect them to cheat/juice the results when they are also charging people for the ability to get higher up the rankings. They are a monopoly in search and by doing this they are abusing that monopoly and even had a VP admit it publicly. Your rant about them not forcing you to do anything is utterly besides the point.
Are you from the other side of the pond? I only ask because the failure of the Government over there to deal with monopolists and the outright fear and hatred of "regulation" usually yields such "why don't the EU keep their noses out" type posts on such matters. There are those that "get it" but an awful lot that don't. I'm not a great fan of regulation but I appreciate it when it's used to level the playing field between monopolists and their fucked-over, deceived, and abused customers.
"The desktop PC is on the way out - you don't need all that peripheral space now that flash memory devices have replaced floppies and CDs"
DVDs are still alive and well though. Not much chance of archiving a photo album off onto flash memory.
What is the peripheral space you refer to? It can't be the screen because you later say you need a decent size screen. It can't be the physical footprint as you don't have to by a tower or other huge lump when you get a desktop - motherboards come in many sizes. I have an XPC kicking around that takes up half the room of a printer and an iMac that is essentially screen-only in size.
Perhaps you can elaborate?
I agree that most of the remaining households are likely that way because they really couldn't give a rat's arse about the internet.
Governments and Corporates that try to appeal to the currently fashionable "must have everything, 5 minute concentration span, is it on Facebook?" brigade will have to put up with it.
I can simply summarise your inciteful posting as thus:
Australian retailers screw Australian customers because they can. That's the way it's always been and they don't want it to change.
When I first moved here I never believed the "small market, big distance" argument for the pricing as it always seemed they were gouging because they could. A perfect example from Harvey Norman was a Harmony One multi-controller that was priced at $399. I told my mate he could pick one up in Australia for around $200 online. He approached the sales guy and got a deal of $220 (he didn't buy it). That's a $180 discount for just asking and knowing the internet prices to force the deal. Mom and Pop would be tooled for the extra $180 though. Bastards.
The man Turnbull has a point.
"The basic problem, he claimed, was that "there’s been no case made or evidence made that there is any benefit from having a speed higher than what we can get now in many of our cities, at least, from ADSL 2+"
There isn't really much use for the super speeds on offer. I know there's the build it and they will come mentality but an eye must always be kept on cost. Also you need to take into account that Australia is the size of Western Europe with 21 million people living in it. What it needs is...
1. Competition - prices are good when there are multiple providers, predictably shit where there are not.
2. Reasonable speeds to the populous. I can get a 17Mbit/1Mbit connection but at a high cost and only from one provider and only over cable. A more basic NBN offering say 50/10 would be great as you have a basic LAN speed if the latency it low. Also people outside the major hubs get screwed. I'm only 4km from the CBD of a major city and can only get a good connection via cable.
That's it. Parts of the NBN work - the idea of a Government pipe that's offered to all providers at the same price works. The fact that it's effectively owned by meddling politicians doesn't.
Turnbull is on the money in this debate but the Luddites are often the populous who don't understand that bigger isn't always better and would like to bankrupt themselves in the process.
On the other points you are quite right - since moving to Australia I have never been f*cked from so many angles by so many entities. It is corrupt and it stinks.
"They know the US is sitting on a mountain of debt and it is just a matter of time before it pops and they have to massively cut their borrowing and start living within their means."
and that debt is largely owned by the Chinese so they could just not pay them. What they going to do, nuke them?
"These stealth fighters are not intended to fight US planes because the US is far too scared to ever go into battle with China."
I'd say that largely cuts both ways.
"The Economist recently [4 Dec 2010] had an article about the ascension of China and the decline of the USA. It's conclusion was that China is perfectly capable of expressing its economic dominance without the need or desire to go nose-to-nose with anyone else. It knows it has time on its side and if the worst did happen it could just unload its trillions of dollars of american debt and screw them into the ground economically rather than militarily. Though there's no need for that when nature is taking its course."
The Economist reads more and more like a glorified red-top publication as each day passes. Personally I'd like to see this play out. Ditch the US's debt in it's entirety eh? How? To sell there must be a buyer, even if it's for precious little. Say you even could offload, and say you could even screw them into the ground. I think the rest of the World's economy then goes to shit at the same time and who do the Chinese sell their cheap knock-off crap to then?
