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User: sr180

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  1. Re:Masking tape on Will Microsoft Dis-Kinect Freeloading TV Viewers? · · Score: 1

    That is what happens in Australia - with our ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Four TV channels, numerous radio stations, very good and relatively unbiased news service - no ads. All for approximate 7cents a day per tax payer. (Used to be 12 cents per day - and they proudly proclaimed this - but then their funding was somewhat cut.)

  2. Re:That doesn't really show anything. on Boeing 787 Makes US Debut · · Score: 2

    Cheapest (full service - Qantas) flight from Adelaide to Melbourne 700kms (Australia): $140 (Meal + Newspaper + 1 free alcoholic drink + minimum 1000 FF points compared to BA's measly 125.)
    Cheapest flight from Adelaide to Melbourne: $48.

    US has it bad, very bad. Australians don't realise how bad flying is until we leave Australia.

  3. Re:LOL on PostgreSQL 9.2 Out with Greatly Improved Scalability · · Score: 1

    Note that the two relevant entries that you mention are both spawned from the same product and code base. Originally, MS SQL Server was Sybase SQL server.

  4. Re:All Done? - But for Lightning on Mozilla Downshifting Development of Thunderbird E-Mail Client · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lightning is full of bugs. Its been getting better over the years - but its so far behind Outlook and Exchange. Its a pity, because a little work with this, and it could be a very good Outlook/Exchange replacement. Cyrus-IMap is a better mail server than Exchange in every way, and the remnants of Netscape Calendar (now with Oracle) is a better calendar server in every way - its just the clients suck.

    These are some wishes from semi-enterprise...
    Mail:
    1. No auto-configuration. Why should users have to configure mail servers - configure it through DNS srv records. (Dont get me started on the current mail configuration - theres plenty of rants here already.) If the srv records are there, it knows all of the account details, just provide a username and password and thunderbird is configured.
    2. The text editor is only a minor improvement from the original netscape (and in some ways that was better.) Have a look at MCE editor for ideas on providing a better editor (and its already in javascript for easy porting)
    3. Plugin deployment is difficult.

    Calendar:
    1. No auto-configuration. Using Caldav means adding a horrible url for each calendar you want.
    2. No way of administering these calendars. - Delete, rename etc. I can add new ones, by crafting a new url.... https://caldav.example.com:8080/caldav.php/username/NewCalendar
    3. No adding of modifying permissions on calendars.
    4. No listing available calendars from the server. I should simply be able to list my own calendars that are on the server - and list ones available from other users, and resources.
    5. Invites are still spotty.
    6. Theres very little insight to when it goes wrong. no meaningful error messages - stuff just doesnt work.

    Sogo is addressing some of these things, however, this should all be included functionality - core to lightning.

    It really highlights some of the issues - calendars are hard, and because its a plugin - its in javascript - and thats damn hard too.
    But its annoying, because its so close to being a great enterprise product.

  5. Re:What do you mean!? on Australian Telco Causes Minor Panic While Preparing Web Filter · · Score: 1

    No, CDMA was shutdown. It has been replaced by the NextG network - with is simply a GSM/HSPA network operating at 850MHz in the country and also on 2100MHz in the cities. With this it combines the best of range and capacity with the dual frequencies. It really highlights the engineering excellence of the best of Telstra - its easily the best network in Australia, and the others are struggling to keep up. Its a pity that nothing else of Telstra shows similar quality.
    It may not quite have the range of the old CDMA network, however its close, and it delivers excellence bandwidth to the areas it does cover. They have also rolled out 4G services through the CBD's and this will get a practical 30Mbs of downloads.

    The alternatives? Vodafone/3g is massively over subscribed, however on their way through $1BillionAUD to attempt to fix it. Optus is in a similar position, having caught everyone who fled from Vodafone.

  6. Re:Big shoutout to Tridge and the whole Samba team on Samba 4 Enters Beta · · Score: 1

    Solaris will join a domain - and allow decent user mapping. Samba's user mapping honestly just sucks - even when it is joined to a domain. There are options - but they are all 'patented' and expensive. (See Centrify or similar) (How do you patent user/userid mapping?)

