Posts by Tac Eht Xilef 129 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2010
"He's been unable to carry out the Prime Directive of most telecommunications ministers, the at-all-costs protection of Telstra ..."
Oh, I dunno about that - Telstra is the big winner out of Turnbull's reversal of the NBN rollout. And it's been evident for years that Telstra doesn't actually want to be in the communications business - they want to be in the 'charging people for communications' business.
Osborne did well at first in the government/corporate world, thanks to "buy Australian" pressures & high IBM prices. However, I suspect the typical government 90/180 day terms didn't help their cash-flow at all...
"... “Australians are not known for their preference to buy products via telephone or mail-order catalogues.”
Dell changed that, selling PCs at prices local manufacturer couldn’t match even though it was shipping them in from Malaysia. Before long, Australian buying habits changed, ..."
From memory, that preference almost smothered Dell's local ops in the cradle too. After a year or 2 of poor sales the local management convinced a very reluctant Michael Dell that they needed showrooms in Australia. They eventually opened a few - just in time to be too late for the latest round of government & big corporate purchasing.
The showrooms struggled on for a couple more years, but by then IBM & others had sewn up government & corporate sales & leasing which mostly killed that market. Local computer shops had sprung up everywhere and computers were becoming common in the big-box retailers, which meant the casual buyer could head out on a Saturday morning & come back with a new computer.
Eventually Dell did get a bit of a foothold in the gov't/corporate market, but they never approached anything like the powerhouse they were in US sales.
>"El Reg can't help but think this idea is somewhat less viable than mass delivery-by-unmanned-aerial-vehicles, as humans will surely realise that the pittance they'll get from the company won't be worth the time or fuel."
Really? I think it's more viable.
Ask yourself which is more likely:
* cargo & battery capacity, as well as self-navigation & object-avoidance technology, will advance fast enough that drones will soon be able to quickly, accurately, & reliably deliver reasonably-sized packages within metropolitan areas, OR
* some people will do anything to earn magic beans & get items on their Amazon wishlists for "free"?
>"We had trouble nitpicking the science - Weir did his homework, with a little glitch about RTGs' dangers and something about breathing mixtures caught by a scuba diver."
Having discussed the book with a few different people from a few different science/engineering domains - who, I will say, all enjoyed it despite its several faults - the biggest complaint seemed to be 'I was happy to let the science be slightly iffy - right up until he got some fundamental of my domain wrong, and it all fell apart!".
For me it was the Arduino-level understanding of electricity / electronics displayed, which lead to some consideration of the thermodynamics issues it raised, which then started the whole thing unravelling...
The one site that years ago broke the camel's back & drove me to permanently install an adblocker (and later NoScript & a cookie manager) was none other than theregister.co.uk.
I got sick of waiting quite literally for 2 or 3 minutes (on an ADSL link!) for DoubleClick to wake up and serve their shit just so the page would render. Installed AdBlock, and I haven't looked back since.
Sorry guys - love your content, but that's when & why you lost me as a revenue-generating reader...
^This^
Division 144 of the GST act has always stated that taxi drivers are required to be GST registered regardless of turnover, or even whether they supply other goods or services (e.g. you can't run a low-turnover business selling cat pictures with a sideline in taxi services and claim exemption under the $75k limit), and several other determinations have clarified that the same applies specifically to services that are 'similar to and essentially in competition with the taxi industry'.
i.e. Uber drivers are required to be GST registered & remit GST payments because they compete with taxis, but wedding limo drivers aren't because they don't.
I'm guessing that this it's all part of the Government's plan to drive people to VoIP & companies like Skype etc. - then try and hit those overseas companies for the sweet, sweet GST...
As cunning plans go it's not the brightest, but it fits right in with everything else they've mumbled & grumbled about.
Google-sponsored "digital rights" group the Electronic Frontier Foundation...
I guess IHBT but really, I expected more from the media-sponsored "online magazine" The Register...
(Hell, I don't even agree with or like the EFF very much - and yet you've caused me to stand up just a little bit for them. Well done!)
