Element14 in.au still sell out, but they've been getting new stock in every 10 days or so. I ordered mine (together with a few other unrelated parts) a couple of days after element14 emailed me to say they had stock... by which time they were out of stock (this was early November)
The unrelated parts arrived in two days, and the Raspberry Pi and its case arrived about a week later, a day or two after element14 got them in stock, and a day or two _earlier_ than their website's expected delivery time.
Yes, it's just another anecdote... but there are plenty of anecdotes here and elsewhere about people receiving their units... and plenty of cool things people are using them for already.
It has been tested. They dropped loads of fertiliser [in the Southern Ocean, the rate, limiting nutrient was iron] in the ocean and quantified the algae growth and carbon capture. IIRC the problem was that in order to capture enough carbon to make a significant difference there just isn't enough iron.
Interestingly, I first heard about this in an undergrad geology course. If you want to know more about the history of the Earth's climate, and how we _know_ the effects of atmospheric CO2, I'd highly recommend an introduction to Earth Systems. I assume most undergrad geology programs offer something similar.
Nerada bag tea is grown in Australia, and it's not too bad for tea that comes in bags. Their leaf tea (according to the label) is blended from Australian and imported teas.
I'm trying to cut my food miles, and imported tea and coffee is an easy way to do that. I guess the side effect is that I am contributing less to the climate change that might ruin the coffee.
Oh noes, some suckers bought some worthless stock because he said it might become valuable. How does this make him any more of a "sleaze" than any other trader?
Does NZ have any presence in Afghanistan? Last I heard they had sold off most of their military and (unlike Australia, who still buy into all the hubris) don't waste money on silly foreign pissing contests.
It seemed really slow when I bought it. Since turning off all the windows 7 eye-candy responsiveness is actually pretty good - certainly fine for web browsing (Firefox with 2-6 tabs open) youtube and XVID movies.
I rarely boot from scratch, as the default setting is for it to sleep* after about 30 minutes, but then it wakes up again in under 10 seconds. Battery life is supposed to be well over a day while it's asleep.
I haven't really tried any games yet, sorry.
*sleep, hibernate, standby... I never remember which is which. Hit a key and the screen comes on, HDD spins up, then it prompts you to click on your username and you're up and running again.
I shouldn't respond to an AC, but I have personally checked mine and the RAM is NOT fixed to the motherboard. It's a hassle to get to, because Asus didn't provide a little hatch in the bottom of the computer, so you have to remove _everything_ (keyboard, HDD, CMOS battery, finally the motherboard) in order to get to the RAM, but then you can definitely just pop out the chip and out in a higher capacity stick of DDR3 laptop RAM. This may vary in different markets - as I said, I bought mine at Best Buy in the USA.
For $200 if bought a 10.1 inch netbook that seems like good value.
Dual-core Atom CPU
Long battery life (at least 6 hours)
Full-HD playback with HDMI-out
320 GB hard drive for local storage (ubiquitous unmetered wifi for cloud use would be lovely but is still pretty rare in.au)
USB and SD card slots
It works great for watching movies on the bus/train when on vacation (or in a hotel, thanks to HDMI and VGA out), occasional work when commuting, and of course sitting next to the couch to fact-check the rubbish that passes for TV news. It's an Asus eeepc "Flare" that I bought right off the shelf at Best Buy. When I get the chance it'll need some more RAM, so I might have to spend another $20.
I can see the value of these things for large companies or schools that can remote administer and secure large numbers of machines, but for home users these would seem to be a fringe item.
Whenever I've been able to see the hardware, it's been a mass spectrometer... Or a clever simulation that shows a series of peaks on the screen. Although I wouldn't put it past the TSA to fake such a simulation!
1. Does 474.17 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act _really_ try to ban "causing offence?" That offends me!
