Formula 1 Grand Prix

How is this for programming stupidity. I'm in Australia and I watch Formula 1. It's on a commercial channel. Being a commercial channel, I presume it must run commercials. But, they don't run money raising commercials, they run programme promotion ones. Not just any old programme promotion, oh no, they run kids show ones. But, they don't have a lot of kids shows, so they run the same ones three times each. Honest, I'm not kidding. Advertising kids shows during a Grand prix, that really is getting to the heart of the target audience eh.

My understanding is...

Huawei has supplied the UK government with the source code for their producs so that it can be worked over. They have also offered the Aus. govt. the same deal, that is, as long as the government use security cleared inspectors then they too can have the source code to check for backdoors, malware or whatever else one looks for. I read this on the Delimiter site here in Aus.

Choices?

How's this for consideration. If the Beeb produce it then it's already bought and paid for so is free on iPlayer, if the programme was produced by outsiders and the broadcast rights sold to the Beeb then they charge for it.

So, you end up with a model where, some stuff are freebies and other stuff are commercial and is paid for.

Mind you, that doesn't give the Beeb much incentive to produce 'home grown' stuff does it.

I'd love iView

I'd love to have iView, but we have restrictive download caps and restrictive speeds. It's all very well for the city slickers with good cheap ADSL in it's various forms (even they have download caps). We who live outside of the cities rely on satellite which has horrid download restrictions that make the likes of iView impossible. Roll on NBN, get those birds in the sky and give us what we need.

The old days

Back in the days of yore it was very common for companies introducing a new product to have an introductory offer. A cheap price. The purpose of this was to gain market share.

Any losses were written off to marketing as a part of the introductory budget.

If and when market penetration reached a reasonable level, those companies would revoke the introductory offer and go for profit.

Now it appears that the greedy buggers want to make big money immediately, they introduce products at top dollar price, no market penetration, no developer support, just 'trust us' pay top dollar and all will be well with the world later.

If HP and later BB had started the sales at the rock bottom prices that they later posted, many, many more units would have sold. This is proven by how quickly HP flogged off it's stock of the tablet at the cheap price.

What's the matter with these companies these days? Are they all run by bean counters who havn't a clue about marketing? If that is so, then bring back merchandisers to oversee sales and leave bean counters to only balance the books at the end of the year.

Dirt

Gawd, whinging Poms. If you reckon that was rough, you should have tried it when it was a dirt road all the way down. The road trains would drag a rooster tail of dust behind them half a km. long.

A Camera

This week I received a camera that was bought in Australia by an insurance company. The supplying company retails said camera for $599. The price to the insurance comapany was $510. A grey import company that I have previously bought camera's from sells the exact same model for $333 and that includes tracked/priority delivery. Last time I bought from them it was 4 days from Hong Kong. Sure I can't send it to the manufacturers agents in Aus. for warranty service. But nonetheless I can still send them to an Aus. agent for service. I can't afford the Aussie price at that rate.

Frikandel

Back in my day, 1960's, most pubs on a Friday night had a seafood (winkle) stall outside. One would stagger from the pub, pay the sixpence for a small plate of winkles, cockles, mussels or whatever took your fancy, they were supplied with a wedge of bread (salt, vinegar, pepper). One would stand and eat this lot then stagger further up the road and spew the lot into the gutter. Sorted.

Now to the point, Frikandel. These have a similar effect as the above, have a gutful of your favourite beer or beers at the bar, then go and buy a couple of Frikandel specials. Frikandel, chips mayonaise and stuff. Eat, stagger and try to overcome the nausea, preferrable do this in Limburgh South Holland where the best Frikandel are made.

I don't understand this litigation thing.

In a democracy it is normal for a govt. department to issue regulations. If they really mean those regulations, then what's the point of taking them to court, they really mean it so all they have to do is change the regulation to bugger up a court case and get the result they 'really want'.

The bit I don't get is, why would this dept. sit back and let business take the regulation to court and let it get watered down, weakened or nullified when with a few strokes of the pen, it's sorted.

Methinks the plan is thus.

First the content mafia force ISP's to send out infringement notices. So, the legwork is done and the ISP's are paper shufflers. Next, the mafia put the case that ISP's arn't doing enough to stop this 'crime', after all, all of the data passes through their portals. So, ISP's should 'sniff' the packets and send out infringement notices in their own right.

