Posts by Stephen 10 121 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009
Okay, freshly created rightwing troll account spib.burfank, we get it, you're either an American (Fox news talking point #2 in your list) or at the very least a libertarian of the Rand-ian crazed sort.
1. Sacking people is a cost - and a waste of resources. Parents are probably the only people worse to run schools than an education department. It's great if you want a return to the 18th Century but perhaps we have moved past that.
2. I'm sure the MASSIVE $12 million in aid to China is crippling your country (2011 figures). Hardly the main focus of your governments spending, perhaps take a look at the good ol' military-industrial complex for that. And then try and dismantle it without killing the rest of your economy...
3. ...Only because you know how bitter you would taste, basted in your sauce of smug superiority.
Seriously your solutions would all create far bigger problems. What you espouse has been tried many times in many locations and it always fails, simply because many people do not work that way and no amount of you wanting them to will change that. You don't seem to have any degree of compromise in your thinking and thus you'll always be marginalised.
I'm voting you down and agreeing with you at the same time, simply because as with all advocacy of smaller government, it is incredibly difficult, verging on impossible, to make the changes in such a way as to increase efficiency.
How do you plan to reduce government size, deliver needed programmes and also re-employ former government workers effectively?
It's a juggling act I'd love to see.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/foam.html
First read about them in the 80s, they're still on the table.
Oh and as far as sovereignty goes, you establish an asteroid in orbit with sufficient solar power and a decent range of available elements and you're good to go as a nation state with the added advantage of being up-hill from everyone else - think kinetic weapons, lasers and probably nukes. Being at the top of the gravity well is like being king of the castle of super steroids.
Nice troll, only a question that's been answered about infinity times.
Read up on forum shopping and come back when you have a nice new shiny clue.
First judgement is for whole EC - the German court was in error to even try the case and it's verdict is put aside..
Proof of concept I guess but not much more - there are some interesting music production tools coming out for iPads though, Akai's synth station looks rather tasty and the new pro-am level mixer that uses the iPad as its main interface looks promising as well. And everyone and their dog is doing tablet remote controls for their gadget... interesting times.
The stinginess in bundling often marks a bad product, possibly indicates the companies management head space (we want your money is our entire mission statement).
I upgraded to the Xperia P from a Nexus One, lovely phone. With ICS it's a very pleasant experience and has pretty much the same feature set as the iPhone 5 (subjectively) + NFC. All for A$350 outright in my case.
I got this because I agree with those not wanting huge phones, the S3 is a powerhouse but too damn big for my tastes.
Re cars - importing cars is a nightmare aided by the collusion of the ATO. They've decided that you pay tax not on the price you pay but on what an equivalent car would retail for in Australia. Nice to see the gov engaging in price fixing to protect the wholesalers.
That said the duty has fallen from around 40% to 5% over the last 15 years, sadly this did not reduce the prices noticeably as the distributors pocketed the difference. Many cars here are 200-300% more expensive than they are in the US or UK and the used market is kept artificially inflated as well. This helps to explain why so many 20-40 year old cars are still rattling dangerously around Australian roads.
It would take major legislative reform to change this and there's absolutely no will to do this shown by the major parties as the industry and it's associated unions are political donators and lobbyists.
What you're saying is all true - but it's still a huge improvement over the current model and there's no real better alternative.
Surely serving 93% excellently and the 7% adequately is a huge improvement. I'm not sure what your argument is beyond some kind of innuendo that everyone should receive the same regardless of individual cost.
The same Roy Spencer who signed off that AGW is wrong because god did it? (And also signing on to Intelligent Design)
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/articles/read/an-evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming/
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/blog/item/prominent-signers-of-an-evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming/
He might not exactly be a reliable source of scientific information.
A good example of the gouge by vendors was when last year, import duty on cars reduced from 10% to 5% on cars not a single imported car reduced price to reflect this.
Australia has very low barriers for imports nowadays, after Labour reduced most of them in the early 90s then they were further reduced with the introduction of GST. It's interesting to see that people think they still high.
It's not helped by people in shops making hand-wavey comments about taxes. It happened to me yesterday when I asked why an item was twice the US price: "Taxes, freight, handling..." even though the shop assistant admitted there was no tax on the item when I asked which tax.
The US legal system for allowing software patents.
There's a reason nobody else does, which is it's a broken idea.
BTW El Reg on reading "We pressed Apple for a comment, but have yet to receive a reply.", when was the last time Apple responded to you?
(And it doesn't appear to be just you, this seems to be boilerplate for any media organisation that asks a question Apple doesn't care to answer)
The Xperia SX which looks to be all this phone isn't; small, light, expandable (8GB internal and takes an micro SD), fast (dual 1.5GHz and LTE), hi-res screen and launches with ICS. Japan only at the moment but looks a good option for those of us who don't want surfboard sized phones.
"Apple, they may charge over the odds but they sure as hell know how to build solid workstations."
Ignoring the fact I've had 3 power supplies die on the Mac Pro (though all 3 replaced outside warranty which makes me think it's a known problem) and the WiFi has been flaky as hell (replaced with '500MB' powerline networking which has worked far more reliably and quickly) it has been reliable.
I disagree about 'professional support' making a PC a workstation though - it's entirely your opinion and goes against the idea of Apple offering workstations, professional support requires on-site which Apple don't do in Australia. In mine it's level of power and expandability that raises it above a regular PC, that's all.
Unlike from the actual massive earthquake and tsunami...
I completely disagree with Lewis' stance on AGW but that doesn't make him wrong on nuclear power.Nuclear is so far the safest power source per watt we've ever discovered to my knowledge. If anything I think you've just made Lewis' headline point with your own hysterically toned posts.
