Then start up a local telco in your town. Build it yourself. Unless of course there aren't enough people to make it cost effective. If that's the case, can you really expect someone else to do it for you?
Well, considering I'm a poorly-paid research assistant, I don't exactly have the time or money to be investing in things like laying backhaul and bargaining with Telstra (to convince them to give me access to their network and exchange racks). I think an established ISP/telco is better placed to do that.
However, they probably aren't willing to do so, since there's quicker profits to be made elsewhere. That's why I think the Government should be helping out.
The Government created the mess where 99% of the infrastructure ended up in the hands of a private company (Telstra) who has no motivation to upgrade it (and is actively hostile to any company who tries to create their own infrastructure), so they should help rectify the situation.
The problem is that there are plenty of people who live in "semi-urban" areas in the outer suburbs of cities, or in "satellite towns", with terrible connectivity.
I'm in the Hunter Valley, in a satellite town of Newcastle, and ADSL only became available at our exchange a couple of years ago. ADSL2+ is still way off.
They would need to run less than 10KM of backhaul to connect us with the nearest ADSL2+ exchange, and the backhaul could keep on running to the Upper Hunter. However, nobody is willing to do this.
There have been wireless internet trials around here, but the performance was totally erratic and unpredictable when compared to ADSL.
I'll be supporting which-ever plan is most likely to give the hundreds-of-thousands of people in semi-urban "blackspots" the best broadband.
ARIA has long argued that these changes will "just create loopholes for pirates". They have asserted that they would never ask for the average consumer to be prosecuted, so it didn't matter that it was illegal - a rather ridiculous argument, but one that the Government has been happy to accept up until now.
I hope that fair use copies of CDs are made legal in the legislation as well. It would be crazy to allow people to create a copy of their music for their iPod, but not for their car CD player. I guess if this isn't allowed, I can just create an MP3 CD for my car, since that would be format shifting, and my car CD player plays MP3s fine.
Also, I hope that the taping of TV shows isn't limited to analog copies, and that format shifting of DVDs is made legal too. It would be nice for my MythTV box to finally be legal, and for these guys' product to be legal as well.
All in all, this seems like a decent change, apart from the extra penalties for copyright infringers that have been added to keep copyright owners happy. One nice side benefit is that the legislation will probably give the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission some justification to rule against "copy controlled" CDs in the same way as they have ruled that region-locked DVD players are an unjust restriction of consumers' rights.
The pop-culture references in Wikipedia are often relevant, but they sometimes also detract from the main article.
If you look up the article on Penguins, about half the article consists of pop-culture references. Does the main article on penguins need to mention that Sega made a 1982 game called "Pengo", or that there is a non-canonical Doctor Who comic-strip character who is a penguin?
Why does the article on Beethoven's Symphony Number 9 need to mention that "the anime Gunslinger Girl used the fourth movement at the climax of the 13th and final episode" or thay "part of Ode to Joy was mixed in as a backbeat to End of the Century, one of the songs produced by Naoki Maeda (under the pseudonym "No. 9") for Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMIX."
Does the main article on the RAH-66 Commanche need to mention that it made an appearance in the game Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction or the TV show American Chopper?
Is it really necessary for the article on the board game Go to mention that "the game also appeared in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled The Cogenitor in which it was revealed that Charles Tucker plays the game."
I think that popular culture references can substantially add to some articles, but a balance really needs to be drawn between highlighting important pop-culture references and inserting irrelevant fandom-related facts into serious articles.
They will eventually get the ISPs under the government's thumb. Whether it be through direct laws requiring certain filtering features or through oversight-free regulation via governmental agencies, they will succumb.
This regulation was primarily developed by Australia's Internet Industry Association (which is made up of ISPs), working together with the Australian Government. The IIA have made it clear that this was primarily their work, as part of their spam-fighting measures. So, the Government is not "getting the ISPs under their thumb", this was just a way to codify best-practices, and ensure that all ISPs adhere to them.
The code of practice seems pretty fair to me. The only that could affect customers would be the mailing limits, and this would only be an issue if you were running a high-volume mailing list. But if this is the case, it would probably be courteous to inform the ISP anyway, and I'm sure that they could remove the limits on mail sending if you had a legitimate reason why you needed to send large volumes of mail.
