El Reg's Deep Outback XP upgrade almost foiled by KILLER ARACHNIDS Australia's Northern territory, where The Reg is this week doing a Windows XP upgrade at the Wirliyatjarrayi Learning Centre in the remote community of Willowra, is huge and empty. Let's give that statement some dimensions. The United Kingdom covers 243,610 km2 and is home to 63.23 million people. Texas covers 696,241 km2 and …
Those numbers are just so - it makes me feel small. But not dangerous, unlike the spiders.
Hope the install goes well, because I don't think you want another trip like that in the immediate future. Though TBH I don't think the lack of speed limit means you need to drive as fast as the car will go - I'm pretty sure the police won't have you for not having your foot flat down
As I recall, they follow a german-ish model for derestriction - that is, it's up to the traffic officer to decide if you're driving dangerously, and penalties for being a dick about it are pretty severe.
100mph in a Micra - might well get a ticking off.
130mph in a BMW 5-series with a V8? Less likely.
Still, interesting to see derestriction used sensibly - especially given that speeding laws around the rest of Oz are tightly policed.
The Stuart Highway didn't have a speed limit until 2007, when the Labour government instituted the current 130 km/h one to raise revenue. The Country Liberals promised to ditch the speed limit if returned to office, and this is the start of actually fulfilling that promise.
Redbacks are normally found near their characteristic webs (untidy networked strands) in dark places near the floor.
Last year I was standing up to relocate a network switch when something hit me in the face - I stepped back and saw it was a very large female redback hanging from the ceiling on a 4ft gossamer about 4ft from the wall. When my heart-rate had returned to normal and a can of flyspray later...
"Poisonous means it's bad for your health if ingested, venomous means its bad for you if introduced to the bloodstream."
Since we're in hair-splitting mode, allow me to disagree.
"Poisonous" is what a substance is. The stuff on the tip of a blowpipe dart is poisonous, but possibly harmless if ingested.
"Venomous" is the characteristic of a creature that can deliver a poisonous substance by stinging, biting or other active means.
Plants, for example, may be poisonous but not venomous. There are, I believe, frogs that have a poisonous coating all over their skin. Whether these count as venomous, I'm not sure.
Wheeeeeee!
I'll join in with the pedantry.
Plants can be venomous, if they transmit or inject their toxins through a specialised apparatus, e.g. nettles.
The frogs you mention are poisonous, not venomous, as the toxin is delivered passively. Poisonous can refer to a substance or a plant which causes illness, death etc when taken into the body, or to an animal which produces a poison.
Dear Sam Bo,
what you are talking about is actually the toxin, which may or may not be harmful based on quantity.
For something to poisonous, the toxin of it must be ingested or absorbed, like your frog. For something to be venomous, it must actively inject the toxin into the target, much like your average spider which will use teeth to cut through skin and inject the toxin into your body.
I have yet to hear about a poisonous spider, bet the arachnid-eating variety of people would not like that too much... :D
Also, I would not always recommend digesting the toxin of a venomous species... Even if it doesn't enter the bloodstream immediately, the toxin may [enter eventually] by virtue of being digested and not broken down in our stomach....
So... this from the ultimate hairsplitter on El Reg...
Back to the story... if that video is shot at 6 frames per second (10 seconds elapsed per frame) and replayed at 18 frames a second, every second of that video covers about 3 minutes (10 seconds elapsed per frame * 18 = 180 seconds = 3 minutes) drive. So, given that the video is 46 seconds, it covers 3 * 46 = 138 minutes of driving. 2 hours and 18 minutes. So we don't quite know what stretch of road that video covers: 180 km at "often sat on 160km/h" is very variable... :D
Nice spiders, though!
Regards,
Guus
Ah. Deadly venom is neither a poison, nor poisonous. Got it.
Fortunately for imanidiot, he/she didn't say that.
A poisonous animal is one that will harm you if you ingest (or sometimes touch) it. An animal that harms you by injecting a toxin is venomous.
It's an entirely uncontroversial distinction in the context of zoology.