Next, well that's easy, seeing as the ISP's are aware of who the infringers are, then they should take 'positive action' eg. begin stopping the services of infringers.

Net result, cost to content mafia: zero, effort from content mafia: zero. All costs, effort and bad publicity now borne by the bad, bad ISP's who were against the whole thing right from the start.

Once upon a time

Once upon a time if a firm wanted to intruduce a new product they would sell it at cost or near cost as an introductory offer.

That was in the days when merchandisers ran merchandising. Now everything is run by beancounters who have little idea about merchandising, if it's as good as or nearly as good as the competitor, then it will sell at that competitors price they say. Bollocks, I say, get it out there at a price that will carve itself a place in the market. When it achieves that, then the special price ends or a new model begins at a not so special price.

Production pressures

I have more than a passing interest in farming and my opinion is this. If farmers plant Agave and it is just as efficient as sugar cane, they will start to intensively farm it, as they do sugar cane. They will monoculture, they will fertilise, they will pour water over it. All to make more money. That is how farming is in Australia. Far from being stewards of the land, most farmers are rapists of the land.

To back this up. In the last few days I have observed a local farm, they have been cropping carrots. The carrots were dug and picked up by machine and dumped into trailers. Two rows behind the digger there was a tractor plowing, two rows behind that was a further tractor and machine planting lettuce, behind that again were workers setting up the irrigation equipment.

This is pretty normal practice in this area. Once the lettuce is cropped another crop will be planted and the cycle continues.

Oh yes, I forgot a title

'Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services and police eventually trapped the animal, and are pondering just what it was doing in the area'.

Wondering what it was doing in the area? Jees, Charleville is halfway to the back of beyond, there are more roos than people out that way. Ponder? No need, it was living in the area.

For those who don't know, the back of beyond is about where the Black Stump is and it's a long way from nowhere. Charleville is about nowhere.

What a pain

If it is found that handsets interfere with TV signals. Given the remoteness of the properties that can't be fibre connected, I assume that any interference is going to be from within the same premises. If that is so, I would guess that a number of ways exist to reduce or eradicate the interference.

First would be a filter on the back of the tv, back in my Ham days I found that to be very effective in most cases.

Second, I assume that the handsets in question are telephones, now if the telephone is a fixed phone as distinct from a mobile phone. A yagi antenna pointed at the TX/RX tower should keep most of the signal away from the TV antenna which is probably a dish pointing upwards.

If the telephone's of of a mobile configuration, then the only answer in the event of interference problems is to keep the calls short or turn the tv off. Or move away from the tv or tv antenna, inverse square law and all that guff.

Fascinating

I find this Predator strike to be both fascinating and thought provoking.

It looks to me like it is an incredibly stable platform from which to launch a weapon. It is slow enough and low enough to enable the operator to see well and seems to have weapons that are quite precise. The craft is a bit slow and cumbersome in 'real' contested airspace. But when the air defence is weak, why on earth would you use manned assets?

I sometimes wonder, if you had a large force of these aircraft and they are equipped with air to air, how would you go if you approached a 'hot' airspace, let go of the air to airs when the AWACS says 'go', turn around and run away. When I say a large force I am meaning upwards of 100 of the blighters.

If I was defending that airspace, I think I'd cut and run. But, maybe that's why I'm not a fighter pilot.

Skymesh

Skymesh are predominantly a satellite ISP, consequently they will be awaiting the NBN interim satellite solution to be announced in June. The Australian Broadband Guarantee ceases at that time, so of course Skymesh will be a part of the trial, their whole future is dependent upon government subsidies.

This post was sent using a Skymesh satellite connection.

Maybe it's the right thing to do

If I go into a shop to buy something and I have a fair idea what price range it is in and they quote way above that. I reserve the right to tell 'em to get stuffed.

It is after all a fair negotiating stand to say no!.

The suppliers make an offer, NBN says no. Now the suppliers have two choices, sharpen their pencils or get out of the game.

I'm sure we tax payers would be right pissed off if NBN just took the lowest of the high prices and allowed us to get ripped off.

Different threats

I read an article today about a problem here in Australia. It appears that some Asian bees have been spotted in Northern Queensland. This particular species robs the hives of other bees and that hive then declines as the bees starve. So another problem to be sorted out before we lose lots of hives.

