Posts by A Dawson

Former UK PM Tony Blair urges governments to sort out online ID

Re: ironic

Papieren bitte

Researchers crack Oz Govt medical data in 'easy' attack with PCs

My brain hurts

I'm sure every time Brandis opens his mouth on technology or privacy he destroys more of my brain cells than a swift smack in the head with a hammer would do, I think its a conspiracy to beat us into some form of mental submission by idiocy or maybe his advisors are as stupid as I think they are, is Brandis someones sockpuppet pretending to be a real person?

Ancient radioactive tree rings could rip up the history books

Re: Does it really matter ?

Or you could look at the Nordic countries ....

Australian States stutter in coding-for-kids bandwagon-jump

I think you will find that New South Wales is the most populous state (5th paragraph) and Victoria referred to the next largest later on, largest is a little ambiguous or am I being to pendantic?

But regarding National Curriculum, the federal government needs to tie direct funding to the adoption to any curriculum they actually want to see get up.

It's almost time for Australia's fibre fetishists to give up

Re: Now flood the comms pits with water…

Errrr Nullarbor has had fibre across it for a looooong time (Telstra and others)

Maybe Maybe not

Umm .... not sure if sarcasm re closeness of exchanges .... plus rotting copper (yay)

3D printer blueprints for TSA luggage-unlocking master keys leak online

Re: Likely to have reverse engineered them?

Thats why the TSA locks I own have a colour indicator that indicates if they have last been opened by the master key or the regular key.

Uber BLOCKS COPS to stop stings

Re: Entrapment?

Entrapment is not a legal defence in Australia

Oh BOY! The MICKEY MOUSE Apple Watch is no heart-throb

I'm sure this has been said before but those are some hideous looking watches.

OMG! With nothing but machine tools, steel and parts you can make a GUN!!

Re: moeity

Homicides by firearms as a percentage 2012 .. US 59% (of 14,827), England and Wales 7%, Northern Ireland 22%, Scotland 0% (they prefer to stab each other apparently) all up for the UK about 700 homicides.

So in the UK not only are you about 5 times less likely to be murdered you are still around 40 times less likely to be slain by a firearm in England an Wales.

You are however right that the new handgun laws did not significantly change the trending of homicides by firearms but the rest of the conclusions seem uniformed.

source UNODC

Re: "can't oppose the gubmint cuz they got tanks and drones.."

Tell that to the native Americans (North and South). I'm sure they were pretty determined too.

World Solar Challenge contender claims new speed record

Re: Tesla S?

Hi Russ just to be clear the Tesla S 60KWh is rated for 200 (208 actually) miles (around 320km) and the 85KWh is rated for 265 miles (426km)

All at and average speed of 20 mph (32km/h) max of 56mph but including stop start *which with regenerative braking is less of a issue than with petroleum cars - but still not apples to apples.

Fuel for jets DOES grow on trees

Re: Scale

Logs .. the logs hardly contain any oil (although you could harvest that for chipping and MDF). The canopy is where the oil is and can be harvested after about 5 years (without ripping up the tree which still acts to keep the water table low enough to reduce the salinity of the topsoil and reduce wind erosion) Collection and yield of usable fuel even after transport etc is estimated at around 2:1 (the energy density is around 3+ times that of corn there is a few papers around if I could bother to look for it). The Mallee is native to the region and can withstand the extremes of the climate (the wheatbelt gets progressively more arid heading east) and requires little encouragement to grow in that environment as opposed to the foodcrops which can only be grown half of the year (very little permanent water and very seasonal rain). Solar is fine but you have huge initial capital and significant maintenance and replacement costs especially dispersed over an area a bit bigger than England. Anyway getting to the TL;DR stage now.

In Australia, protesting against Brendan Eich will be a CRIME

Law in Australia

For those of you discussing free speech rights .. just be aware that there is no right to free speech in Australia (unless you are a politician in parliament).

Google wearables: A solution looking for a rich nerd

I think the AC was talking about professional wankers.

Australia puts 300 sharks on Twitter

Re: An interesting fact

Sorry you are wrong .. no beach nets in Western Australia.

Why a plain packaging U-turn from UK.gov could cost £3bn a year

Re: It's not what you say ...

Durrie is actually dhurrie ... which you if you were to roll one up for storage will give you the answer you seek for the why of the slang term.

Samsung stakes claim to smartwatch market with Galaxy Gear

A whole DAY of battery life, I'd call that a dumb watch

Only 1 in 5 Americans believe in pure evolution – and that's an upswing

Re: Slight confusion here

Still a lot more evidence than the opposition can muster.

Music industry raises NBN fears as legal digital sales take off

Fail Dan, Fail

For all our non Australian friends .... NBN will deliver up to 100Mb speeds to the house but like all other services in Oz is volume capped (from what I've seen so far .. comparable pricing to non-fibre services) which means freetards will just hit their cap faster rather than being able to pirate more <rant> Mr Rosen either you are an idiot or are preying on the ignorance of the professional politicians and their viziers .. possibly both.</rant>

Other posters seemed to have covered most of the fun points :)

Electric cars stall in USA, Australia

Re: utter bollocks

Corn is poor in oil production there are better oil producing plants which produce an order of magnitude more oil for the same land use and algae in ponds is two (nearly 3) orders of magnitude more although does require infrastructure and lots of water.

Flame icon .. cause you want to burn the stuff

AIIA takes the ‘Australian’ out of price-gouge concerns

Re: It isn't just IT

Dont get too wound up, if you'd done the currency conversion 5 years ago it would look much different (let alone when it was 3 Pacific peso to the pound). A rather odd comparison, I would have stayed on the coffee and chips routine or any consumer electronics goods (Rip-off Britain has nothing on Pay-with-your-first-born Australia).

You could always go back to Blighty ?

Kiwi judge steps aside from Dotcom extradition hearings

Re: *sigh*

Actually he does have 2 points

1. It will not be legal to buy, modify or import a device that plays content out of region (perhaps the content too).

2. Playing content out of region will be a criminal offence not a civil one.

But as you pointed out it could have been a bit clearer.

Cockfighting Reg hack cursed with cancer

<claps>

Its not even Friday ... you owe me a new keyboard.

US Navy preps railgun for tests

ummmm

Actually around 40 seconds (assuming that the round doesn't slow down as you pointed out so call it a minute) ... Large Ships don't necessarily maneuver that well, the firing ship will fire a barrage most likely (over the horizon so you aren't going to know there incoming rounds) so it's not as silly as it sounds.

Cheers

Punters hate copyright, says Steelie Neelie

The problem is Silent_count .. there are no politicians/partys left to vote for worth a damn.

Farewell then, Sony Ericsson

P800

I just retired my p800 this year ... battery life was still good (nearly a week) although it had lots of war wounds after years of rough use. Admittedly no GPS and a pretty crappy camera but as a phone it was great.