2. The media seems to be a bit mixed up about the differences between trolling, bullying, and harassment. trolling is all about getting a reaction, not even necessarily a negative one. A troll would go to an Apple forum and say "I want to buy a Galaxy Tab" and then enjoy the reactions of the forum users saying that it's a bad idea. A troll would go to Slashdot and say something about Windows ME being the best OS ever. This is pretty different from targeting an individual or a family for harassment, and it's certainly not hate speech. On a Venn diagram, there may be a slight overlap between trolling, harassment, and bullying, but they're typically very separate things.
3. Some former cop has left the police and now has a "cyber-safety consultancy." Is it any surprise that she wants to spread FUD in order to grow her business? This is like me selling tiger insurance and and then spreading rumours about runaway tigers. It's a damn shame someone gave this obvious shill any airtime.
Of course this is just an anecdote... In August I bought a 1998 Ford minivan for $1550, drove it 9000+ miles around the USA, and all it needed was a couple of hose clamps. The vehicle was the first van from Craiglist that I looked at, was about 20 minutes from where I was living.
I changed the oil and oil filter twice - first when I bought it, and then again last week because I'm about to sell it. Everything on this van works, the A/C is still cold, I loved that van, and it got me and a couple of friends right around the country.
Again, I know it's just an anecdote, but my experience is that used cars in the USA are cheap, abundant, and reliable.
I'm pretty sure the guys "sent to war" weren't drafted. They signed up for the military, and as such they had a reasonable expectation that they might be sent into combat and get shot at.
I'm not debating whether the death benefits are fair, or whether some of the people who enlist have any other job prospects, just saying that these people _chose_ to be in the military, and there's a risk of them dying in combat, just like if I get a job cleaning septic tanks there's a higher risk of me getting covered in shit than if I get an office job.
Not only that.. people simply lived more optimally. When children grew up, they didnt automatically leave home. They stays and helped out until they got married, and even then they sometimes stayed to help out, enriching both themselves AND their parents in the process.
Well, some of them did. Not the ones that DIED before the age of 5 from such old-fashioned diseases as measles, smallpox, polio.....
There are a hell of a lot of people who use photoshop for nothing more than cropping and resizing images. Maybe some simple red-eye reduction or other touch-ups. GIMP is more than sufficient for these tasks, and FREE. I downloaded it because it was easier than finding a pirated version of Photoshop I could trust.
Part of the reason Adobe can sell so many copies of photoshop is that "photoshop" has become the generic verb for "edit a picture."
Thanks for the non-advice hint:-) You're right, I certainly should shop around more. What bugs me is that with my checquered employment, I tend to get shafted by ongoing fees and insurance. Of course I have since cancelled the insurance, but what I found (with REST incidentally) is that I would start with [let's say] $1000 in there, and pay in another $400 over the quarter. At the end of the quarter, I'd have about $1200. These aren't the real numbers, as I can't find my statements right now (and wouldn't put them on a public forum anyway) but the point is that cash stuffed into a mattress would have $1400 over the same period. A term deposit of course would perform much better.
OK, sure, I understand that If I had more money in there, then fees would represent a smaller percentage of my overall money. But still, I don't see how superannuation could possibly be better than (gasp!) allowing ME to prepare for my retirement by _not_ giving 50% of my contributions to some bank. Is there even a mandate that these funds have to show a decent return? Because it seems to be that they're basically given carte blanche to whatever they want with this money, safe in the knowledge that you and I can't claim it until we hit 65, which for me is quite a long way away, long enough that the guy in charge of the fund will have long since retired himself.
I don't want to get into a flame war about Aussie banks, but there's a reason they keep posting such spectacular profits. Yes, we are lucky to have a certain level of regulation. But let's remember that it's easy to run a profitable bank if you're getting 9% of what every Australian earns to speculate with.
And REST? In my experience they're reaming every young kid with a casual retail job, because that kid will probably never claim the super from that job they had in high school. It's a while since I've dealt with them, I know Super Choice has introduced a bit more competition into the system, but I have to say, I still think my mattress fund is competitive.
unlike if you're an Australian abroad, when the embassy will tell you "tough shit, you're not in.au now." If you're lucky they'll call your folks back home who can send you a care package in whatever foreign prison you land in.
