The problem with #1 is that whilst airline A might fly from city A to city B via city C (because it has a hub in city C), airline B might have its hub in city B instead and might have a direct flight. So airline A has to price its flights to city B at similar prices to airline B to get passengers even though it actually costs them more than airline B.
#2 I agree with, having a uniform "this is the price you will pay" displayed based on the trip options you select and your location (to cover any taxes etc you need to pay) will make it easier to compare things. No more adding surcharges after you start the booking process.
As for checked baggage, the way to go is to have a strict size limit for carry-on baggage enforced at the gate (no more bringing massive suitcases as carry-on to avoid the checked baggage fees) where anything bigger than the size limit is required to be gate-checked (which needs to attract a fee higher than it would have cost if you had just checked it in the first place). Doing this will encourage people to pre-purchase checked baggage with their ticket but without penalizing those who genuinely CAN get away with just carry-on (carry-on that meets the size limit)
#5 wont work, a lot of the time the delays aren't due to things the airline can do anything about like weather. No way should the airline be required to compensate passengers for delays beyond their control.
If it wasn't for the negative reports I have heard regarding the Model M and certain games (e.g. twitchy FPS games or fast button mashers) I would buy a Unicomp to replace this generic Microsoft job.
But I dont want to spend up big only to find that its too hard to play the games I play (although to be fair for the arcade stuff I have a USB arcade joystick) so I dont want to take the risk...
I can understand the initial purchase (in that we needed something to replace the obsolete F-111 Aardvark and at the time it wasn't known how bad F-35 would turn out to be. But now our government wants to buy MORE of these things despite no evidence that they are actually any good as an airplane? Why?
Does Australia actually need that many airplanes? (its not like there are any countries in our region that are likely to decide to attack us so the only real mission for the F-35 is going to be sending a few to help in some foreign war and we dont need anywhere near as many aircraft to be able to do that) Is Abbot just following through on a commitment originally made by Howard when he placed the first order of F-35s? Is Abbot deliberately doing this to make the budget look worse so he can justify his unpopular budget cuts?
The decision of Sony to limit the release to the US as of now (presumably because they still want to be able to negotiate with cinema chains in Australia, Europe and elsewhere) means people who want to see it have no choice but to pirate it.
If Sony had made the online release (through the special website at the very least) global then piracy wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a problem.
Its an interesting idea but there are so many issues to resolve. Which platform do you use? Xbox? PlayStation? PC? If PC, who defines the system specs? Which games do you use? Who defines what settings are used for each match like the level to use? What would the rules be regarding player choices like e.g. which faction the player picks in an RTS? What happens if the internet or severs go down mid-match?
Of couse some of these questions have already been answered by existing e-sports contests and the IOC would probably defer to that rather than inventing new rules. (just like olympic golf, if it was a thing, would be played according to the rules set down by St Andrews Royal & Ancient instead of inventing ndw ones)
Re:Invasive Species Introduction in Wood Pallets
on
The Magic of Pallets
·
· Score: 1
That's one of the reasons for the move away from wood to plastic pallets, I know of no bug that can live inside a plastic pallet. Plastic is also a lot more durable so you can use it a lot more times before it fails and needs to be disposed of.
The difference is that the Internet the Cuban government wants (no doubt censored and highly regulated like in China, Russia etc) is totally different to the internet that the old guy was trying to set up (which wouldn't have had the censorship and regulations)
Anyone who thinks that there will ever be a repeat of the Hollywood anti-trust lawsuits of the late 40s clearly doesn't understand just how much power Hollywood has over the US government.
Good Game Spawn Point is a TV show aimed at younger gamers (like the OP's kid) and the tutorial in question takes you step by step through the production of a simple game.
And once they have done this, they can start playing around with the Scratch! toolkit (a free game design tool produced by the fine folks at the MIT Media Lab aimed at getting kids into game development and coding) and producing their own games.
Ok so the largest theater chains wont show the film (not just because of the threats of physical attack but because of the threats of cyber attack by the same hackers that attacked Sony).
And it doesn't make sense to do a full theatrical release if the biggest chains in the US wont show it (because of all the costs involved with doing a theatrical release like marketing and advertising).
