This is why I have been working on a practical "sense and avoid" (SAA) system for UAVs and FPV RC models.
So far so good (very good in fact) and I expect to start the airborne testing of a prototype very shortly.
The goal was to have the reliable detection of full-sized aircraft at a minimum range of 1.5Km and not rely on transponders or other equipment in those aircraft and it appears that this objective is attainable.
It's been a lot of fun developing this thing and it's something that has really only become possible recently, now that we've got some seriously powerful processors capable of handling the signal processing involved without the need for a rack-sized box and an appetite for watts.
If it works "as planned", odds are that I'll be releasing this as an open-source, copyleft project so hobbyists can use it instead of it becoming the sole domain of the "drone" companies.
Lithium batteries really don't handle cold temperatures very well at all -- one of the many reasons that aircraft have continued to use good old fashioned Nickel-cadmium or lead-acid batteries (until the Dreamliner came along).
When they're too cold, they neither take a full charge, nor do they deliver their rated capacity or maximum current.
I would say that, given the weather on the East Coast of the USA during the drive, this played a significant factor in the lack of range encountered -- but I acknowledge that it may not be the only factor.
Perhaps another factor is the enhanced need to heat the passenger compartment. Unlike a regular IC-powered car, there's very little "waste heat" in an EV so perhaps over-zealous use was made of the electric heating - thus producing further heavy drain on the battery and reducing range.
The problem (for Tesla) is that people don't want an EV that comes with a long list of "don'ts" and "cautions" in respect to power management and the effects of low/high temperatures on range. They just want a car they can unplug, jump in and drive -- with an unqualified guarantee of a known range. That's effectively what they get now with their IC-powered cars and that's what they want from any replacement.
I got hit by this last week and blogged about it, griping that surely a company with the resources of Yahoo should be able to fix such a critical flaw faster than seems to be the case.
It would appear that Yahoo is happy to announce "fixexd" while the hackers simply exploit yet another hole in the company's shaky cloud.
Tragic.
Would Google be so lax in sorting out what is clearly a very critical issue that is affecting a large (and rapidly growing) number of users?
I'm pretty sure everyone loves to hate the RIAA/MPAA so Kim Dotcom had little trouble rounding up support when they moved to shut down MegaUpload.
Unfortunately, he's now picking a fight with bigger opponent and possible a mass of small website owners who rely on their Adsense revenues to help pay the bills.
Kicking the RIAA/MPAA for their sins is one thing, taking money out of the mouths of independent content creators (by hijacking their ad-revenues to fund his Mega-services) is something altogether different.
I admire KD for what he's doing with the MegaKey service but I really wonder if he's got an oar out of the water in picking a fight with Google and the many websites who rely on that company's ad-revenue sharing.
BTW: I'm one of those sites and I'll be mighty pissed if Kim starts replacing the ads on *my* webpages that should be generating money to pay for *my* efforts -- because I have *nothing* to do with MegaKey so why should *I* be paying for it?
Thank you for your invoice # 88266 for the sum of 300 Euros.
This has been forwarded to our accounting department who have informed me that as of today, your account is now 30 Euro in debt, being calculated as follows:
"I'm getting really sick of this tiresome rant popping up on every single Slashdot story. Government is corrupt. Corporations rule the world. We are all slaves. blah blah blah!
Can't you guys give it a rest?
Why do you always post your rants as AC anyway?"
Sadly, while I might once have agreed with everything you said, I fear that times have changed -- or perhaps it's just that the Net has allowed the truth to be revealed in a way that governments can no longer control.
Everywhere you look these days, there are many and varied examples of government being driven, directed and controlled by industries and those with lots (of money) at stake.
Look at Kim Dotcom for instance -- the MPAA/RIAA may have had plenty of legal justification for some of what they did -- but certainly not all of it and not the way it was done. Hell, the FBI/MPAA/RIAA triad even bullied the New Zealand government in engaging in "unlawful acts" to carry out their dirty deeds.