I remember 2 situations like that. In the first, I arranged to take the beating for my brother, in the second, I broke those involved in the assault, because thats what big brothers do.
Well, in my case I couldn't do anything about it, since I didn't find out about it until they dragged him out. The only good thing to come out of it was that my parents realized that the school was absolutely hopeless, and we changed to another school - one that did not tolerate bullies at all and had very high academic standards (and very high fees).
Calling the police would be a more acceptable solution if they did treat the incident as a full-blown assault case. Unfortunately, they usually don't, which is why people end up having to tell their daughters to knee their harassers in the face.
I think that the fact that schools and the police do not take bullying seriously is just as much of a problem as the bullying itself. I was verbally and physically assaulted repeatedly, had flaming gasoline-soaked tennis balls thrown at me, went through countless sets of clothes because they were constantly being ripped, and endured a lot more over the course of a couple of years, yet the school's response was just to ignore my complaints (and in one instance to actually laugh and say "well, boys will be boys"). It was only after my brother received one of the worst beatings I have ever seen that the school actually took things seriously, but even then they just warned the bullies to stop it. Needless to say, we changed schools.
Bullying can have a massive impact on the victims. I was a nervous wreck for years after having a breakdown as a result of the bullying, and I would say that even now, 10 years later, I haven't recovered 100%. My brother was pretty shaken for a long time after the incident as well.
Bullying needs to be taken seriously, it is assault and should be treated as such. There really needs to be a zero tolerance policy. The fact that people need to resort to fighting back just shows that the official processes for responding to bullying are totally inadequate.
Fighting back is not always smart. I fought back against bullies at school, and it didn't work out well at all. Despite two years of bullying and assault, the principal didn't want to hear about it, so I made the decision to fight back.
This was not a smart move. The bullies decided that since I was no longer an easy target, they would after my little brother. They locked him in a room with several guys twice his size and they proceeded to beat the crap out of him. He was a mess once they were finished with him, and I had a breakdown as a result.
I'm convinced that fighting back will only result in the bullies going after someone else. In my case, it happended to be my little brother. I think that calling the police is the only solution to these problems, and I think the police should treat these incidents as full-blown assault cases.
I think you need to retake history. The 40 hour work week was started by Henry Ford, prior to any unions being formed in his company...
Maybe this was the case in the USA, but in Australia and most of the rest of the industrialized world, the 40 hour work week was earned by unions. In Australia, the "8-hour day" was earned by a collective organization of stonemasons and building workers in Victoria in 1856. Demonstrations were then held by unions to win the same rights for other trades. By the 1880s, the 8-hour day was commonplace in Australia, and "8-hour day" parades were held throughout the late 19th century to celebrate the fact.
The embedded poem reads: 'Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he'd do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don't steal Mac OS!/Really, that's way uncool.
While I realise that Apple have to protect their technology, Steve Jobs' anti-hacking comments lately have been a bit hypocritical, given his history. Here is a more appropriate poem:
Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined The phone companies robbed him blind He'd do better to phreak With a 2600Hz beep So a blue box was designed. Please don't steal phone calls! Really, that's way uncool.
I guess I could of phrased that better. When I mentioned "opening up" Apple products, I was referring to opening them to perform maintenance. Opening a Mac mini to upgrade the RAM requires a putty knife and some black magic. I got the guys at my local Apple shop to open mine, and they even struggled. Opening an iPod mini to replace the battery is virtually impossible.
While the iPod could conceivably be considered a "disposable" consumer item to be thrown away when the battery dies, there is no excuse for the Mac mini. Surely Apple could have gone with screws rather than clips in the Mac mini, since the screws would be on the bottom where nobody would ever see them.
You were resting your keyboard on your Mini? Why? I don't understand.
It was playing up with my LCD monitor when using "expose" (causing green lines all over the screen), so I moved it to a different desk to try it with a different brand monitor. I plugged a USB keyboard into the back of the Mac mini, and since there was not enough room on the desk, I rested the keyboard on the Mac mini. I didn't think that this would cause noticeable scratches, but it did. I was absolutely amazed that the top surface was so scratch prone.
I have since got more scratches on the top, from carrying the Mac mini to and from work, which is to be expected, but I am still amazed that it was scratched by simply resting a keyboard on top for a few seconds.
