Posts by Troy Shanahan

Turnbull says NBN Co could offer FTTN with optional fibre-for-cash

RE: FlatEarther

Obviously you aren't one of the people who got effed over by the NBN rollout.

I recently discovered that telstra was mere months away from upgrading my local exchange to allow for more ADSL connections before the NBN rollout began. Of course, as soon as the NBN rollout started, Telstra said, "well, why bother?" Thus, we have no ADSL, and my area is not even on NBNco's 10 year rollout plan, which means we now wait more than 10 years for something that was only a few months away before the beginning of the rollout. So, for the next 10 years myself and everyone in my area will suffer under the yoke of paying for satellite and 3G broadband, both of which are insanely expensive.

My main reason for liking Liberal's plan for the NBN is that they'll be shifting the focus from metropolitan areas, where 95% have access to decent broadband, to country areas like mine where no one has access to decent broadband.

Official: America now a nation of broadband whingers

Re: Missing the mark

Agreed with that Michael.

I recently discovered that my area basically got effed over by the NBN rollout, telstra was mere months away from upgrading my local exchange to expand the DSL ports available. Of course, now that NBNco is buying up the infrastructure, Telstra have halted all upgrades to exchanges. in the meantime, my area is slated for the NBN rollout more than 8 YEARS from now. (We're not even on their rollout map)

My choices for internet? 3G broadband (what I'm using), intermittently acceptable, and insanely expensive, Satellite (BAHAAHAHAHA), or dial-up. Of course, the 3G connections are owned by the absolutely marvelous duopoly of Telstra/Optus, meaning i get gouged a tidy $79 for 20 gig of data per month, charged at 25c per MB if I exceed that cap. I dare the americans who are whinging about their situation to come live where i live and deal with my internet for a few months....

Wind now cheaper than coal in Oz: Bloomberg

Well...

I live in a tiny rural town on the tip of the Fleurieu peninsula in South Australia, and wind turbines have been a constant companion for us. Since their installation, power outages in Cape Jervis have halved in frequency and duration.

The problem for the turbines here is never lack of wind, it's that there's occasionally too much, as the turbines are locked down when the wind approaches gale force.

Everyone bitches and moans about wind power, but which would you RATHER have? An ancient soot-belching coal plant, or an elegant looking wind farm? Sure, much of the grid's power is still from non-renewable power, but supplementing that with renewable sources can only help.

Personally I'd rather see Australia using nuclear power, we're sitting on a good amount of fissionable uranium after all....

Terrible reception for Oz spectrum auction

And as always...

... someone gets screwed. Usually us country people.

According to NBNco's rollout plan, my area (Cape Jervis and Kangaroo island) is not going to even be considered for fixed wireless in the next 6 years. Meanwhile, the wonderful duopoly of optus and telstra 3G wireless continues to screw us for every cent we have. I don't think I've actually downloaded anything major in the last 2 years, simply because 20 gig for a month is bugger all, and I pay $74 a month for it.

So much for the NBN delivering 'Affordable broadband to ALL Australians'.

Apple iPhone 5 review

Seriously guys?

Okay, we need to put a stop to this nonsense.

Okay, I can officially name myself as an Android fan. (Not a fandroid, there is a difference.) My best mate is much the same, only with Apple. We always have good natured debates over which is better, my Galaxy SII or his iPhone 4s. In the end, neither of us are saying 'you should convert', we're simply comparing the two phones.

Yes I agree with most, this was a dismal review and I expect better from El Reg. But seriously, the choice comes down to personal preference. Apple or Android? Who cares? They both make calls, send/receive emails and SMS, and have well stocked app stores.

And to all the people saying 'go out and buy your tacky plastic Galaxy SIII', okay, I most certainly will. I like the plastic finish of Samsung phones, once again, that's my personal preference.

Pope gives blessing to anti-christ terrorist squad

Bah, you're all incorrect

Has sci-fi taught you nothing? It's always the guys with awesome melee weapons (see pole-axes) that win in a fight. Especially in Sci-fi RTS games. So if the pope has a special command and control screen to order the poleaxe guys around with, they're our best hope of stemming the alien / demon tides. Especially if they were to mount flamethrowers in the ends of their pole-axes.

Mine's the flame-retardant one.

Nvidia to acquire ray tracing startup

@ AC

Ahahahaha! Best thing I've read all week. Well said.

Regarding it being good at rendering cars, who here reckons we'll see this in the next need for speed, even if the hardware doesn't support it? I don't put it past EA somehow.

First public Firefox 3 candidate shoots out the door

@ Will

Will, Firefox can install as 2 instances, you can have FF2 and FF3 installed at once. I know this for a fact because my lappy has both.

@ all the people jumping on the Hate bandwagon:

Honestly folks, don't react untill it actually happens. I'll be happily using firefox, and even if they do it there will soon be an addon that kills it. Also see the fact that the FF install will probably tell you it's doing it and ask you to opt in or out. It's not like they've conducted some form of secret trial, and they've actually told everyone ahead of time to see what the reaction will be.

Swiss birdman in Alpine backpack-jetplane stunt flight

@ Runcible Spoon

Hey, nice to see a fellow Dominic Deegan fan on el Reg. Unless there's another Runcible Spoon I'm unaware of.

And well said for the most part. I agree totally although you could have used a little less profanity.

Life is for living, get out there and do something stupid/inane if it suits you, as long as you don't hurt anyone else.

