Posts by Charybdis

ZERO-G DINOSAUR made from bits and bobs by space station flight engineer

Karen Nyberg is a Whovian

..."It's a DINOSAUR on a SPACESHIP".....

And that is just so ridiculously cool... like a fez... or a Stetson.

Saucy Star Wars strip show - sorry, burlesque - to tour Down Under

This show was brilliant

I saw the show on May the 4th 2012 (which was awesome), so am very happy it will be returning.

The Batman Follies show has also already toured , but the Star Wars show was significantly better

.

And as cliched as it is, the Slave Leia performance was spectacular....For the record, that woman writhes like a snake on stage, and has the most amazing...err...eyes.....

Cheers!

Texan schoolgirl expelled for refusing to wear RFID tag

If the system was Opt-in, there should be no issue

People are SIGNING UP to be RFID tracked (just look at the http://www.epicmix.com/ ski-ticket system from Vail resorts, or for public transport there are the UK Oyster Cards or the Oz Myway cards etc).

However for them to be introduced at a public school, with no choice but to comply smacks of the police state.

We all already have barcode/swipe cards used to "Buy and Sell goods" (I wonder if the student in question likewise avoids credit cards and ATMS under religious beliefs), so it's only a small leap to get to RFID tracking of same.

Of course, we all protested something back in high school, and for the student to refuse to comply with an RFID-less lanyard (which appears to mean that she is refusing to carry school ID) it seems that the school is quote within rights to expel her, religious beliefs or not.

Note: If your religious beliefs mean you refuse to be photographed, for example, you can't get a license or photo ID to buy liquor. It's not religious persecution, it's legal bloody sense....

South Africa and Australia to share SKA

West Australia is the far better site for this project, especially for the heavily weighted technical and politically stable requirements, but quite simply, the Oz public and Govt didn't do enough campaigning to secure this job. In the end, we were lucky to get a share of it.....

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/we-dont-deserve-this-huge-exciting-scientific-project/

Will good things come of it? Sure.

But nobody can tell me that the decision to share it was due to anything more than strong South African campaigning coupled with Australian complacency....

Wondershare PowerCam

It's Free again

I've just checked again, and now it's free (20.04.12)

Downloading now, baby :)

Re: Not free App

$1.99AU for us Down Under as well....

Maybe it was free until they got some El Reg publicity?

Whinging Brits reflect on epic Oz road trip

Rental Car what?!

What sort of 2-bob rental agency were you using?

'Normally, you can't take hire cars out of the Northern Territory, and certainly not on one-way trips.' ?!

What a load of rubbish! Both tourists and locals do this all the time. You've been had, boys!

Videogames caused riots says plod

Wow, bad sound byte

Geez I hope this was misquoted. I normally respect the plods, but this particular specimen seems to be of the clueless, doughnut-munching variety....

IT governance: a help or a hindrance for your projects?

Some cliche's are true

It's a PM's job to co-ordinate/manage requirements (via whatever methodology is deemed best to suit the work), and translate between teams that speak entirely different languages (User, Engineer, Management, Executive, Technician etc)

- Executive finances the project

- Business areas provide requirements

- Experts design solution

- Technical teams deliver the solution

- Management communicate new processes to staff

- PM slides in and out between all required teams to make sure everything's working well together (reactively and proactively)

This isn't really an IT discussion. It's true for every type of project in every industry.

And the cliche? It's a team effort

*blech* but true....

MPs slam government's 'obscene' IT spend

With Gov IT policies, they're lucky it _only_ costs £3,500

Depends on if we're just talking about Hardware, or adding software, service and network charges. At which point £3,500 is a bargain for what Gov agencies expect.

- Standard Hardware costs (minimal costs)

- Licensing for basic software (minimal costs)

- Licensing and customisation for weird and wacky gov software (obscene costs)

- Permanent right to call Gov IT Service desk for ranting and support (moderate costs)

- Lease arrangement to perform hot-swaps at any stage (minimal)

- SOE/IMAGE overheads requirements because agencies all want different hardware to run all their software packages (moderate costs)

- Data connection costs (permanent 100/1GB data connections aren't cheap)

- etc etc

it's not a cheap exercise, but it's all pretty logical. Just depends on what this report is actually saying about capital costs vs ongoing/running costs..... sounds a bit vague to me...

Gamer claims complete console collection

No Vectrex?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex

I'm sure there's others missing too...

Aussie carbon tax in actually-makes-sense shocker

Tax Free huh?

I think you'll find the higher tax-free threshold is completely nullified by the proposed increases in the higher non-tax-free brackets.

End result. More taxes for a $120k household (which, incidentally is dead average for two full-time working adults in Australia http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6302.0 )

So, the 'rich' are actually anyone on an average OZ income or higher. Awesome.....

Wow, a lot of people really aren't paying attention....

Whole bunches of people here think that actually paying attention to the taxes you pay makes me 'a douche' to quote from the posts. Well, let's do the math then on a nice hypothetical family with 2.2 kids and two spouses at work to pay for a mortgage that didn't start in the 90's.

Family income ~AU$120,000

minus Income Tax ~30% averaged between spouses = ~$30,000 on the sliding scale

minus child care = $25,000 p.a. (cheap child care is $50 per day per child, so let's be conservative).

**credit**: Child care rebate (which is on the table to be removed for such a 'high-earning' family) +$10,000

Family Tax benefit A)...nope not applicable

Family Tax benefit B)...nope, not applicable

So, the reward for all the hard work to get to this point is to get to hand over $45,000 in tax. Yup, that hurts...add in 30k in mortgage payments and the family is now on $45,000 a year for food, petrol, rates, after-school-care, electricity, home repairs, insurance and god-forbid a phone bill or a night out...