Now, if only Jonathan Ive could design products that were as durable as they are beautiful. We have all heard about iPods scratching, but other Apple products are just as bad. The top of my Mac mini was scratched within hours of buying it, due to resting a keyboard on it. It really is amazingly scratch-prone. I have heard that iBooks suffer from the same problem (although not as severely).
Jonathan Ive is known for being hands-on in selecting the materials which the Apple devices are made from, but the plastics used in Apple products seem amazingly scratch-prone.
Add that to the hoops that must be jumped through in order to open entry-level Apple products, and you have products that look great out of the box, but are terrible after long-term use.
The WiMax card was not developed by an Australian ISP, they are just one ISP participating in the trial. Why say "Australian ISP Unveils WiMax Like Card" when the card was developed by a Texan company, and the ISP just happen to be using it.
As an Aussie, I'm sick of seeing submissions on Slashdot from other Australians that hype the Australian angle to every story. This is typical Australian insecurity. Since we are isolated down here at the opposite end of the world to the USA and Europe, most Australians see a need to shout "Don't forget about us!!" constantly, as if to remind the world that we are still here.
If this technology was being trialled by an ISP in any other country, the story would primarily be about the technology, maybe with a note about where it was being trialled. But since this is being trialled in Australia first, the headline and summary hype up the Australian angle. Hopefully one day us Australians will be secure enough that we can stop constantly worrying about what everyone else thinks about us.
Creative says that the X-Fi's upsampling and upmixing capabilities can make MP3s sound better than the original CD.
In other news, Creative have created a new image compression standard that makes compressed images "look better than the original uncompressed version". A Creative spokesperson has announced that this compression standard uses the same technology as X-Fi to create information out of thin air.
Seriously, there is no way to make a recording that is compressed by a lossy algorithm such as MP3 sound as good as the original without creating information out of thin air. Of course, X-Fi can't do this, so it must be "guessing" what the original information was. This would of course mean that what you are listening to is just a moderately close approximation of the original recording that has had information added to it to sound "better" (by some Creative engineer's definition of "better").
They could just have their dev tools use "fat binaries". These are binaries that support both architectures.
They could then (theoretically) have PPC chips in some computers in the product line, and x86 chips in others. IIRC MacOS supported fat binaries duiring the original transition in the early 1990s. NeXT (the progenitor of OS X) also supported them.
It could be a nightmare for developers when it comes to testing, though.
Mac Mini: $750 for the 80G model. Superdrive: $130. Third Party 1G SODIMM: $260. That's about $1175 for a useable Mac. And that's five year old technology, running on a 4800RPM laptop drive, and with only Firewire 400 (not 800) for external drives.
The Mac mini takes ordinary DDR RAM, not SODIMMs. I picked up a 1G stick for under AU$150 on the weekend. You can get a 5400 RPM laptop drive for pretty cheap as well, but I grabbed a 7200 RPM Hitachi Travelstar for AU$220, and put the existing drive in an external USB2 HDD enclosure (cost: AU$11). I have no need for a Superdrive, as I'll use my PC for burning DVDs.
The Mac mini is a great bedroom PC. It's quiet, small, and unobtrusive. If I want to take it to work, I can just chuck it in my bag. Plus, it runs OS X, which I am still impressed by. For around AU$1200 I have a souped-up mini-computer, an 80GB external HDD, and a spare 256MB RAM stick, which has been put to good use in my parent's PC.
Maybe it's still a little expensive for a second PC, but considering how happy I am with it, the Mac mini seems like a cheap gadget when compared to the my $AU600 PDA. Furthermore, most people would not need to soup up the Mac mini, and would only need the base model with a RAM upgrade to 512MB.
Don't complain. Here in Australia we pay for our ABC directly via taxes, and their funding has been drastically decreased over the last two decades (from to $41 per person per year in 1985 to around $20 per person per year now). As a result, they can't really afford to finance the production of local programmes, so they currently spend most of their TV budget on buying programmes from the BBC.
Some of the purchases haven't made sense in recent years, either. They have been playing endless repeats of "Dead Ringers", which is bizarre, because most Australians have only a cursory knowledge of British politics, so I can't see the value in imitations of British politicians and newsreaders.
So, a well funded BBC that can produce world-class entertainment is nothing to complain about. Slashing funding would just result in less profits in the long-term, and less local productions. The BBC is something to be proud of, and a couple of pounds per week is a bargain for what you receive.