Upvoted - but Telstra stopped maintaining it's copper network well before that. They'd pretty much given up on it long before I left ~10 years ago, and were doing only absolutely essential maintenance e.g. repairing/replacing sections when there were no working spare pairs & they'd run out of even broken pairs to rig.
I was saying way back then that their plan was obviously to let it rot then find some way of getting paid to fix it. Looks to me like they've managed to do that quite nicely, and even get paid twice for it...
SamuraiMark, your logic is both impeccable and unassailable, and your eloquence has touched my heart and moved me to tears.
Now, when you finish your latest round of self-'congratulation' (in about 10 seconds) the tissues are in aisle 3, and I'm sure mom won't notice if you grab some clean socks too (aisle 5). Wristguards to help with the inevitable RSI can be found up the back of the store in the computer & AV section...
Funny thing, though - the old Active Desktop was actually a reasonably good idea that had useful potential. Arguably the most innovative thing MS had ever done, in terms of UI & general-purpose utility of the desktop.
Implementation sucked, though, and coming right at the time that IE holes were being revealed at the rate of about one a second it was a security nightmare...
The first thing that you've got to understand about Turnbull is that he's a c*nt.
The second thing that you've got to understand about Turnbull is that he's a self-interested c*nt.
The third thing that you've got to understand about Turnbull is that he's a very patient self-interested c*nt - he's got a long-term plan, and he knows that people have short memories, so all he's got to do is be the most acceptable man at the right time and he's in. Last time was too soon - but next time...
In short, he's the Liberal Party's smarter, more self-centred version of Kevin Rudd...
Obviously you've never tried your suggested method of triangulating the source of sounds yourself.
Utrasound? Easy.
Audio frequencies above ~1KHz? Fairly easy.
LF sound above a few 100's of Hz? Getting difficult.
LF sound from 20Hz to a few 100's of Hz? Bloody difficult.
Subsonic/infrasonic? Fuckin' difficult (excuse my French).
It's also very difficult to triangulate repetitive signals you don't control (e.g. from rotating blades...) by TDE / TDOA (time-correlation) - you don't know which individual pulses correlate across receivers. Single-shot is much much easier, which is why infrasound triangulation works for detecting unauthorised nuclear tests, avalanches, and (I believe) large artillery emplacements.
How about
"Australia Post's ShopMate: cheaper than eBay's Global Shiping Program.
Just..."
@P. Lee: a lot of places ship UK->Eire->Aus; for some things at least it's cheaper than Royal Mail.
(Cut-price logistics is a dark and mysterious art - I've had stuff that's been shipped from Shenzen to Sweden then posted from Malmö to Brisbane, because apparently sometimes the cheapest way from A to B is via Q...)
>"wristwatches became popular during WWI when GIs worked out that it was much more effective to check the time (to synchronize military movements) on their wrist vs. pulling out a pocket watch."
Apart from them being favoured by British officers (and therefore not GIs) before the time of the Boer War (and therefore 20 years or more before WWI), you're absolutely correct.
"One copper told me years ago the reason they had not implemented a computerized system was because paper is tangible"
Well that, and mailing in a paper cheque also gives them access to your name in it's most human form (signature), your true essence (DNA from licking the envelope or shed skin cells), and your trapped breath (the air sample inside the envelope).
Traditionally, in witchcraft, any one of those things could be used to control or harm you or your family...
To quote the bitcoin folks themselves:
"All Bitcoin transactions are public, traceable, and permanently stored in the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin addresses are the only information used to define where bitcoins are allocated and where they are sent. These addresses are created privately by each user's wallets. However, once addresses are used, they become tainted by the history of all transactions they are involved with. Anyone can see the balance and all transactions of any address. Since users usually have to reveal their identity in order to receive services or goods, Bitcoin addresses cannot remain fully anonymous."
> "So bitcoins are traceable? Well that's great news for the exchanges that got knocked off....."