If you're female however, you might have a chance, because you look good in the tabloids and can whip up a good old-fashioned racist fear of our white girls being defiled by brown people. (read also: Schapelle Corby)
TL;DR: Australian taxes buy you no protection overseas. Either find a UK grandparent, and get a UK passport, or do what other Aussies abroad do and pretend to be from New Zealand. This last part is analogous to those American college kids backpacking thru Europe who have the Maple Leaf sewn onto their backpacks, so that the locals don't hassle them about US foreign policy:-)
My superannuation (Australian government-mandated retirement fund a bit like a 401k in the USA) consistently has _less_ money in it than I deposit, mostly due to fees charged by the [obscenely profitable] banks who run these funds and choose where to invest the money.*
Every Australian employer has to send 9% of each employee's wage to one of these funds. The employee can [usually] choose the fund, but they can't just choose to stick it in a term-deposit, or under the mattress.
Under the mattress currently shows a lower loss than allowing Macquarie Bank et al to gamble with this money.
Again, what seemed like a good idea (mandatory retirement savings for all working Australians) has turned into free money being handed to the banks to gamble with.
I repeat, not only does superannuation not keep up with inflation, it actually goes BACKWARDS. Stuffing the money in a mattress would be a far superior investment, but alas I'm not allowed to do that.
Fuck superannuation. Any Aussies have a better solution? How hard is it to set up so-called "self-managed super"?
*It's not their money, and the investor (me) can't claim it until I retire (like 40 years from now) so it's effectively a blank cheque for these arseholes to invest in any flavour-of-the-month IPO with absolutely no repercussions when they lose all (my) money.
Slashdot Mirror
Element14 in .au still sell out, but they've been getting new stock in every 10 days or so. I ordered mine (together with a few other unrelated parts) a couple of days after element14 emailed me to say they had stock... by which time they were out of stock (this was early November)
The unrelated parts arrived in two days, and the Raspberry Pi and its case arrived about a week later, a day or two after element14 got them in stock, and a day or two _earlier_ than their website's expected delivery time.
Yes, it's just another anecdote... but there are plenty of anecdotes here and elsewhere about people receiving their units... and plenty of cool things people are using them for already.
It has been tested. They dropped loads of fertiliser [in the Southern Ocean, the rate, limiting nutrient was iron] in the ocean and quantified the algae growth and carbon capture. IIRC the problem was that in order to capture enough carbon to make a significant difference there just isn't enough iron.
Here's one link to get you started: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~oliver/Nature_News_SOFeX_2002.pdf
And of course WIkipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
Interestingly, I first heard about this in an undergrad geology course. If you want to know more about the history of the Earth's climate, and how we _know_ the effects of atmospheric CO2, I'd highly recommend an introduction to Earth Systems. I assume most undergrad geology programs offer something similar.
Nerada bag tea is grown in Australia, and it's not too bad for tea that comes in bags. Their leaf tea (according to the label) is blended from Australian and imported teas.
I'm trying to cut my food miles, and imported tea and coffee is an easy way to do that. I guess the side effect is that I am contributing less to the climate change that might ruin the coffee.
Thanks for clarifying... after a slow read thru the thread it makes more sense.
Oh noes, some suckers bought some worthless stock because he said it might become valuable. How does this make him any more of a "sleaze" than any other trader?
Does NZ have any presence in Afghanistan? Last I heard they had sold off most of their military and (unlike Australia, who still buy into all the hubris) don't waste money on silly foreign pissing contests.
it's kind of important to put sodium chloride instead of sodium chlorate on your baked potato.
I bet you could make a neat rocket fuel or low explosive using the right ratio of [dried] baked potato and sodium chlorate.
It seemed really slow when I bought it. Since turning off all the windows 7 eye-candy responsiveness is actually pretty good - certainly fine for web browsing (Firefox with 2-6 tabs open) youtube and XVID movies.
I rarely boot from scratch, as the default setting is for it to sleep* after about 30 minutes, but then it wakes up again in under 10 seconds. Battery life is supposed to be well over a day while it's asleep.