Considering that the UK has roughly 1/5th or so of the population of the U.S. (60 million UK, compared to probably 300 million US), the number of downloads per capita is much larger over there.
Well, in that case, Australia's per-capita TV downloads are even higher again, since total proportion of downloads is only slightly lower (18.5% vs 15.6%), yet our population is approximately 1/3rd of the UK's.
I don't know what this says about Australians - other than providing fodder for the old, innacurate convict stereotypes - but it's even more impressive considering that Australia has a relatively low rate of broadband penetration (supposedly due to our sparse geographical distribution, but more realistically due to Telstra's virtual monopoly on land-line infrastructure).
Here is a basic explanation of what happened from what I have read.
ICANN recently changed the rules for domain name transfers so that rather than requiring confirmation for domain name transfers, they are transferred automatically if the owner does not object within a set period of time (a few weeks IIRC). This is meant to "streamline the domain transfer process". In this regard, I believe that ICANN is partially to blame for this hijacking. These policy changes need to be reviewed. You can, of course, lock your domain against this occurring, but it is a simple error to neglect to do this.
Melbourne IT is also more or less to blame for this hijacking (depending on who you believe). It has been confirmed that one of their resellers allowed someone to create an account with a stolen credit card number, and initiate the domain transfer process. Panix claims that Melbourne IT failed to send the notification of transfer to them or their registrar. They also state that they had asked that their domain be locked against transfers, but this did not occur. If this is the case, then this is a serious issue with Melbourne IT.
Mebourne IT has also been accused of being unavailable for contact over the weekend, despite promising 24/7 service. The only way that Panix managed to contact them was via the CEO's mobile number.
If these accusations are true, then this shows serious problems within Melbourne IT.
Presumably he's already spent some time in jail while he was awaiting trial.
He has been in jail since October 2003 (according to The Register). If there is a significant risk that an alleged criminal will flee the country, then it is standard practice to deny bail. Someone who claims to have "African Brothers" throughout the world who will help him flee probably fits this description.
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Well, considering I'm a poorly-paid research assistant, I don't exactly have the time or money to be investing in things like laying backhaul and bargaining with Telstra (to convince them to give me access to their network and exchange racks). I think an established ISP/telco is better placed to do that.
However, they probably aren't willing to do so, since there's quicker profits to be made elsewhere. That's why I think the Government should be helping out.
The Government created the mess where 99% of the infrastructure ended up in the hands of a private company (Telstra) who has no motivation to upgrade it (and is actively hostile to any company who tries to create their own infrastructure), so they should help rectify the situation.
The problem is that there are plenty of people who live in "semi-urban" areas in the outer suburbs of cities, or in "satellite towns", with terrible connectivity.
I'm in the Hunter Valley, in a satellite town of Newcastle, and ADSL only became available at our exchange a couple of years ago. ADSL2+ is still way off.
They would need to run less than 10KM of backhaul to connect us with the nearest ADSL2+ exchange, and the backhaul could keep on running to the Upper Hunter. However, nobody is willing to do this.
There have been wireless internet trials around here, but the performance was totally erratic and unpredictable when compared to ADSL.
I'll be supporting which-ever plan is most likely to give the hundreds-of-thousands of people in semi-urban "blackspots" the best broadband.
ARIA has long argued that these changes will "just create loopholes for pirates". They have asserted that they would never ask for the average consumer to be prosecuted, so it didn't matter that it was illegal - a rather ridiculous argument, but one that the Government has been happy to accept up until now.
I hope that fair use copies of CDs are made legal in the legislation as well. It would be crazy to allow people to create a copy of their music for their iPod, but not for their car CD player. I guess if this isn't allowed, I can just create an MP3 CD for my car, since that would be format shifting, and my car CD player plays MP3s fine.
Also, I hope that the taping of TV shows isn't limited to analog copies, and that format shifting of DVDs is made legal too. It would be nice for my MythTV box to finally be legal, and for these guys' product to be legal as well.
All in all, this seems like a decent change, apart from the extra penalties for copyright infringers that have been added to keep copyright owners happy. One nice side benefit is that the legislation will probably give the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission some justification to rule against "copy controlled" CDs in the same way as they have ruled that region-locked DVD players are an unjust restriction of consumers' rights.
The pop-culture references in Wikipedia are often relevant, but they sometimes also detract from the main article.