So why doesn't Sony just release it to every digital download store that will take it? (and any increased risk of cyber attack that might come from distributing the film) It wouldn't be the first time that a film originally slated for theatrical release ended up being switched to a direct-to-video release instead.
Are there legal issues in going direct-to-video? (e.g. contracts with the production team) Could Sony have been asked by the government not to go direct-to-video at this point? Are they still considering a theatrical release of some kind at some point in the future? Or are Sony scared that releasing the film in this way will result in further damage? (i.e. the hackers releasing information they copied in the Sony hack and haven't yet released but which, if released, will be even more damaging to Sony than what's released so far)
I see nothing to indicate that the list in that link is significantly different to the export control list that has been in force for years.
Yes it restricts the export of a lot of stuff including nuclear stuff, electronics, computer gear, telecoms gear, aerospace and more but unless there is some big list of "stuff added to the export control list just recently" that I have missed, I dont see all that much that is now export-controlled under this new bill that wasn't export-controlled before.
I see nothing to indicate this region lock stops anyone from buying games from the US Steam store. All it does is stops people who aren't in Russia from buying from the Russian Steam store at Russian prices and people who are in Russia from buying from the Russian Steam store then gifting the game to someone not in Russia.
This is not a new bill, it is an amendment to the "Defence Trade Controls Act 2012".
I see nothing to suggest that, say, exporting open source cryptographic software without a permit is more illegal under this bill than it is as things stand right now. I did 6 months working for Motorola doing software development back in 2005 or so and I remember they had training and stuff regarding export controls including export controls on cryptography.
The actual list of what is export controlled is the same list as used in every other country that is a signatory to the same international export control treaty.
As for the bill itself, if it (or the bill it amends) DOES make exporting cryptography (or other software) illegal (or if that stuff is otherwise illegal) then people should use the public consultation process (or letters to their local MPs and senators) asking for exemptions that cover open source software so that it becomes possible to continue development and use of such software in Australia.
Given the number of people who read Slashdot using old browsers that dont do HTML5 video (like all those people stuck at work on Intercrap Explorer 6) Flash seems like the better choice here.
Too bad the same magic that throws up things like that cant throw up a few hundred of the obsolete Knowles speaker the Neo900 project has been trying to source (or the other hard-to-get components that project has a need for)
The airspace over Sydney isn't closed, nor is its airport. Flights are being diverted around the CBD (both by order from the authorities and voluntarily from the main domestic airlines agreeing to divert).
I flew from Perth to Brisbane last xmas with a desktop tower case PC plus a bunch of peripherals and other stuff in my checked luggage (it was part of a permanent move from Perth to QLD) and there was basically no security checks of my luggage at all (despite the fact that the cardboard boxes or their contents could easily have contained explosives). In the US on a similar domestic flight, I am sure my 2 cardboard boxes and suitcase would have been run through all sorts of scanning machines and possibly opened (they may have even removed the cover off the PC to inspect its inside).
That said, I did learn just what a cross-country flight (and QANTAS baggage handlers) can do to a desktop PC when the only thing protecting it from damage is a layer of bubble wrap and a cardboard moving box...
Why are banks pushing this crap in the first place? I can't see entities like Bank of America spending their own money on security stuff unless its going to cost them more money not to.
All the times I used a taxi (which were because I needed to carry more stuff than it was possible to carry on the bus and was unable to get help from friends/family) I only had to make one phone call, they showed up reasonably quickly and got me and my stuff where I needed to go without any problems. As for costs, the costs for those taxis were quite reasonable (although you better carry cash or else they will sting you with a ridiculous 10% surcharge for card payment)
If the government and media companies REALLY want to stop piracy they need to make the content easier to legally acquire without needing to pay a lot of money for content you dont want. This applies to both new content and older content.
Some examples of how the local industry makes it harder: 1.Scorpion (2014 TV show). Channel 10 (local FTA network) aired up to episode 10 straight after the US airing. However, to see Episodes 11 and 12, you will have to wait for a few months. Episode 11 is already available online to download and episode 12 will likely follow shortly after its US airing next Monday.
Its a good bet a bunch of Aussies are going to pirate those 2 episodes rather than wait for TEN to air them. And its a good bet that when Episode 13 airs on TEN, it too will be weeks behind its US airing and have already been pirated by a fair few people. If TEN aired these episodes straight after the US (and continued to put them on their catch-up-TV website), there would be basically zero reason to pirate them.
