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User: MichaelSmith

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Comments · 11,670

  1. Re:Apparently lawyers are dirt-cheap now... on Pay Or Else, News Site Threatens · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't think FrontPage has a paywall button.

  2. Re:How Much? on Pay Or Else, News Site Threatens · · Score: 1

    I have coded many of those systems, often for a notional fee.

  3. Re:what if restaurants tryed to sue for refills on Pay Or Else, News Site Threatens · · Score: 1

    what if restaurants tryed to sue for refills (after that fact and don't do any thing to stop you) and they point to a small and out the way sign saying NO FREE refills.
    what if they tried to press theft of services on you for taking a refill like that?

    Do you mean coffee? Why not just charge for refills.

  4. Re:Clueless on Pay Or Else, News Site Threatens · · Score: 1

    Is this like you go into the grocery store and eat a few twinkies and the manager bum rushes you and makes you pay?

    I would say they are well within their rights to do that.

  5. Re:boom? on Giant Impact Crater Found In Australia · · Score: 1

    Even in South Australia I am sure somebody would have noticed a large chunk of the worlds fission bombs going off. That said, Disaster Area are touring again so something is bound to go off.

  6. Re:In Newcastle, some cabby asked... on Closing In On 1Gbps Using DSL · · Score: 1

    Argy-bargy is slang and very casual slang at that. I would be a bit surprised if its meaning wasn't clear it any non-Australian speakers from context and usage. It just means having an argument.

    English is like C. It works well enough to be useful in most places. It gets messed with a lot and you can count yourself lucky if you get something out of it. It openly steals good words from other languages. My favourite is Awas which means caution in Malay. Its shorter and more striking than the English equivalent and easier to put on warning signs.

    I know my wife has been speaking Cantonese to her family when she starts confusing "Lights", "Mirrors" and "Windows". They are all the same in her native language and she has to do this manual disambiguation.

    I was just joking with my wisecrack above. I didn't mean it to be taken seriously.

  7. Re:Obligatory on Power Failure Shuts Down 50 US Nuclear Missiles · · Score: 1

    Its an open air cinema but with cars instead of people. There are people inside the cars. Every car has a speaker on a cable which you can attach to your window. There is a shop where you can buy junk food. Many drive ins had two screens and you just turned the other way to watch a different movie. Traffic problems were endemic. Houses near the drive in got free vision but not sound. One popular hack was to lock the kids in the boot (trunk) of your car so they got in for free. You pay on the way in at a kind of toll booth.

    They are almost gone in Australia now. I suppose video killed them off, along with high land prices.

  8. Re:I abstain on Voting Machines Selecting Default Candidates · · Score: 1

    Yeah in fact its a bit of a joke here in Australia. I know plenty of people who have studied for the examination you have to pass on general Australian cultural knowledge and its all crap of no interest to me. I doubt I could pass. Apparently you have to know all about our great sportsmen and have similarly useless information in your head.

  9. Re:Multiple phonelines on Closing In On 1Gbps Using DSL · · Score: 1

    Their methodology requires multiple phone lines bonded and being used with parity in order obtain these speeds.

    Most houses dont have multiple phone lines

    Actually every house I have been in (this is in Australia) has had at least two pairs. My current house has two separate cables, each with two pair. Though that doesn't mean the infrastructure can deliver two pairs end to end.

  10. Re:Docsis 3 on Closing In On 1Gbps Using DSL · · Score: 1

    Most cable companies will sell you a static IP on a business account. A lot of telcos have the same policy.

    I tried that with Optus in Australia. It was no-go. They weren't interested in giving me a static IP so I moved to ADSL from comcen.

  11. Re:And yet, I'm stuck on Closing In On 1Gbps Using DSL · · Score: 2, Funny

    though there is political argy-bargy about it

    I think there's something wrong with your new, high-speed network. It seems to be getting lots of line noise coming across as random characters on your Slashdot posts.

    Can't you read Australian? Its not like we speak English here you know.

  12. Re:And yet, I'm stuck on Closing In On 1Gbps Using DSL · · Score: 1

    Yeah and cable is being pulled in Brunswick, Victoria only a few k from my home. I know a guy who lives a bit closer to the test area who has been invited to participate in tests.

  13. Re:400M ? on Closing In On 1Gbps Using DSL · · Score: 1

    In places like Korea and China, probably quite a few people.

  14. Re:This is just embarrassing. on Power Failure Shuts Down 50 US Nuclear Missiles · · Score: 1

    Clearly the search was not thorough enough.

  15. Re:Obligatory on Power Failure Shuts Down 50 US Nuclear Missiles · · Score: 1

    Yeah Kong got some flying in that time. Its one of my earliest memories BTW. Maybe taking a three year old to Kubrick movies wasn't such a good idea...

  16. Re:This is just embarrassing. on Power Failure Shuts Down 50 US Nuclear Missiles · · Score: 1

    Its called a biscuit. Bill must have been hungry.

  17. Re:News? on DOS Emulator In and Out of App Store · · Score: 1

    Okay its being blocked for no good reason.

  18. Re:News? on DOS Emulator In and Out of App Store · · Score: 1

    Its a nice to have thing which is being blocked for no particular reason.

  19. Re:How widespread is piracy in SK? on Korea Kicking People Offline With One Strike · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can't answer your question but I will say that the Koreans do things differently. Once I needed to download a .deb to install uucp on my laptop. I got a line and an IP address but all I got was a text file telling me I wasn't allowed to access that file. So I gave the URL and a USB key to a guy with a windows box. Still he got the same message. He removed the USB key and the file downloaded okay to local storage. Then he mounted the usb key and passed the .deb to me.

    You see everybody runs IE. The web proxies install a component (ActiveX I suppose) which checks for mounted devices which could be used for piracy or to upload malware. Its stupid and easy to work around but people just seem at accept it as the way things work.

  20. Re:Online gaming on Korea Kicking People Offline With One Strike · · Score: 1

    I don't want to be out middle stump just for downloading "Transformers".

  21. Re:There is still long way to go on The Android Invasion Cometh; Is Resistance Futile? · · Score: 1

    The air traffic control systems along the way will either run a unix variant or linux. Generally the newer systems will run linux.

  22. Re:Hmmm on You Have Taste Receptors In Your Lungs · · Score: 1

    I had a co-worker who when pregnant couldn't stay off the stuff. She had a bottle a day habit.

  23. Re:Larry does it His Way on Oracle Needs a Clue As Brain Drain Accelerates · · Score: 4, Funny

    Gosh I bet Larry was mortified.

  24. Re:I hope Oracle doesn't get a clue on Oracle Needs a Clue As Brain Drain Accelerates · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Oracle wanted Sun IP. They got that. They don't want to do much with it except bring in some cash so engineers are of no use.

  25. Re:Full sized laptop key style on Ergonomic Mechanical-Switch Keyboard? · · Score: 1

    No need for a DNA test then.