Pandora is such a piece of crap compared to newer entrants like Spotify, it will take massive efforts for Pandora just to copy them. Spotify is years ahead with their tech.
Pandora bought Rdio's technology last year - all it would take is a new licencing deal to launch a new streaming service.
The specifications you list cite a maximum temperature of 43 degrees Celsius.
Now the maximum temperature for the majority of Australian households in summer rarely if ever reaches or exceeds that. There is a large amount of the continent where the temperature exceeds that - however its very sparsely populated (you are looking at the central deserts after all) and has minimal infrastructure anyway.
For the majority of the population (i.e. major population centres on the coast) it's quite reasonable.
Many parts of the mainland capitals approach 43 degrees multiple times during summer, and it's not uncommon to have at least one day a year that exceeds that (for example Penrith and Richmond in Sydney's west were around 45 degrees on 23/11/14). Depending on where the units were placed, it's quite possible that the operating temperature would exceed 43 degrees even if the ambient temperature was below that.
The biggest problem is that when you don't have an "E-Tag" on your car, the bill gets sent to your house with a $10 or more Administration Fee... So your $3 toll becomes $13 everytime you drive through
That's not a problem if you pay attention to all the signs that direct you to get an E-Toll pass from the RTA website... Then your $3 toll only turns into a $5.25 toll on your first trip and $3.75 on subsequent trips over the next 14 days.
Heck, dude, you're so far out of touch that you think Australia is in the tropics so "educate" isn't a word that you should even be using. That's especially true considering that it's only the people who aren't at all educated on the matter that don't know that some regions are very likely to get colder.
Perhaps you need a little bit of education yourself before you go making statements like that:
...tell us ITWire is reporting that Novell has just signed a deal with the Australian government...
As much as I like to think that my state is a little more important than the others, it's pretty obvious from the title of TFA that the deal has been signed with the New South Wales state government, not the Australian federal government.
It was actually their review of the game that led to the classification being revoked, due to the inclusion of "contentious material" (their words, not mine) which wasn't disclosed when the game was orignally submitted for classification and which may have affected the original classification granted.
It turns out that under the Classification Act publishers of games must disclose all contentious material included with the game, regardless of whether it requires codes or modification to access. If the classification board determines that the publisher failed to do this, then it must by law revoke the classification.
As the game is now considered to have been Refused Classification by the OFLC, it cannot be legally sold, hired, advertised or exhibited. In addition, anyone who attempts to import the game from overseas could possibly have the game seized by Customs and face charges for importing prohibited material.
As GTA:SA most likely would not have been granted a classification in its original form had the OFLC been aware of Hot Coffee (since depictions of sex are not allowed under the MA15+ classification) it probably won't be classified again until Rockstar produces a version without Hot Coffee on the disc.
Sorry to rain on the parade here, but EVACS wasn't used for a national election (federal elections and referenda are conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission). It was used in the 2001 ACT Legislative Assembly election, where about 220 000 voters selected 17 representatives. Of those votes, 16 559 votes were actually cast using the system - less than 10 percent.
I would be more impressed if it had been used in an election for a bicameral parliament like New South Wales. The above the line/below the line ballot paper used for the upper house (also used for the Senate and NSW local government elections) would be a greater challenge, given the large number of candidates (the "tablecloth" ballot paper of the 1999 NSW election is a classic example).
Child porn: Sorry, but I do not agree with the US position that 18 is some magical age when sex become ok. If other countries wish to have a lower age of consent, that's their right. Then there are those countries that want ALL pornagraphy to be illegal. So if it's ok for us to tell a nation that 18 must be the minimum age for porn, why is it not ok for a different country to tell us that NO age is ok for porn?
While no country should be able to dictate that no porn should be accessible, there must be a line drawn somewhere that says that images of children younger than x years are illegal worldwide.
Since the lowest age of consent appears to be 12, there should be no reason whatsoever to see 6 or 7 year old children in explicit images anywhere on the Internet.
I'm all for free speech online, but that "right" should not be abused to exploit innocent children.
Actually, E-Talk's bandwidth is provided by NTT Australia:
traceroute www.comcen.com.au
1 cisco-eng-fe0.newcastle.edu.au (134.148.96.250) 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms
2 134.148.250.242 (134.148.250.242) 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms
3 callaghan-gw.newcastle.edu.au (134.148.24.251) 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms
4 nswrno2-atm4-0-ultimo.nswrno.net.au (203.15.123.37) 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms
5 ATM9-0-0-3.sn2.optus.net.au (202.139.18.113) 9 ms 13 ms 6 ms
6 NTTAustraliaIP.sn2.optus.net.au (202.139.138.134) 137 ms 165 ms 219 ms
7 fa1-4.dc1-core3.syd.ntt.net.au (203.111.5.38) 12 ms 8 ms 9 ms
8 fa4-0.dc1-acc7.syd.ntt.net.au (203.111.5.234) 8 ms 9 ms 10 ms
9 etalk-cust.syd.ntt.net.au (203.111.96.206) 16 ms 13 ms 31 ms
10 www.comcen.com.au (203.29.124.1) 17 ms (ttl=55!) 14 ms (ttl=55!) 22 ms (t
tl=55!)
On that one, googlefight has NTT absolutely trouncing ARIA...
When I do straight DHTML instead, I would definitely include Opera 7.x. (I wouldn't mind testing in Safari also, but I don't think my work will buy me a Mac!)
Doesn't Safari use KHTML for rendering? All you would need is a Linux or FreeBSD box to test using Konqueror. If your bosses are too cheap, you could always use Knoppix...