However, if this family was to work part-time and just live on $60,000 per year, the tax would be around 10k (with tax offsets and government hand-outs also paying off most of the child care as well), plus rent assistance to pay for someone else's mortgage...

So, for the half the effort, the reward is 50k and government assistance, but at full effort, the reward is $75k and the government telling you to bend over.

So, who here thinks that's a fair indication of reward for effort?

Come on, raise your hand if at the end of the day, your boss says:

"You worked 40 hours last week, and 80 hours this week, but I'm not going to double your pay"

and you happily go

"Fair enough boss, I was too rich anyway...."

No? Didn't think so....

You drongo

Like I said, I don't mind paying a carbon tax. And if it was only going to be $10-20 per week, sign me up!

However:

A) What massive property and share portfolios? All you need is one dead-average OZ mortgage, two incomes in the house to pay for it, and suddenly you're rich enough to just shut up and bend over? Get bent.

B) Read the proposal. The flow-on effect is going to be a lot more than initial estimates. Every middle man along the way will raise the price by 1-2%, and suddenly ever item made in Australia is 10% dearer. We're already paying 10% GST... now it's magically 20%?Gee, Fun!

C) Targets those making the greatest emissions? Really? So my lifestyle of self-sufficient solar power, public transport and veggie garden is higher than some V8 driving hoon on welfare? Don't think so...

D) What 'boost to disposable incomes'? You mean that extra few hundred per annum? That will disappear with cost of living/inflation faster than you can say 'Where's me smokes?'

E) I've been that poor bugger who couldn't pay the bills. So I stopped drinking, gave up smokes, got a job, an education and then a family. Now after slogging through, paying my way and my dues, the government (and judgemental prats on technical forums) think I'm on easy street because the household has a combined family income over $120k? Au Contraire mon frere....

F) And those other buggers I went to school with who are still lazing around getting drunk, stoned and welfare payments every week, can keep their hand out and not care, because the government is making sure this tax won't hurt them ...awww....how nice for them.

So, where's the incentive to work hard, make a living for yourself and family and stop being a burden to society? It's rapidly disappearing because the government keeps applying more and more taxes on the upper margins, while ensuring that the unwashed masses aren't 'further disadvantaged'. It's insulting, it's bad economics, and it's got a mighty PR machine behind it to convince the simple-minded that it's all in the name of the environment.

And you, my friend, are buying it hook, line, sinker rod and copy of Angling Times....

Economics be damned...

As an OZ geek, I don't mind paying a carbon tax (aka a Pollution tax) in order to help clean up the planet. The principle is solid. However this tax is just a cleverly disguised, discriminatory wealth re-distribution package.

- Low-to-Medium Income earners get other tax breaks to compensate for the Carbon tax.

- High-to-OMG income earners just get the carbon tax, with no compensation or offsets.

This combined with other recent government tax changes against higher income earners means that the government is just spruiking votes from the low-to-mid income masses, and what's particularly embarrassing as an OZ is that the masses are falling for it.

If the government wants to make the carbon tax fair, it should apply to all businesses and all taxable income (even on a sliding scale would be fairer than the current proposal). But leaving out key polluters (including Petrol Companies FFS?!) demonstrates that this isn't actually a Carbon tax. It's just economic slight of hand by a second-rate prestidigitator...

The great Aussie firewall is back - and this time it's personal

This embarrasses all Aussies

On behalf of Australia, I'd like to apologise for the stupidity of our politicians.

The great Aussie firewall is a joke.

It will not work the way the government wants it to.

It will not work the way the lobbyists want it to

It will not work the way normal Internet users want it to

It will not work the way journalists and media want it to

Why the %$#$@#! are we still debating this?! How many times do both reasonable public and technical experts need to tell the Government that their request is neither feasible nor warranted....

To the rest of the world...look, we're really sorry. We're only a 222 year old country (109 if you count since Federation)...we'll grow up soon, I promise...

Microsoft gets Speedos in a twist over half-naked 'Meter Maids'

Not Indicative!

For the record, the IT Girls I know would have enjoyed the event, although some Gold Coast boys (Manpower? Thunder from Down Under?) should probably have been likewise involved in the name of fairness. The Gold Coast is called 'BrisVEGAS' for a reason!)

Seeing as MS chose the outfits (Classic!) but in other news articles around the world are claiming ignorance (ie News.com.au) sounds like a few people at Gatesworld are panicking in the PR backpedalling...

Is it art or is it pr0n? Australia decides it's ALL filth

I apologise for our politicians

On behalf of all Australians, I'd like to apologise for the simple-minded half-wits who are presenting these laws.

Do kids need to be protected from child exploitation? Yes, absolutely.

Is this proposed amendment going to do anything to help? No bloody way!

I wonder if this means that every Australian gallery and church would have to take down all those naked cherubs?

Bureaucracy gone mad.... mad I tell you!

Rogue contractor admits Oz gov hack attacks

It's the NT government, not the Pentagon

Population of this particular capital city is 100,000 ... and they brought some experts from interstate ASAP to help out with the restore.

There were indeed backups, but it was a little trickier than usual to implement them. He didn't just delete the public servant profiles. He deleted _all_ the logins... all of them... Admin, Support staff, Field Techs, and Government users etc etc

I don't know what they did in the end to fix this, but it was most likely either:

- hack open a domain server /

- rebuild a domain server

-- Then let the system repopulate the ID's downstream to other server locations

As for whether he's available for hire in the UK to help out with those troublesome civil servants, he may need to give 6-12 months notice! :)