At the risk of being flamed or modded down, it's pretty arrogant to expect a non-US site to use USD$ as the currency of which items are priced. Being a.au site, I'd expect it to be AUD$. But, yes, you're right in that it should be specified, but I would assume AUD.
I'll give up my modpoints in this article, and post a network admin's view from Victoria.
I used to (well, still do on a part-time basis) work as a network admin for a secondary school in Victoria. Previously, until about 2 years ago, all government schools were mandated to use a state-government-selected ISP (Fuck you, Edunet!) which had a DEET-approved filtering system (N2H2). Given that they were working within the constraints of the VicOne WAN, they did an acceptable job, but outsourcing the filtering was one of the worse moves possible. Many educational and open-source-related sites were blocked, and it took upto 24 hours to get a site unblocked - the central filters were updated via a daily cronjob.
Things have improved slightly with regards to filtering - they have now allowed schools to filter by category, and turn off filtering for users (network admins/staff), but there's still the problem of inappropriate content being blocked.
I, personally, would like to see an instant unblocking option available for staff in schools, once they have reviewed the site in question. Yes, many within the system say that staff should check this when developing their lesson plans, but given the time constraints, the current filtering system is less than workable. I should say that, for the record, we have moved to the private (non-Telstra) incarnation of Edunet - Schoolsnet. Different name, same low SLA.
Yeah, you've got a point there.. the arable land in the US greatly outnumbers that here. Our workable land is typically along the eastern, south, and southwest coastal areas. Inland areas along the east are also arable, but the US does seem to have a greater area usable for general housing and population centres.
It still disappoints me to see that public transport is not widely used in population centres though; when I was in San Diego earlier this year, the train system only had two lines, and roughly the same population as Melbourne. Is there a lower tendency for offices and businesses to congregate around central areas in US cities, due to factors such as land cost, or land zoning?
I don't get what the problem with public transport over in the US seems to be. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and we have a wonderful public transport system. Trains, buses and trams.. the timetables match up pretty much all of the time. The only issue I have with it is that buses don't run late enough, but for typical commuting to and from work, it's fine.
Depending on the day, I'll walk, then catch a bus/train to work, or just drive to the station, then catch a train in. Public transport infrastructure seems to be fairly heavily used here as opposed to my experience of the US (Southern Calif).
I will add a couple of notes though.. Melbourne has a population of around 4 million, within a radius of roughly 40-50km; 1700 tram stops, around 20 train lines, and about 250 train stations. It seems to be a fairly well developed public transport infrastructure.
Even better.. include a demonstration video for the similarly-named projects... or, on a mathematical tangent, release a set of videos on how to perform calculations.. "Matrix.avi", anyone?
Is it just me, or does that webpage have problems in Firefox, such as the answers not scrolling..? Or is it just Flash for Linux being, well, less than capable?
What part of Melbourne? I saw a couple of windows like this around a fishtank out at Tulla when I flew to Calif the other month.. but never heard of toilets using that.
As per the parent, "I don't know how you have it in the US", well, actually, I do.. but that's beyond the point. I'll talk about GSM here.
Can you run direct tcp/ip over most cell networks?
Yes, most GSM networks provide a GPRS access point for those who want to use the internet directly. One of the (CDMA, IIRC) other telcos over here, Hutchinson, is pushing their '3' service with PCMCIA cellular modems as of late.
Can you change the WAP gateway you're tied to?
Can you change the router you're tied to on your local LAN? Sure, but you'd have to be the one providing it. As with my mobile - the WAP gateway can be changed; but there's no others I know of on my telco's network.
Can you use the bandwidth you pay for, how you want to?
Yes! As per above point, many networks are touting the always-on aspect of GPRS, and you can do pretty much anything you want. The only limitation is the cost - many networks are charging 1-2c per kilobyte (that's $10-20 a megabyte, people). If it takes off, I can see it going down. But for the meantime, GPRS is going to be limited to those that can write it off as a business expense, or those who want to just check a few things online via a WAP browser.
