Yes, there are a lot of kiddies there, but there are more kiddies in Oz than there are movers and shakers. Just because the ankle biters get underfoot at times doesn't mean that they are the only ones watching Whirlpool.
I'm also an IT manager, and a member of Whirlpool. I wonder just how many Whirlpool members also come over here to/.? And how many of the dual group are IT bods?
Although I tend to regularly get sin-binned over there, I see it as an extremely useful set of forums to have around, and if it went down the gurgler, would like to think that there might be some way of resurrecting it - perhaps as a "specialc interest group", here at/., where Australian laws couldn't touch it.
Also, i have no idea how Christmas (Christ-mass... a meal shared in memory of Christ) is advertising for the pagan church,
Well, ya know, one of the abiding visions we have from the religion most christians in the world follow has the vision of the shepherds watching their flocks on the hills, and seeing this here star glowing in the sky (another civilization blasted to advertise the appearance of another god for earthlings, perhaps, as their sun goes supernova???). Well, let me tell you, that in December (a month not named after your god, BTW) It gets REALLY COLD on the hills around Bethlehem, and the sheep that were going to see it through the winter would be well and truly penned up - guess where - in all those barns with mangers, so they'd be pretty crowded around the time of the return of the sun.
So, the birth, if it happened, was PROBABLY at another time of year, BUT, the good ol' woad painting pre-christians of northern and western Europe were already celebrating the return of the sun back then, and for many centuries before then.
So the christians spread their word, and want to celebrate the birth of their savior - fair enough. BUT, instead of finding some day of their own to use, they park their festival on the 25th of December, which just happens to be the date when the ancient astronomer, with his stick in the ground, and marks where the sun cast the shadow to the previous day, can see that it is starting to come back, instead of still retreating.
Why would they do that? (I hear you say - hmmm - I must be psychic to hear you say that from way over here!). Well, it's like this. If you plonk your festivals down on the day when your main opposition has his festival, you can go to him and say "why don't you join in our festival. You can keep on worshiping your gods, but we can all celebrate together". Now, the older generation realized that this was so, and joined in, but the younger generation were seduced away from the old ways, and went with the new ways, and pretty soon, Yule is no longer a pagan festival, but a christian one!
Don't believe me? Go ask the Inuits in northern Canada what they think of the modern day christians doing the exact same thing with THEIR Holy Days!
BTW, it isn't limited to days of the year. The same thing happens with major religious sites. That's why one of the most "holy" Moslem sites is on the same site as the old Temple of David, and why the most important Eastern Orthodox site is now an Istanbul major mosque, and it's not only the Moslems who do this, but every wave of religion - it's part of the way in which the bureaucracy of each new wave earns its living.
Sorry, but i put all ministers or Mullahs, or Rabbis, or whatever on exactly the same level - moderately competent con men who have found a good way of suckering their "flocks" out of a living, and the better con job they do, the better THEIR lifestyle, on earth, anyway.
It's no more rational than "As an Santa Clausian" or "As an Easter Bunnyite".
Or as a pagan, from whom the christians originally stole that christmas (return of the sun / winter solstice) festival and the easter (fertility / spring festival) festival as well!
I can't help but laugh my head off every Yule tide, when I hear some christian preacher stand up on his hind legs and begs the world to "return to the true and original values of christmas". Most of them probably don't realize that they're advertising for the pagan church!
And not only that, the difference is that Orwell was warning against Government. This is the corporate sector, though I am sure that he would have been against any gains in power by corporations. He was, after all, a socialist.
Marx (with his economist hat on) always contended that corporate power would over time concentrate into fewer and fewer groups, which would grow in size until the state was dominated by the corporate entities, until they eventually supplanted the political entities entirely. The people who tried to adopt his theories to backward peasant nations sure got it wrong, but it sure looks to me like he was right about this, and this is but one of the manifestations of that phenomenon..
Get yourself a couple of spare bulbs (globes) for any torches or other lights you take - they do very much differ around the world, and there's nothing much more useless than a torch with no working light bulb!
Get a small, either AA powered, or hand cranked, transistor radio, with as many bands on it as you can find. Not everywhere uses FM, and being able to pull in short wave in places can tell you what's going on in the rest of the world.