If you look up the article on Penguins, about half the article consists of pop-culture references. Does the main article on penguins need to mention that Sega made a 1982 game called "Pengo", or that there is a non-canonical Doctor Who comic-strip character who is a penguin?
Why does the article on Beethoven's Symphony Number 9 need to mention that "the anime Gunslinger Girl used the fourth movement at the climax of the 13th and final episode" or thay "part of Ode to Joy was mixed in as a backbeat to End of the Century, one of the songs produced by Naoki Maeda (under the pseudonym "No. 9") for Dance Dance Revolution 3rdMIX."
Does the main article on the RAH-66 Commanche need to mention that it made an appearance in the game Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction or the TV show American Chopper?
Is it really necessary for the article on the board game Go to mention that "the game also appeared in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled The Cogenitor in which it was revealed that Charles Tucker plays the game."
I think that popular culture references can substantially add to some articles, but a balance really needs to be drawn between highlighting important pop-culture references and inserting irrelevant fandom-related facts into serious articles.
They will eventually get the ISPs under the government's thumb. Whether it be through direct laws requiring certain filtering features or through oversight-free regulation via governmental agencies, they will succumb.
This regulation was primarily developed by Australia's Internet Industry Association (which is made up of ISPs), working together with the Australian Government. The IIA have made it clear that this was primarily their work, as part of their spam-fighting measures. So, the Government is not "getting the ISPs under their thumb", this was just a way to codify best-practices, and ensure that all ISPs adhere to them.
The code of practice seems pretty fair to me. The only that could affect customers would be the mailing limits, and this would only be an issue if you were running a high-volume mailing list. But if this is the case, it would probably be courteous to inform the ISP anyway, and I'm sure that they could remove the limits on mail sending if you had a legitimate reason why you needed to send large volumes of mail.
I remember 2 situations like that. In the first, I arranged to take the beating for my brother, in the second, I broke those involved in the assault, because thats what big brothers do.
Well, in my case I couldn't do anything about it, since I didn't find out about it until they dragged him out. The only good thing to come out of it was that my parents realized that the school was absolutely hopeless, and we changed to another school - one that did not tolerate bullies at all and had very high academic standards (and very high fees).
Calling the police would be a more acceptable solution if they did treat the incident as a full-blown assault case. Unfortunately, they usually don't, which is why people end up having to tell their daughters to knee their harassers in the face.
I think that the fact that schools and the police do not take bullying seriously is just as much of a problem as the bullying itself. I was verbally and physically assaulted repeatedly, had flaming gasoline-soaked tennis balls thrown at me, went through countless sets of clothes because they were constantly being ripped, and endured a lot more over the course of a couple of years, yet the school's response was just to ignore my complaints (and in one instance to actually laugh and say "well, boys will be boys"). It was only after my brother received one of the worst beatings I have ever seen that the school actually took things seriously, but even then they just warned the bullies to stop it. Needless to say, we changed schools.
Bullying can have a massive impact on the victims. I was a nervous wreck for years after having a breakdown as a result of the bullying, and I would say that even now, 10 years later, I haven't recovered 100%. My brother was pretty shaken for a long time after the incident as well.
Bullying needs to be taken seriously, it is assault and should be treated as such. There really needs to be a zero tolerance policy. The fact that people need to resort to fighting back just shows that the official processes for responding to bullying are totally inadequate.
Fighting back is not always smart. I fought back against bullies at school, and it didn't work out well at all. Despite two years of bullying and assault, the principal didn't want to hear about it, so I made the decision to fight back.
This was not a smart move. The bullies decided that since I was no longer an easy target, they would after my little brother. They locked him in a room with several guys twice his size and they proceeded to beat the crap out of him. He was a mess once they were finished with him, and I had a breakdown as a result.
I'm convinced that fighting back will only result in the bullies going after someone else. In my case, it happended to be my little brother. I think that calling the police is the only solution to these problems, and I think the police should treat these incidents as full-blown assault cases.
I think you need to retake history. The 40 hour work week was started by Henry Ford, prior to any unions being formed in his company...
Maybe this was the case in the USA, but in Australia and most of the rest of the industrialized world, the 40 hour work week was earned by unions. In Australia, the "8-hour day" was earned by a collective organization of stonemasons and building workers in Victoria in 1856. Demonstrations were then held by unions to win the same rights for other trades. By the 1880s, the 8-hour day was commonplace in Australia, and "8-hour day" parades were held throughout the late 19th century to celebrate the fact.