We've seen the problem of politicians protecting the rich at the cost of the poor grow to become a major problem down in this part of the world (NZL) and it's plainly obvious that the situation is far worse elsewhere.
Bureaucrats (ie: central and local government) spend most of their time simply working to cover it's own ass -- in case things go wrong.
Just look at most of the laws and regulations out there. They're not to improve the safety or to benefit the public nearly so much as they are to ensure that when something goes wrong, some bureaucrat somewhere can say "not my fault, we passed a law/regulation against that and the offender(s) broke those laws/regulations".
Look at gun control for instance...
It's illegal to murder someone with a firearm (or anything else for that matter) -- so the problem of firearms is solved! If someone goes postal or kills innocent pupils/teachers in a rampage -- it's not the fault of any bureaucrat - after all, they've made killing illegal so it's not *their* fault that kids can get their hands on assault rifles so easily.
And they're doing it again with terrorism... they're making just about *everything* illegal -- so when a terrorist does attack and innocent folk are killed, they can turn around and say "not our fault, we made everything illegal -- what more could we do?"
As for drones -- well yes, they're almost certainly going to make them illegal (in the hands of private individuals) too. After all, if there's one thing that bureaucrats *don't* like, it's having their actions spied on by those they're allegedly employed to protect.
Sorry but the "perfect" world never existed and never will.
Why the hell should other sovereign nations bow to Western pressure not to develop their weapons?
Surely every country has a right to develop its own technologies if it wishes to. It seems awfully hypocritical of the USA and other nuclear powers to say "no, *you* can't have nukes" to nations that want them.
Now I have no time for Iran or N. Korea - but it's just bitchy for those who have nukes and ICBMs to criticise those who don't but are developing them.
Maybe, if these little renegade states end up with nukes on ICBMs, there'll be a lot more double-sided discussion rather than demands and sanctions. Isn't that what we need to preserve world peace?
Hell, imagine what the world would be like today if Hitler had invented the nuke and said to the USA -- no, sorry, you can't have any -- shortly before turning NYC into a smouldering hole in the ground.
Imagine how long the cold war would have lasted if only Russia had nukes!
It seems to me that MAD is working just fine -- but for it to work, all parties have to have nukes of their own.
The way I see it -- either every nation has a right to nuclear weapons and ICBMs -- or none do.
How about just carrying some of those "warranty void" stickers with you and place one so that it bridges the keyboard and screen on the opposite edge to the hinge.
Now the "maid" can't open your laptop without knowing their intrusion would be very obvious to the owner.
If that was the case then what about the incandescent bulbs still found in some old flashlights or even in the "overhead lighting" above your seat?
Do you know how hot that tungsten filament gets when energized?
The total amount of *heat* being used for refreshing your memory chip will be infinitesimal by comparison to the average bulb filament. Remember -- temperature without heat is pretty harmless.
Hey, I picked up a microUSB 5V wall-wart supply for $9.99 at the local equivalent of Walmart and just used an old Class 4 SD card I had laying about so my $94 Raspberry Pi only cost me $44.99.
Actually I lie -- I had to buy an HDMI cable and I can't find a spare ethernet cable either so I'll have to fork out some more cash.
But come to think of it -- neither my DVD player nor my TV came with an HDMI and my PC didn't come with a network cable so I guess that no matter what you buy, there are always "essential extras" to factor in.
And my Pi didn't come with a mouse or keyboard either -- what's with that??:D
I'm wondering if the model A will really have much of a market.
The end of the market that the A might have been useful in may well have been overtaken by the top-end of the M-series ARM processors, especially with companies like STM now pitching boards like the Discovery STM32F4 for $20 or so.
Yes, it's got less RAM, less MIPS and so forth -- but it *is* 100% open and incredibly capable for what it is.
