From what I understand (from a local news report) it appears to be over the fact that Woolworths is doing a blanket trademark of every type of trademark item with the new logo.
Now considering that some of the classes of trademarks in Aus are computers and electronics and mobile phones/communication devices; if Woolworths stuck that logo all over the front of a shiny new home brand/Woolworths MP3 player (which they're getting into), there's bound to be some idiot who buys the thing and expects it to work with his iTunes.
The fact that Wooloworths already sells rebranded sim cards and mobile phones this isn't that far a fetch. Granted, I don't see the problem, they're easily distinguishable, but even the smallest similarity and a few dumb customers and Apple has bad press.
It would be grand to be able to buy a low watt, small box gaming machine that doesn't require 6 fans to keep it cool.
However, with the way things are at the moment in the pc gamespace, I'd be pretty cautious expecting any decent performance, even with their Crysis and Bioshock demoes.
I do miss the days when games had 128 multiplayer maps, ran on cheap $200 video cards well and had more story rather than the shinies but I guess that's progress for you. *sigh*
And i've had a fair bit of exposure to flash and I can say that while you can get some simple animations and image based animations running quite smoothly on any new browsers canvas, on IE or for any highly graphical sequences, your CPU maxes out and it runs like a dog.
Hopefully the new release of beta browsers can do something nice to fix the performance issues.
It might just be me but here are the problems I've had in my 4 months of using Vista from my uni MSDNA.
Slow network speed - Vista ftp to my server starts at 1 meg a second (wireless g) and drops until it hits a fairly stable 250 ish k/s. If I boot up into XP, or OpenSuse, this number stays up at 800k/s or more. This is also true for copying directly through explorer on my samba drive where I usually sit at (according to the box) about 80 k/s on Vista.
Sound problems - I cannot for the life of me get 5.1 channel sound working, and even though quadraphonic is enabled and supposedly works (each speaker plays in the test) I cannot hear anything through them from any 5.1 movies or games. (Using crappy onboard)
Vista UAC would ask for permission EVERY time i tried to rename, move or edit a file in an external hard drive. UAC would also cause amsn received files to be unaccesible even though the folder had the files in it. Turned off within 4 days.
Program compatibility - Quickbooks and Gnucash will not work on Vista. Quickbooks will crash every time I try to accept the license no matter what compatibility I run it in. These are important programs to me.
Many programs and games will crash upon closing - when I close a game or program, there's a rather large chance of it crashing and throwing a "This program has crashed, - look online for a fix or close it box". Highly annoying
Entire windows will freeze sometimes when copying files over the network. Mapped network samba drives do not remember the username and password and keep trying to shove the computer name in front of my username.
Control panel is an absolute MESS to navigate, took me hours to try and show hidden files and weekly cannot find the add/remove programs. Vista explorer navigation also painful, where is my UP arrow dammit. Also, explorer path shortening extremely painful when in two similarly named folders, one on server, one on my computer.
That's my list for the short time I've been using it. Now this isn't a hatefest, because I love the new taskbar and some of the aero features like program thumbnails and the alt-tabbing. I detest the start menu and the constant dissapearing of links (my office 2003 links dissapeared for no apparent reason). The search function is shoddy at best trying to find programs. "word" got me nothing, had to type winword, real intelligent.
I'm quite happy with XP and Stardock themes to be honest and opensuse fills the void for everything non gaming so I'm a happy little camper for the timebeing.
The ABC almost never buys the rights to any of the big television shows.
That's usually left up to our commercial stations under the big media (or as big as you can call Aussie media anyway) or our cable company.
The ABC usually runs with local content since it's funded directly by the government, not through ads so I really doubt that's the reason. The other commercial statements allow nowhere near the liberties that ABC does with respect to sharing.
Leasing happens in Australia as well.
I've only seen small businesses doing it so far but it happens. The company I was working at leased 5 new Toyota Prado's for driving out in central Australia. Cheaper than buying them outright and lots more tax benefits I was told. Cheaper to upgrade to the next model as well since you just stopped paying the lease on that car and started it on a new model. No selling, no buying, very simple and cheap transition.
Look for some local leasing companies on google if you want to see more, but it does exist.
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From what I understand (from a local news report) it appears to be over the fact that Woolworths is doing a blanket trademark of every type of trademark item with the new logo.