  7. Re:What about LDAP on Samba 4 Enters Beta · · Score: 1

    Incidentally Ive noticed that 389 Directory server only allows single-values for attributes such as mail... They have probably done it to allow their replication to AD.

  8. Re:You cant hear it anyway. on Dolby's TrueHD 96K Upsampling To Improve Sound On Blu-Rays · · Score: 1

    Not true.. There is a good reason, and its reducing your quantisation noise. You will increase your Signal to Noise ration by sampling higher, doing your processing and then filtering back down. In fact, doubling your sampling frequency gives you the equivalent snr increase of more than an extra bit. DSP cycles are dirt cheap in the recording stage, so why not?

  9. Re:You cant hear it anyway. on Dolby's TrueHD 96K Upsampling To Improve Sound On Blu-Rays · · Score: 2

    How does a sound engineer get to call themselves an engineer? Im not having a go, Im just asking...

    However, for those of you quoting Nyquist, you only have half the answer. One of the side benefits of a higher frequency is lower quantisation noise - and hence a better signal to noise ratio. When you take a sample of sound, you then fit it to 16 bits. Obviously an analogue sound pressure level wont fit perfectly into a 16 bit value - so you have to fit it to the nearest one. The difference then becomes noise - which can generally be approximated as white noise (I know mathematically this is possibly incorrect, but practically its true) with its energy spread over the available frequency. Filter this noise out (which your ears will do for anything above 20-25khz) and you reduce the effective quantisation noise being heard (you have filtered out half of the noise's power) - improving the signal to noise ratio.
    This obviously will not work in the case of material already sampled - as the quantisation noise is already there in its sampled form, however, it will have a similar effect for the encoding - if the encoding poduces white noise as part of its process - which (not having researched their encoding thoroughly) is likely.

    Will it truely make a difference? I doubt it. TrueHD is already damn good - and the limitations are really going to be in the amplifiers and the speakers, particularly the cheap power supplies modern home amps seems to carry. I'm sure this is really just more about planned obsolescence.

  10. Re:I wonder... on Jars of Irradiated Russian Animals Find a New Purpose · · Score: 2

    The Australians and the British simply had their soldiers walking through the falling mushroom clouds of nuclear tests. They then denied that this activity caused cancers later in life and refused to provide compensation or support for it.

  11. Re:I know you don't want to here this... on Ask Slashdot: All-In-One PC For Kitchen? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Acer A200. Should be able to get a better price, its a solid device and in the box with Android 3.1 with Acer provided 4.0 updates. This is the machine that finally convinced me to drop money on a tablet. The right machine at the right price.

  12. Content on Introducing SlashBI · · Score: 1

    Has anyone read the crap on there? My first read was about selecting a Database for your business. Its a couple of pages of meaningless waffle. There's no real content - the author clearly has very little knowledge about databases, hasnt written anything meaningful or useful and Slashdot has ultimately published an article that will not be of any help to anyone.
    Plus is uses another whole new commenting system - so more issues and bugs to contend with.

    To agree with some of the above posters have mentioned, I for a long time have come to Slashdot not so much for the articles, but the comments on the articles. You could always guarantee that a number of world leading experts on the subject would be posting. Those days are sadly passing.

  13. Re:We like the theory, but in practice .... on Huawei Claims 30Gbps Wireless 'Beyond LTE' · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Ive regularly hit speeds of around 25-30MBps on Telstra's LTE network in normal usage. This isnt too far off the advertised maximum.

  14. Re:A second just Justice.... Please on Journalist Arrested For Tweet Deported to Saudi Arabia · · Score: 1

    Sorry, Malaysia is significantly more complex than that. First you have the ethnic Malays, they speak Bahasa in a dialect similar to Indonesia. Officially they are Muslim, practically its very different. Freedom of religion is somewhat protected in the Malaysian legal system (outside of the Sharia courts). Then you have the Chinese. Generally the Chinese are Christian or Buddhist as you mention. There is also a significant Indian population which has their influences as well. In the major centers you have a (somewhat) significant expat population - helping to modernise the country. It makes for one very big melting pot of culture, and not that they dont have their problems, they seem to be succeeding at multi-culturism much better than anyone else.

