Posts by poopypants 419 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2013
I don't own a TV. It suffered an unfortunate accident, and I haven't felt sufficiently motivated to replace it. In any case, we'll be waiting forever for decent 4K content to watch. By that time I should have high bandwidth internet, and might as well use the 2560 x 1440 monitor sitting 50 cms in front of my face. No requirement to buy a new TV that way. As usual, your mileage may differ. Feel free to stimulate the economy to your heart's content.
A few years ago I had open heart surgery. Lots of procedures, lots of specialist care, lots of in hospital bed occupancy. The total cost to me was under $6,000. If I hadn't had cheap hospital cover it would have cost nothing, but I would have been put on a (shortish) waiting list.
That's how we do things in Australia, and I have no complaints.
I have two PCs on my desk. One has 16GB RAM, two 2560 x 1440 monitors, a Titan graphics card, 10 TBs disk storage, etc. The other is a Chromebox. The one I use when I am not on Mumble or playing games is the Chromebox. Apart from games, it does over 90% of the things that I usually do - which is mostly browse the web, write fiction or read/write emails. Best of all, it powers up in seconds, and uses far less power than my high end gaming PC.
Does your partner play games or chat on Mumble?
The problem with this approach is that you only get to see whatever is displayed on a particular PC's monitor. In most cases that won't be very interesting. Also, you have no power to go fishing - you will need physical access to a PC that is going to display something important. For that to work you would need an insider with physical security access to the PC that you want to spy on. If the data going to that PC is important, it's probably sitting in a locked office, in which case why are you doing it the hard way? Just ask your cooperative insider who has a key to that office whatever you want to know.
Sadly, Telstra was privatised in three different stages, informally known as "T1", "T2" and "T3" in 1997, 1999 and 2006 respectively. T3 dropped public ownership from 51% to 17%. In 2009, another $2.4 billion worth of shares were sold, reducing the government's stake in Telstra to 10.9%. In August 2011, the remaining Telstra shares were sold, effectively completing Telstra's privatisation.
That is why we are in this current mess.
I fear Australia has been harmed by our use of cheap string for our broadband network. Unfortunately we used up all the more expensive stuff wrapping food parcels to send to our less fortunate relatives.
Soon, however, we hope to start using copper wire, but only as far as the nearest gum tree. Plans to lay twisted pair all the way to the home have been abandoned due to spiralling costs.
Despite having a voting system that encourages the emergence of new parties, Australia has never given birth to a political party that meets all of the following:
- has sane policies
- is internally democratic
- is highly principled
- is free of scandal (by that I mean at the very least that none of them are under police investigation)
Quite sad really, but does rather explain the current state we are in, and why there is no hope of salvation.
It doesn't matter. As a result of any random person in your household coming under suspicion, they can seize everyone's computers and hold onto them for several months until a court case takes place, and you have no realistic expectation of getting all your equipment and data back in the same state it was in when it was confiscated. You may win the case, but you will still lose.
Interesting coincidence: yesterday I read an impassioned plea from someone seeking help to recover 15 months of research work from his USB external sealed hard drive, which Windows had stopped recognising. Yes, he should have backed it up, but if that was the result of his hard drive manufacturer using fake components, I fail to see how punishing the victim is going to help anyone, or indeed punish anyone apart from the victim.
This reminds me of a briefly popular tactic of erasing the hard drives of people who ran pirated software. That did not end well. I imagine there will be a similar outcome here.
"...a single Windows Store including desktop and corporate apps as well as public apps"
Why would anyone release a desktop app into the Windows Store where it attracts something like a 30% fee from Microsoft?
ANSWER: The only reason anyone would do that would be if they had no choice, or Microsoft decided to make an exception and not charge store fees for desktop apps. Which do you think is more likely?
What will this mean for PC gamers?
Microsoft recently bought out the makers of UnityVS, a Visual Studio plugin that makes debugging Windows Desktop programs developed using Unity a lot easier. Unity of course also targets Windows Store, Android, iOS, OS X, Web browsers, etc. I would be interested to know how this fits in to their Universal App strategy.
Microsoft offers UnityVS free of charge to interested users.
in the fact that the government didn't even have to pause before kicking the report under the rug.
I am confident that even with the current government we will end up with a national broadband network that is vastly superior to the one we have now. Not as good as it could have been, but still good enough to stream 4K movies and games.
but I fear it will be the first stage in erecting a walled garden, with the ultimate aim of grabbing a 30% slice of the price any software sold to run on PCs. That is why Gabe Newell is spending so much time and money on developing a Linux based Valve games machine. Is he right? Time will tell.
I've only seen a couple (gmail filters them out - checking my spam folder shows hundreds).
The most professional looking one that managed to slip through purported to be a delivery tracker from Australia Post for a parcel (coincidentally, I was expecting a parcel). Still, because it wanted me to click on something, and because the URL didn't look quite right, I did a lookup. The site was based in Russia, and owned by someone in Romania. I did not click the link.
Another claimed to be from a bank with which I do not have an account.
I can see how people without a good email service and/or a deficit of caution could find themselves in trouble. It might be safer for such people to have a mobile phone set aside for email, that has nothing of importance on it and runs an obscure OS (Windows Phone springs to mind).
Especially the arguments that Scotland will struggle on its own.
Australia is doing quite nicely without England.
Canada is doing quite nicely without England.
Éire is doing quite nicely without England.
India is doing quite nicely without England.
New Zealand is doing quite nicely without England.
Still, it's not my battle. *fetches popcorn*
Probably a standard USB camera feeding into movement detection software (readily available, but you can write this yourself if you're keen - a good excuse to play with CUDA if you have an up to date NVIDIA card), dumping any snaps into a Google Drive directory on your computer. These will be automatically be transferred to the cloud when added.
Apple's decision to make the 5.5in iPhone nice and slim has forced them to compromise on battery size, which in turn has forced them restrict the screen resolution to 1334 x 750, versus 1920 x 1080 in Android competitors with a similar sized screen.
That is a perfect example of form triumphing over function, and one of the reasons why I don't buy Apple products.
Less exciting than the next Doctor Who episode.
More ephemeral than the relationships that you cultivate with your co-workers.
Far more expensive than either of the above.
Those who care should in my opinion examine their lives, and ask themselves why something of such little significance is able to distract them from the important things in life.
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