A self-charging torch is good - better than those squeezie things - I use one that is recharged by just shaking it up and down, and it's range and brilliance is just fine in most circumstances. I find thew LED torches good, but the lights tend to be too dim to really be of use outdoors.
Many power paks (used to charge batteries, etc) are independent of voltage, frequency, etc, and can be used just about anywhere. A tip - look for one that uses a lead to connect it to the power point - they are usually OK for 50 - 60 hz, and 100 - 240 volts, so all you have to worry about is the power point. There are about 5 standards, and if you are carrying multiple devices that must be plugged in, get yourself a multiple output power block rated at 240 volts, make sure you can plug everything into that, and only carry one adapter - for the power block.
If you MUST carry a laptop, get yourself the crappiest old small laptop that will still do what you need, instead of carrying your new, you beaut, iMac (or whatever). That way, if you lose it, it shouldn't matter too much, especially if you back up your pictures etc on either the internet, or an external disk pack. One thing - make sure it's got the best possible battery on board - most old, beat up laptops have really crappy batteries.
But why is the government paying for it? It's the TV industry that benefits from, as you say, not having a large fraction of its viewer base cut off - so why isn't it paying for the goddamn boxes?
Because it's the government that has dictated to the industry the time line for turning off the analogue transmissions, not the TV industry.
Get rid of manufacturing jobs and we'll all be working the fields, just like ancient Sumeria. There wil be no doctors because they be too busy growing their own food.
They tried it in Cambodia. Didn't work, but made sure that overpopulation wasn't going to be a problem for a while.....
You're right, of course, when you say I'm very biased, and I did pluck some figures without looking them up (silly me), but I do disagree with your statement about 8000/384 being available everywhere that has ADSL, because it simply isn't true.
Go to Whirlpool, and you'll find that although any ADSL exchange may SUPPORT 8000/384, not many actually have ISPs who have plans that provide 8000/384, and even those who do, don't necessarily provide it to all exchanges.
I'm on the Optus 1500/256, with 20 gig midday - midnight, and 40 gig midnight - midday, and am also quite happy with that, even at $AU70 a month.
Sounds like South Africa is in an even worse plight than we are, BTW.
And this is one area that here in Oz we are sucking the hind teat.
Plans start at 300 meg / month (yes meg a month) with a charge of $150 per MEG if you go over. That's one of the REALLY stupid ones from Telstra.
Then we have various 1, 5, 10, 20, maybe 50 GB plans, each of which will be "shaped" back to 64kb, and because you aren't actually charged for what you can suck out of 64 k, they have the cheek to call "unlimited".
Some people have access to ADSL2, but most of us are limited to 1500/256, or if we're REALLY lucky, 8000/512!
AFAIK, there is no such thing as a truly unlimited plan, and the few that go close have a caveat that if you're in the top 3% of downloaders, you'll be shaped.
A new kind of flash was developed last year that had much faster read/write (closer to RAM) and didn't deteriorate. I suspect that kind is what these will use. (Unfortunately I don't remember the name...) If you burrow down to the original blog Q & A, the MS guy says that they have been very careful how they use reads & writes, and they expect memory sticks to last 10 years being used like this, so it appears that dead sticks isn't a problem.
If you read the blurb, or the article, this is not the same thing as ReadyBurst TM which MS touts as a new feature in Vista. ReadyBurst TM, allows you to plug in a flash drive and use it as a sort of replacement for part of the disk. ReadyBurst TM allows you to use up to 2GB of flash.
Close, but no ceegar, I'm afraid!
ReadyBoost doesn't replace anything, really. What it does do is provide a very fast cache for files, that are also saved to disk, but can much more quickly be accessed from the flash drive (which can be a memory stick, SD card, CF card, or whatever, provided it is overall fast enough for Vista to use (it does a complete R/W check to make sure that the device is fast enough across the whole device.
Ideally, for those with smaller amounts of memory, a ratio of 1:1, flash : memory, but with larger amounts of memory, 2.5 : 1 is the recommended amount of flash drive to use, up to a maximum of 4gb, which is the limit for FAT32 apparently.