2.The films of Yahoo Serious. Aussie actor who was in 3 films, none of which is particularly popular but all 3 of which have their fans (myself included). Young Einstein is available on DVD overseas (and importing that DVD is technically illegal under Australian parallel import legislation I believe). Reckless Kelly is not available on any physical media format. No clue about Mr Accident. All 3 films seem to be available on the US Amazon digital store. None of the 3 films are available in Australia on either physical disk format or digital store.
3.Halt & Catch Fire (AMC TV series). As far as I can tell this show has yet to air on any Australian TV network (Foxtel included) and is unavailable on disk or digital in this country.
4.X-Planes (old Discovery Channel show about the X series of experimental aircraft). Totally unavailable in any form.
All 4 items above are items I would happily consume legally if there was an option to do so.
Rural areas are very much able to go off-grid. I have family who used to own a sheep station 100s of km from the nearest town and they ran for many years off a combination of a diesel generator and batteries with a small wind turbine (this was back before solar panels really became anywhere near viable). Provided all the power needs for the property. No reason why rural properties elsewhere couldn't do the same with solar/renewables and batteries with a generator (running off the same diesel they use to run the tractors and machinery most likely) for those times when the sun isn't shining and the batteries are dry.
It costs the utilities a certain amount to provide you with a grid connection (grid maintanence costs, power station maintanence costs, repairs, wages, capital expenditure etc) no matter how much electricity you use. So why shouldn't the electricity companies charge you this fixed cost directly instead of trying to roll it into the variable per-kWh cost?
My power company charged me for 420kWh of "anytime usage" and 56 days of "service to property charge" on my last bill and there is no reason electricity companies couldn't do the same thing everywhere (as long as they reduced the per-kWh charge in line with the maintanence costs that are now being covered by the service charge and not the usage)
Here in Australia more power companies are forcing residential customers (especially those with grid-tie solar connections) onto "time of use" metering where you pay more at times when demand is higher.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with #1 is that whilst airline A might fly from city A to city B via city C (because it has a hub in city C), airline B might have its hub in city B instead and might have a direct flight. So airline A has to price its flights to city B at similar prices to airline B to get passengers even though it actually costs them more than airline B.
#2 I agree with, having a uniform "this is the price you will pay" displayed based on the trip options you select and your location (to cover any taxes etc you need to pay) will make it easier to compare things. No more adding surcharges after you start the booking process.
As for checked baggage, the way to go is to have a strict size limit for carry-on baggage enforced at the gate (no more bringing massive suitcases as carry-on to avoid the checked baggage fees) where anything bigger than the size limit is required to be gate-checked (which needs to attract a fee higher than it would have cost if you had just checked it in the first place). Doing this will encourage people to pre-purchase checked baggage with their ticket but without penalizing those who genuinely CAN get away with just carry-on (carry-on that meets the size limit)
#5 wont work, a lot of the time the delays aren't due to things the airline can do anything about like weather. No way should the airline be required to compensate passengers for delays beyond their control.
If it wasn't for the negative reports I have heard regarding the Model M and certain games (e.g. twitchy FPS games or fast button mashers) I would buy a Unicomp to replace this generic Microsoft job.
But I dont want to spend up big only to find that its too hard to play the games I play (although to be fair for the arcade stuff I have a USB arcade joystick) so I dont want to take the risk...
I can understand the initial purchase (in that we needed something to replace the obsolete F-111 Aardvark and at the time it wasn't known how bad F-35 would turn out to be. But now our government wants to buy MORE of these things despite no evidence that they are actually any good as an airplane? Why?
Does Australia actually need that many airplanes? (its not like there are any countries in our region that are likely to decide to attack us so the only real mission for the F-35 is going to be sending a few to help in some foreign war and we dont need anywhere near as many aircraft to be able to do that)
Is Abbot just following through on a commitment originally made by Howard when he placed the first order of F-35s?
Is Abbot deliberately doing this to make the budget look worse so he can justify his unpopular budget cuts?
The decision of Sony to limit the release to the US as of now (presumably because they still want to be able to negotiate with cinema chains in Australia, Europe and elsewhere) means people who want to see it have no choice but to pirate it.