Actually most of them do have gold connectors in pro audio and decent grade copper wire. Just checked all of my standard XLR cables and they're OFC with gold pins... Hell of a lot cheaper than Hi-Fi equivalents though. And the gold is there to prevent corrosion as has been pointed out previously. All my mics have gold connectors too btw, as do my standard studio headphones.
Which is the most amusing bit, audiophiles will spend money to gain spurious advantages that the musicians and producers never even thought about - we actually mix to make sure things sound good on a phone/radio more than high end gear. Most mixing is done using smallish near field monitors, the huge wide-range speakers are usually there to impress the suits and deafen the band, we need our ears for mixing ;-)
there was for removing my post - especially as the blatantly inflammatory and possibly defamatory post I responded to was not moderated.
Your bias is showing Mr Mod. Which is a pity as Richard has been doing an excellent job in showing you how to present un-biased, fact based editorial and journalism.
The Age "left leaning", the government "socialist"?!?!
In what world is that remotely accurate?
Seriously, you need to understand what socialism means, it's certainly not supporting multinationals and other party donators over responsible policy choice. Which is the current model the Labor Party uses. But socialist, that is hilarious, they're a centre right party with the Liberal party moving to the extreme right.
And the Age is a seller of Real Estate advertising and football news, that's pretty much it.
Next you'll be saying Andrew Bolt is a reasonable person with valid well researched views...
Possibly you're quite correct - but then the executive/boards of financial institutions never have to look much farther ahead then the next 3 reporting periods. Long term is not their goal and we've all seen they still get rewarded for failure.
Banks are short term focussed and there is no will to change this.
They've once again ensured that the world's press do their marketing for them. (Not a dig at the Reg)
I wonder if anyone has quantified how much money they save with the free advertising they receive, compared with their competitors? It has to be one of the key factors behind their startling profit margins.
Graham, surely you can't be *that* disingenuous as to straight-facedly state that Lewis hasn't already shown his colours? Really?
He's not a journalist - he's an editorialist. An opinion writer. With zero credentials on this subject. A well displayed propensity for cherry-picking and huge slant on everything he writes.
It's not an ad-hom nor is it shooting the messenger when it's:
a: Their own message
b: Been shown to be outrageously inaccurate
and
c: They have a history of selectively quoting others out of context.
Climate scientists did have open debates, symposia, journals (with actual peer reviewed papers) etc. Just because you weren't invited doesn't mean they're not transparent.
I think the problem is that climate scientists already had the rational debate. Now every contrarian wants to stick their ill-informed and illogical oar in as well.
Lewis being a perfect example... He seems to know better than the appointed experts on any subject he turns his keyboard to, no matter how un-related his actual qualifications, methods and experience are.
Frankly I'm guessing he's mates with the editor/owners of el Reg, he can hardly be here based on journalistic skills.
Surely they mean that more money will be flowing offshore as this is an overseas company looking to operate at a profit.
The indirect job numbers are obviously made up - selling a person who works there a sandwich one day does not count as a newly created job.
Not saying datacentres aren't needed but quoting the governments self-serving PR nonsense is a waste of valuable bits.
As far as I can tell this means that their advertising blitz is working, mixed with continuous free PR from the general media. It's a fact free, emotion rating. Nice for Apple and its investors but irrelevant otherwise. Still, nice job bigging up Harris Interactive and their meaningless metric.
Why exactly should the entertainment/sports industry have its business model specially protected? I'd like one of these sinecures too please, I'll pay the appropriate bribes/donations to political parties/put them on boards after they've been kicked out etc.
It explains why we have such a low perception of corruption in Australia, it's institutionalised.
That there's actually a few choices for web servers for android - so potentially yes.
And it comes with a video editing app, at least my TF-101 did. Haven't used it as yet but there are options again.
I'm using the tablet alongside my Mac Pro and it makes a great combo, just remote log into the Mac Pro when I need serious grunt/disk.
I think you'll find he's covered either way. Senior Executive remuneration packages often have clauses that minimise their potential loss and taxes while maximising the return, all at the cost of the regular stockholders. They also don't usually have the vesting periods that regular employees have with stock options and seem to have very flexible terms on repayments if they borrow money from the firm to pay for options.
But then whose going to rock that applecart when the rest of the people deciding the payment are in on the same deal?
What should but never will happen, is a return to the pre-JFK rates of income tax. It's worth noting that the USA's highest productivity and general wealth growth happened during their highest income tax rates for the rich.
Most high end speakers [ and the studio monitors that the music is tracked and mixed on ] are constructed using MDF as it has better damping and far more consistent acoustic properties than 'real wood'. They just use it in much thicker slabs, usually at least 25-50mm, to ensure structural rigidity. Then they put a nice veneer on to make it look like furniture or vinyl if they want to reduce cost.
Chip-board is the crap alternative, often used in mini and micro systems.
I look forward to you driving over a bridge designed solely by an industrial designer.
Industrial design is an arts based qualification with a drafting/technical drawing component. It is not a technical qualification.
An engineer is a recognised and certified title, like a medical doctor, it takes a minimum of 4 years of study at a recognised institution and is highly protected due to the consequence of the work and its potential failure. While bunging another word in front is fashionable it doesn't make anyone a real engineer.
A friend of mine just finished her Engineering PhD in plasma physics after 9 years of study then original, ground-breaking work, she's an engineer, Ive is not.
Hey AC - why not use your real name if you're so passionate about this - 4 posts and counting, what's your interest in this?
This seems to read like someone with a vested interest in clearing Hurd's name, your justifications are hardly convincing and seem to be along the lines of 'everyone else does it so it's okay'.
Get some ethics. Some solid ones that don't rely oin screwing over everyone else for short term gain.
It's just a job is never an excuse.
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