Hyundai and Kia's latest pitch to US drivers - Windows

Sigh

All the same microsoft bashing. Seriously, it's not like the ECU is being mapped my MS (Anon, do you really think MS would map an ECU? Do you know what mapping an ECU entails?) MS is simply providing a base OS to put voice recog software on. It's more gimmick than anything.

Alienware ships 'most powerful' 15in laptop to Brits

RE: Computer games

And movies come where? Between watching grass grow and people watching?

Wait, both of those things are better than the stuff hollywood puts out. Honestly, 90% of games have better stories than movies these days.

Xbox 360 burns house down

V1 console

The V1 does have a brick, my mate's V1 power lead fits my V2 console. Go figure.

Also: all power bricks heat up. he probably had something flammable on or near the brick. these things happen. I've never had an issue with my 240v brick... hmmm... maybe it's Australian mains power that makes Xbox 360s more reliable?

Top-end Fords will be watching your rear

Y'know, I have these wonderful things...

... Called blind spot eliminator mirrors. They cost 5 AUD. They are a small curved mirror that sits in the corner of your wing mirror and completely eliminates the blind spot. Problem Solvered.

I drive a small hatchback and I've never failed to check my blind spot manually, even though my blind spot is almost non-existant.

IBM dreams of optical chips with tiny light pulse device

Bwahahaaha!

Sorry, but that 'actual size' image made me laugh out loud at the exact moment a call dropped into my headset. That's hilarious. Put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

Top stuff, keep it coming.

Boozed Belarusian dodges birthday train squish

Not new

There was actually a guy here in Australia who did a similar thing, except he actually slept on the sleepers between the rails. And he woke up, hitting his head on one of the train's axles, thankfully the train was slowing down to stop at the next station.

Still, excellent article Sarah. Classic use of Darwin there...

Nortel widens telecom tubes with 40Gb/s optical cards

Not just star wars kid....

... Numa Numa must also bear the blame.

US, UK and friends have cyber-war party

Cyber Storm II?

Wait, wasn't there a REALLLY old game by Sierra called CyberStorm 2?

*Checks CD rack*

Indeed there is! Quick! Hide! The largest companies on earth have developed giant death walkers and will begin a war over earth's remaining resources. (No, I'm not being incoherent. Look up CS II's plotline.)

Hacking for public health

How long before we hear...

..I'm in ur brains, reading all ur impulses?

Mine's the white one with overly long sleeves and leather straps.

Sony Ericsson: Xperia X1 delay a 'mistake'

@What a shame

Why would them using Windows mobile degrade the reliability of the handset itself? Maybe software issues, but the handset durability should still be top notch, just as we've come to expect from SE.

I for one welcome this handset gladly. Unfortunately there's a good chance it won't be available in AUS for a good long while *Grumble*

Google enters underwater cable business

All good

...Until the anglerfish start chewing through the cable.

...Mine's the Driza-bone in the corner.

Elon Musk delays SpaceX launch until 2009

Whoa there sparky

Webster, chill the heck out! Space exploration has been on the cards for a looong time now.

And what makes you draw the conclusion of dreams of space exploration = star wars? Some of the brightest inventors, scientists and other boffins have been sci-fi nerds/geeks. Some don't like sci-fi. They're human, and they have varying interests. I think you need to pull your head out of your arse and start looking at the world around you.

Trust me, climate change is forefront in my mind, considering I'm australian and we're in the grip of one of the worst droughts in a very long time. Followed closely by the recent floods in QLD/NSW. But I can still reserve some space in my head for thinking about brighter things in our future.

Microsoft poised to unveil WorldWide Telescope?

@ John

Actually, Vista SP1 is due out at the end of this month. Check the technet, I kid you not.

BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

epic fail?

Comcast should quit while they're ahead... They're gonna lose customers this way... and they've got the whole torrent community thirsting for their blood.

Well done comcast, you receive the 'Epic Fail' award.

Paris? Cause we can see comcast reaching her level of pure stupidity soon.

Finland censors anti-censorship site

'el bonfire'

Yeesh, this is the electronic equivalent of book-burning, isn't it? Didn't most countries renounce that?

Censorship solves nothing, and unlike book burning, it's pretty easy to go to another 'internet library' to get the info. This is a useless gesture, and a bad move politically.

The finns must be miffed.

Opera screeches at Mozilla over security disclosure

Whaaat..?

Okay, why are Opera whining about this? They should have jumped on the info that mozilla provided asap, instead of procrastinating. Anyway, what was mozilla supposed to say when they released the patch without teling their users about the vulnerability? "We're just patching our software for the sake of it"?

Honestly, pull your head out Opera. Knuckle down and you might just beat mozilla to patching the hole.

Pr0n baron challenges Google and Yahoo! to build better child locks

Ouch

That's gotta hurt, when a porn baron tells you to reinforce your child locks.

But frankly, I don't see how this is going to help. What needs to be pushed is the education of parents, because, in my opinion, it's up to them to take reponsibilitly for what their child does or doesn't see. We must also remember that when you forbid a child to see something, you make them curious enough to make serious effort to see or do what is forbidden. That's the way kids are.

It's almost inevitable that a kid will come across porn at some point. It's impossible to create a completely infallible search filter. They either block too much or too little.

Microsoft immune system rejects execs

Maybe...

... Yahoo! could change microsoft? Look on the bright side, at least MS isn't as evil as news corp.

Who knows? A microsoft turnaround could be great, and it could be bad. But, stranger things have happened. I'm rather indifferent anyway.