* Posts by John Angelico

350 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2007

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'There's too much climate change denial on the BBC'

John Angelico
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Missed ...

... your anti-depressants today, did you?

John Angelico
Joke

Deep Thought experiment?

Could it require seven and a half million years for this experiment?

John Angelico
FAIL

@N'n'G

...for failure to dispose of now-useless scripts of Godspell , and lost towel.

Uh, no there it is - wrapped around the Sub-Ether Sens-O-Matic...

HTC loses prelim patent ruling to Apple, takes stock hit

John Angelico
Joke

ALL?

What, you wanna give the winner the WHOLE island?

Before the PC: IBM invents virtualisation

John Angelico
Thumb Up

Finally! Something recognized from YOUR side of the pond...

The Ferranti, later swallowed up by ICT into what became ICL(IIRC).

The GEORGE series of OSs on 1900 range hardware had a lot of stuff that PCs took a long time to catch up on.

Virtual store, flat memory, device independence, workfiles, OS-level file versioning, user management and accounting. Ah, nostalgia: http://www.icl1900.co.uk/g3/index.html.

Aussie carbon tax in actually-makes-sense shocker

John Angelico
FAIL

Sorry, bamalam but

...you are not aware that the capitalists had their arms twisted by governments (see Clinton) to grant housing loans to people who would otherwise not qualify - they were deficient in one or more of the 3 Cs: Character (thriftiness etc), Capacity (to pay back the loan), and Collateral (houses of poor value).

It was not a failure of free market capitalism, but the chickens coming home to roost after market-distorting government interference.

John Angelico
FAIL

Fizackly, Ivan4!!

"he was Prof of Economics at Cambridge and the man who got Keynes into the subject."

That should disqualify him immediately.

Microsoft muzzles IE chief's 'native HTML' nonsense

John Angelico
FAIL

Pinning the tale back on the donkey!

'...the IE "pinning" tool, which lets you drag and drop links to off-visited websites onto you desktop.'

ROFL till my teeth fell out.

OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 had drag/n/drop EVERYWHERE in the 1990s.

Netscape 4 for OS/2 Wap had d/n/d of HTML linnks to the desktop at the same time.

Mozilla for OS/2-eCS STILL has it.

NOTW hack-hackage: Inside the personal data press mess

John Angelico
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The problem isn't ownership

but the mindset of the so-called "profession of journalism" around all the various media.

That mindset/world-view/philosophical framework is predominantly anti-conservative, anti-freedom and pro-totalitarian/centralism as compared to the population at large (qv. voters).

Do we really want 100Gig Ethernet?

John Angelico

Strewth, you youngsters haven't seen anything

10Mb Ethernet? 2Mb coax? 1200 baud?

Some of us veterans remember 300-baud acoustic couplers and RS-232C comms. They were around when the Dead Sea wasn't even crook, and they went out so far back that Wikipedia may not have an entry.

John Angelico
Boffin

Historically inaccurate...

You said:

"The original PC design, which crippled all subsequent PCs until WinNT was released, only had 1 megabyte of RAM available for use,..."

which is both hystorically(sic) and hysterically inaccurate.

You conflate software and hardware, and you forget OS/2, and other OSs which also used a flat memory model (Linux, MacOS on the Motorola 68000 and mainframes too).

The hardware for a flat memory model in the PC era was available from the 386 chip onwards (realistically) although almost from the 186 in fact. It was only the 8086 which had "the problem".

Telstra announces copper retirement agreement

John Angelico
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You clearly were not around when...

... it took six weeks to get a simple telephone (POTS) installed.

Even then you were never guaranteed the number, so you couldn't print your business cards etc. ahead of time.

During this period, I was responsible for a small business Datel network (four branches 1200 baud only). It took us 3 months AFTER installation to get the lines "tuned" and that was only after my boss pulled some strings and got it done on a weekend.

The techs and linies were never the problem - it was always the b...y organisation gettting in the way.

I am not sanguine about this re-monopolisation of the telecoms infrastructure.

Well, that about wraps it up for the NBN

John Angelico

And you ASSUME...

...that building the electronic equivalent of an eight-lane freeway to your driveway will improve your effective download speed?

Maintaining the vehicular analogy, if your car was a Skoda Popular (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_Auto), what would be the benefit to you of an eight lane freeway outside your pot-holed and mud-filled drive?

You probably couldn't get it into the traffic stream very easily, and it would still only putter along at 48mph.

From your own post, first we need reliable service, THEN we can talk about speed

FTTN too expensive says Graeme Samuel

John Angelico
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Gee, a business...

... with a business plan to make money instead of losing it? How bizarre in this Land of OziMadness!

Mr Samuel, we appreciate that you are exposing the risk of a monopoly, but please point us to something a little more useful that a gummint-owned white elephant.

World IPv6 Day fails to kill the internet

John Angelico
Alien

Especially as every ...