2.4GHz is an unlicensed band, and as such, any devices are permitted to use it, provided they stay within any power regulations. For example, over here in Australia, 36dBI EIRP is the limit for unlicensed transmission in the 2.4GHz band. Phones were the first users, IIRC, but 802.11b started to use the band as well.
This concept was explored in an Aussie movie of a couple of years back, called The Bank. A person previously wronged by a bank was employed to investigate stock market trends, using 'chaos theory' and 'fractal geometry'. Quite an interesting movie to watch.
Whilst that would have a dramatic effect on various OSes that reuse the BSD TCP/IP stack, I doubt there would be a feasible way to remove the stack from OSes, given the BSD license. But, yes, I know that the businesses I work for would refuse to use IIS et al. if FOSS alternatives were removed - they would simply continue to use the FOSS solutions in place. I doubt that they'd officially say anything, but it'd be a low-risk gamble for them, after all, who would know if businesses continued to run FOSS?
And herein lies the problem with dealing with business - they'll look at the cost of living without FOSS, and compare it with the cost of purchasing software produced by licensees of the patent holders. It's nothing personal, "just business". FOSS is harmed by software patents - that cannot be denied. But the same argument cannot be held to business - they'll just treat it as a cost of operating, and subsequently pay, (illegally) avoid paying, or go out of business. Welcome to The System.
Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of software patents, just a realist.
Some of the places I've been hiking around in Victoria, Australia in the past have been pretty damn close - in winter, it's rather quiet (and cold); if you find yourself out in the middle of nowhere on a non-windy night, it really is eerie. The silence is disturbing, to say the least.
Slashdot Mirror
At the risk of being flamed or modded down, it's pretty arrogant to expect a non-US site to use USD$ as the currency of which items are priced. Being a .au site, I'd expect it to be AUD$. But, yes, you're right in that it should be specified, but I would assume AUD.
I'll give up my modpoints in this article, and post a network admin's view from Victoria.
I used to (well, still do on a part-time basis) work as a network admin for a secondary school in Victoria. Previously, until about 2 years ago, all government schools were mandated to use a state-government-selected ISP (Fuck you, Edunet!) which had a DEET-approved filtering system (N2H2). Given that they were working within the constraints of the VicOne WAN, they did an acceptable job, but outsourcing the filtering was one of the worse moves possible. Many educational and open-source-related sites were blocked, and it took upto 24 hours to get a site unblocked - the central filters were updated via a daily cronjob.
Things have improved slightly with regards to filtering - they have now allowed schools to filter by category, and turn off filtering for users (network admins/staff), but there's still the problem of inappropriate content being blocked.
I, personally, would like to see an instant unblocking option available for staff in schools, once they have reviewed the site in question. Yes, many within the system say that staff should check this when developing their lesson plans, but given the time constraints, the current filtering system is less than workable. I should say that, for the record, we have moved to the private (non-Telstra) incarnation of Edunet - Schoolsnet. Different name, same low SLA.
Now, if only I had modpoints and posting capabilities... definitely a +1 Informative.
Yeah, you've got a point there.. the arable land in the US greatly outnumbers that here. Our workable land is typically along the eastern, south, and southwest coastal areas. Inland areas along the east are also arable, but the US does seem to have a greater area usable for general housing and population centres.
It still disappoints me to see that public transport is not widely used in population centres though; when I was in San Diego earlier this year, the train system only had two lines, and roughly the same population as Melbourne. Is there a lower tendency for offices and businesses to congregate around central areas in US cities, due to factors such as land cost, or land zoning?
I don't get what the problem with public transport over in the US seems to be. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and we have a wonderful public transport system. Trains, buses and trams.. the timetables match up pretty much all of the time. The only issue I have with it is that buses don't run late enough, but for typical commuting to and from work, it's fine.
Depending on the day, I'll walk, then catch a bus/train to work, or just drive to the station, then catch a train in. Public transport infrastructure seems to be fairly heavily used here as opposed to my experience of the US (Southern Calif).