It's always amazed me how different cultures behave. Here we have a group of people talking of the major company's as being "evil".
Well, although some of all companies (and peoples) behavior could be defined as "evil", I very much doubt the wisdom of branding a whole on going business concern, that abides by most of the laws, pays its taxes, and competes robustly, as "evil".
Groups who manufacture and sell illegal drugs could be branded as evil.
People who swindle little old ladies out of their homes are, IMO, evil.
People who abuse small children are evil.
Some would say that politicians, lawyers, and used car salesmen, as a class, are evil.
But corporate entities? In my country, we have something called the "Tall Poppy Syndrome", which, I believe, we are seeing here. It's the desire for the Tall Poppies - the ones that lead the pack, show out in a crowd - to be pulled down to our level.
So, how about leaving the "evil" tag for the ministers of religion and the media, and accept that what we are talking about is the tall poppies in the industry.
I'm really looking forward to the "one true religion".
Now, let me see, it will:
1. Hand out money to all comers, instead of having a hand out for money
2. Tell us that we should "go for it" here, because the afterlife is bit of a bitch
3. Preach good will towards all other creeds and religions, regardless of what they believe to be true
4. Give us this dfay our daily bread (and butter, and jam, and...)
5. Have a special place reserved for used car salesmen, politicians, dog catchers, parking inspectors and other sundry low lifes
And I haven't even started on the 42 virgins here on earth, either!
but instead found the genuine missile parts they were missing!
.... complete with the serial numbers that they were looking for? Hmmmm!
I once lived near a pub (hostelry) like that - you could probably buy back your video player ifyou waited 24 hours after your house was burgled!
In Oz, even most of the cities are not big enough to support the type of computer bits store that the average enthusiast would want. It's always a case of trooping from one store to the next, until (maybe) you find the one with the bits that you are looking for. I have a regular round that I take, when on the prowl, and often come up empty.
For my sins, and in the course of my work, I now travel fairly frequently to the US, where I have a good choice of stores, cf Melbourne. The best locally IMO is Micro Center, but the CompUSA (which appears to be amongst the closures) was quite reasonable in terms of willingness to help and range of goods.
We have NOTHING like Tiger Direct, here, and I find it very frustrating not to be able to take them up on their (usually last generation, but what the heck) special offers.
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Yes, there are a lot of kiddies there, but there are more kiddies in Oz than there are movers and shakers. Just because the ankle biters get underfoot at times doesn't mean that they are the only ones watching Whirlpool. I'm also an IT manager, and a member of Whirlpool. I wonder just how many Whirlpool members also come over here to /.? And how many of the dual group are IT bods?
Although I tend to regularly get sin-binned over there, I see it as an extremely useful set of forums to have around, and if it went down the gurgler, would like to think that there might be some way of resurrecting it - perhaps as a "specialc interest group", here at /., where Australian laws couldn't touch it.
Well, ya know, one of the abiding visions we have from the religion most christians in the world follow has the vision of the shepherds watching their flocks on the hills, and seeing this here star glowing in the sky (another civilization blasted to advertise the appearance of another god for earthlings, perhaps, as their sun goes supernova???). Well, let me tell you, that in December (a month not named after your god, BTW) It gets REALLY COLD on the hills around Bethlehem, and the sheep that were going to see it through the winter would be well and truly penned up - guess where - in all those barns with mangers, so they'd be pretty crowded around the time of the return of the sun.
So, the birth, if it happened, was PROBABLY at another time of year, BUT, the good ol' woad painting pre-christians of northern and western Europe were already celebrating the return of the sun back then, and for many centuries before then.
So the christians spread their word, and want to celebrate the birth of their savior - fair enough. BUT, instead of finding some day of their own to use, they park their festival on the 25th of December, which just happens to be the date when the ancient astronomer, with his stick in the ground, and marks where the sun cast the shadow to the previous day, can see that it is starting to come back, instead of still retreating.