... conspiracy theorist just knows that 6 is the devil's number while 7 is the number of prime perfection GD&R

Digital shoppers ripped off @.com.au

John Angelico
FAIL

<sigh> let's get one fact straight

Please, please get one thing straight - GST is assessable on all imports at point of entry.

So let's abandon this stupid statement about "imposing GST on imports of under $1000" as if it doesn't happen now.

What we are arguing about is that Australian Customs operates a debt collection policy to not try to collect amounts under $A100 for items entering via the "informal entry" system for shipment direct to final consumers (meaning low-value one-time shipments going direct to us mug buyers).

That $A100 represents all charges due to Customs including duty, tariffs (if any) and GST. It is just not worth their effort to chase and collect small amounts. Sometimes they get lucky, and Australia Post has a chance to collect for them. With the boutique agents working with fast couriers like FedEx, DHL and the like, there isn't enough time to handle the paperwork or the payment.

This policy does NOT apply to Entry 10 (normal customs clearance) through a broker or agent. If a business has an ABN then the broker is to collect from their customer whatever amount is due even below $A100. This is usually done by EFT and is vastly more efficient.

As many other posters (whether named Bill or not) have pointed out the difference is not merely 10% for GST but a swag of other factors causing online shoppers to shun local etailers.

Rapture postponed as world inexplicably fails to end

John Angelico
FAIL

I haven't a scrap of sympathy for the defendant...

This raving nutter is a serial offender who has been exposed a couple of times already.

He is roundly condemned by most mainstream Christian denominations.

Don't give him any more media oxygen, or internet electrons!

Small Oz carriers get license fee cut

John Angelico
Coat

What's so difficult about reporting revenue? Let me count the ways...

"Senator Stephen Conroy, Australia’s minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy" (aka BROCADE? try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocade) can't possibly just take the gross revenue as shown in existing reports, can he?

His dept has to come up with some crazy form which forces telcos to exert some mammoth effort to supply ONE figure which will then have some percentage applied to come up with another number which goes into the USO pool.

If we want to win the war against terror, all we have to do is send in the bureaucrats. For those of you in Blighty, you might salivate at the prospect of transporting all you civil servants (who are reputedly neither).

Google pours millions into wind power

John Angelico
Stop

Metrics, metrics

Now where does one find such figures as 230g/km?

And who established this benchmark? With what sort of testing?

And since a lot of cars will vary in fuel efficiency, what is the metric for a car that does 12L/100km? Or 6L/100km on diesel? etc., etc.

Google Linux servers hit with $5m patent infringement verdict

John Angelico
Coat

the high density of software engineers living there

...presumably the density in not in their crania, or they would not have arrived at this patently absurd conclusion...

The one with Logic 101 in the pocket

Lasers set to replace spark plugs in car engines

John Angelico
Joke

Wonder if I can retrofit this to a morris minor...

...only if you recognise the intellectual property rights of the late Lord Nuffield.

You could try retro-fitting it to a mini-cooper S - straight after you take the brain surgery correspondence exam :-)

ICT classes in school should be binned – IT biz body

John Angelico
Thumb Up

"How to use MS products"

The same applies in the colonies.

And naturally, the next time MS releases a new version, the revised placement of menu items will render all that painstaking memorisation useless.

Australian OS/2 zealot...

Australia might need the NBN, but the OECD data is meaningless

John Angelico
Stop

In fact...

Malcolm Turnbull's comments need to be simplified down to:

a) how <i>much</i> did you say it would cost? <b>$A27billion</b>

b) how much will this investment improve inbound traffic from USA, Europe etc? <b>NIL</b>

c) therefore how much will 100Mbit connections improve throughput? <b>Not a whit!</b>

<i><b>HAHAHAHAHA!</i></b>

Oxfordshire cops switch speed cameras back on

John Angelico
Coat

Real science?

Begging your pardon squire...

"These are randome events which obey a Poisson distribution"

Statistical techniques to help our minds cope with random events doth not real science make (necessarily).

Real science deals with repeatable tangible events in an orderly universe. Events do not "obey" some statistical measure in the way that bodies with mass "obey" the law of gravity.

So mind your language, please...

The one with Newton's Principia, please.

Go Daddy CEO under fire for 'elephant snuff film'

John Angelico
Coat

PETA or PITA?

You choose.

Meh? I'm for the latter!

Yeah, yeah, OK, it was a bad pun, and the rhyme was verse!

The one with Roget's Thesaurus in the pocket, thanks.

Antarctic ice breakup makes ocean absorb more CO2

John Angelico
FAIL

Error in assumptions

You said:

"CO2 is continuing to be put in to the atmosphere at an exponential rate"

but I don't think it is at an exponential rate, which would be rising at a faster rate each period (like the acceleration due to gravity, prior to reaching terminal velocity).

