Posts by Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Re: Re: Lost the plot

Cheers Tony,

if I parroted anyone's lies, it was nbn's, not a politician's.

In the longer piece I linked to, I query the logic of the copper remediation fund - so it's not like I am swallowing the FTTN story.

I get that a single FTTP connection can drag the average connection cost up, thereby making FTTP look expensive compared to FTTN. And therefore providing false justification for FTTN.

I'm not sure that's happened - will do some analysis when time permits. Happy to be pointed in the direction of good data. Data matters - lots of feelpinions in this debate.

Ongoing cost of operations/maintenance is tricky. nbn says the copper is in good shape and feels it is fit for use a generation or two past VDSL without replacement, or with possible supplanting by fibre to the kerb. Bill Morrow said this in front of 15 journos. I know that copper maintenance costs are high. Whether the construction cost of FTTP and lower initial maintenance costs would be cheaper than wearing higher copper maintenance, I don't know. Again, good data welcome.

Long story short: I've reported, as faithfully as I can, what happened on one day, noting that it was a media event and that nbn was therefore on safe ground and its best behaviour. We'll keep going on this topic, which is enormous and complex. If you or other readers can help with expertise or data that will advance our knowledge of the story, please do so.

Simon

I do my own stunts. And write my own headlines.

Thanks for being nice ;-)

Re: Re: Chicken & Egg Problem

"Only eight billion ..."

That's the bit I choke on. That's eight billion on which interest has to be paid.

Re: Re: The price baloons. To what exactly?

By Jove you're right! I'm not worthy.

Re: The Terrible...

I use OpenOffice here at El Reg. It's fine for the light typing I do - never need formatting here at The Reg. The spreadsheet syntax is close enough to Excel that I can translate. Rubbish for presentations. Apple Keynote for that!

Re: Noah called, he wants his units back.

FWIW that's the unit of measurement Airbus is using ... I suspect because the plane is in the USA

I thought DevOps was "yesterday afternoon's hasty revision to code nugget X goes live everywhere ..... NOW!"

Re: Well done boffins.

The boffins admit this was a pilot study and that further work is needed.

Re: Just wait...

Here's Redmond saying they can't run DOS 5, unless you boot from floppy

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/75226

Yes, you do. And maybe glasses?

Re: 2 Months?

"Upgrade" might be too severe a term: as I understand it, this kind of update is closer to a plugin.

But there's a dance that goes on here: government knows people need lead time, so try to get laws passed with enough time to let developers get their patches done in a timely fashion. Down here in Oz there are working groups between our tax office and software developers to get things sorted.

Boom-tish.

Re: Less drag, not more lift

I thought it was a bit of both. More wing area doesn't hurt. Smaller vortices help by smoothing out the air immediately adjacent to the plane. Together, PROFIT!

Re: Re: Have to admit....

It was. Thanks for pointing out the error. Sub-editor flagellation procedure invoked.

Backup and DR companies would IMHO have every right to squeal if Microsoft bakes ASR into Windows Server 2016. Sure, Windows has always had weak backup utilities. But ASR is a whole new level.

Re: 'password' indeed!

that's just the default password. if you don't change it within three seconds of using a UCS server, you deserve whatever happens to you

You're right. But so am I. The description offered by DLR is that Philae has independent transmitters and receivers. I'm happy calling both radios. But I simplified things because it's kinda painful to get into the nitty gritty. Will tidy up now.

Re: Inevitably....

Unicorns would poop out golden rainbows, all wars would cease, ... stop me if you've heard this one before.

Re: Re: Sometimes you don't mind quite as much

Best ... present ... ever

Re: Judging by the spelling, grammar and punctuation....

And after hitting a 4AM deadline for a Star Wars review...

Re: Re: pre-show ads

Staff were overwhelmed at the screening I attended, and were flat out handing out 3D glasses and tickets. And they ran out of the souvenir cups :-(

Re: Yammer is...

Has it updated lately? Haven't used it for months. When I did it it was a lot closer to Twitter than Facebook.

Re: er ..... what poll ?

Oops. Forgot to turn it on. Did that now

Re: Somewhat disingenuous headline

FWIW I think Tridge just said what he believes, even though it was not all going to be helpful to the cause of accessing the source code for easycount. The presiding officers of the tribunal took his entirely reasonable concession that someone could behave badly with the source and made it a major point in their decision.

Re: 1601?

Splendid idea! Ye Olde VM hath not been up-backed etc ...

No. But you raise a good point: we can all chortle at this stuff, but livelihoods are at risk.

Not don't realise - rather a case of considering that perhaps part of the network was down along with the SAN. But good point on the relevant servers being SAN-dependent.

Re: Re: "exciting as careers in professions like the law"

I'm in Australia so can't comment on the NYC stuff, but the lawyers I know are hard-working, clever people who can wrap their minds around the many nuanced approaches that the law has developed to very complex problems.

yes, it can be a very well-paid profession. As can any job these days that requires high levels of abstract thinking.

Re: It's Telstra

Fair point - we've not been rigorous on cost analysis here.

But IMHO what's the point of going to cloud storage if not for lower costs? Ease of use is lovely, but can also reduce opportunity cost - no more storage admins, complexity becomes someone else's problem.

I do stay in touch with VMware, but it is by no means an authority on cloud storage costs. AWS, Google and Microsoft would be the chief cheerleaders there.

FWIW I defy anyone to get close to their archival storage costs on-premises. And that's despite Amazon Glacier being far from easy to use!

10 internet points for remembering Habbo Hotel. gets me thinking about a story on the first wave of social networks and why they failed

Re: Why the high degree of granularity?

Do you really want to live in a world when things are out by an hour?

Re: Re: Stands to reason

I'd always hoped to get my kids to build their own PCs. By the time they needed them, it had to be a laptop. Bring on Project Ara so they can at least contemplate DIY phones

Not a crime under any AU law I'm aware of. ISPs can do whatever they want AFAIK. But the prospect that small ISPs would just add URLs to their lists and send off a letter to avoid hassle is real, IMHO. And scary.

Not saying Wikipedia is correct, but it says the decompression caused the stabiliser to fall off

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123

Re: Gift or curse?

Madder for sure.

Re: Re: October sure was a funny month...

Fair points here, but by way of explanation there are very few indicators of real-world broadband performance in AU. Netlifx's isn't stellar, but is at least offering us one view. And a view that readers generally respond to rather well.

Let's also remember that Australia has no real net neutrality debate. And Telstra remains a dominant provider ...

Re: Re: wah wah wah...

If there's no story, why do you folks blog the releases?

I do the maintenance releases as a PSA, BTW.

And yes, we do consider you important enough to cover in detail.

Simon

As soon as I put the "no typos" in the headline I knew I would miss a typo somewhere else. And so it came to pass ...

Re: Re: Reboots?

I'm going with misused, but also will have a crack at attempting to expand the definition.

The new movies are absolutely reboots - same universe, same characters, same rules, a different take on things.

I'd argue TnG was just about a reboot. Yes, it was on the same timeline but it deliberately stepped far in enough in time beyond ToS to create a lacuna that allowed for the insertion of entirely new elements. As the movies rolled out, bits of that lacuna were erased to get Kirk and Picard on the same screen. But hey, let's not spend the >>whole<< day arguing about Trek continuity. People might decide we're nerds ...

Find us the data and we'll do it. How about we start with the G20?

Re: Now flood the comms pits with water…

The pits are indeed the pits. Mine were repaired twice last year. But are they the pits everywhere? We don't know. Hence my call for proper data on the state of copper