You might like to look at how they happened:
Ignoring the cases where bitcoins were destroyed & nobody realised any value, most were "move magic beans from other wallets to yours, grab cash & run before anyone notices". The more sophisticated were "make magic beans disappear from other wallets, make them again & put them in yours, grab cash & run before anyone notices". In both cases, the weak point in traceability is the "grab cash & run" bit - just like with real world dollars/pounds/renmibi/shekles. The equivalent of faking your VAT statements or not declaring your income...
Of course, you could always live like Lee from The Magnificent Seven - sitting on your big pile of bitcoins, and never being able to spend them...
"Considered they are virtually untraceable, I can't see many people declaring them to the tax office."
Untraceable? Whuh? The whole point of bitcoin is that it is traceable. By anybody. Publicly...
At best, all you can do is try and stymie that traceabilty by playing a shell game with disposable bitcoin addresses and wallets. Which starts looking a lot like tax evasion.
"If it's AAC-HEv2 then 48 kbps is a good compromise and more than sufficient for FM-quality audio."
Really? All the subjective and objective studies - note 'studies', not 'claims' - of HE-AACv2 I've ever seen consistently rank the sound quality @ 64kbps as worse than marginal FM reception, and well below the quality of average FM reception.
On top of that, coming from a country where HE-AACv2 at 48~64kbps is common on DAB+, I can tell you that it sounds like shit for music, and is distinctively noticeable even on speech.
"Broadcasting Services Act, the Telecommunications Act, the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act, and the Radiocommunications Act."
I'm reasonably familiar with all of those, and the funny thing is that - apart from some changes to the second by the last Labor gov't to bring it into line with other existing consumer legislation - I can't think of a single onerous thing in them that isn't a product of the previous Liberal government.
"on more than one occaision shops have told me that they dont have my item in stock and get it for me in a few days."
A few days? You're lucky!
I've not long come back from an attempt at buying some stuff (electronics bits & pieces) with about 1/2 of what I was after. For the other 1/2, I was told - quite seriously - "we can order those in for you, they should be here in about two weeks, but maybe after Christmas". I came back, ordered them from a US wholesale/retail supplier, and they're already in the hands of Fedex - I expect them to be delivered to my door on Friday, maybe Monday.
The price? Including shipping, it comes to 1/3rd of what the locals wanted. Genuine quality parts too, not the random chinese knockoffs the local mob sells. And I'm kicking myself that I didn't think of ordering them as samples from the manufacturers; it would've been free (including delivery in the same timeframe).
And it's not just tech bits, or overseas sales vs GST that's hurting local retailers - my parter was chasing some new clothes last week, knew exactly what she wanted (a local label), and hit the high-end stores. Again, nothing in stock, two weeks or more until they get their next order in. She ordered them direct from the label's website Tuesday lunchtime; the courier turned up Wednesday morning. Price? Several hundred dollars, but still ~1/3rd cheaper than in-store retail price.
Local retailers have many problems with being competitive, and some of them aren't even their own fault - I'm looking at you, ridiculous retail rents - but shit, if you're expensive and don't carry stock then the GST threshold on imports is the least of your problems...
"So are cigarette cases illegal in Oz?"
No - just ones that contain or mimic any tobacco product branding or advertisements. Oh, and you can't give away a 'free gift' with a cigarette purchase, or sell cigarettes with the plain packaging covered up.
(an Australian smoker who's only problem with the legislation is the government's hypocrisy in continuing to pocket the sweet, sweet tax money. Ban or ban not, there is no try...)
Whatever happened to the open-source credo? Namely:
"If you have a very strong desire to see a particular feature implemented, your odds of success of ultimately having it become a part of the tool are dramatically increased if instead of asking for it to be implemented, you check out a copy of the latest source code tree, code it yourself (even if slightly incomplete or somewhat buggy), and submit it for peer review by the existing developer pool. Other technical parties are far more likely to help you complete a worthwhile code enhancement that you've clearly put time and thought into than they are to remotely consider doing what you want from scratch just because you want it."
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