Spam levels plummet as Rustock botnet taken down... for now

John Angelico
Joke

Indeed...

...but my voice isn't any good for trilling - and don't call me every!

Republicans believe in 'climate change' but not 'global warming'

John Angelico
Boffin

O RLY?

http://www.hjo3.net/orly/gal1/orly_skywalker.jpg

However, a student of history can tell you that it has been warmer in past times than it is now, and human burning of fossil fuels has had nothing to do with those periods.

So the key questions remain:

Do we really need to do anything about it?

If we do something, how much impact will it have, temperature-wise?

Will we be better off for having done whatever it is that was decided?

How much will it cost us to do the whatever?

and

Will it all be worth it?

Android phone to replace shop till

John Angelico
Boffin

Of course security would be an issue...

...but I'm sure there could be some engineering adjustments for those robust (metal?) tokens, and maybe some design features could be a part of the printed image...

Your idea has some legs, my friend :-)

The Register and Australia-New Zealand

John Angelico
Coat

Turn it up?

How about some upside down icons then? :-)

<--- See, I know when I'm not welcome...

John Angelico
Joke

Drink up...

... your beer's getting cold!

Reactions to iiNet's copyright win

John Angelico
Thumb Up

Correctomundo, copsewood!

I notice that the operators of wire, cable and wireless telephony networks were not among the defendants, despite the fact that they would have carried the signals and data streams.

Windsor slaps News for NBN 'scare campaign'

John Angelico
Boffin

What a lot of rot you do talk!

"Investments that take 20 or more years to show their return are not things the private sector gets involved in."

a) How long ago did Lang Hancock see iron ore in the Pilbara and kick off the WA mining boom?

b) What did the Victorian (Labor) government do to the dual track of the Bendigo rail line? Turned it into a single track and called it the "High-Speed Regional Rail Link"

c) how many rail gauges are we cursed with in Australia? How many WERE we cursed with altogether, all by government decision?

d) Back to the Pilbara - how many rail gauges were built by the separate mining companies operating in the area - all the way from Paraburdoo and Mt Tom Price to the coast?

and finally

e) how does this government propose to demonstrate that there is ANY return, since they decline to publish a business case for the NBN?

UK.gov's axing of school building plan 'unlawful'

John Angelico
Joke

I say, what's happened to the empah, suh?

"If that's the, case, the UK courts are simply following EU law."

That's what's happened, Featherstonehaugh! The ruddy froggies have won after all.

Nine hundred and fifty years of keeping them off our soil, and look at us!

...

Pass us another whisky and soda, would you? There's a good chap...

Aussies demand Poms cough up first 'Australia' map

John Angelico
Coat

Well, if that's the way you're thinking...

...how about putting the thing on show, instead of hiding it away - as if you are embarrassed about us.

Sheesh, just because you hang onto the Ashes you think you own the place again!

The one with the Oz flag hanging out of the pocket - I just collected that at our local authority Australia Day ceremony - ta muchly.

Big new wind turbines too close together, says top boffin

John Angelico
Boffin

Until...

...you get to an aerodynmically determined maximum velocity at the tip of each blade.

The longer the blade, the greater the tip speed for a given speed of rotation. There is some maximum tip speed where the necessary revolutions would not be sufficient to overcome the mechanical inefficiencies of the generator set, and there would be insufficient power generated - or heaven forfend NONE AT ALL.

'NBN is like a bathroom' says opposition, BCA agrees

John Angelico
Big Brother

<sigh> Try another analogy

The NBN still lacks a business case to establish its economic viability (thus bringing into question the very idea of putative viability).

The basic proposal is akin to running an eight lane tollway/motorway/autobahn/autostrada to the front driveway of 93% of the Australian population. Of course, in the abstract it sounds like a Good Idea. But do we really want that? And especially at the cost estimated to be beyond a gross $A46Billion now.

But nobody has dared to say anything about the concentration of traffic and the contention that may occur as throughput rises (as expected by proponents of the idea).

And nobody in the gummint is game to say publicly that the base network in place TODAY, already provides a lot of 100Mbit throughput - especially in the Metropolitan Access Networks (between exchanges), and the interstate and interurban trunk connections.

But they sure as hell KNOW it because they are proposing to pay Telstra $A11Billion to rip out the old infrastructure completely.

It's a backdoor method for undoing the privatisation of Telstra, which has been handled badly by successive gummints from 1975 onwards.

Third party developers blamed for Windows security woes

John Angelico
Gates Horns

Exactly. You only find out when...

"Windows patching is reasonably unobtrusive and doesn't prevent you from working while it's going on"

...all of a sudden something works differently to last time!

Assange vows to drop 'insurance' files on Rupert Murdoch

John Angelico
Big Brother

Yeah, publish and be damned...

"So whatever you have on Murdoch, Julian, please get on and publish it at once - you'll be doing the planet a public service."

