Re:Cook more "claimed" Australia than discovered.
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I have to take issue with some of the assertions here. First, while the British had various maps, they weren't aware that there was a *continent*. The Dutch had landed on the west coast and, given the spice trade in the 17th/18th century, there were contacts with the northern coast too. Abel Tasman mapped a lot of the north coast in 1644, having previously skirted the very south tip of what we now call Tasmania (he called it Van Dieman's Land). Everything in between was unknown - it could have been many islands or a continent - no one was sure. In school, we were told that Cook discovered the east coast... but I don't recall a claim to have proved it was a continent. As for La Perouse, the dates and personae are wrong. The French explorer turned up in Botany Bay shortly after the First Fleet arrived in January 1788 under the command of Arthur Phillip, not during Cook's visit in 1770. A French sailor died while they were there and there is a small monument on the headland where he is buried and which is actually French territory. La Perouse left a few days later and was never seen again. OK, I agree that the loss of the American colonies was one of the reasons why the colony was established. Another reason was to stake a strategic claim to the territory Cook discovered, for reasons such as stopping others from doing so... e.g. the French... so the arrival of La Perouse would have proved a good justification of that purpose.
Telefonica could probably have worse service, but they would need to train their personnel for it.
Well said. I'm by no means sure they aren't doing such training.
I suppose misery loves company. Over the last couple of months, I've hardly been able to read Slashdot on my home PC, as I keep getting the "banned" page - Telefonica's transparent proxy strikes again. (I'm posting this from work.) Is it naive of me to ask if/. can respond port 8000 or 8080 as well? Does that bypass the proxy. At least then, if I was really generating excessive traffic, it would be my own IP address getting banned.
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I have to take issue with some of the assertions here. First, while the British had various maps, they weren't aware that there was a *continent*. The Dutch had landed on the west coast and, given the spice trade in the 17th/18th century, there were contacts with the northern coast too. Abel Tasman mapped a lot of the north coast in 1644, having previously skirted the very south tip of what we now call Tasmania (he called it Van Dieman's Land). Everything in between was unknown - it could have been many islands or a continent - no one was sure. In school, we were told that Cook discovered the east coast ... but I don't recall a claim to have proved it was a continent. As for La Perouse, the dates and personae are wrong. The French explorer turned up in Botany Bay shortly after the First Fleet arrived in January 1788 under the command of Arthur Phillip, not during Cook's visit in 1770. A French sailor died while they were there and there is a small monument on the headland where he is buried and which is actually French territory. La Perouse left a few days later and was never seen again. OK, I agree that the loss of the American colonies was one of the reasons why the colony was established. Another reason was to stake a strategic claim to the territory Cook discovered, for reasons such as stopping others from doing so ... e.g. the French ... so the arrival of La Perouse would have proved a good justification of that purpose.
Telefonica could probably have worse service, but they would need to train their personnel for it.
Well said. I'm by no means sure they aren't doing such training.
I suppose misery loves company. Over the last couple of months, I've hardly been able to read Slashdot on my home PC, as I keep getting the "banned" page - Telefonica's transparent proxy strikes again. (I'm posting this from work.) Is it naive of me to ask if /. can respond port 8000 or 8080 as well? Does that bypass the proxy. At least then, if I was really generating excessive traffic, it would be my own IP address getting banned.