The whole thing is a red-herring as both parties need each other and that's how the debt ownership came about - the Chinese had to keep financing the US consumer so that they'd keep buying their shit so they could then build empty cities and move people out of the country to the cities etc etc. It's estimated (I believe from this same oft-arserag publication) that GDP growth less than 6% (or thereabouts) constitutes an effective recession for the Chinese. Check for yourself how their economy went when the US went down. They have their own financial issues don't you worry.
Like many other countries China is rapidly garnering Western tastes particularly the "money-grabbing bastard" ones. If their runaway investment in the property market is anything to go by they could quite easily develop their own Wall Street tendencies and piss it all back down the drain.
"the only reason China has done this is so it can sell a bucket load of them to the US for a fraction of the cost of an F22."
Nice theory, highly topical with US outsourcing (and I'm sure you're being satirical) but I doubt it. This thing just looks like yet another cheap shitty Chinese copy of a Western design and its only saving grace is that they can probably knock it out by the thousand and have ample pilots (or meatsacks at least) to fly them. Missiles to knock it out the sky are probably still cheaper though even at Western prices.
"Although the Liberal Party have declared themselves opposed to Labor’s plans for an internet filter, they have also displayed more Luddite tendencies, including fierce opposition to the National Broadband Network (NBN), as well as a general inclination towards moral conservatism."
Most politicians are luddites but in this instance they have fierce opposition to the NBN because it is due to cost around $43bn which is quite a lot of money. Especially so when one of your States is under water, another is bankrupt and there's probably a lot of other issues to fix first before guaranteeing a lightning fast connection to skippy in the bush.
The reality is that for the most part the big brave NBN promised by Labour was a last ditch bit of vote grabbing as it need not be as expensive or extravagant given the limiting factor will be the bandwidth off of the island and the fact that no bastard will use it given you can already get a 30Mbit connection in most cities (where a very large chunk of the populous live). The signs from the techno backwater of Tasmania weren't exactly glowing with plenty being unable to connect reliably, speeds at ADSL levels and them having to mandate the connection to the NBN as opt-out because nobody was bothering.
The glass in Australia is not typically the pint it is the schooner (or pot when you wander into the more redneck/good old boy areas). The pint is becoming more popular but the schooner is definitely more common. Go to Queensland and see how many joints sell pints - only really the English/Irish themed bars.
Amen to that (standard sizes of pint and half for the ladies). Australia does not even have a standard size for a schooner - it varies by state. I've even been served a different sized schooner in the same pub depending on whether thee is frequenting the public bar or the other one - a legacy sized one I believe. For some beers you get a "glass" - I mean WTF kind of measure is that? It costs the same or sometimes more than a schooner too. I been served a draught beer in the following sized glasses that I can remember - 285ml (half), 330ml, 385ml, 425ml, 570ml (pint). It's shit and it leads to customers getting f*cked over. Willets is obviously a prick.
Maybe, maybe not. As the various Linux distros have shown, without having a dedicated team working on look, feel, standardisation and usability of the UI you can end up with some real shit. I like Linux and Ubuntu is definitely getting there but it has shown that open source software needs real leadership and direction. Outside of starting it off and getting their hooks into your data I'm not so sure Google gives a toss, which then leaves the handset manufacturers and networks that can only think of themselves. I know there's some club/group/committee or whatever that deals with Android but that's probably not enough.
The advantage that I'm afraid Apple has is that they know shiny touchy feely hardware and UI sells (whether it's great or not is your own opinion) and because they control the lot it's why they're ahead.
Now that doesn't mean I'm advocating that Android won't get market share as choice and cost will sort that out but I don't believe number of developers means much either - just look at windows.
They both need to do some innovation in the app stores though - too much shite to sift through in both.
Guarantee it'll be using one of those shitty green power drives to keep consumption low. The first hard drive failure I've had in 14 years in IT came via a My Book drive fitted with one of these. Split the case open and connected another drive -> case worked fine. Put the green drive in 2 other enclosures -> drive fired up then cycled down, repeat ad-nauseum. Piece of shit.
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