Finally....
....I'll be able to get a reservation at Dorsia.
Posts by Urh
99 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jan 2010
RIP Paul Allen: Microsoft cofounder billionaire dies at 65 after facing third bout with cancer
Dear rioters: Hiding your face with scarves, hats can't fool this AI system
Google and its terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week in full
Sunday 13th August 2017 07:32 GMT 
"The document was hurtful and offensive as well as openly dismissive and contemptuous of the ad giant's own culture."
I didn't know that a concise summary of the current state of scientific knowledge about biological differences between men and women was "hurtful" and "offensive." I guess it can only be those things if those facts do not gel with your personal politics. It's sad to see that Lysenkoism is still alive and well in the current year.
Hyperloop One teases idea of 50-minute London-Edinburgh ride
Wednesday 7th June 2017 10:11 GMT
Re: Um
And there's also the whole preventing a sudden loss of vacuum. Because if that happens when a train is in motion, all the passenger will die in the resulting colossal wreckage. Many proponents of this dumb idea fail to realise that Musk's proposed Hyperloop doesn't operate at "low pressure", it essentially operates under vacuum - the pressure inside the loop (according to the documents) is equal to ambient pressure at an altitude of about 50km, i.e. HALFWAY TO OUTER SPACE.
I admire Musk's achievements, but he is throwing far too much money away at a hilariously impractical idea.
nbn™ needs copper to build FTTN: another 15,000 km of it
User couldn't open documents or turn on PC, still asked for reference as IT expert
Australian Greens don't believe Silicon Valley can save the world
Sunday 15th May 2016 05:37 GMT
Annoyingly....
....I kind of agree with him, but that is most likely a coincidence (I like to call The Greens the watermelon party - green on the outside, red on the inside). I have been rather disappointed in silicon valley in recent years - they seem to be more interested in finding new ways of slurping and selling people's personal information.
Australia's broadband policy is a flimsy, cynical House of Cards
Friday 8th April 2016 03:45 GMT
"a logorrhea of buzzwords"
...has to be one of the more eloquent ways of saying that somebody is talking $hit I have come across in a while. Frankly, the fate of the NBN was sealed back in 2013. The true enormity of the blunder probably won't be truly tangible until 2020, at which point Joe Public will have long forgotten about it.
FORKING BitcoinXT: Is it really a coup or just more crypto-FUD?
nbnTM plans for future backhaul upgrade to FTTN cabinets
nbn has made ZERO fibre-to-the-node and cable connections
Metadata retention to cost AU$3.98 a year per customer
Turnbull says no need to future-proof NBN
NBN Co numbers suggest FTTP build could be done for close to Labor's budget
NBN Co's HFC build will be DOCSIS 3.1 ready, but use 3.0 only
Telstra copper at crisis point, endangers NBN, says union
Welcome to 'uber-veillance' says Australian Privacy Foundation
SpaceX six days from historic rocket landing attempt
Tuesday 6th January 2015 14:58 GMT
Re: Fuel cost?
This is also true, but this also means that more fuel is spent per unit mass of payload sent into orbit. I don't doubt that SpaceX have sat down and done the numbers and found this to be a cost effective approach. I'm mostly curious as to how drastically this landing system affects payload capacity.
Offshore metadata storage fine by me, says Malcolm Turnbull
Turnbull to Big Content: Let your movies RUN FREE ... for a fair price
Friday 1st August 2014 04:10 GMT 
Content Availability
Well Mr Turnbull, maybe content would be more readily available if our telco infrastructure were up to snuff and we weren't at the mercy of that monopolistic motherf***er Rupert Murdoch. Good thing that the NBN will fix this problem once it's finished, eh? Oh wait, you've been sabotaging the NBN ever since you've entered office.
R.I.P. LADEE: Probe smashes into lunar surface at 3,600mph
Saturday 19th April 2014 10:15 GMT 
3,600 mph...
...or 0.0537% of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum for those using Reg units. By my estimates, the probe would have struck the lunar surface with a force of about 40,000 Norrises. I still haven't tried estimating the size of the impact crater, but I'm confident it will be significantly smaller than a nanoWales.
Turnbull Twitfight - we're backing Mal this time
Monday 24th March 2014 03:24 GMT
Ugh....
While Turnbull did not explicitly tell Keady to move house, I agree with other comments that have concluded that Turnbull's response implied that she should move in order to get better broadband. For a minister whose job it is to oversee telecommunications policy, this is unacceptable. Instead of expressing concern that there are still premises without fixed line service (in 2014, no less), the minister tries to paint Keady as a fool, even though (as others have rightly pointed out) it is virtually impossible to know for certain what services are available at a property until after you've purchased it and attempt to have services connected.
This entire farce has highlighted yet another one of the ways in which the telecommunications sector is failing to serve the Australian public, yet this message is being drowned out amongst the frantic s***-flinging that has become Australian political discourse (thanks in no small part to Tony Abbott and his rabid supporters in the media).
NBN to be built even if cost-benefit analysis shows no ROI
Thursday 20th February 2014 08:10 GMT
Re: Labor's plan for 50% at 12Mbps
The prediction of 50% at 12mbps was a conservative estimate, much like many of NBNCo's figures. Actual uptake figures showed that 44% were opting for 100mbps plans. You are clearly ignoring reality, matthew. HFC is painfully congested - it can't even meet CURRENT customer requirements, much less future requirements. If anything, it's the Liberals who should be fearing a CBA, however they've just said that they'll ignore any negative outcomes (considering how farcical the strategic review turned out to be, I'm expecting the CBA to be yet another steaming load of bollocks).
Tasmanian Liberals fear NBN policy will kill their election hopes
Google promises 10Gps fiber network to blast 4K into living rooms
Tuesday 18th February 2014 19:13 GMT
Except...