I will add a couple of notes though.. Melbourne has a population of around 4 million, within a radius of roughly 40-50km; 1700 tram stops, around 20 train lines, and about 250 train stations. It seems to be a fairly well developed public transport infrastructure.
I saw that.. not sure if it was shown outside of Australia, though
Even better.. include a demonstration video for the similarly-named projects... or, on a mathematical tangent, release a set of videos on how to perform calculations.. "Matrix.avi", anyone?
I'll bet it's just Flash playing up then.. again.
Is it just me, or does that webpage have problems in Firefox, such as the answers not scrolling..? Or is it just Flash for Linux being, well, less than capable?
What part of Melbourne? I saw a couple of windows like this around a fishtank out at Tulla when I flew to Calif the other month.. but never heard of toilets using that.
About the dogs, or about gentoo? :)
Propanol [C3H7OH] = bad
Ethanol [C2H5OH] = good
Methanol [C1H3OH] = bad
Note the number of carbons.
As per the parent, "I don't know how you have it in the US", well, actually, I do.. but that's beyond the point. I'll talk about GSM here.
Can you run direct tcp/ip over most cell networks?
Yes, most GSM networks provide a GPRS access point for those who want to use the internet directly. One of the (CDMA, IIRC) other telcos over here, Hutchinson, is pushing their '3' service with PCMCIA cellular modems as of late.
Can you change the WAP gateway you're tied to?
Can you change the router you're tied to on your local LAN? Sure, but you'd have to be the one providing it. As with my mobile - the WAP gateway can be changed; but there's no others I know of on my telco's network.
Can you use the bandwidth you pay for, how you want to?
Yes! As per above point, many networks are touting the always-on aspect of GPRS, and you can do pretty much anything you want. The only limitation is the cost - many networks are charging 1-2c per kilobyte (that's $10-20 a megabyte, people). If it takes off, I can see it going down. But for the meantime, GPRS is going to be limited to those that can write it off as a business expense, or those who want to just check a few things online via a WAP browser.
So that's why my webserver got slashdotted.. bloody geeks.
2.4GHz is an unlicensed band, and as such, any devices are permitted to use it, provided they stay within any power regulations. For example, over here in Australia, 36dBI EIRP is the limit for unlicensed transmission in the 2.4GHz band. Phones were the first users, IIRC, but 802.11b started to use the band as well.
This concept was explored in an Aussie movie of a couple of years back, called The Bank. A person previously wronged by a bank was employed to investigate stock market trends, using 'chaos theory' and 'fractal geometry'. Quite an interesting movie to watch.
Cents are counted for sales tax (GST), but for income tax and other individual-based taxes, cents are excluded.
Whilst that would have a dramatic effect on various OSes that reuse the BSD TCP/IP stack, I doubt there would be a feasible way to remove the stack from OSes, given the BSD license. But, yes, I know that the businesses I work for would refuse to use IIS et al. if FOSS alternatives were removed - they would simply continue to use the FOSS solutions in place. I doubt that they'd officially say anything, but it'd be a low-risk gamble for them, after all, who would know if businesses continued to run FOSS?
And herein lies the problem with dealing with business - they'll look at the cost of living without FOSS, and compare it with the cost of purchasing software produced by licensees of the patent holders. It's nothing personal, "just business". FOSS is harmed by software patents - that cannot be denied. But the same argument cannot be held to business - they'll just treat it as a cost of operating, and subsequently pay, (illegally) avoid paying, or go out of business. Welcome to The System.
Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of software patents, just a realist.
That's pretty decent.. I'm assuming it's a PDA or such?
3 days is amazing? I get a week plus out of my Nokia 6610.. it's a year old and the battery's still going strong.
High plains of Victoria (near Falls Creek), via GRPS on a mobile phone. Damn it was slow.. but it was a break from the hiking.
WTF is a 'NEXtel'?
That's a good one.. nearly had me going for a second... /. a reputable source? =)
Some of the places I've been hiking around in Victoria, Australia in the past have been pretty damn close - in winter, it's rather quiet (and cold); if you find yourself out in the middle of nowhere on a non-windy night, it really is eerie. The silence is disturbing, to say the least.