Posts by Michael Xion
109 posts • joined Thursday 5th June 2008 03:21 GMT
Unleash the Newtork Beems! That'll fix it.
Re: The military guide on the DPRK side overloking the DMZ
Never been there myself, but maybe it was one of the old gents in this picture:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-06/north-korea-issues-foreign-embassy-warning/4613432
That picture for me sums up a lot of the issues. Some gormless young ex-playboy being sheparded around by a couple of old soldiers who are still reliving the Korean War in their heads. Look at them. You can just imagine these old geezers thinking that as their clock winds down, they'll take the south with them into the long dark.
Re: hmmmmmmmm
You almost had it. What you really need to look at is purchase power parity (I think it's called that). Up until a couple of years ago the exchange rate for $au was about 40p. So back then the relative salaries would have been much the same (multiply the uk wages by 2.5) to get the Oz equivalent. Yet, in the sometime frame the cost in native currency hasn't really changed ie a £10 DVD 3 years ago is still £10 now and a $30 DVD in Oz is still $30 now (roughly speaking). A better way to compare is cost of living (I think The Economist still produce a cost of living comparison based on the price of a Big Mac).
tl;dr. It's more than just exchange rates. You have to look at what the money will buy.
Re: I'm gonna start up my own social network
How about joining Facebook and twitter ......F*witter. Then all the F* wits will be in one place.
Astonishingly useable
I don't usually buy into the whole 'my phone's better than your phone' gig, but I'm currently using an iPhone 3GS running iOS 6.1.2 and I never have a problem with it. Maybe you're holding yours wrong :-) or just need to upgrade the OS.
As its a work phone, I cold get a brand new iPhone 5 tomorrow, but don't see the need as the current one works perfectly. Battery life is as good as the day I bought it.
Re: Quando, Quando, Quando?
Wow. I had no idea, but i should have suspected something like this. Thanks for posting the link.
...firewall off port 22 completely.
I don't know much about networking, but I can't see that helping as the paragraph before that mentioned IP ranges with port 24.
Re: Pic 1, page 1
Ah, the old 'drunken mouse' after dousing the insides with rubbing alcohol to get rid of accumulated cruft.
Re: Smart phone apps
In my job I come into daily contact with people on centrelink payments (unemployed, single mothers, disability pensioners). I can't recall the last one I met with who didn't have a smartphone of some sort (apple, Samsung or HTC). Tech may be expensive, but mobile plans are easy to get with most people not realising how much they are actually forking out over time.
On a related note, a standard landline package from Telstra that includes most calls is $80 per month ($960) per year. You can get a SIM card with unlimited calls to all Australian fixed and mobile phones and 6Gb do data per month for $300 per year. Even if you bought an iPhone 4, you'd still be ahead in the first year if you did away with the landline.
In reality, smartphone apps for centrelink is a good idea.
Re: Ally 1
Ahhhhh, nope.
Re: Ally 1
Sorry, random comma in previous post. I'm on a roll here, where's my steenking gold badge? Am I there yet?
Re: Ally 1
They really should allow everyone to edit their own posts. Previous reply should have read ' can I upvote....'
Does this post add to my total? Can I just keep replying to my own posts? (looks like, i'm not going to be getting any work done today)
Re: Ally 1
Can. Up vote this 100 times so you get a gold badge? Nice one, off to gmail I go........
Re: The key may be in the name.
Also, looking at the map, Sandy Island is almost exactly on a cartographic line (not sure what the lines are - latitude?) that ends up intersecting Great Sandy Island (now known as Fraser Island). Hmmmm.
Re: My manager at work...
Ha ha. I'm ok with gangnam style. Not a big fan of pop music, but its catchy and fun. One thing I can't stand is the innumerable tv/radio personalities that refer to it as 'gangam style'. There's and 'n' in there, use it.
Was fun until I connected.
Downloaded this the other day to see what it was about. Sent about 10 minutes playing the 'server busy, retry' portion of the game which was quite exciting waiting to see if it would connect, quite a sense of achievement once i got through. Once I got on the rest of the game was dead boring, mindlessly tapping at blocks and then all of a sudden the whole screen just clears.
Honestly, he should have just released the first part where you try to connect to the server, way more fun.
Re: awesomeness
+1 I was actually waiting for that myself
Re: @Xion
Ok, I'll bite <:-)>
I've never understood how 'electing' an official is inherently better than said official being appointed through a competitive process designed to select the best applicant (and yes, I know that the process can be subverted). I've also never understood why it's so important to know the political views of the local dog catcher. I can see why you would want a say in who is on the School board, but not why you'd have a school board in the first place (shouldn't the curriculum be set by professional educators).
Another poster made mention of the fact that if people can't complete a ballot with 30 choices, they shouldn't be voting. I'm sorry but western politicians, by their nature, seem to pander to the lowest common demnominator, so people of differing abilities will be voting. Additionally, given the low voter turnout in US elections, I'd have thought making the process as simple and efficient as possible would be in the interests of a truly participatory democracy.
And while I'm on the subject...what's with getting people to vote on a Tuesday? It certainly doesn't enfranchise those on minimum wage, working long hours who probably wouldn't be given time off work to vote.
