Aha!

So lemmings jump off cliffs because of climate change?

Whinge FAIL

I've heard better whinges from locals complaining about it taking too long to bring a glass of red.

Just toast his account, how hard can it be?

All this stuff with criminal charges is pointless. Just toast his account and quietly tip off any other ISPs about his activities, and BOOM, he's out of action.

The IT industry has its own justice, which is faster, simpler and WAY more effective than the court system.

A lesson in standardisation

Let's just settle on a few helicopter types - Bell 412 up to 2t capacity, Black Hawk up to 5t, Chinook above that. Once you have an airframe you can do anything you like with it.

Porn... mmm.

No, seriously - if there was porn on Osama's hard drive it would tarnish his reputation with his followers. That would actually be a highly effective way of ending the war on terror, if their revered leader was indulging in one of the evil pastimes of the western infidels, what's left to fight for?

It's like the security measure they proposed just after 9/11 - legislate that a stripper be rostered onto every commercial flight. If there's a hijacking, she goes into action. Muslim men aren't allowed to look on the body of a woman, so they'd have to cancel the hijacking. As a bonus, every businessman in the world would want to fly just in case there's a hijacking - free striptease!

Paris because... isn't it obvious?

Malcolm Turnbull is a waste of perfectly good oxygen

He really is the weakest link in the Opposition. If the nation is to be saved the burden of $50bn of debt, we need a better comms spokesperson - and let's face it, Conroy should be a complete pushover!

Love it!

Verity if you keep writing like this I'm going to be slapped with an ASBO for excessive loud laughter.

Get a life!

Out here in the colonies we have 3+2 seating on all our long distance trains (and most of our short distance trains too). And they only go 70mph so they take longer to get there.

I've made the trip to the mother country several times and let me tell you, you have NOTHING to complain about with regard to your trains. Nothing at all.

iiNet are smart, therefore won't succeed

With this paper iiNet have done the impossible - found a solution which isn't ideal but is at least bearable for all parties. It's a very clever idea - and therefore will be rejected by the people who have to make it happen. The IT industry doesn't sit well with legacy institutions like governments.

BTW I'm not employed by iiNet or anything - although I do use them as my ISP and find their tech support excellent.

You're doing it wrong

Guys, guys, guys! It's much simpler than that! Just make the electric vehicles run off 120-240V 50Hz AC, ship them with a power cord specific to the country, and everyone's problem is solved.

You know, like the way computer manufacturers have done it for years.

DUH.

OH&S presents so many opportunities to the BOFH

If the boss ever lasted long enough to learn from his mistakes, or if the higher-ups on the corporate ladder were a little higher up on the evolutionary ladder, someone would eventually decide that the BOFH and PFY really need an extra £10,000 a year expense account for safety-related items. For instance, six beers at each lunchtime would prevent users from annoying them, thus reducing user fatalities. It's a small price to pay!

Also, the company safety manuals should be rewritten. The #1 rule of computing is DON'T HASSLE THE BOFH. It should be written in 36pt type on page 1 of the safety manual. And in 18pt type at the bottom of every other page.

Of course it won't hurt Greece's debt levels will it?

Make a multinational pay a stack of euros into the treasury, that's a good way to inject capital into debt-ridden Europe.

Paris because she's in Europe too.

Students, politicians and academics? Smells like trouble.

Come on Poms, surely you have groups of students, politicians and academics that come up with idiotic ideas? And you wouldn't want us to think the whole country felt the same way?

If you lot want to send the map over for a touring museum for the anniversary of Flinders' death I reckon that'd be a nice gesture. But in 2015 you can take the bloody thing back again, I don't want to have to pay the power bills for the climate controlled room it has to live in.

And of course if you don't want to come to the party we'll just send Warnie over to beat your whole cricket team single handed. And have affairs with half your female population.

Beer because I can't be bothered arguing.

The NBN isn't even worth building!

$43 billion is the figure that's been thrown around, and the rationale behind it is so rubbery (as well as being kept out of view of the public) that industry people are saying it'll be something like $10bn on top of that.

And for what? I know we keep hearing about doctor's consultation rooms via webcam and online education - but really, it's mainly going to be used for streaming movies and BitTorrent.

In any case, none of that NEEDS fibre-to-the-home. If we spent even $5bn extending the quality connections currently available only in big cities out to the country we'd have all we need.

Happy New Year Verity!

Thanks. Have a beer or three.

If they want any market penetration at all...

... they'd better work on the reliability of their code. Facebook beats every piece of software I've ever worked with (bar one accounting package which had just been hastily recoded - shoddily - to handle networks, back when they were a novel concept) for the sheer pervasiveness of its weird bugs and inconsistencies. I've never actually lost data, but I've been given false-negative notifications of its existence countless times.

What a line!

Ironing out bugs - with a #2 Iron.

Simon, if you ever run short of beer you can rely on me for several.