While I realise that Apple have to protect their technology, Steve Jobs' anti-hacking comments lately have been a bit hypocritical, given his history. Here is a more appropriate poem:
I guess I could of phrased that better. When I mentioned "opening up" Apple products, I was referring to opening them to perform maintenance. Opening a Mac mini to upgrade the RAM requires a putty knife and some black magic. I got the guys at my local Apple shop to open mine, and they even struggled. Opening an iPod mini to replace the battery is virtually impossible.
While the iPod could conceivably be considered a "disposable" consumer item to be thrown away when the battery dies, there is no excuse for the Mac mini. Surely Apple could have gone with screws rather than clips in the Mac mini, since the screws would be on the bottom where nobody would ever see them.
You were resting your keyboard on your Mini? Why? I don't understand.
It was playing up with my LCD monitor when using "expose" (causing green lines all over the screen), so I moved it to a different desk to try it with a different brand monitor. I plugged a USB keyboard into the back of the Mac mini, and since there was not enough room on the desk, I rested the keyboard on the Mac mini. I didn't think that this would cause noticeable scratches, but it did. I was absolutely amazed that the top surface was so scratch prone.
I have since got more scratches on the top, from carrying the Mac mini to and from work, which is to be expected, but I am still amazed that it was scratched by simply resting a keyboard on top for a few seconds.
Now, if only Jonathan Ive could design products that were as durable as they are beautiful. We have all heard about iPods scratching, but other Apple products are just as bad. The top of my Mac mini was scratched within hours of buying it, due to resting a keyboard on it. It really is amazingly scratch-prone. I have heard that iBooks suffer from the same problem (although not as severely).
Jonathan Ive is known for being hands-on in selecting the materials which the Apple devices are made from, but the plastics used in Apple products seem amazingly scratch-prone.
Add that to the hoops that must be jumped through in order to open entry-level Apple products, and you have products that look great out of the box, but are terrible after long-term use.
The WiMax card was not developed by an Australian ISP, they are just one ISP participating in the trial. Why say "Australian ISP Unveils WiMax Like Card" when the card was developed by a Texan company, and the ISP just happen to be using it.
As an Aussie, I'm sick of seeing submissions on Slashdot from other Australians that hype the Australian angle to every story. This is typical Australian insecurity. Since we are isolated down here at the opposite end of the world to the USA and Europe, most Australians see a need to shout "Don't forget about us!!" constantly, as if to remind the world that we are still here.
If this technology was being trialled by an ISP in any other country, the story would primarily be about the technology, maybe with a note about where it was being trialled. But since this is being trialled in Australia first, the headline and summary hype up the Australian angle. Hopefully one day us Australians will be secure enough that we can stop constantly worrying about what everyone else thinks about us.
Creative says that the X-Fi's upsampling and upmixing capabilities can make MP3s sound better than the original CD.
In other news, Creative have created a new image compression standard that makes compressed images "look better than the original uncompressed version". A Creative spokesperson has announced that this compression standard uses the same technology as X-Fi to create information out of thin air.
Seriously, there is no way to make a recording that is compressed by a lossy algorithm such as MP3 sound as good as the original without creating information out of thin air. Of course, X-Fi can't do this, so it must be "guessing" what the original information was. This would of course mean that what you are listening to is just a moderately close approximation of the original recording that has had information added to it to sound "better" (by some Creative engineer's definition of "better").
Certainly he didn't walk away from that place perfectly healthy.
He lived until he was 95, passing away a few years ago. Frankly I think that it is amazing that he survived the aftermath of Nagasaki unscathed.
Can you say binary incompatability?
They could just have their dev tools use "fat binaries". These are binaries that support both architectures.
They could then (theoretically) have PPC chips in some computers in the product line, and x86 chips in others. IIRC MacOS supported fat binaries duiring the original transition in the early 1990s. NeXT (the progenitor of OS X) also supported them.
It could be a nightmare for developers when it comes to testing, though.
Mac Mini: $750 for the 80G model. Superdrive: $130. Third Party 1G SODIMM: $260. That's about $1175 for a useable Mac. And that's five year old technology, running on a 4800RPM laptop drive, and with only Firewire 400 (not 800) for external drives.
