What he said! Victoria has just done away with annual rego labels this year; the police have on line systems in cars that can lookup the registration plate number and see if it is current. I just pay the the bill online and that's it now. very convenient.
I agree. The speedo sticky label was a nuisance, but eventually everyone here in oz "got" metric measurements. I still think in feet and inches, but measure in metric, especially those metric volts and amps on my DMM! Lots of things and info from the US are marked in both imperial and metric anyway. My kids (eldest nearly 40) know nearly nothing of the old imperial system...
you're a bit late to the the party! AS has already been explained, UNSW is University of New South Wales (one of the older universities in Australia). Maybe Slashdot editors should insist the ALL acronyms, esp. the US ones, be explained at least once per article.
Since you mentioned that you come from the land of the free (ride for bankers and other folk who produce no tangible works..). Australia is not the only country where the idea that research organizations funded by the community via the elected government helps defray the considerable costs of doing the research by patenting and licensing new innovations is customary - try the UK or France.. I can't speak for your form of government, but the last time I filled in a Tax Return, there weren't armed soldiers at the door to collect the money...
According to news reports here in AU, CSIRO expect to keep about half of the settlement proceeds, the rest will go to the Commonwealth, probably to pay all the lawyers' fees, long lunches and mistress costs...
Funny, I got the impression that Raspberry Pi was yet another extension of the BASIC Stamp/PICAxe/Arduino idea; a neat hardware wrapper around a microcontroller, but in Pi's case a processor with enough grunt to run Linux. Maybe not a robotics platform particularly, but who knows what crazy repurposing of the board is just around the corner? (Disclaimer: I haven't got a Raspberry Pi, but a motley collection of Arduini and friends, steppers and techo stuff!)
I just saw that item in a recent catalog - decided I didn't really want yet another combo reader USB hard disk thingy and passed on it. Just as well.. Aldi have good deals from time to time on cheap tools, both hand and electric. They appear to be well made for the price (in China, of course). Guess they have to satisfy a tough German home market. I got a 5 inch angle grinder a year or so ago, it has been a good performer.
Be kind to folk from the US. Their dialect of English broke away from the mainstream a long time ago, and they have kept many forms and regional linguistic quirks from the time of their first settlement by English-speaking people. We in the south (AU/NZ) have kept closer to conventional English, despite colourful usage and NZ vowel shifts...
If you are an IT policy decider in an Australian Government agency, you have buckley's of getting any serious attention paid to a non-MS solution for a SOE. Pushing for 'open'ness such as seriously considering say 7-Zip or OpenOffice, even where it can be demonstrated convincingly that they are both user-friendly and cost-effective will have you labelled as not a team player or worse, plain eccentric. It can be very detrimental to your career prospects in the APS. (been there, done that in the past) Do not underestimate MS' very unhealthy hold over governments and senior management in this country. I'd like to see a Senate inquiry into that!
Since being able to patent a novel technology (and reasonably claim some reward by licensing, as CSIRO has done) is what drives others to develop even more novel technologies which can be patented and licensed for reward and so on...
I wouldn't assume that it will be necessarily IBM or Intel or the cult fruity computer co. that will come up with the next great innovation.
I am now on my second R61, (upgraded to faster CPU and better graphics card), ans find them to be quite stable and well equipped for business/development use (am not a gamer, but watch DVDs occasionally) The quality of build is not as bad as it could be...
It would be good to see Buffalo contest their patent infringement in an Australian court...This will cost CSIRO hard-one funding to pursue their claim in a Texas court.
Hear, Hear - most 'terrists' are fanatic criminals and should be dealt with as such. Religion is used as a smokescreen for their real motives - seizing of money/land/power.
The UK use.gov.uk for many govt agencies, The Ministry of Defence use www.mod.uk for the outside world; we do the same inn AU, eg www.defence.gov.au for Internet facing hosts for the Australian Department of Defence.
November 11 is hardly a holiday! In many parts of the english-speaking world and Europe, Remembrance Day is a solemn occasion where wreaths are laid at war memorials and a minutes silence is observed by many people at work and elsewhere at 1100 hours. I believe that it is also called Armistice Day in some parts of the world.
I was just about to say the same thing! The Government could appoint a new National Information Infrastructure body or just add to the ACMA (Communications and Media Authority). Its a pity that the other mob don't put it into their platform...