...And then let's see how empty or otherwise your threat really was/is.

Mr Assange long ago forfeited any credibility in my mind, as he was all for open-ness and no secrets, BUT very selectively.

He wanted the documents of the USA to be exposed to all the world, but not the documents of other nations, NOR was he happy that documents about his own life could not be kept secret.

He speak with forked tongue, Kemosabe!

When one oligopoly screws another

John Angelico
FAIL

And another correction...

Mr Harvey shot himself in the foot again by conveniently missing the fact that GST is levied on all goods imported to Australia (with certain special exemptions which need not detain us here).

What he is really challenging is the *administrative ruling* by Customs Australia (the appointed agent for collection of GST on imports) that they find it uneconomic to collect any amount less than $A100 - which includes customs charges, duty, tariffs and GST.

By skipping all the other things, and scaling up from a 10% rate for GST, he gets to the only partially correct figure of goods valued for import at up to $A1000.

For the boss of a billion dollar retail business, he really stuffed it up big-time with a total fail on his research!

Oz net filter jams up with smut, may be pulled out altogether

John Angelico
Headmaster

...egad, another one!

Copper can't rust!

John Angelico
FAIL

And as evidenced by the above AC...

...they post drivel on these pages.

The voters in the yellow corner have seen through those in the Green corner as a bunch of raving anti-development nutters, to lift a quote from Ford Prefect. Hmm, in fact, Goldafrincham would be just the place for those Greens.

In the Red corner we see the reason for the red - spilled ink from the Treasury Budget papers, as our ranga of a PM spends money we don't have, on a new service we don't need (since it's already available cheaper) AND wants to pay Telstra to remove all the existing copper so we can't use our democratic freedom (what's that, grandad? Something we lost a long time ago, sonshine!) to not buy into the new service if we don't see a need for it. Some of us simply like the idea of a POTS (plain old telephone service), in much the same way that we like the old-fashioned idea of walking to the corner shop instead of driving as the 'merkans do.

In the Blue corner the Opposition suffers the slings and arrows of outrageously lazy journalists who accuse them of opposing (hey, you mad lot, it's in their job title). Meanwhile they ask the government politely for a business plan demonstrating the putative viability of said NBN. Since the government has steadfastly declined to open the kimono, one is left with the distinct impression that the Opposition has a point, and that at $AUD43 Billion gross (plus interest, to be paid for by 24 million population) NBN may stand for NOT BLOODY NEEDED.

Skype goes titsup across globe

John Angelico
Flame

Just because...

...something is going wrong elsewhere, doesn't mean Windows is not the problem.

Windows is ALWAYS the problem!

'ALIEN' LIFE FOUND in California

John Angelico
Joke

This is serious...

...and don't call me "surely"!

Thank you Mr Neilsen. :-)

Calling Australia's IT Pros: Optus wants to kick your sporting arse

John Angelico
Coat

But maybe the marketing droids

... have already figured out that they want the Zoo to Cost Ya less than that of the competition (yes, it's a jungle out there!)?

Mine's the one with the well-thumbed copy of "Comedy for Dummies" in the pocket.

Now Oz to ban online cigarette ads

John Angelico
Black Helicopters

Already banned

Tobacco advertising was banned many years ago (when Mrs Cripps was 'young and charming' for all you HMS Pinafore fans).

It merely demonstrates that Australia's parliaments are no more than legislation factories: 'Oh, is that a problem? We'll legislate!' "You have convinced me that this is a problem. We'll legislate!"

Soon there won't be enough room to breathe for all the rules and regulations.

US opts out of carbon trading

John Angelico
Black Helicopters

Another control scenario

Your proposal:

"The REAL solution is to require US/Canada style emission regulations in every country, require true recycling with established markets and pricing for recycled materials, equalize wages and cost of labor differences between countries by establishment of trade tariffs that prevent outsourcing manufacturing jobs and factories."

The end result - there needs to be SOMEONE or SOMETHING big enough and with enough firepower to ENFORCE all this.

Choose your conspiracy: Forbin Project or One World Government via the UNO.

And be sorta happy that you can exercise some choice, which is more than Winston Smith got (with thanks to George Orwell).

Deep space COMET FLYBY: First PICS

John Angelico
Joke

Maybe not...

It could be characterised as a:

Remote

Extended

Space

Investigation

Node

could it not?

MS-backed CodePlex Foundation morphs into Outercurve

John Angelico
Gates Horns

But it's still ...

... totally funded by MS?

What measure of independence does that actually provide for?

Looks like a Sirius Cybernetics Marketing Dept definition of surgery - appear to cut the umbilical cord (but really keep it connected).

Sex Party proposes new classification system for Oz

John Angelico
FAIL

Ahh, but they are not

.. different. They are just as much using sex to sell - in a word: prostitution.

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