Posts by James 25 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jan 2008
Anything which is going to increase standardisation of web is a good thing. And one less reason to have potentially bug-laden proprietary add-ons .
It's about time Microsoft started using everyone else's standards in this area rather than trying to get everyone to use theirs. At least in Adobe's defence, there wasn't a standard alternative when they introduced flash.
Given the wingspan on this thing it's not surprising they're having lateral stability issues with those tiddly rudders. These people were clever enough to get the X-prize, so I can't imagine something as trivial as this is going to slow them down much.
Still, bags not be the test pilot that has to spin this beast (or more correctly, the test pilot who has to get it out of the spin).
The call to proposals to build this network which was scrapped to give us 100Mb/s fibre to the home was only asking for fibre to the node at a minimum of 12 Mb/s. At least we're now going to bypass the aging copper altogether. Given how copper went from dialup to ADSL2+ I'm guessing once the fibre's in the ground and plumbed into people's houses the clever boffins can figure out how to push data through it faster in the future.
So if the ACMA won't allow an Australian site (Whirlpool.net.au) to link to the banned material, is it ok to link to a non-Australian site that has a link to the material? ie will the ACMA leap into action to protect innocent Australians if I put in link on whirlpool to the second comment above? And if that is verboten and going to cost AUD11,000/day, how many intermediate links do there have to be before it's ok.
Farcial...
When they can get it to the point where you can do all things that Windows uses IE for using any standards compliant browser (Windows update etc), then I'll accept that Microsoft is changing. Until then, regardless of how the EU see it, deleting an executable doesn't cut it in my book...
And two reboots just to delete a file? Granted it's only a beta, but are they having a larf?
To all those putting the boot in, Welsh is an official (minority) language of the UK. Along with Scots Gaelic, Cornish etc. This should mean that it gets treated in the same way as English in those areas where it's spoken. Accordingly, I think she's got a point...
Personally, I think the best thing to put on an ID card is a couple of sticks of dynamite...
My issue with IE is it cannot be removed from a Windows machine, it's so tightly integrated you simple are not able to remove it without borking the entire system. Can I remove Firefox from my linux box? An easy peasy one line command.
And as for everyone bleating about how you cannot get a browser without having a browser in the first place there are other ways of doing it - I could imagine a small app using wget that gives you a choice of browser installers to fetch. It's ugly, but it's possible.
Personally I think it's MS's right to include their browser on their OS and I think it's daft if they should be forced to include any competitors software, but they world would be a better place if:
a) the OS didn't depend on the browser for critical functions, eg Windows Update
b) a user could remove IE if they wanted to
c) MS got with the program and starting supporting the current standards rather than making their own ones
Err, re your 1/4 score - the Labor party campaigned on making a filtered web feed available for schools/libraries/homes, but it wasn't mandatory. They only slipped that little proviso in - oh and didn't we mention P2P too, oops, we meant to - once in power.
And Ian Rogers, voting is compulsory in Oz, if you didn't vote for them them (or a party which supported them through a ridiculously complex support scheme) then you would have voted against them.
I still fervently hope that one day the pollies involved will realise this will never fly, and quietly shelve the whole thing. Internet access in Oz is already slow and expensive enough as it is, without mangling it further.
At least the Oz government finally seem to be listening to everyone telling them that kiddie porn isn't done using http, and are broadening their internet-slowing filter to suppress other avenues. Shame they're not listening to the even louder cries that this whole thing is an epic steaming pile of Fail waiting to happen.
I very much look forward to saying "we told you so" when they eventually quietly drop this and move on.
Given that about 85% of Australia's electricity is generated from burning coal, can someone tell me how this is any better than cars running on petrol? Until a greater percentage of their electricity generation is happening from renewables this smells suspiciously like greenwash...
Fine in somewhere like New Zealand where the electricity is mostly from hydro.
"Business jets and private planes are the only other all-composite fuselage aircraft that fly on a regular basis."
You're forgetting gliders, all of which are made of carbon fibre/fireglass these days. Admittedly while 50,000 ft isn't a normal operating altitude it has been done (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record#Gliders), and half that height is pretty straight forward if you're in the right place. No special modifications needed to the airframe even for world altitude flights...
I lived in Perth, Western Australia for a few years, and the speed cameras there are evil. They're mobile, and they set them all over the place (they're very very hard to see in advance as they're usually under trees or hidden behind signs), and you've got a 5 kph (3 mph) margin before they start taking money off you. Once you've been done a couple of times you figure out why virtually all the locals religiously obey the speed limits, even on the motorways.
Just when airlines are struggling with high fuel costs, and looking at weight reductions on aircraft as much as possible along comes someone with the bright idea of bolting several hundred kilos of kit on the arse of each plane.
Still, think of the fear-mongering you can with this (OMG!! THEY'RE NOT GOING TO GET YOU WITH SCISSORS OR BREAST MILK ANYMORE BUT THEY'RE GOING TO SHOOT YOU ALL DOWN!!1!...)
I think I'm getting cynical in my old age.
When will people stop saying because we'd need 10 gazillion doofangles to replace the existing power gen kit, and there's no way we can do that, we should do nothing instead and keep on using coal/nuclear/etc.
The existing messy generation kit is never going to be replaced by a single type of clean technology. It's going to be a bit of this one, and a bit of that one, and some of that other stuff too. Wave generation should comprise part of an overall solution - just because it isn't a total solution doesn't mean it's of no value.
And I'm sure if these things start to wear out and lose rigidity, a little blue Pfizer pill is all that would be required to make 'em good as new...
If they want this thing to run iTunes, the lack of storage space is one issue. The fact it's running linux is going to be another blocker. Or have Apple decided to hug the penguin of late, and I've missed it?
Still, good luck to them. It should be perfect for some situations (as with the new range of laptots out there). If this thing does take off, it'll be interesting to watch MS give XP a further reprieve in the hope of staying relevant.
Pffft - $1 per gig. If you want to see proper gouging you want to try Australia, where the incumbent will sting your for $150/GB: http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-1/telstra-bigpond.htm.
Oddly enough, amongst the knowledgeable, they're not the most favoured ISP here...
Anyway, I welcome those Time Warner customers to our ridgy-didge Aussie internet experience.
John Hargrove - the increase in thrust immediately prior to landing is often caused by the aircraft dropping into a slower moving head wind - wind at ground level is less that at even a few hundred feet. This results in the aircraft losing airspeed, hence the increase in thrust to maintain safe approach speeds when you get close to the ground.
You (hopefully) don't get too many cowboys behind the steering wheels of big places, most of them value their careers too much.
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