Slashdot Mirror
Pandora is such a piece of crap compared to newer entrants like Spotify, it will take massive efforts for Pandora just to copy them. Spotify is years ahead with their tech.
Pandora bought Rdio's technology last year - all it would take is a new licencing deal to launch a new streaming service.
The specifications you list cite a maximum temperature of 43 degrees Celsius.
Now the maximum temperature for the majority of Australian households in summer rarely if ever reaches or exceeds that. There is a large amount of the continent where the temperature exceeds that - however its very sparsely populated (you are looking at the central deserts after all) and has minimal infrastructure anyway.
For the majority of the population (i.e. major population centres on the coast) it's quite reasonable.
Many parts of the mainland capitals approach 43 degrees multiple times during summer, and it's not uncommon to have at least one day a year that exceeds that (for example Penrith and Richmond in Sydney's west were around 45 degrees on 23/11/14). Depending on where the units were placed, it's quite possible that the operating temperature would exceed 43 degrees even if the ambient temperature was below that.
Charging so called night rates up to 9am. Thats FRAUD, its NOT NIGHT time between 6am and 9am.
That's what you get for living in Victoria. All other states start their regular rates between 6-7am.
Yes, millions - Vodafone Hutchinson Australia (which owns the Vodafone and 3 networks in Australia) had 6.3 million customers as of September 2009.
I tried that test in the current Chrome dev build (6.0.422.0 dev) on my Vista box at work and it failed.
The biggest problem is that when you don't have an "E-Tag" on your car, the bill gets sent to your house with a $10 or more Administration Fee... So your $3 toll becomes $13 everytime you drive through
That's not a problem if you pay attention to all the signs that direct you to get an E-Toll pass from the RTA website... Then your $3 toll only turns into a $5.25 toll on your first trip and $3.75 on subsequent trips over the next 14 days.
Heck, dude, you're so far out of touch that you think Australia is in the tropics so "educate" isn't a word that you should even be using. That's especially true considering that it's only the people who aren't at all educated on the matter that don't know that some regions are very likely to get colder.
Perhaps you need a little bit of education yourself before you go making statements like that:
Mackay, Queensland: 21 8' 28" S
Tropic of Capricorn: 23 26' 22" S
It's true that most of the population does live south of the tropics, but to say that Australia isn't in the tropics is just plain dumb.
As much as I like to think that my state is a little more important than the others, it's pretty obvious from the title of TFA that the deal has been signed with the New South Wales state government, not the Australian federal government.
It turns out that under the Classification Act publishers of games must disclose all contentious material included with the game, regardless of whether it requires codes or modification to access. If the classification board determines that the publisher failed to do this, then it must by law revoke the classification.
As the game is now considered to have been Refused Classification by the OFLC, it cannot be legally sold, hired, advertised or exhibited. In addition, anyone who attempts to import the game from overseas could possibly have the game seized by Customs and face charges for importing prohibited material.
As GTA:SA most likely would not have been granted a classification in its original form had the OFLC been aware of Hot Coffee (since depictions of sex are not allowed under the MA15+ classification) it probably won't be classified again until Rockstar produces a version without Hot Coffee on the disc.
For more information (PDF links):Sorry to rain on the parade here, but EVACS wasn't used for a national election (federal elections and referenda are conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission). It was used in the 2001 ACT Legislative Assembly election, where about 220 000 voters selected 17 representatives. Of those votes, 16 559 votes were actually cast using the system - less than 10 percent.
I would be more impressed if it had been used in an election for a bicameral parliament like New South Wales. The above the line/below the line ballot paper used for the upper house (also used for the Senate and NSW local government elections) would be a greater challenge, given the large number of candidates (the "tablecloth" ballot paper of the 1999 NSW election is a classic example).
While no country should be able to dictate that no porn should be accessible, there must be a line drawn somewhere that says that images of children younger than x years are illegal worldwide.
Since the lowest age of consent appears to be 12, there should be no reason whatsoever to see 6 or 7 year old children in explicit images anywhere on the Internet.
I'm all for free speech online, but that "right" should not be abused to exploit innocent children.
traceroute www.comcen.com.au
On that one, googlefight has NTT absolutely trouncing ARIA...1 cisco-eng-fe0.newcastle.edu.au (134.148.96.250) 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms
2 134.148.250.242 (134.148.250.242) 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms
3 callaghan-gw.newcastle.edu.au (134.148.24.251) 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms
4 nswrno2-atm4-0-ultimo.nswrno.net.au (203.15.123.37) 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms
5 ATM9-0-0-3.sn2.optus.net.au (202.139.18.113) 9 ms 13 ms 6 ms
6 NTTAustraliaIP.sn2.optus.net.au (202.139.138.134) 137 ms 165 ms 219 ms
7 fa1-4.dc1-core3.syd.ntt.net.au (203.111.5.38) 12 ms 8 ms 9 ms
8 fa4-0.dc1-acc7.syd.ntt.net.au (203.111.5.234) 8 ms 9 ms 10 ms
9 etalk-cust.syd.ntt.net.au (203.111.96.206) 16 ms 13 ms 31 ms
10 www.comcen.com.au (203.29.124.1) 17 ms (ttl=55!) 14 ms (ttl=55!) 22 ms (t tl=55!)
Doesn't Safari use KHTML for rendering? All you would need is a Linux or FreeBSD box to test using Konqueror. If your bosses are too cheap, you could always use Knoppix...