Now considering that some of the classes of trademarks in Aus are computers and electronics and mobile phones/communication devices; if Woolworths stuck that logo all over the front of a shiny new home brand/Woolworths MP3 player (which they're getting into), there's bound to be some idiot who buys the thing and expects it to work with his iTunes.
The fact that Wooloworths already sells rebranded sim cards and mobile phones this isn't that far a fetch. Granted, I don't see the problem, they're easily distinguishable, but even the smallest similarity and a few dumb customers and Apple has bad press.
It would be grand to be able to buy a low watt, small box gaming machine that doesn't require 6 fans to keep it cool.
However, with the way things are at the moment in the pc gamespace, I'd be pretty cautious expecting any decent performance, even with their Crysis and Bioshock demoes.
I do miss the days when games had 128 multiplayer maps, ran on cheap $200 video cards well and had more story rather than the shinies but I guess that's progress for you. *sigh*
I've had a bit of a foray into some mindless canvas programming Some Free Canvas Games
And i've had a fair bit of exposure to flash and I can say that while you can get some simple animations and image based animations running quite smoothly on any new browsers canvas, on IE or for any highly graphical sequences, your CPU maxes out and it runs like a dog.
Hopefully the new release of beta browsers can do something nice to fix the performance issues.
- Slow network speed - Vista ftp to my server starts at 1 meg a second (wireless g) and drops until it hits a fairly stable 250 ish k/s. If I boot up into XP, or OpenSuse, this number stays up at 800k/s or more. This is also true for copying directly through explorer on my samba drive where I usually sit at (according to the box) about 80 k/s on Vista.
- Sound problems - I cannot for the life of me get 5.1 channel sound working, and even though quadraphonic is enabled and supposedly works (each speaker plays in the test) I cannot hear anything through them from any 5.1 movies or games. (Using crappy onboard)
- Vista UAC would ask for permission EVERY time i tried to rename, move or edit a file in an external hard drive. UAC would also cause amsn received files to be unaccesible even though the folder had the files in it. Turned off within 4 days.
- Program compatibility - Quickbooks and Gnucash will not work on Vista. Quickbooks will crash every time I try to accept the license no matter what compatibility I run it in. These are important programs to me.
- Many programs and games will crash upon closing - when I close a game or program, there's a rather large chance of it crashing and throwing a "This program has crashed, - look online for a fix or close it box". Highly annoying
- Entire windows will freeze sometimes when copying files over the network. Mapped network samba drives do not remember the username and password and keep trying to shove the computer name in front of my username.
- Control panel is an absolute MESS to navigate, took me hours to try and show hidden files and weekly cannot find the add/remove programs. Vista explorer navigation also painful, where is my UP arrow dammit. Also, explorer path shortening extremely painful when in two similarly named folders, one on server, one on my computer.
That's my list for the short time I've been using it. Now this isn't a hatefest, because I love the new taskbar and some of the aero features like program thumbnails and the alt-tabbing. I detest the start menu and the constant dissapearing of links (my office 2003 links dissapeared for no apparent reason). The search function is shoddy at best trying to find programs. "word" got me nothing, had to type winword, real intelligent. I'm quite happy with XP and Stardock themes to be honest and opensuse fills the void for everything non gaming so I'm a happy little camper for the timebeing.Hahahahaha, not the balls!
That's a statement alright. I meant stations, teach me to post to /. while watching the evening news.
The ABC almost never buys the rights to any of the big television shows.
That's usually left up to our commercial stations under the big media (or as big as you can call Aussie media anyway) or our cable company.
The ABC usually runs with local content since it's funded directly by the government, not through ads so I really doubt that's the reason. The other commercial statements allow nowhere near the liberties that ABC does with respect to sharing.
Oh my kingdom for a mod point.
Leasing happens in Australia as well. I've only seen small businesses doing it so far but it happens. The company I was working at leased 5 new Toyota Prado's for driving out in central Australia. Cheaper than buying them outright and lots more tax benefits I was told. Cheaper to upgrade to the next model as well since you just stopped paying the lease on that car and started it on a new model. No selling, no buying, very simple and cheap transition. Look for some local leasing companies on google if you want to see more, but it does exist.