They are pretty harmless unless you pick them up or sit on the bog without checking. Nothing like this which infests the Vulture South offices or worse still one of these. At least some of the sheep are OK.
Holy s**t, the "Drop bear."
Not exactly a cuddly koala is it?
I feel Aus film makers have been very remiss in exploiting the vast opportunities for horror movies their country has to offer for its wild life to seriously f**k you up.
Forget giant types caused by nuclear testing (although you've got to wonder about the odd missing back packer) just the regular size nasties are pretty nasty.
I must have led a charmed life, since I've been uninstalling Java everywhere I've come across it, and only LibreOffice / Open Office seems to require it, and I've had no user complaints. Delighted praise is another matter...
only LibreOffice / Open Office seems to require it,
Not even. When you start it, LO pops up a message about it being rather displeased with the system being uncontaminated by cheesejava, but as far as I can see it runs OK despite the warning. Haven't encountered stuff not working attributable to lack of java
Always found aircon turns you into a prisoner in your own home - or chalet on the beach on holiday.
30C is horrible for 2 days and then you get used to it - if you dont use aircon.
I only use aircon to dry me out for a shave. Any other cooling requirements beer will do. Even aussie beer in emergencies.
I'm guessing you're somewhere humid - "dry out for a shave"? In dry heat, you just wait a few tens of seconds, you don't really need a towel let alone air-con. Also 30C dry heat isn't particularly unpleasant, even straight off a plane from the UK. You just have to be sure you can stay hydrated, or it'll make you ill in a couple of hours and kill you in a day. Water works better than beer.
(I've been to Death Valley in summer. That WAS hot. )
@Bill B:
You'd be so wrong! Beer is obviously much better for dehydration than water. If the Daily Mail says so it must be true!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-491236/A-pint-beer-better-workout-water-say-scientists.html
Sadly, I couldn't find the peer reviewed journal article, but I'm sure it exist. Somewhere. In someones mind, at least.
"30C is horrible for 2 days and then you get used to it - if you dont use aircon."
PFFT! 30C? That's what my AC is set on in the Spring and Summer!
Around here, 35C-38C is the Summer norm, though it can hit 40C+ for a couple of weeks at a time, with humidity at 80 to 120%.
120% humidity for Top End (top of the NT) sounds about right for the wet season, which is where Batchelor is, Willowra is a bit further south and not quite so sticky, but potentially a lot hotter.
In that kind of humidity you take around twenty steps out of your A/Ced office and you are literally soaking in your own sweat. And I do mean literally, not figuratively.
Which is why an NT stubby holds around 2 litres of beer (although no local drinks that rubbish, go for mini-kegs instead). 'Cos you gotta stay hydrated or get inebriated enough that you don't care. Plus there's a lot of renal care facilities up here just in case...
Your average server and SAN is comfortable at higher temperatures than your average techie.
We run a cold aisle with a target temp of 27.5 degrees - but regularly get asked to turn it down - usually to 23 degrees - when visiting techies find their "it'll be 18 degrees in there mate" issued uniforms are a little on the warm side. Uses less than half the power required to keep the hall at the 18 degrees that was previously deemed essential, with no difference in fail rates (still zero after 3 years).
We even operated at full capacity for a few hours at 32 degrees once (by accident), but found some things didn't like it much. We also know that one brand of server will fail spectacularly at 36 degrees, and blow every circuit breaker feeding the hall in the process.
Cooling is relative...
The press-driven hysteria over the arrival of the Noble False Widow in the UK always makes me smile when I think of the care education and common sense Australians have to apply to their interactions with this far more hazardous relative, and while I can imagine the experience of lactrodectism to be an incredibly painful one, redback-induced fatalities are vanishingly rare. And we in the UK worry about a spider whose incredibly rare bite is usually less medically significant than a wasp sting...
Good job on the project, guys.
But the redbacks are only dangerous to small children and the elderly with heart issues. To the normal healthy adult, a redback bite will make you sick as hell for a few days but it wont kill you.
If you want spiders that will kill you... try the funnel web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_funnel-web_spider) to really fuck you up!
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