PS if my local school was run by a 'Board', I probably would want a say on who's on the board.
I guess at the end of the day, every four years the same thing happens.....a bunch of horses run around in a circle in Australia and two blokes apply for the same job in the US. It doesn't really matter whether the winner is a horse or a human.
why they don't use pen and paper
I looked into this during the whole kerfuffle back when Bush won over Gore. In Florida there were something like 30 (or more) individual votes that needed to be cast by electors on polling day. School board, dog catcher, police chief etc etc. given the volume of votes, it's no wonder they use machines like 'chads' to make the process a bit quicker. If they just restricted the voting to a couple of important things ( like for the president), they could probably use simple and secure pen and paper. The problem is all the other pissy jobs that people think they have to elect people into. Some times, too much democracy isn't a good thing.
Re: almost forgot
I think you may be right. Also, they spelt Bungie wrong in the caption. Ha ha.
Cannot unsee.....
Ha, ha. Angry robot face is angry. Check out the first pic. I have to say the internal arrangement of parts is quite aesthetically pleasing.
The real 99%
I followed the whole 'occupy' protest thing in the media and the '99%' claim always seemed dubious to me. I didn't see a lot of homeless people and south Sudanese refugees protesting in wall st. Obviously, you can't rely on media supplied photo and video to not be biased or to properly represent the whole range of people involved, but it just seemed to me to be a bunch of privileged westerners complaining that they weren't a member of the elites gravy train. That's not to say that there are good and valid reasons to assess how the worlds economy privileges a small elite over the bulk of the population, I just don't think those protesting we're far off the 1% themselves.
In respect of the Twitter issue. I always work on the premise that if you put it online, don't be surprised if it gets used against you. Some more detail on why the courts feel they need his Twitter posts would be good. My assumption is that it has something to do with 'incitement'.
Posted in iPhone 5 adaptors goldrush begins
Why re-buy apps?
You can simply download your already purchased apps to the new phone.
Re: iPad saves environment
And don't foret to Gris your Malodor when we browsing - damn autocorrect.
Re: iPad saves environment
Having seen this quote from Jobs a few times, I must say it never made any sense. I'm typin Gris on an iPad I bought earlier this year. Before that I used my iPhone quite comfortably for we browsing, applications and typing comments on El Reg forums. Admittedly, if ind the iPhone a bits malodor this purpose now I'm used to the iPad, but the fact remains that I didn't need to sharpen my fingers to use the iPhone. This 'quote' from Jobs seems to imply that the iPhone would also be useless as a media device as its even smaller than 7 inches.
Posted in Google gets hands on 'glove-cam' patent
It's a pity a 10 year old can't patent ideas
When I was about 10, I had to watch 'Blake's 7' on a B&W portable TV in the spare room as the main TV was being watched by the rest of the family for something else (can't rememberer what). The antenna was a bit dodgy and I found that by moving my hands in a particular way I could improve or degrade reception. At the time I thought this could be a really cool way to control devices. I figured that you could wear rings of various metals on your fingers and the EMF broadcast from a transmitter could be modified by moving your fingers in a certain predetermined way (ie touch thumb to little finger to change channel up) to alter the signal received at the nominated device. At the time I'd never heard of the Theremin, and it was many years later that I saw something similar in the Steven Spielberg film 'Minority Report'.
Re: Conroy is a complete and utter idiot
That was meant for Goat Jam
Re: Conroy is a complete and utter idiot
Dick.
Re: Duplicates
Set one up the other day just to access some info only available ona company's FB account. Oddly enough Nerk Nerksome has yet to find any friends -:)
Oooooh, lady Fanny
Cheers for the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels reference....is it referring to the lads from Lagos or the American banks, hmmmm
Re: Cheesy article...or should I say Fruity article?
I'm just an office worker in a large university, but I know that the late-2011 iMac sitting on my desktop cost the same as the standard Dell boxes that are rolled out across the organisation. Your assertion as regards desktops does not hold true across the board. I suspect most large organizations do not go for cheap generic brand PCs. The only extra cost involved in purchasing the iMac was $50 for a copy of VMWARE so I can run Windows for a couple of enterprise apps.
Posted in Optus’ free broadband: the details
Not Everywhere
For obvious reasons, It's not available on exchanges that only house Telstra equipment ie most small towns outside the capital and larger cities. I reckon most people would be happy to forego the NBN if there was just some compulsion on Telstra to upgrade existing exchanges. Wouldn't it be good if any ISP could offer services at any exchange. Not sure if this is technically possible, but it would make a big difference to people who can only get Bigpond.
Re: Maybe the judge was getting some from the plantiff?
It's simple really. The worker was domiciled at a lodging chosen by her employer whilst away from hoem on work-related purposes. Anything that happens to the worker during that period is covered by the company's compulsory workers compensation/workcover insurance.
She could also separately sue the hotel for not adequately maintaining their light fixtures. To be honest, I don't know why this even went to court. Seems a pretty clear cut case of workers comp to me.