"The best overall winner will also be given a tour of Sony’s Welsh in which the Raspberry Pi is manufactured"
Proof-reader sick today?
Actually, I'm not usually so grumpy but that full-page interstitial ad I had to dismiss before I got to the 7-paragraph ultra-lightweight "story" kind of ticked me off.
Back in 2003, I built the world's first DIY cruise missile in a garage here in New Zealand.
When the media found out, they approached the government for comment and the Prime MInister of the day (Helen Clark) admitted that in doing this, I had broken no laws.
Well when the US government found out what I'd been doing they were outraged and intense pressure was applied to the NZ government to shut down this low-cost-cruise-missile project.
But how could they do that? -- after all, the PM had admitted I'd broken no laws in doing so.
Well as we all (now) know, governments can do any damned thing they want and if they can't achieve their ends by fair means, they'll use foul ones.
As a result, they "Caponed" me and used the NZ equivalent of the IRS to bankrupt me by coming up with all manner of "assessed" tax liabilities and breaching an agreement I already had in place.
A local TV current affairs program did a piece on my plight:
and you can see from that, just how governments are able to sidestep or force the courts to do whatever they want -- when there's an agenda involved.
So Kim Dotcom ought to be very careful -- who knows what a savage dog will do when you back it into a corner?
I've written a book about this chapter (and others) of my life but suffice to say I have had some issues with publishers who don't want to get involved in a case where it's obvious that the rulebook gets tossed out the door in favor of covering asses at high levels.
I knew I shouldn't have taken a nap at the keyboard -- a quick zzz and you wake up with outdated skills!
Yeah, I'm a grey-beard too (started hand-coding 2650 assembler into hex-digits for keypad entry back in the 1970s) and was hardcore programming right up until about 1995 when I got into "content" creation for the WWW.
I still do some coding these days but it's mainly microcontroller stuff (because I also have a strong hardware background). I use C and some assembler for that. I like microcontroller programming -- usually there are fewer human inputs to stuff you up.
I wouldn't go back to coding as a job (I'm 58) because I find that my mind just isn't agile enough to work the way it did 30 years ago when I could keep so much contextual information in my memory at once that it was *easy*. These days, I live in a sea of paper and post-it notes.
No... find something more enjoyable than programming -- there are *lots* of alternatives.
The NZ Prime Minister John Key is *so* in-bed with the US movie industry that it is not funny.
Right now, he's in the USA schmoozing with the members of the MPAA and offering them hundreds of millions of (taxpayer) dollars in inducements to come film their products here.
Meanwhile... the same government ignores pleas from the science and technology sectors here to give them even a small break with respect to their R&D activities. Even when they do have a brain-fart and decide to invest taxpayers' money in some research or development activity they totally screw up and blow almost $1m on a stupid pie-in-the-sky delusion like the Martin Jetpack.
No, it seems that the government is more interested in selling-out (at all levels) to the USA than in helping to actually create some really valuable intellectual property that would be *owned* by NZers.
Kim Dotcom can't win -- because he's fighting the people who make (and break with impunity) the rules.
How long before the citizens of the world wake up to the way in which their governments are colluding with certain big business interests to disadvantage the majority of people?
Surely, in this age of technology, we can do more than simply voice our disgust on forums like this?
Commentators (including myself) have been predicting the end of the internet (as we know it) for almost two decades now -- but I (and all the others) have been proven wrong.
Yes, the demand for bandwidth is growing at a huge rate -- but so is the provisioning of that bandwidth.
If you live in a country like New Zealand (where I live) you get used to living with capped data plans -- they're just a part of life and, to be totally honest, it's never really been an issue for me -- despite the fact that I do a *lot* of online video, as you can tell by my Youtube Channel.
Sure, the arrival of IPTV will change the picture a little, as TV programming starts to make up an increasingly high percentage of the total traffic -- but hey, nothing's free and many people pay for cable so why not pay for IPTV in a way that includes the bandwidth you use as well? (as will soon be the case).