Won't happen

Remember they tried to get hold of Yahoo too?

Do I have to be the first to say it?

I come from a land down under, whose kangaroo-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think iPhones are a pretty neat idea.

It's a design philosophy

Back when Apple were Motorola-based there was a joke that went "Using a Mac is like shaving with a bowling pin. Using Windows is like juggling with razors."

That's still basically true - the Apple philosophy is to close things up in order to ensure security and reliability. It's not perfect, of course, but it is a significant safeguard against the kind of instability Windows is famous for. The problem is, preventing rogue programs from taking the system down means preventing some things that the user actually wants.

The open philosophy says that if you point a gun at your foot and pull the trigger, it will shoot you. It is therefore your responsibility to know what you're aiming your gun at before pulling the trigger.

Apple's philosophy is perfect for the 99% of people who just want to browse the web, read emails and write documents. The 1% of people who actually know what they're doing on a computer should use a more open system.

Notice that this leaves 0% of the market for Windows, which is a closed system without any of the protection Apple gives. Sorry Micro$oft.

Style over substance

The Apple difference is that it values style over substance. Compare any Apple product (computer, phone, music player, etc) against a non-Apple device of comparable performance. The Apple version will usually be between 25% and 75% more expensive.

Apple have always, since the first Macintosh computers, been visually-oriented - they invented the Graphical User Interface which was then copied by Microsoft to become Windows which has destroyed the productivity of computer professionals the world over. And just look at the "Get a Mac" series of ads - they portray the creation of a photo book as the world's highest achievement, while the running of a spreadsheet (which may even do useful work for a business near you) is treated as an activity for desperate losers.

If there's any common trait among users of Apple products, it's an eye for style and a weakness for group-think. Apple is on par with the makers of luxury cars, designer clothes and contemporary art.

NBN is a dead duck

$43bn to deliver a fibreoptic cable to every premises - sounds fine. But they're going to charge accordingly - so most people will find it unaffordable. It's never going to happen.

What they need to do is renationalise the infrastructure (ducts, cable, etc) from the government-department-cum-private-company-with-most-shares-still-owned-by-the-government and upgrade them, and then hire that out to resellers on a pay-per-megabyte basis. Hopefully that way we get some actual competition in the market and the service will get better.

Gratitude is short lived

Winston Churchill found out just after the war that even an overwhelming tide of gratitude for the past won't ensure security for the future. Firefox saved us from Death By Microsoft, but that doesn't change the fact that it takes at least 3500 milliseconds to open. Chrome starts in a few blinks of the eye. The "cool kids" (in the IT world I mean, the alpha geeks) have brains that fire VERY quickly, and to them, 3500ms is long enough to get bored. When geeks get bored, Bad Things happen.

Paris because Chrome renders her well.

April the 1st was some time ago

But better late than never. Good thinking, whoever came up with it.

BOFH is back!

The Dynamic Duo have returned. The BOFH is none the worse for having been dead for a few episodes, and the PFY is none the worse for having been given the poisoned chalice.

Individually, they can do each other an incredible amount of harm. Together, they can not only wage a holy (and successful) war against the bureaucracy, but cover each other's tails too.

Simon, just in case you're still sober enough to drink it after all the other readers have said this, have a beer on me.

Come to think of it, I'll have one myself too.

Please succeed. Please.

Of course it will take another ten years for the WTO to put pressure on countries like China to stop censoring, but in the meantime, people like Mr Conroy who want to start censoring Australia's internet users will sit up and take notice.

"Consulted broadly" with the telecomms industry?

Based on past history, that means Mr Conroy rang up one of Telstra's government relations people and said "Yeah we're thinking of doing this, would you people object to it? How about if I threatened your job if you didn't comply? Good, thanks."

Slower rotors = less vibration

An active damping system isn't perfect, so it's a good thing vibration will be lower too. Of course running an engine at low revs and high torque isn't usually all that good for it (unless your name is R-2800 and you're trying to do an eight hour patrol in a P-47) but no doubt modern engine metallurgy will offset that problem.

Every technology has its Achilles Heel, whether it's the Rotodyne, the Cheyenne, the V-22 or this. The only question is which design can be engineered to the point where its Achilles Heel is pushed far enough towards the edges of its performance envelope that it can perform its mission.

No no Conroy, you misunderstand me!

Damn damn damn! When Senator Bloody Conroy said that his internet filter was the same as restricting the sale of illegal stuff, I told him "No it's not, it's like searching everyone who comes into the country to see if they're carrying any illegal stuff".

It seems he took that comment the wrong way.

Election time is coming. For my next trick, I will make Senator Conroy disappear. Can I have 21 million volunteers from the audience to join me in this polling booth?

Mine's the one with the Labor party how-to-vote card in the pocket. I need a humour fix.

I like this guy McHenry.

He has a good sense of humour and a good sense of coolness.