Why would they do that? (I hear you say - hmmm - I must be psychic to hear you say that from way over here!). Well, it's like this. If you plonk your festivals down on the day when your main opposition has his festival, you can go to him and say "why don't you join in our festival. You can keep on worshiping your gods, but we can all celebrate together". Now, the older generation realized that this was so, and joined in, but the younger generation were seduced away from the old ways, and went with the new ways, and pretty soon, Yule is no longer a pagan festival, but a christian one!
Don't believe me? Go ask the Inuits in northern Canada what they think of the modern day christians doing the exact same thing with THEIR Holy Days!
BTW, it isn't limited to days of the year. The same thing happens with major religious sites. That's why one of the most "holy" Moslem sites is on the same site as the old Temple of David, and why the most important Eastern Orthodox site is now an Istanbul major mosque, and it's not only the Moslems who do this, but every wave of religion - it's part of the way in which the bureaucracy of each new wave earns its living.
Sorry, but i put all ministers or Mullahs, or Rabbis, or whatever on exactly the same level - moderately competent con men who have found a good way of suckering their "flocks" out of a living, and the better con job they do, the better THEIR lifestyle, on earth, anyway.
Well, I must have been slow, because I kept my belief in christianity until I was at least 16!
Just goes to show - some people are just born slow!
As for daddy claus and bun-bun, I got over them by about age 6 (courtopusy of fellow puils at my primary school, so I suppose it evens out in the end!
More to the point, would you deny it to your 5 y/o when he/she comes up and asks if the easter bunny is coming this year?
You would? You B*****D! You've killed the easter bunny!
Or as a pagan, from whom the christians originally stole that christmas (return of the sun / winter solstice) festival and the easter (fertility / spring festival) festival as well!
I can't help but laugh my head off every Yule tide, when I hear some christian preacher stand up on his hind legs and begs the world to "return to the true and original values of christmas". Most of them probably don't realize that they're advertising for the pagan church!
Marx (with his economist hat on) always contended that corporate power would over time concentrate into fewer and fewer groups, which would grow in size until the state was dominated by the corporate entities, until they eventually supplanted the political entities entirely. The people who tried to adopt his theories to backward peasant nations sure got it wrong, but it sure looks to me like he was right about this, and this is but one of the manifestations of that phenomenon..
Get yourself a couple of spare bulbs (globes) for any torches or other lights you take - they do very much differ around the world, and there's nothing much more useless than a torch with no working light bulb!
A self-charging torch is good - better than those squeezie things - I use one that is recharged by just shaking it up and down, and it's range and brilliance is just fine in most circumstances. I find thew LED torches good, but the lights tend to be too dim to really be of use outdoors.
Many power paks (used to charge batteries, etc) are independent of voltage, frequency, etc, and can be used just about anywhere. A tip - look for one that uses a lead to connect it to the power point - they are usually OK for 50 - 60 hz, and 100 - 240 volts, so all you have to worry about is the power point. There are about 5 standards, and if you are carrying multiple devices that must be plugged in, get yourself a multiple output power block rated at 240 volts, make sure you can plug everything into that, and only carry one adapter - for the power block.
If you MUST carry a laptop, get yourself the crappiest old small laptop that will still do what you need, instead of carrying your new, you beaut, iMac (or whatever). That way, if you lose it, it shouldn't matter too much, especially if you back up your pictures etc on either the internet, or an external disk pack. One thing - make sure it's got the best possible battery on board - most old, beat up laptops have really crappy batteries.
North AND South America?
Because it's the government that has dictated to the industry the time line for turning off the analogue transmissions, not the TV industry.
They tried it in Cambodia. Didn't work, but made sure that overpopulation wasn't going to be a problem for a while.....
Go to Whirlpool, and you'll find that although any ADSL exchange may SUPPORT 8000/384, not many actually have ISPs who have plans that provide 8000/384, and even those who do, don't necessarily provide it to all exchanges.
I'm on the Optus 1500/256, with 20 gig midday - midnight, and 40 gig midnight - midday, and am also quite happy with that, even at $AU70 a month.
Sounds like South Africa is in an even worse plight than we are, BTW.
Plans start at 300 meg / month (yes meg a month) with a charge of $150 per MEG if you go over. That's one of the REALLY stupid ones from Telstra.