Uncapped internet? Never had it, never really needed it. I have 120GB a month and that's all I need -- perhaps because I don't like the kind of dross I find on TV anyway. Quality of content is *far* more important than the quality of the image.
The media here is having a field-day both here (in New Zealand) and in Australian -- with suggestions that you're looking to move to this part of the world.
Are you?
There's some pretty cool tech stuff happening around here right now but this country woefully needs a tech-figurehead to help the government focus on important issues such as getting behind our nascent knowledge based industries. I think you'd be just the man.
Or you could just spend your days skiiing (water/snow), cycling, swimming, relaxing in the peace and quiet of scenic wonders -- or chugging a few brews.
And let's not forget their big non-commitment to creating a knowledge-based economy.
The best they can do is offer to *give* taxpayers money to companies that are already so successful that they don't need it. And the buggers don't even have to pay it back!
Where's the support for fresh new startups created by NZ's best and brightest?
There is none -- so it's no wonder our "best and brightest" head straight from the capping ceremony to the nearest international airport.
Slashdot Mirror
Duh! They've hired the MPAA/RIAA to do their off-shore enforcement for them.
Just ask Kim Dotcom how that works.
Some time ago I gave some thought to the apparent anomalies and strangeness of the quantum world.
Here's what I came up with as a theory It's all about time
Comments would be welcomed from all the (real and wannabe) quantum physicists out there.
This is why I have been working on a practical "sense and avoid" (SAA) system for UAVs and FPV RC models.
So far so good (very good in fact) and I expect to start the airborne testing of a prototype very shortly.
The goal was to have the reliable detection of full-sized aircraft at a minimum range of 1.5Km and not rely on transponders or other equipment in those aircraft and it appears that this objective is attainable.
It's been a lot of fun developing this thing and it's something that has really only become possible recently, now that we've got some seriously powerful processors capable of handling the signal processing involved without the need for a rack-sized box and an appetite for watts.
If it works "as planned", odds are that I'll be releasing this as an open-source, copyleft project so hobbyists can use it instead of it becoming the sole domain of the "drone" companies.
Lithium batteries really don't handle cold temperatures very well at all -- one of the many reasons that aircraft have continued to use good old fashioned Nickel-cadmium or lead-acid batteries (until the Dreamliner came along).
When they're too cold, they neither take a full charge, nor do they deliver their rated capacity or maximum current.
I would say that, given the weather on the East Coast of the USA during the drive, this played a significant factor in the lack of range encountered -- but I acknowledge that it may not be the only factor.
Perhaps another factor is the enhanced need to heat the passenger compartment. Unlike a regular IC-powered car, there's very little "waste heat" in an EV so perhaps over-zealous use was made of the electric heating - thus producing further heavy drain on the battery and reducing range.
The problem (for Tesla) is that people don't want an EV that comes with a long list of "don'ts" and "cautions" in respect to power management and the effects of low/high temperatures on range. They just want a car they can unplug, jump in and drive -- with an unqualified guarantee of a known range. That's effectively what they get now with their IC-powered cars and that's what they want from any replacement.
I got hit by this last week and blogged about it, griping that surely a company with the resources of Yahoo should be able to fix such a critical flaw faster than seems to be the case.
It would appear that Yahoo is happy to announce "fixexd" while the hackers simply exploit yet another hole in the company's shaky cloud.
Tragic.
Would Google be so lax in sorting out what is clearly a very critical issue that is affecting a large (and rapidly growing) number of users?
I'm pretty sure everyone loves to hate the RIAA/MPAA so Kim Dotcom had little trouble rounding up support when they moved to shut down MegaUpload.
Unfortunately, he's now picking a fight with bigger opponent and possible a mass of small website owners who rely on their Adsense revenues to help pay the bills.
Kicking the RIAA/MPAA for their sins is one thing, taking money out of the mouths of independent content creators (by hijacking their ad-revenues to fund his Mega-services) is something altogether different.