I wish I knew! I won't be voting for the major parties - both are lead by EGfS (Evil Gits from Sydney) who have expressed little or no interest in the rest of the country outside TinselTown. The Dems have still not got it together, and the Greens are too feral to be taken seriously. The mainstream (TV/papers/radio) commercial media is owned by Sydney-based interests which has already sold their souls to the conservatives. The ABC is been cut back because it is a 'hotbed of lefties' (Tony Abbott sometime jesuit)and SBS is derided as 'Wogovision' a new 'No-Bullshit' party would be good.. Grrr, Bah, Snarff...
Here in Oz, you front up to the Voting Place, the electoral people ask you if you have voted before on this day, you say "no", they look you up in their copy of the electoral roll, give you a voting slip (ballot paper)which has been initialled on the back by another electoral official, then they rule a line through your name after confirming your address and date of birth. You then take the ballot paper to a booth and armed with a pencil do the democratic thing! you then fold up the ballot paper and post it into the sealed ballot box, watched by another electoral official. All open and scrutinised by everyone there. A manual system can and does work well.
Yes, the ideal system would lie in between a freemarket system and a totally controlled system. But if you were to to have a society where people paid taxes under a serious, scientifically-derived taxation system (not the comic opera models used in.AU and elsewhere) you could afford a proper safety-net system for those on low income and for major medical mishaps for other folk without breaking your economy. Medibank (the original in.AU) was supposed to do this but it was whiteanted by treasury bureaucrats and right-wing politicians..
Assuming that the group concerned have been able to do what they claim, (now testable by others) and that Microsoft (who, it should be pointed to those posters from the US is only a corporation - not a sovereign state) have ignored them, would it not be worthwhile to see what the results of the tests are and allow a bit more time for MS to consider its position. Perhaps MS is biding its time, like IBM in the SCO affair. Many insults are hurled at both Open Source and MS; they don't help the cause of either camp.
Slashdot Mirror
Started with early Slackware, now Ubuntu LTS for servers and Mint (MATE) desktops.. It all just works! Still not totally convinced about systemd...
What he said! Victoria has just done away with annual rego labels this year; the police have on line systems in cars that can lookup the registration plate number and see if it is current. I just pay the the bill online and that's it now. very convenient.
I agree. The speedo sticky label was a nuisance, but eventually everyone here in oz "got" metric measurements. I still think in feet and inches, but measure in metric, especially those metric volts and amps on my DMM! Lots of things and info from the US are marked in both imperial and metric anyway.
My kids (eldest nearly 40) know nearly nothing of the old imperial system...
you're a bit late to the the party! AS has already been explained, UNSW is University of New South Wales (one of the older universities in Australia). Maybe Slashdot editors should insist the ALL acronyms, esp. the US ones, be explained at least once per article.
Paper and pencil voting still works reliably for other countries - such as here in .au!!
Since you mentioned that you come from the land of the free (ride for bankers and other folk who produce no tangible works..). Australia is not the only country where the idea that research organizations funded by the community via the elected government helps defray the considerable costs of doing the research by patenting and licensing new innovations is customary - try the UK or France..
I can't speak for your form of government, but the last time I filled in a Tax Return, there weren't armed soldiers at the door to collect the money...
According to news reports here in AU, CSIRO expect to keep about half of the settlement proceeds, the rest will go to the Commonwealth, probably to pay all the lawyers' fees, long lunches and mistress costs...
Funny, I got the impression that Raspberry Pi was yet another extension of the BASIC Stamp/PICAxe/Arduino idea; a neat hardware wrapper around a microcontroller, but in Pi's case a processor with enough grunt to run Linux.
Maybe not a robotics platform particularly, but who knows what crazy repurposing of the board is just around the corner?
(Disclaimer: I haven't got a Raspberry Pi, but a motley collection of Arduini and friends, steppers and techo stuff!)
Ben Miller (he was on QI with Rob Brydon on ABC1 on Wednesday Night)
and Slashdot won't be quite the same anymore...
so long and thanks for all the nerdy [fish] tales.
I just saw that item in a recent catalog - decided I didn't really want yet another combo reader USB hard disk thingy and passed on it. Just as well.. Aldi have good deals from time to time on cheap tools, both hand and electric. They appear to be well made for the price (in China, of course). Guess they have to satisfy a tough German home market. I got a 5 inch angle grinder a year or so ago, it has been a good performer.