The Mac mini takes ordinary DDR RAM, not SODIMMs. I picked up a 1G stick for under AU$150 on the weekend. You can get a 5400 RPM laptop drive for pretty cheap as well, but I grabbed a 7200 RPM Hitachi Travelstar for AU$220, and put the existing drive in an external USB2 HDD enclosure (cost: AU$11). I have no need for a Superdrive, as I'll use my PC for burning DVDs.
The Mac mini is a great bedroom PC. It's quiet, small, and unobtrusive. If I want to take it to work, I can just chuck it in my bag. Plus, it runs OS X, which I am still impressed by. For around AU$1200 I have a souped-up mini-computer, an 80GB external HDD, and a spare 256MB RAM stick, which has been put to good use in my parent's PC.
Maybe it's still a little expensive for a second PC, but considering how happy I am with it, the Mac mini seems like a cheap gadget when compared to the my $AU600 PDA. Furthermore, most people would not need to soup up the Mac mini, and would only need the base model with a RAM upgrade to 512MB.
Don't complain. Here in Australia we pay for our ABC directly via taxes, and their funding has been drastically decreased over the last two decades (from to $41 per person per year in 1985 to around $20 per person per year now). As a result, they can't really afford to finance the production of local programmes, so they currently spend most of their TV budget on buying programmes from the BBC.
Some of the purchases haven't made sense in recent years, either. They have been playing endless repeats of "Dead Ringers", which is bizarre, because most Australians have only a cursory knowledge of British politics, so I can't see the value in imitations of British politicians and newsreaders.
So, a well funded BBC that can produce world-class entertainment is nothing to complain about. Slashing funding would just result in less profits in the long-term, and less local productions. The BBC is something to be proud of, and a couple of pounds per week is a bargain for what you receive.
Considering that the UK has roughly 1/5th or so of the population of the U.S. (60 million UK, compared to probably 300 million US), the number of downloads per capita is much larger over there.
Well, in that case, Australia's per-capita TV downloads are even higher again, since total proportion of downloads is only slightly lower (18.5% vs 15.6%), yet our population is approximately 1/3rd of the UK's.
I don't know what this says about Australians - other than providing fodder for the old, innacurate convict stereotypes - but it's even more impressive considering that Australia has a relatively low rate of broadband penetration (supposedly due to our sparse geographical distribution, but more realistically due to Telstra's virtual monopoly on land-line infrastructure).
Does anyone really use the hard drive on the XBox? And do those that do use it to its fullest potential?
Well, my original XBox HDD is in a drawer somewhere, but the upgraded 100GB one is full of emulators, movies and MP3s.
Here is a basic explanation of what happened from what I have read.
ICANN recently changed the rules for domain name transfers so that rather than requiring confirmation for domain name transfers, they are transferred automatically if the owner does not object within a set period of time (a few weeks IIRC). This is meant to "streamline the domain transfer process". In this regard, I believe that ICANN is partially to blame for this hijacking. These policy changes need to be reviewed. You can, of course, lock your domain against this occurring, but it is a simple error to neglect to do this.
Melbourne IT is also more or less to blame for this hijacking (depending on who you believe). It has been confirmed that one of their resellers allowed someone to create an account with a stolen credit card number, and initiate the domain transfer process. Panix claims that Melbourne IT failed to send the notification of transfer to them or their registrar. They also state that they had asked that their domain be locked against transfers, but this did not occur. If this is the case, then this is a serious issue with Melbourne IT.
Mebourne IT has also been accused of being unavailable for contact over the weekend, despite promising 24/7 service. The only way that Panix managed to contact them was via the CEO's mobile number.
If these accusations are true, then this shows serious problems within Melbourne IT.
The big deal was not the copyright enforcement provision, but:
"...the term of protection for copyright material was extended by 20 years"
and
"New provisions were introduced in relation to the unauthorised receipt and use or distribution of encoded broadcasts"
These will have a real impact on IP in Australia.
Presumably he's already spent some time in jail while he was awaiting trial.
He has been in jail since October 2003 (according to The Register). If there is a significant risk that an alleged criminal will flee the country, then it is standard practice to deny bail. Someone who claims to have "African Brothers" throughout the world who will help him flee probably fits this description.
There is more information here.