I admire KD for what he's doing with the MegaKey service but I really wonder if he's got an oar out of the water in picking a fight with Google and the many websites who rely on that company's ad-revenue sharing.
BTW: I'm one of those sites and I'll be mighty pissed if Kim starts replacing the ads on *my* webpages that should be generating money to pay for *my* efforts -- because I have *nothing* to do with MegaKey so why should *I* be paying for it?
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your invoice # 88266 for the sum of 300 Euros.
This has been forwarded to our accounting department who have informed me that as of today, your account is now 30 Euro in debt, being calculated as follows:
Opening balance: 0.00
-
Your Inv# 88266: -300.00
Handling fee: 150.00
Processing fee: 120.00
Account setup fee: 60.00
-
Closing balance: 30.00
Please remit your payment for 30.00 Euro within 7 days to avoid legal action.
We thank you for your business and trust you will continue to trade with us.
Regards
F.U Assole
President, Don't Mess With Us Inc
"I'm getting really sick of this tiresome rant popping up on every single Slashdot story. Government is corrupt. Corporations rule the world. We are all slaves. blah blah blah!
Can't you guys give it a rest?
Why do you always post your rants as AC anyway?"
Sadly, while I might once have agreed with everything you said, I fear that times have changed -- or perhaps it's just that the Net has allowed the truth to be revealed in a way that governments can no longer control.
Everywhere you look these days, there are many and varied examples of government being driven, directed and controlled by industries and those with lots (of money) at stake.
Look at Kim Dotcom for instance -- the MPAA/RIAA may have had plenty of legal justification for some of what they did -- but certainly not all of it and not the way it was done. Hell, the FBI/MPAA/RIAA triad even bullied the New Zealand government in engaging in "unlawful acts" to carry out their dirty deeds.
We've seen the problem of politicians protecting the rich at the cost of the poor grow to become a major problem down in this part of the world (NZL) and it's plainly obvious that the situation is far worse elsewhere.
Bureaucrats (ie: central and local government) spend most of their time simply working to cover it's own ass -- in case things go wrong.
Just look at most of the laws and regulations out there. They're not to improve the safety or to benefit the public nearly so much as they are to ensure that when something goes wrong, some bureaucrat somewhere can say "not my fault, we passed a law/regulation against that and the offender(s) broke those laws/regulations".
Look at gun control for instance...
It's illegal to murder someone with a firearm (or anything else for that matter) -- so the problem of firearms is solved! If someone goes postal or kills innocent pupils/teachers in a rampage -- it's not the fault of any bureaucrat - after all, they've made killing illegal so it's not *their* fault that kids can get their hands on assault rifles so easily.
And they're doing it again with terrorism... they're making just about *everything* illegal -- so when a terrorist does attack and innocent folk are killed, they can turn around and say "not our fault, we made everything illegal -- what more could we do?"
As for drones -- well yes, they're almost certainly going to make them illegal (in the hands of private individuals) too. After all, if there's one thing that bureaucrats *don't* like, it's having their actions spied on by those they're allegedly employed to protect.
Sorry but the "perfect" world never existed and never will.
And look... not posting as an AC! :-o
Damn you MacGyver, look what you've done to our society! :-)
Why the hell should other sovereign nations bow to Western pressure not to develop their weapons?
Surely every country has a right to develop its own technologies if it wishes to. It seems awfully hypocritical of the USA and other nuclear powers to say "no, *you* can't have nukes" to nations that want them.
Now I have no time for Iran or N. Korea - but it's just bitchy for those who have nukes and ICBMs to criticise those who don't but are developing them.
Maybe, if these little renegade states end up with nukes on ICBMs, there'll be a lot more double-sided discussion rather than demands and sanctions. Isn't that what we need to preserve world peace?