If Sony had made the online release (through the special website at the very least) global then piracy wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a problem.
Its an interesting idea but there are so many issues to resolve.
Which platform do you use? Xbox? PlayStation? PC?
If PC, who defines the system specs? Which games do you use?
Who defines what settings are used for each match like the level to use? What would the rules be regarding player choices like e.g. which faction the player picks in an RTS? What happens if the internet or severs go down mid-match?
Of couse some of these questions have already been answered by existing e-sports contests and the IOC would probably defer to that rather than inventing new rules. (just like olympic golf, if it was a thing, would be played according to the rules set down by St Andrews Royal & Ancient instead of inventing ndw ones)
That's one of the reasons for the move away from wood to plastic pallets, I know of no bug that can live inside a plastic pallet. Plastic is also a lot more durable so you can use it a lot more times before it fails and needs to be disposed of.
The difference is that the Internet the Cuban government wants (no doubt censored and highly regulated like in China, Russia etc) is totally different to the internet that the old guy was trying to set up (which wouldn't have had the censorship and regulations)
Anyone who thinks that there will ever be a repeat of the Hollywood anti-trust lawsuits of the late 40s clearly doesn't understand just how much power Hollywood has over the US government.
Scammers aren't going to stop calling you or remove you from their phone list.
Check out this tutorial:
http://www.abc.net.au/abc3/goo...
Good Game Spawn Point is a TV show aimed at younger gamers (like the OP's kid) and the tutorial in question takes you step by step through the production of a simple game.
And once they have done this, they can start playing around with the Scratch! toolkit (a free game design tool produced by the fine folks at the MIT Media Lab aimed at getting kids into game development and coding) and producing their own games.
Ok so the largest theater chains wont show the film (not just because of the threats of physical attack but because of the threats of cyber attack by the same hackers that attacked Sony).
And it doesn't make sense to do a full theatrical release if the biggest chains in the US wont show it (because of all the costs involved with doing a theatrical release like marketing and advertising).
So why doesn't Sony just release it to every digital download store that will take it? (and any increased risk of cyber attack that might come from distributing the film) It wouldn't be the first time that a film originally slated for theatrical release ended up being switched to a direct-to-video release instead.
Are there legal issues in going direct-to-video? (e.g. contracts with the production team) Could Sony have been asked by the government not to go direct-to-video at this point? Are they still considering a theatrical release of some kind at some point in the future? Or are Sony scared that releasing the film in this way will result in further damage? (i.e. the hackers releasing information they copied in the Sony hack and haven't yet released but which, if released, will be even more damaging to Sony than what's released so far)
I see nothing to indicate that the list in that link is significantly different to the export control list that has been in force for years.
Yes it restricts the export of a lot of stuff including nuclear stuff, electronics, computer gear, telecoms gear, aerospace and more but unless there is some big list of "stuff added to the export control list just recently" that I have missed, I dont see all that much that is now export-controlled under this new bill that wasn't export-controlled before.
I see nothing to indicate this region lock stops anyone from buying games from the US Steam store. All it does is stops people who aren't in Russia from buying from the Russian Steam store at Russian prices and people who are in Russia from buying from the Russian Steam store then gifting the game to someone not in Russia.
This is not a new bill, it is an amendment to the "Defence Trade Controls Act 2012".
I see nothing to suggest that, say, exporting open source cryptographic software without a permit is more illegal under this bill than it is as things stand right now. I did 6 months working for Motorola doing software development back in 2005 or so and I remember they had training and stuff regarding export controls including export controls on cryptography.
The actual list of what is export controlled is the same list as used in every other country that is a signatory to the same international export control treaty.
As for the bill itself, if it (or the bill it amends) DOES make exporting cryptography (or other software) illegal (or if that stuff is otherwise illegal) then people should use the public consultation process (or letters to their local MPs and senators) asking for exemptions that cover open source software so that it becomes possible to continue development and use of such software in Australia.
Given the number of people who read Slashdot using old browsers that dont do HTML5 video (like all those people stuck at work on Intercrap Explorer 6) Flash seems like the better choice here.