I haven't really tried any games yet, sorry.
*sleep, hibernate, standby... I never remember which is which. Hit a key and the screen comes on, HDD spins up, then it prompts you to click on your username and you're up and running again.
I shouldn't respond to an AC, but I have personally checked mine and the RAM is NOT fixed to the motherboard. It's a hassle to get to, because Asus didn't provide a little hatch in the bottom of the computer, so you have to remove _everything_ (keyboard, HDD, CMOS battery, finally the motherboard) in order to get to the RAM, but then you can definitely just pop out the chip and out in a higher capacity stick of DDR3 laptop RAM. This may vary in different markets - as I said, I bought mine at Best Buy in the USA.
For $200 if bought a 10.1 inch netbook that seems like good value.
It works great for watching movies on the bus/train when on vacation (or in a hotel, thanks to HDMI and VGA out), occasional work when commuting, and of course sitting next to the couch to fact-check the rubbish that passes for TV news. It's an Asus eeepc "Flare" that I bought right off the shelf at Best Buy. When I get the chance it'll need some more RAM, so I might have to spend another $20.
I can see the value of these things for large companies or schools that can remote administer and secure large numbers of machines, but for home users these would seem to be a fringe item.
Whenever I've been able to see the hardware, it's been a mass spectrometer... Or a clever simulation that shows a series of peaks on the screen. Although I wouldn't put it past the TSA to fake such a simulation!
So why the hell does every airport I've been to swab me for explosives instead of using a dog? Those mass spectrometers aren't cheap.
A few things strike me about this article:
1. Does 474.17 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act _really_ try to ban "causing offence?" That offends me!
2. The media seems to be a bit mixed up about the differences between trolling, bullying, and harassment. trolling is all about getting a reaction, not even necessarily a negative one. A troll would go to an Apple forum and say "I want to buy a Galaxy Tab" and then enjoy the reactions of the forum users saying that it's a bad idea. A troll would go to Slashdot and say something about Windows ME being the best OS ever. This is pretty different from targeting an individual or a family for harassment, and it's certainly not hate speech. On a Venn diagram, there may be a slight overlap between trolling, harassment, and bullying, but they're typically very separate things.
3. Some former cop has left the police and now has a "cyber-safety consultancy." Is it any surprise that she wants to spread FUD in order to grow her business? This is like me selling tiger insurance and and then spreading rumours about runaway tigers. It's a damn shame someone gave this obvious shill any airtime.
The heading should be "Former Australian cop trying to drum up more business for her new company."
OK, but this is not trolling. This is bullying and/or harassment.
Of course this is just an anecdote... In August I bought a 1998 Ford minivan for $1550, drove it 9000+ miles around the USA, and all it needed was a couple of hose clamps. The vehicle was the first van from Craiglist that I looked at, was about 20 minutes from where I was living.
I changed the oil and oil filter twice - first when I bought it, and then again last week because I'm about to sell it. Everything on this van works, the A/C is still cold, I loved that van, and it got me and a couple of friends right around the country.
Again, I know it's just an anecdote, but my experience is that used cars in the USA are cheap, abundant, and reliable.
I'm pretty sure the guys "sent to war" weren't drafted. They signed up for the military, and as such they had a reasonable expectation that they might be sent into combat and get shot at.
I'm not debating whether the death benefits are fair, or whether some of the people who enlist have any other job prospects, just saying that these people _chose_ to be in the military, and there's a risk of them dying in combat, just like if I get a job cleaning septic tanks there's a higher risk of me getting covered in shit than if I get an office job.
Fair point, but there weren't too many '77 GMC vans with airbags.
In some cultures humans are stuffed and put on display for the public. Lenin, Mao Zedong anyone?
I'm hoping the Cubans are watching this. They could outdo the other commies by having a FLYING embalmed dead leader...
If you have asked, and you receive permission, then it's probably OK. There may be hygiene rules to comply with at your office though.