Hell, imagine what the world would be like today if Hitler had invented the nuke and said to the USA -- no, sorry, you can't have any -- shortly before turning NYC into a smouldering hole in the ground.
Imagine how long the cold war would have lasted if only Russia had nukes!
It seems to me that MAD is working just fine -- but for it to work, all parties have to have nukes of their own.
The way I see it -- either every nation has a right to nuclear weapons and ICBMs -- or none do.
What do you mean I can't get a laptop with a Hercules mono graphics card in it?
And who said CGA was "so last century".
Hell, maybe it's time I upgraded.
I noticed that I became much better at playing minesweeper after switching to an NVIDIA card.
Hmmm... I think this morning's earthquakes may have rattled something loose in my head ;-)
How about just carrying some of those "warranty void" stickers with you and place one so that it bridges the keyboard and screen on the opposite edge to the hinge.
Now the "maid" can't open your laptop without knowing their intrusion would be very obvious to the owner.
I wonder if they still would?
"Tandy got its wish: nobody ever writes about Radio Shack computers today."
Except you, so it would appear :D
If that was the case then what about the incandescent bulbs still found in some old flashlights or even in the "overhead lighting" above your seat?
Do you know how hot that tungsten filament gets when energized?
The total amount of *heat* being used for refreshing your memory chip will be infinitesimal by comparison to the average bulb filament. Remember -- temperature without heat is pretty harmless.
Hey, I picked up a microUSB 5V wall-wart supply for $9.99 at the local equivalent of Walmart and just used an old Class 4 SD card I had laying about so my $94 Raspberry Pi only cost me $44.99.
Actually I lie -- I had to buy an HDMI cable and I can't find a spare ethernet cable either so I'll have to fork out some more cash.
But come to think of it -- neither my DVD player nor my TV came with an HDMI and my PC didn't come with a network cable so I guess that no matter what you buy, there are always "essential extras" to factor in.
And my Pi didn't come with a mouse or keyboard either -- what's with that?? :D
I'm wondering if the model A will really have much of a market.
The end of the market that the A might have been useful in may well have been overtaken by the top-end of the M-series ARM processors, especially with companies like STM now pitching boards like the Discovery STM32F4 for $20 or so.
Yes, it's got less RAM, less MIPS and so forth -- but it *is* 100% open and incredibly capable for what it is.
Is TechWorld for real or is it someone's blog?
"The best overall winner will also be given a tour of Sony’s Welsh in which the Raspberry Pi is manufactured"
Proof-reader sick today?
Actually, I'm not usually so grumpy but that full-page interstitial ad I had to dismiss before I got to the 7-paragraph ultra-lightweight "story" kind of ticked me off.
Yeah... big ones and smaller ones.
Back in 2003, I built the world's first DIY cruise missile in a garage here in New Zealand.
When the media found out, they approached the government for comment and the Prime MInister of the day (Helen Clark) admitted that in doing this, I had broken no laws.
Well when the US government found out what I'd been doing they were outraged and intense pressure was applied to the NZ government to shut down this low-cost-cruise-missile project.
But how could they do that? -- after all, the PM had admitted I'd broken no laws in doing so.
Well as we all (now) know, governments can do any damned thing they want and if they can't achieve their ends by fair means, they'll use foul ones.
As a result, they "Caponed" me and used the NZ equivalent of the IRS to bankrupt me by coming up with all manner of "assessed" tax liabilities and breaching an agreement I already had in place.
A local TV current affairs program did a piece on my plight:
Part 1
Part 2
and you can see from that, just how governments are able to sidestep or force the courts to do whatever they want -- when there's an agenda involved.
So Kim Dotcom ought to be very careful -- who knows what a savage dog will do when you back it into a corner?
I've written a book about this chapter (and others) of my life but suffice to say I have had some issues with publishers who don't want to get involved in a case where it's obvious that the rulebook gets tossed out the door in favor of covering asses at high levels.
Why buy them before you're going to use them?