It doesn't matter what she was doing provided it happened in the 'normal course of events' ie not a high risk activity. So, no, abseiling down the hotel wall with tied together bedsheets (as a previous poster suggested) would not be covered due to the 'you're a dickhead' clause.
ps IANAL, YMMV
Posted in Aliens Blu-ray disc set
Re: Boring gun scene?!
I think you'll find that was in 2001 a space odyssey.
Re: AM radio still exists?
Wtf. Is that supposed to be an oz accent. Sound more Wes country to me.
Re: Fact
Same genre. Have wok supplied 3GS and bought myself new iPad on launch day. Tested using work network via speed test.net
3GS
39ms ping
8.78 up
10.38 down
iPad
25ms ping
12.1 up
14.89 down
Also have not noticed any difference between the two in ability o receive signal. iPad is 16gb wi-fi only.
Suspect any issues are related to bad batch and/or the '4g' versions.
Re: RE: All I need now is for Bill Nighy to play the next Doctor Who :)
I'd actually watch Dr Who if Bill Nighy was the doctor.
Re: Re: Anonymous because this wont be popular, but...
Have to agree with this. Always thought OHMSS was one of the best. Made Bond an actual person as well with the whole fallign in love and new bride getting murdered. Plus, love the opening ski sequence.
Isit irony?
'apple china employees abuse cook' at the bottom of the article. Great confluence of tags.
Posted in Telstra gets mail with Microsoft
No choice.
Mac-based household. Got bigpond ADSL and it works fine. Don't use the Bigpond email address as I have a private gmail address and work address. Unfortunately I have no choice about using Bigpond as Telstra are the only ISP available where I live.
Posted in Koala food may power US Defence force
No worries, will swap the lot for about 5 million cane toads. Come and get 'em.
Posted in Kodak heading to Chapter 11
Damn you, autocorrect, damn you
So, no tweet answer to the "bass question" then.
YMMV
Never had this problem. I use my appletv to stream music and videos from my Mac on an almost daily basis. I turn the power off at the wall every night without going in to standby and it always comes back one fine the next day. Have has it since launch. Had to reset maybe 3 times in that period
Posted in Solar installations skyrocket in Oz
How do you figure this?
The average daily generation from a 1kw system in Australia is 4KWh. Multiplied by 365 gives 1460 KWh annual generation. Scaling up from 1000MWh installed base should give a generation of 1460 GWh of annual generation. If only 680GWh is being produced, that implies a 46% efficiency. Still not good, but nowhere near as bad as 7.8%. I accept the comments regarding poorly installed panels and people purchasing cheap components that don't produce at rated ouput, however, it's worth noting that:
The generation of 680GWh is based on the period from 1/10/10 to 30/9/11.
The headline figure of 1031MW of installed systems is based on the figure at the end of August 2011. The installed figure for the end of 2010 was 492MW.
So, the geeration figure of 680GWh has to be based on a generation capacity of substantially less than 1031MW as something like half the installed capacity was actually installed sometime between 1/10/10 and 30/9/11.
To be fair, the CEC report should have been clearer on this. Given the reduction in government rebates on July 1, 2011, it woudl be safe to assume that a lot of the 492Mw installed between 2010 and 2011 occured in the second quarter of 2011, so woudl not add significantly to the total output generated.
I'm happy for someone to explain if I've worked any of this out incorrectly, but the CEC figures seem reasonable to me.
Posted in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition
Fanboi Alert (me)
Been playing the Mac version since it came out (Halo:CE). There are still some people playing online on both PC and Mac. I find the Mac version plays fine. I finally 'bit the bullet' and bought an XBOX 360 console earlier this year (mainly due to there being no Oz players left on the PC/Mac and me getting constantly lag-killed online), then purchased Halo 2, Halo 3, ODST and Reach. Finished Reach and nearly all of Halo 2. I agree with the comment about Halo 2 graphics - looks worse on the console than on my iMac G5. Couldn't wait for the anniversary version to come out, made the mistake of ordering from overseas to keep the cost down so still waiting :-(
But that's ok, 'cos I downloaded the map pack for Reach today - yay
Horses for courses, I don't play very often so prefer to pick a game and thoroughly enjoy it, rather than jumping to whatever is this month's AAA title.
I understand the reasoning for using the Reach multiplayer engine, but some of the original maps are going to be a bit small to play with jetpacks etc (battle creek springs to mind).
The too would be fine...
..so long as you weren't driving a road train. Those buggers are 7 foot tall and all muscle.
Posted in Facebook Deals dumped
Places?
Any reference for the quote that Facebook has cabncelled places? Haven't seen it reported elsewhere.
Who will pay...
BHP of course. They could use some of the 22b they make from digging up dirt in WA to bankroll the project. Better yet, considering that dirt will be made into the steel used in the tunnel, they could ship the dirt from Siberia back to WA to fill up the holes. Everyone wins! (except the Oz public)
If you are referring to the rustock perps ...
Not really. That would be analogous to me robbing a bank then being offered a job as their security guard.
Posted in Amazon swallows UK online bookseller
noooooooo
I regularly buy from The Book Depository from Australia, I'd hate to see the business messed with by Amazon (and prices go up).