Too bad the same magic that throws up things like that cant throw up a few hundred of the obsolete Knowles speaker the Neo900 project has been trying to source (or the other hard-to-get components that project has a need for)
The airspace over Sydney isn't closed, nor is its airport. Flights are being diverted around the CBD (both by order from the authorities and voluntarily from the main domestic airlines agreeing to divert).
I flew from Perth to Brisbane last xmas with a desktop tower case PC plus a bunch of peripherals and other stuff in my checked luggage (it was part of a permanent move from Perth to QLD) and there was basically no security checks of my luggage at all (despite the fact that the cardboard boxes or their contents could easily have contained explosives). In the US on a similar domestic flight, I am sure my 2 cardboard boxes and suitcase would have been run through all sorts of scanning machines and possibly opened (they may have even removed the cover off the PC to inspect its inside).
That said, I did learn just what a cross-country flight (and QANTAS baggage handlers) can do to a desktop PC when the only thing protecting it from damage is a layer of bubble wrap and a cardboard moving box...
Why are banks pushing this crap in the first place? I can't see entities like Bank of America spending their own money on security stuff unless its going to cost them more money not to.
All the times I used a taxi (which were because I needed to carry more stuff than it was possible to carry on the bus and was unable to get help from friends/family) I only had to make one phone call, they showed up reasonably quickly and got me and my stuff where I needed to go without any problems. As for costs, the costs for those taxis were quite reasonable (although you better carry cash or else they will sting you with a ridiculous 10% surcharge for card payment)
The satellite TV situation is different since you are obtaining a service without paying for it.
If the government and media companies REALLY want to stop piracy they need to make the content easier to legally acquire without needing to pay a lot of money for content you dont want. This applies to both new content and older content.
Some examples of how the local industry makes it harder:
1.Scorpion (2014 TV show). Channel 10 (local FTA network) aired up to episode 10 straight after the US airing. However, to see Episodes 11 and 12, you will have to wait for a few months. Episode 11 is already available online to download and episode 12 will likely follow shortly after its US airing next Monday.
Its a good bet a bunch of Aussies are going to pirate those 2 episodes rather than wait for TEN to air them. And its a good bet that when Episode 13 airs on TEN, it too will be weeks behind its US airing and have already been pirated by a fair few people.
If TEN aired these episodes straight after the US (and continued to put them on their catch-up-TV website), there would be basically zero reason to pirate them.
2.The films of Yahoo Serious. Aussie actor who was in 3 films, none of which is particularly popular but all 3 of which have their fans (myself included). Young Einstein is available on DVD overseas (and importing that DVD is technically illegal under Australian parallel import legislation I believe). Reckless Kelly is not available on any physical media format. No clue about Mr Accident. All 3 films seem to be available on the US Amazon digital store. None of the 3 films are available in Australia on either physical disk format or digital store.
3.Halt & Catch Fire (AMC TV series). As far as I can tell this show has yet to air on any Australian TV network (Foxtel included) and is unavailable on disk or digital in this country.
4.X-Planes (old Discovery Channel show about the X series of experimental aircraft). Totally unavailable in any form.
All 4 items above are items I would happily consume legally if there was an option to do so.
Rural areas are very much able to go off-grid. I have family who used to own a sheep station 100s of km from the nearest town and they ran for many years off a combination of a diesel generator and batteries with a small wind turbine (this was back before solar panels really became anywhere near viable). Provided all the power needs for the property. No reason why rural properties elsewhere couldn't do the same with solar/renewables and batteries with a generator (running off the same diesel they use to run the tractors and machinery most likely) for those times when the sun isn't shining and the batteries are dry.
It costs the utilities a certain amount to provide you with a grid connection (grid maintanence costs, power station maintanence costs, repairs, wages, capital expenditure etc) no matter how much electricity you use. So why shouldn't the electricity companies charge you this fixed cost directly instead of trying to roll it into the variable per-kWh cost?
My power company charged me for 420kWh of "anytime usage" and 56 days of "service to property charge" on my last bill and there is no reason electricity companies couldn't do the same thing everywhere (as long as they reduced the per-kWh charge in line with the maintanence costs that are now being covered by the service charge and not the usage)
Here in Australia more power companies are forcing residential customers (especially those with grid-tie solar connections) onto "time of use" metering where you pay more at times when demand is higher.