Be kind to folk from the US. Their dialect of English broke away from the mainstream a long time ago, and they have kept many forms and regional linguistic quirks from the time of their first settlement by English-speaking people. We in the south (AU/NZ) have kept closer to conventional English, despite colourful usage and NZ vowel shifts...
If you are an IT policy decider in an Australian Government agency, you have buckley's of getting any serious attention paid to a non-MS solution for a SOE. Pushing for 'open'ness such as seriously considering say 7-Zip or OpenOffice, even where it can be demonstrated convincingly that they are both user-friendly and cost-effective will have you labelled as not a team player or worse, plain eccentric. It can be very detrimental to your career prospects in the APS. (been there, done that in the past)
Do not underestimate MS' very unhealthy hold over governments and senior management in this country. I'd like to see a Senate inquiry into that!
Since being able to patent a novel technology (and reasonably claim some reward by licensing, as CSIRO has done) is what drives others to develop even more novel technologies which can be patented and licensed for reward and so on...
I wouldn't assume that it will be necessarily IBM or Intel or the cult fruity computer co. that will come up with the next great innovation.
I am now on my second R61, (upgraded to faster CPU and better graphics card), ans find them to be quite stable and well equipped for business/development use (am not a gamer, but watch DVDs occasionally)
The quality of build is not as bad as it could be...
It would be good to see Buffalo contest their patent infringement in an Australian court...This will cost CSIRO hard-one funding to pursue their claim in a Texas court.
What is this Start Rek you speak of?? We have the the Doctor....
Hear, Hear - most 'terrists' are fanatic criminals and should be dealt with as such. Religion is used as a smokescreen for their real motives - seizing of money/land/power.
The UK use .gov.uk for many govt agencies, The Ministry of Defence use www.mod.uk for the outside world; we do the same inn AU, eg www.defence.gov.au for Internet facing hosts for the Australian Department of Defence.
November 11 is hardly a holiday! In many parts of the english-speaking world and Europe, Remembrance Day is a solemn occasion where wreaths are laid at war memorials and a minutes silence is observed by many people at work and elsewhere at 1100 hours. I believe that it is also called Armistice Day in some parts of the world.
I was just about to say the same thing! The Government could appoint a new National Information Infrastructure body or just add to the ACMA (Communications and Media Authority). Its a pity that the other mob don't put it into their platform...
I wish I knew! I won't be voting for the major parties - both are lead by EGfS (Evil Gits from Sydney) who have expressed little or no interest in the rest of the country outside TinselTown.
The Dems have still not got it together, and the Greens are too feral to be taken seriously.
The mainstream (TV/papers/radio) commercial media is owned by Sydney-based interests which has already sold their souls to the conservatives. The ABC is been cut back because it is a 'hotbed of lefties' (Tony Abbott sometime jesuit)and SBS is derided as 'Wogovision'
a new 'No-Bullshit' party would be good..
Grrr, Bah, Snarff...
Here in Oz, you front up to the Voting Place, the electoral people ask you if you have voted before on this day, you say "no", they look you up in their copy of the electoral roll, give you a voting slip (ballot paper)which has been initialled on the back by another electoral official, then they rule a line through your name after confirming your address and date of birth. You then take the ballot paper to a booth and armed with a pencil do the democratic thing! you then fold up the ballot paper and post it into the sealed ballot box, watched by another electoral official. All open and scrutinised by everyone there. A manual system can and does work well.
Yes, the ideal system would lie in between a freemarket system and a totally controlled system. But if you were to to have a society where people paid taxes under a serious, scientifically-derived taxation system (not the comic opera models used in .AU and elsewhere) you could afford a proper safety-net system for those on low income and for major medical mishaps for other folk without breaking your economy. Medibank (the original in .AU) was supposed to do this but it was whiteanted by treasury bureaucrats and right-wing politicians..
dt..
Assuming that the group concerned have been able to do what they claim, (now testable by others) and that Microsoft (who, it should be pointed to those posters from the US is only a corporation - not a sovereign state) have ignored them, would it not be worthwhile to see what the results of the tests are and allow a bit more time for MS to consider its position. Perhaps MS is biding its time, like IBM in the SCO affair. Many insults are hurled at both Open Source and MS; they don't help the cause of either camp.