Posts by Mahatma Coat
881 posts • joined Thursday 11th June 2009 14:00 GMT
"Oh, and I expect Top Gear to be available in HD with 'the news'. Channel 9 hacks the bejesus out of it and makes it near unwatchable, plus they only offer SD."
I timed it once. They cut 26 minutes out for ads and trailers. They should at least make two series out of it instead of losing all that content. Tossers.
Posted in .Scot campaign seeks UK Gov backing
FFS indeed
I can understand the Scots wanting their independence and if they vote for it in a referendum then congratulations and good luck to them.
What I don't understand is why a party like the SNP, a party based on the idea of being independent, wants another country to pay for this new TLD.
The BBC needs a big clue
Much as I love the BBC they really need a serious battering with the Internet clue stick.
I know loads of fellow Pom ex-pats who would happily pay the UK Licence fee each year for full access to the BBC. Australian-made TV is a large pile of steaming poo and mostly unwatchable.
I've seen comments that claim the cost of bandwidth is an issue but surely they just need to come to a peering arrangement with some Aussie ISPs and distribute via torrent locally? I'm sure there are other countries that have an even bigger UK ex-pat audience too.
Until then many Poms will be watching the BBC via various dodgy methods and Aunty will lose out on potential overseas revenue.
"However, the broadcaster says it will be offering access to 70 years’ worth of archival material to subscribers, for any Australians that haven’t had enough of the BBC’s archives already."
Exactly. There are several channels now running very old BBC programmes, the kind I saw when I was a kid.
MPs label police IT 'not fit for purpose'
Bit of a typo there. Someone added "IT" by accident.
<-- Proper copper.
Yes, Andrew, you did miss something here
"Any blocking can be circumvented fairly easily by tech savvy people."
"The number of people who know how to is small, and will do so is even smaller, though..."
But that number will grow. Only the tech savvy knew how to file share once. Remind us how that stayed a minority pursuit among geeks, please?
"OK, OK, yes, this isn't quite right. There's labour involved in digging up all that copper"
But if you have to dig it up anyway to lay fibre then it becomes a feasible proposition.
I'll get me donkey jacket and shovel.
Posted in BBC website ditches modules in facelift
Thanks...
...but bbc.co.uk and beta.bbc.co.uk are identical when viewed here in Aus. The Beeb do a bit of geo-fiddling for non-UK IP addresses.
Posted in BBC website ditches modules in facelift
Maybe it's because I'm overseas...
...but it looks exactly the same.
"Wikipedia lists him as “musician, entrepreneur and movie producer”."
Enough said.
Re: "private email system"
"What on earth were these idiots thinking?"
And therein lies the problem. Idiots rarely think. Govt idiots think even less.
Posted in Qantas trials iPad in the sky
The safety record is a myth
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Qantas_Flight_30#Safety_record
There are other airlines that have never lost a single plane.
They screwed me after a family death and reduced my wife to tears. JAL came to the rescue and even upgraded me to first class for one leg of the flight back to the UK.
This is their latest stunt:
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/qantas-under-fire-for-longhaul-longleg-charge-20110915-1kaqv.html
Posted in Qantas trials iPad in the sky
You can't polish a turd
It doesn't matter what they offer, it's still a shitty airline.
Been there, got the t-shirt...
...Anyone remember "embrace, extend, extinguish"?
<-- Most appropriate icon.
Re: Set them to music
Pure genius. Have you patented that idea yet?
How long before the NoScript devs get busy...
...and release NoNative.
No worries...
...it'll be added to Google's redundant project list in six months along with Wave, Labs and all the others.
Posted in Early Earth’s ‘golden shower’
Re: Hardly?
Just a suggestion. Type the words "golden shower" into your favoured image or video search engine.
(untitled)
(body)
Posted in Early Earth’s ‘golden shower’
Only El Reg could use "golden shower" in a science story headline
Keep up the good work.
Posted in Four depart in Internode reorganization
WTF?
I love Internode. They are *the* best ISP in Aus so I'm somewhat shocked, especially about Mark Newton. He was very much the public face on 'Node in many areas.
Posted in DNS hijack hits The Register: All well
Er...
"If you still see a defaced page, turning your equipment on and off again may help:"
How could I read that if I saw a defaced page?
But seriously, welcome back.
Posted in Sea eagles menace Scottish children
The eagles around here are smart
In my part of Aus we often see eagles that swoop and collect highly venomous snakes from cane fields. They then fly a few hundred feet upwards and drop the snakes onto a road to kill it safely. Pretty clever thinking by this magnificent bird.
Posted in A Farewell to Oates: Adios, El Reg
Err...
...what everyone else said. Thanks and good luck.
May be so but...
...go to any .gov.au site or subdomain thereof (qld.gov.au for example) and a cookie is set for .gov.au.
Not just .gov.uk...
...gov.au seems to work in a similar manner.
An incovenient truth
Facts can be annoying to anyone that holds an opposite position to those facts. Did someone really vote me down for stating a fact? I'd have thought people would have appreciated a very pertinent fact that was missing from the original article. All I was pointing out is that the Epoch Times is hardly a neutral news source.
Just in case the down voter doubts that it was a neutral comment I'd like to state that I support neither the fascist government in China nor a bunch of loony religionists. All clear now? Thank you.