Then we have various 1, 5, 10, 20, maybe 50 GB plans, each of which will be "shaped" back to 64kb, and because you aren't actually charged for what you can suck out of 64 k, they have the cheek to call "unlimited".
Some people have access to ADSL2, but most of us are limited to 1500/256, or if we're REALLY lucky, 8000/512!
AFAIK, there is no such thing as a truly unlimited plan, and the few that go close have a caveat that if you're in the top 3% of downloaders, you'll be shaped.
Cable, where available, has similar limits, BTW.
Close, but no ceegar, I'm afraid!
ReadyBoost doesn't replace anything, really. What it does do is provide a very fast cache for files, that are also saved to disk, but can much more quickly be accessed from the flash drive (which can be a memory stick, SD card, CF card, or whatever, provided it is overall fast enough for Vista to use (it does a complete R/W check to make sure that the device is fast enough across the whole device.
Ideally, for those with smaller amounts of memory, a ratio of 1:1, flash : memory, but with larger amounts of memory, 2.5 : 1 is the recommended amount of flash drive to use, up to a maximum of 4gb, which is the limit for FAT32 apparently.
I suggest getting a dog.
Not only will it fetch beers, but you can kick it instead of beating your wife
Besides, who other than a wife would keep the fridge stocked with beer?
Q: What's the difference between a lawyer and a bucket of shit?
A: The bucket!
Well, although some of all companies (and peoples) behavior could be defined as "evil", I very much doubt the wisdom of branding a whole on going business concern, that abides by most of the laws, pays its taxes, and competes robustly, as "evil".
Groups who manufacture and sell illegal drugs could be branded as evil.
People who swindle little old ladies out of their homes are, IMO, evil.
People who abuse small children are evil.
Some would say that politicians, lawyers, and used car salesmen, as a class, are evil.
But corporate entities? In my country, we have something called the "Tall Poppy Syndrome", which, I believe, we are seeing here. It's the desire for the Tall Poppies - the ones that lead the pack, show out in a crowd - to be pulled down to our level.
So, how about leaving the "evil" tag for the ministers of religion and the media, and accept that what we are talking about is the tall poppies in the industry.
I'm really looking forward to the "one true religion". Now, let me see, it will:
1. Hand out money to all comers, instead of having a hand out for money
2. Tell us that we should "go for it" here, because the afterlife is bit of a bitch
3. Preach good will towards all other creeds and religions, regardless of what they believe to be true
4. Give us this dfay our daily bread (and butter, and jam, and...)
5. Have a special place reserved for used car salesmen, politicians, dog catchers, parking inspectors and other sundry low lifes
And I haven't given up on the 42 virgins here on earth yet, either!
But inflatable and flatulence have DIFFERENT meanings!
I'm really looking forward to the "one true religion". Now, let me see, it will: 1. Hand out money to all comers, instead of having a hand out for money 2. Tell us that we should "go for it" here, because the afterlife is bit of a bitch 3. Preach good will towards all other creeds and religions, regardless of what they believe to be true 4. Give us this dfay our daily bread (and butter, and jam, and...) 5. Have a special place reserved for used car salesmen, politicians, dog catchers, parking inspectors and other sundry low lifes And I haven't even started on the 42 virgins here on earth, either!
Radio Shack, Tandy, Realistic - they aren't limited to the USA - they've psread their corporate identity much further than that!
I once lived near a pub (hostelry) like that - you could probably buy back your video player ifyou waited 24 hours after your house was burgled!
In Oz, even most of the cities are not big enough to support the type of computer bits store that the average enthusiast would want. It's always a case of trooping from one store to the next, until (maybe) you find the one with the bits that you are looking for. I have a regular round that I take, when on the prowl, and often come up empty.
For my sins, and in the course of my work, I now travel fairly frequently to the US, where I have a good choice of stores, cf Melbourne. The best locally IMO is Micro Center, but the CompUSA (which appears to be amongst the closures) was quite reasonable in terms of willingness to help and range of goods.
We have NOTHING like Tiger Direct, here, and I find it very frustrating not to be able to take them up on their (usually last generation, but what the heck) special offers.
There. Is that better?