  15. Re:I am not worried about it on Don't Worry About Global Warming, Say 16 Scientists in the WSJ · · Score: 1

    Lets make a list of the companies involved in funding for that crap, so we know whom to disposses in 20 years.

    No one in 20 years will notice. Because many of the groups actively promoting Climate Change Denial now are the same groups that were denying that cigarettes cause lung cancer.

  16. A very good article. on The Future of Hi-Tech Auto Theft · · Score: 1

    This is one of the best articles place on Slashdot in a long time. Its a pity that very few of the above posters have actually read it.

    Firstly, it details the methods of accessing the car. Surprisingly, the CD was most effective. They found vulnerabilities in parsing MP3's and WMA's. They reverse engineered the firmware, - found a buffer overflow and exploited it. From there, they then exploited the Dealer tools used to analyse vehicle faults.

    So, infect and mp3 and upload it via sharing. That infects cars, which then infect their dealer tools. The infected dealer tools can then reprogram ecu's and other devices on the cars themselves.
    This is only the start. They then proceed to find more in depth vulnerabilities and propose possible wholesale models of theft that become possible. For anyone with an interest in hacking (and true hacking, not just script kiddy stuff) then have a good read of this article...

  17. Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." on US Threatens Spain For Not Implementing SOPA-Like Law · · Score: 1

    And I will sell you Australian Hard Drives, just to get around your trade issues.

    "Packed in Australia from local and imported goods."

  18. Re:Honeypot? on Site Offers History of Torrent Downloads By IP · · Score: 1

    Exactly. The extremely long captcha would not work for me at all - forcing people to use the facebook login, so its conveniently a neat little trick connecting People to IP addresses.

  19. Lotus Symphony on Looking Back On a Year of LibreOffice · · Score: 1

    After seeing a post on here, Ive switched to Lotus Symphony, which I have been much happier with. It feels like a much better replacement to me, and I now use it full time over Open or Libre Office.

  20. Re:If you ask nicely enough... on Mozilla Asks All CAs To Audit Security Systems · · Score: 1

    Lol. So true. A mate of mine worked for them. He had an accounting background on top of a CS degree. One week he would be providing consultant advice on naval ship building, the next week on running a national train system - despite having zero experience in either of these activities. To put it simply, the powers that be, needed consultants, and PWC kindly stepped in and took plenty of their money!

  21. Re:History also shows Keynesian policies can fail on Krugman On Bitcoin and the Gold Standard · · Score: 1

    Australia did exactly this, we were running good surpluses and did fully pay our debt before the Global Financial Crises. It definitely helped us weather the storm.

  22. Re:I guess it was inevitable... on Test Driving GNU Hurd, With Benchmarks Against Linux · · Score: 1

    We still dont have Samba 4.0 yet..

  23. Re:have they fixed on Firefox 8 20% Faster Than Firefox 5 · · Score: 1

    I have noticed this on one of my machines, and tracked it down (in my case) to a pause when ever Flash is loaded. It only happens on one of my machines, and its damn annoying..

  24. Re:Coal is King on Renewable Energy Production Surpasses Nuclear In the US · · Score: 1

    Agreed..

    A. Clean coal doesnt truly exist yet. There are a few trial plants around, but nothing commercially viable. Note that the industry does confuse scrubbing with carbon capture when talking about "clean coal".
    B. The energy requirements for carbon capture will be huge.

    The simplest way is to use your coal beds as unconventional gas resources. Coal Seam gas is much better than coal, easier to collect, transport and use. Coal Seam gas is becoming the major target of producers around the globe. Both Australia and the US are putting alot behind it, and that would be the direct reason for the reduction in coal use.

  25. Sony Viao Z-series on First Thunderbolt Peripherals Arrive To Market · · Score: 2

    The Sony Viao Z-series laptops have just been announced and include a light-peak connected dock. Its only a couple of weeks away - so Apple wont be the only one with Thunderbolt.