Who do I believe?
Neither/both. I have no knowledge and therefore no opinion that is worth anything.
The Epoch Times...
...is a newspaper owned by Falun Gong. Just saying.
They forgot the most important group...
'designed to “gauge the views of key stakeholders” about copyright enforcement in Australia.'
...the most important group of "key stakeholders" is the public. Without them there is no entertainment industry.
A verifed Charles Arthur?
...the real one is beyond parody.
Strange choice
You'd really like to be sloshing around in a bunch of leaked coolant?
Given the choice...
...I'd rather be living near a wind farm than Fukushima.
Re: Guardian: Do as we say, not as we do
I guess you'd rather not have known about the News International stuff then?
You give them too much credit by call them readers...
...they just look at the pictures of lady bumps on Page Three and occasionally grunt.
Posted in Skype arrives on fondleslab
The first time I see someone...
...with an iPad stuck to the side of their head I will literally shit myself with laughter.
Posted in Cabinet Office ends website test
Our local council is no better...
...they just paid AUD25,000 for a "new site".
1. For the 25k they got a new content management system that required staff retraining. The CMS is open source so the supplier paid zero dollars for it.
2. A slightly modified template that they have used on other similar sites (changed the header graphic)
3. It's on shared hosting with 102 other sites.
4. It's often unavailable. It was down for over 90 minutes a few days ago. So were all the other 102 sites.
5. Will only allow PDF downloads if you have certain versions of Adobe Reader and browser plugin.
6. No new content on the new site and a whole lot of the old content has gone walkabout.
7. Old site was 100% HTML/CSS/accessibility compliant. The new site has 75 errors and 82 warnings on the home page.
Some companies and government buyers should be ashamed of themselves. And preferably fired and locked up.
“activated within 15 minutes”
Sounds very familiar....Iraq...WMD...45 minutes. Someone remind me how that went.
Posted in Want to be more secure? Don’t be stupid
I keep telling grandma about no.23...
...but she insists that 12 months is long enough to keep server logs.
Re: Eh?
"I just don't get the logic of this. If NBN is more expensive than your current copper-based service, and you don't need the speed, don't sign up for it."
As I understand it, Telstra is ripping out all the copper as part of the $11bn deal with the govt. It's either NBN or nothing from then onwards. You just get the choice of ISP to move bits across the network on your behalf.
The contention ratio isn't that good...
...100 salesmen/20 naughty ladies. Sloppy fifths, anyone?
Elites? The man is an idiot...
...everyone knows it's spelt l33t5.
Posted in NBN Co lights up on mainland
Actually, I do understand...
...and I know roads are partially funded by the Federal govt:
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201105/s3213420.htm
If you can't figure out how to make the link work I'll quote the salient part:
"The Federal Budget allocates $325 million to upgrade the national highway that runs from Brisbane to Cairns."
And worse still is the fact that the Bruce Highway gets a fraction of the Pacific Highway budget, to the tune of $500k less *per kilometre*:
http://www.news.com.au/queensland-road-funding-lags-behind-nsw/story-e6frep2f-1226040230589
And talking of tax dollars, us fools in the bush will contribute the same amount of tax towards building the NBN as the city people will but we'll get at best 12 Mb/s wireless compared to the potential 1Gb/s fibre in the cities.
Your turn.
Posted in NBN Co lights up on mainland
NBN = Not Bloody Needed
While we still have entire regions in Aus that are cut off by flooding for weeks - and sometimes months - during the wet season, the first big infrastructure project should be flood-proofing roads. Food and other supplies need to come in and local produce needs to go out. We're talking basics here, not high speed fripperies.
After that it should be storm-proofing the electricity network. Hanging power lines between wooden sticks in a cyclone region is beyond stupid and when there is a big cyclonic event the power network quite literally falls over. We had no power for almost four weeks after Cyclone Yasi while the poor engineers from the powercos went from one natural disaster to another in Queensland between December and March.
A fast network connection isn't much use when homes and telco exchanges are dark but I guess faster downloads are more important to the kids of Melbourne, Sydney and the other big cities of the SE corner of Aus.
"for those not familiar with Australian-New Zealand argot"..
..."bro" is short for "brother".
That's the first time I've been patronised by an Australian.
"Bro" is an abbreviation for "brother" outside of Aus/NZ and has been for a very long time. You'll find it in company names (Fred Bloggs & Bro Ltd) going back centuries in the UK, for example.
Kindest regards,
M Coat, your friendly Pommie pedant.
Beavering away on Martha Lane Fox...
...El Reg gets more like a Carry On film every day.
But back to the point. This does have a tiny whiff of the database state that I thought the UK had tried to get rid of at the last election. At least some good people such as NO2ID are having some input this time.
Oh the irony...
...I'm guessing from the article that some mumsnet users have used the forum to attack the parents of Madeleine McCann for not supervising their child. I really hope these aren't the same parents that can't even be arsed to supervise their own children's Net use.
Ha! Dopey!
Although I'm sure I won't be the only one to say this.
Simon Hackett...
...the bloke's a bloody legend, as the locals like to say.
I sometimes wonder if he and the rest of the Internode crew are the only ones that actually give a fuck about the Net in Australia.
Closed source comms
I think you have to start with the assumption that it is backdoored and make your decisions from there.