This technology is advancing so rapidly that anything you buy *today* will cost half the price in a couple of month's time and be twice as capable.
There's a Moore's law involved here so it seems stupid to tie up capital in something that will be unused and depreciating at such a rapid rate.
Think of all the donuts and coffee they could buy for that money!
What do you mean nobody uses Cobol 60 any more?
WTF?
I knew I shouldn't have taken a nap at the keyboard -- a quick zzz and you wake up with outdated skills!
Yeah, I'm a grey-beard too (started hand-coding 2650 assembler into hex-digits for keypad entry back in the 1970s) and was hardcore programming right up until about 1995 when I got into "content" creation for the WWW.
I still do some coding these days but it's mainly microcontroller stuff (because I also have a strong hardware background). I use C and some assembler for that. I like microcontroller programming -- usually there are fewer human inputs to stuff you up.
I wouldn't go back to coding as a job (I'm 58) because I find that my mind just isn't agile enough to work the way it did 30 years ago when I could keep so much contextual information in my memory at once that it was *easy*. These days, I live in a sea of paper and post-it notes.
No... find something more enjoyable than programming -- there are *lots* of alternatives.
The NZ Prime Minister John Key is *so* in-bed with the US movie industry that it is not funny.
Right now, he's in the USA schmoozing with the members of the MPAA and offering them hundreds of millions of (taxpayer) dollars in inducements to come film their products here.
Meanwhile... the same government ignores pleas from the science and technology sectors here to give them even a small break with respect to their R&D activities. Even when they do have a brain-fart and decide to invest taxpayers' money in some research or development activity they totally screw up and blow almost $1m on a stupid pie-in-the-sky delusion like the Martin Jetpack.
No, it seems that the government is more interested in selling-out (at all levels) to the USA than in helping to actually create some really valuable intellectual property that would be *owned* by NZers.
Kim Dotcom can't win -- because he's fighting the people who make (and break with impunity) the rules.
How long before the citizens of the world wake up to the way in which their governments are colluding with certain big business interests to disadvantage the majority of people?
Surely, in this age of technology, we can do more than simply voice our disgust on forums like this?
What is the next step?
Commentators (including myself) have been predicting the end of the internet (as we know it) for almost two decades now -- but I (and all the others) have been proven wrong.
Yes, the demand for bandwidth is growing at a huge rate -- but so is the provisioning of that bandwidth.
If you live in a country like New Zealand (where I live) you get used to living with capped data plans -- they're just a part of life and, to be totally honest, it's never really been an issue for me -- despite the fact that I do a *lot* of online video, as you can tell by my Youtube Channel.
Sure, the arrival of IPTV will change the picture a little, as TV programming starts to make up an increasingly high percentage of the total traffic -- but hey, nothing's free and many people pay for cable so why not pay for IPTV in a way that includes the bandwidth you use as well? (as will soon be the case).
Uncapped internet? Never had it, never really needed it. I have 120GB a month and that's all I need -- perhaps because I don't like the kind of dross I find on TV anyway. Quality of content is *far* more important than the quality of the image.
The media here is having a field-day both here (in New Zealand) and in Australian -- with suggestions that you're looking to move to this part of the world.
Are you?
There's some pretty cool tech stuff happening around here right now but this country woefully needs a tech-figurehead to help the government focus on important issues such as getting behind our nascent knowledge based industries. I think you'd be just the man.
Or you could just spend your days skiiing (water/snow), cycling, swimming, relaxing in the peace and quiet of scenic wonders -- or chugging a few brews.
It all happens here! :-)
And let's not forget their big non-commitment to creating a knowledge-based economy.
The best they can do is offer to *give* taxpayers money to companies that are already so successful that they don't need it. And the buggers don't even have to pay it back!
Where's the support for fresh new startups created by NZ's best and brightest?
There is none -- so it's no wonder our "best and brightest" head straight from the capping ceremony to the nearest international airport.