Posts by gz3zbz

What do sexy selfies, search warrants, tax files have in common? They've all been found on resold USB sticks

Tip for Windows users

Windows has the cipher command which can be used to overwrite free space on a drive, e.g. cipher /w:F:\ will overwrite free space on F: with 0x00, then 0xFF, then random numbers.

US Congress mulls expanding copyright yet again – to 144 years

You wouldn't steal a car

Copyright holders are fond of telling the public that breaches of copyright are akin to theft, and have secured some notable prosecutions. Conversely, trying to extend copyright must also be theft, by copyright holders, from the public. Can we have some prosecutions?

Biker nerfed by robo Chevy in San Francisco now lobs sueball at GM

You have to keep left in Western Australia at 90km/h or above, with some exceptions - http://www.roadrules.rsc.wa.gov.au/road-rules/keeping-left.

IBM offloads Notes and Domino to India's HCL Technologies

Interface Hall of Shame

Used to support Lotus Notes back in the '90s and enjoyed reading the entry for Notes in the Interface Hall of Shame: Link

One example:

"Judging from the number of visitors who have mentioned it, the process of copying messages in Notes is perhaps its worst interface "feature". Apparently, when mail messages are copied from one folder to another, the message itself is not copied; Notes creates a "reference" to the message. Unbeknownst to the user, if you delete the reference, Notes will in turn delete the message itself. Similarly, deleting the message will cause all references to it to also be deleted.

A number of visitors described the loss of valuable information through this process."

Microsoft does something unusual in Australia: Names the bit barn hosting Azure

Re: Need a geography lesson

It's halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, it couldn't be more central.

Telstra's 'future of medical diagnosis' needs just 5Mbps

It's not just the speed

FTTP brings reliability as well as higher potential speeds. My main gripe with ADSL is not the speed - yes I'd love 100mbps - but it's the unreliability of the copper network. Every time it rains and the pits fill with water the reliability plummets. If I'm trying to work from home or download the latest software release, having the connection drop is, at the least inconvenient, and potentially costly. I'm sure a doctor who is working remotely would also not want the connection dropping out halfway through the procedure.

Your train analogy also doesn't really fly. Miners build point-to-point rail lines between a mine and a port. Do you really think Netflix wants to build point-to-point networks to every one of their subscribers? And YouTube, Stan, Foxtel, and all of the other video providers? The internet is more like a road network, with users trying to get from one destination to any of thousands of other destinations. Road networks, electricity distribution, water, and sewage are all natural monopolies, and we should not be allowing commercial actors to benefit from these monopolies.

Labor's broadband policy decides 39% fibre is healthy NBN diet

Re: Do voters care?

Two points:

1) It's not just about what speed people are purchasing today, it's about investing in the future as well. If high-speed connections were ubiquitous then high-speed services would follow.

2) The copper is old and unreliable. Every time it rains, people have trouble with ADSL dropping out. A new fibre network would fix this.

Assembly of tech giants convene to define future of computing

Re: Notably absent

Also absent is HPE, who recently signalled their intention to use Azure as their preferred provider of public cloud. Not sure if this has any significance.

HPE's private London drinking club: Name that boozer

The Machine Inn

Memristor Bar

Photonics

Helion Tavern

Synergy Inn

The Bill and Dave