Conclusion?

I'm sorry, I don't understand this, you didn't come to a conclusion.

I'll just put you on hold...click beep beep beep

Wonderful things call centres. You call, you jump through hoops, get someone finally, only to get cut off and need to jump through all the hoops again. Unless, you call sales, odd that, you never have to wait in a queue, you never need be transferred, never lose the call, in fact the first thing they ask is for your call back number, just in case. Mr. Thodey is listening to his customers, that is, if he doesn't get cut off.

Careful

'So it’s hardly surprising that with a new network on the way, the AFP would start tilling the soil and planting the seeds that might one day yield a fine crop of new interception and wiretap powers. ®'

You have to be careful, I see the feds are looking at banning a large number of garden plants on the basis of the possibility of them containing banned drugs. All that tilling and planting may get someone arrested.

Bleeding Obvious

Yes indeed it may be bleeding obvious that mobile networks need fibre and it may be bleeding obvious that fibre can and will complement the NBN, but, those opposed to the NBN eg. the political opposition, don't deal in the bleeding obvious, only in FUD.

Maybe a silly question

For many years now there have been female astronauts.

I have oft wondered, what with all the experiments concerning weightlessness.

Have there been any experiments performed whereby two astronauts perform astronaughties in space. Purely to check how sperms perform under weightless conditions of course, only for science.

What about?

I know it is their own fault, but what about those users who use pirate copies of Windows.

There must be many.

Patches are not an option are they.

A computer specialist may well refuse to work on such a system.

Yes, you can get free scans and repair from anti-virus mobs, but that doesn't solve the base problem that the OS is broken due to not having patches applied.

There are many reasons why people use 'pirated' Windows. So it's not simply a matter of saying 'tell them to buy Windows' or 'they deserve getting the chop if they use 'pirate' versions'.

Linux is not an option.

So what is?

Cool!

When did an iphone pull a bird? I'd say never.

When did an Aston Martin fail to pull a bird? I'd say never. Cool.

Viewing a sex object

Isn't it so, that when two people first meet that they may be sexually attracted to each other. Perhaps they havn't even spoken at this stage. Havn't we all seen a member of our favoured gender of sexual partner and though, yummy, scrumptious, I wouldn't mind a piece of that!

Does this mean that we are demeaning them as purely a sex object?

No way, we are feeling perfectly natural lust in our loins.

Neither men nor women are sex objects, but they may be the subject of lustful looks. Demeaning? Not in the least, it takes at least some communication before feelings other than the basic lust can be replaced/conjoined with respect, like, friendship and/or love.

If however you see someone on the screen with no possibility of further communication, then lust is all that remains, it doesn't mean that you are demeaning that person, it just says, gawd I'd like to get into his/her pants. Maybe that means that they become an object of our sexual desires, so in that sense a sex object, but demean? I think not.

Sorted

Well that's sorted then, the police may not confiscate an image without a court order unless they want to, then it's ok.

NBN

Australia is big. If you havn't been here I promise you, you will not be able to imagine how big it is.

Giving us all broadband is only something that a government can do. I live about 15 Kms. outside of a small town which has ADSL, in my locality (farming), houses are few and far between, there is no way that we will ever get ADSL even with town so close, it just is not economically viable and there are tens of thousands of homes a lot more isolated than my locality.

I have two choices, dial up or satellite. The government subsidises the cost of satellite where there is no other higher speed connection available. If wireless was financially viable then we would have it, it is around. So for us, NBN is our only hope. We would finally get connections with good speed and without the horribly restrictive download/upload caps that we now have on satellite.

I am not a supporter of the Labour party in any way, but, it appears to me that the opposition is saying no purely because they can't say yes for fear of making Labour look as if they are offering something good and will work.

Bloody politicians, they'll waste what NBN has spent already and then throw in a few billions to make the existing telcos rich and I still won't get broadband. But they may win an election, so it must be worth it.

Lets be fair

The satnav was in no way at fault. These people would have made the same error had they been following a map, they were just stupid.

Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Labour want to build the Fibre network and filter it. The others want to build something else instead, but havn't said what, and are strangly silent about the filter. We vote in two weeks. What to do, what to do. The Greens may get the balance of power in the senate, pro-fibre, maybe pro-filter.

Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Sad when you have to vote for the lesser of two evils because there's nothing else.