Not only that.. people simply lived more optimally. When children grew up, they didnt automatically leave home. They stays and helped out until they got married, and even then they sometimes stayed to help out, enriching both themselves AND their parents in the process.
Well, some of them did. Not the ones that DIED before the age of 5 from such old-fashioned diseases as measles, smallpox, polio.....
There are a hell of a lot of people who use photoshop for nothing more than cropping and resizing images. Maybe some simple red-eye reduction or other touch-ups. GIMP is more than sufficient for these tasks, and FREE. I downloaded it because it was easier than finding a pirated version of Photoshop I could trust.
Part of the reason Adobe can sell so many copies of photoshop is that "photoshop" has become the generic verb for "edit a picture."
Thanks for the non-advice hint :-) You're right, I certainly should shop around more. What bugs me is that with my checquered employment, I tend to get shafted by ongoing fees and insurance. Of course I have since cancelled the insurance, but what I found (with REST incidentally) is that I would start with [let's say] $1000 in there, and pay in another $400 over the quarter. At the end of the quarter, I'd have about $1200. These aren't the real numbers, as I can't find my statements right now (and wouldn't put them on a public forum anyway) but the point is that cash stuffed into a mattress would have $1400 over the same period. A term deposit of course would perform much better.
OK, sure, I understand that If I had more money in there, then fees would represent a smaller percentage of my overall money. But still, I don't see how superannuation could possibly be better than (gasp!) allowing ME to prepare for my retirement by _not_ giving 50% of my contributions to some bank. Is there even a mandate that these funds have to show a decent return? Because it seems to be that they're basically given carte blanche to whatever they want with this money, safe in the knowledge that you and I can't claim it until we hit 65, which for me is quite a long way away, long enough that the guy in charge of the fund will have long since retired himself.
I don't want to get into a flame war about Aussie banks, but there's a reason they keep posting such spectacular profits. Yes, we are lucky to have a certain level of regulation. But let's remember that it's easy to run a profitable bank if you're getting 9% of what every Australian earns to speculate with.
And REST? In my experience they're reaming every young kid with a casual retail job, because that kid will probably never claim the super from that job they had in high school. It's a while since I've dealt with them, I know Super Choice has introduced a bit more competition into the system, but I have to say, I still think my mattress fund is competitive.
unlike if you're an Australian abroad, when the embassy will tell you "tough shit, you're not in .au now." If you're lucky they'll call your folks back home who can send you a care package in whatever foreign prison you land in.
If you're female however, you might have a chance, because you look good in the tabloids and can whip up a good old-fashioned racist fear of our white girls being defiled by brown people. (read also: Schapelle Corby)
TL;DR: Australian taxes buy you no protection overseas. Either find a UK grandparent, and get a UK passport, or do what other Aussies abroad do and pretend to be from New Zealand. This last part is analogous to those American college kids backpacking thru Europe who have the Maple Leaf sewn onto their backpacks, so that the locals don't hassle them about US foreign policy :-)
My superannuation (Australian government-mandated retirement fund a bit like a 401k in the USA) consistently has _less_ money in it than I deposit, mostly due to fees charged by the [obscenely profitable] banks who run these funds and choose where to invest the money.*
Every Australian employer has to send 9% of each employee's wage to one of these funds. The employee can [usually] choose the fund, but they can't just choose to stick it in a term-deposit, or under the mattress.
Under the mattress currently shows a lower loss than allowing Macquarie Bank et al to gamble with this money.
Again, what seemed like a good idea (mandatory retirement savings for all working Australians) has turned into free money being handed to the banks to gamble with.
I repeat, not only does superannuation not keep up with inflation, it actually goes BACKWARDS. Stuffing the money in a mattress would be a far superior investment, but alas I'm not allowed to do that.
Fuck superannuation. Any Aussies have a better solution? How hard is it to set up so-called "self-managed super"?
*It's not their money, and the investor (me) can't claim it until I retire (like 40 years from now) so it's effectively a blank cheque for these arseholes to invest in any flavour-of-the-month IPO with absolutely no repercussions when they lose all (my) money.