...the current government basically went to the polls telling porkies by promising a minimum of 25 mbit via FTTN - as far as I know, not a single ISP on the planet makes such guarantees for FTTN. Furthermore, the projections NBNCo made in regards to service uptake were exactly that - projections, and early uptake figures demonstrated that their estimates were quite conservative.
And before you go around calling the previous government idiots, there are buffoons among the current mob who are claiming that fibre has been superseded by copper! I'll just let that sink in...
Australia's new year tech headlines … for 2015!
Friday 27th December 2013 03:53 GMT 
This is my prediction for May 2014
"NBN to be scrapped, sold off, in bid to end budget crisis"
Ever since Turnbull assumed the role of Comms minister, he has been sabotaging the NBN. Step 1 - sack the NBN board and fill it with cronies. Step 2 - deliberately fudge the numbers in that pathetic joke he called the Strategic Review (the review claims there are no irregularities with NBNCo's reporting, then proceeds to pull numbers out of its ARSE to make FTTP look bad from a financial perspective). Step 3 - propose a half-arsed alternative plan in order to keep up the appearance of giving a toss about the public. Step 4 - have aforementioned plan vetoed by Joe Hockey under the guise of being fiscally responsible. Step 5 - Sell off what little infrastructure has been built.
'Mixed tech' NBN needs a super-sized HFC net
Online shopping tax slug not worth the effort: National Australia Bank
Thursday 5th December 2013 16:11 GMT
The price difference isn't the point...
...the point is that local retailers refuse to compete on price, so they want to frustrate smart consumers with bureaucracy. The convenience of online shopping is somewhat diminished if you have to file papers with customs (and pay the ATO their 10%) every bloody time you want to avoid getting reamed by the local oligopolies.
Some online retailers may even think that the bureaucratic wrangling isn't worth the hassle for such a small, remote market, and may simply choose not to sell to Australians at all. Which is exactly what the local extortionists want. It's funny - these bastards were all about embracing globalisation for the purpose of improving their bottom lines, now that consumers are able to do the same, they're crying foul and are demanding a regime of neo-protectionism.
Australia's Silicon Beach is a wipeout
'I WAS AN ADMIN FOR SILK ROAD': Alleged hit-man target tells all
Saturday 9th November 2013 17:06 GMT
Actually....
The case against Ulbricht is pretty strong. The feds aren't just throwing around hearsay, they've managed to establish that Ulbricht is DPR. He did make it kinda easy though, seeing as he made a number of jaw-droppingly stupid mistakes such as:
-using an email address of the form "firstnamelastname@gmail.com"
-using an internet cafe less than 200 metres from his home
-telling the DHS about Silk Road while being questioned by them over a bunch of fake IDs he had ordered
While I concede that some of the evidence is circumstantial, you have to be somewhat delusional if you still genuinely believe that Ulbricht != Roberts.
I was wondering if/when the targets of Ulbricht's attempted assassinations were going to crawl out of the woodwork. IIRC, the second one (whom Ulbricht allegedly coughed up $500k to have whacked) was Canadian. I'll be interested to hear what they have to say...
Australia's proto-NBN now decaying in the desert
Tuesday 5th November 2013 07:12 GMT
I'll give you lack of vision...
Fluffy Bunny - Howard's plan was little more than a band-aid which would have done next to nothing to solve the much bigger problems of Australia's telecommunications sector (said problems were largely the result of Howard's grossly mismanaged privatisation of Telstra). Now we have Malcolm Turnbull attempting to fool the nation into thinking that it is more prudent to solve the problems of tomorrow with yesterday's technology (FTTN). Labor's NBN was the first time I've seen anything resembling vision from our politicians in years. That vision will probably be completely f***ing dead by the next election, and Australia will cement its place as a telecommunications backwater.
NBN review team looks like old Telstra board
Monday 21st October 2013 06:38 GMT
I thought he was quoting Sir Humphrey. Although I did come across one from Jim Hacker which is relevant to Turnbull's claims that his plain is faster and cheaper:
"The three articles of Civil Service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly, it's more expensive to do them cheaply and it's more democratic to do them in secret."
Ziggy Switkowski appointed NBN Co executive chair
Saturday 12th October 2013 03:48 GMT
Obvious choice?
"Switkowski was the obvious choice as chair..."
....if the objective is to demolish the NBN. Yes, Ziggy was in charge of Telstra and Optus, but his tenure at both companies was at times when neither company was engaged in large scale infrastructure rollouts (unless you count the joke that was HFC a large scale rollout). So his "experience" if worth precisely bugger all in the context of the NBN rollout. This is once again a shameless display of hypocrisy by Malcolm Turnbull. During his time in opposition he lambasted the (now previous) NBNCo board for lacking relevant experience. So naturally the first thing he does is appoint a CEO who lacks relevant experience, and as other comments have already stated, he was rubbish at his job when he was at Telstra.
I've still yet to hear a word from Turnbull in regards to the latest numbers showing a complete absence of a cost blowout in the fibre deployment, which was the last nail in the coffin of the LNP's utterly preposterous $94 billion estimate.
How long will the next NBN Co board last?
Sunday 29th September 2013 05:28 GMT
Enough with the talk of cost blowouts already....
....because they're simply not there. If the project costs are out of control, why is NBNCo's contingency fund completely untouched? Plus there's the latest report which shows that costs are *lower* than expected. It's high time that Malware Bullturn face reality and leave the FTTP deployment alone.
Limbaugh: If you hate Apple then you're a lefty blog-o-twat hipster
Tuesday 6th August 2013 11:34 GMT 
Funny...
...I've traditionally associated Apple products with hipster doofuses (doofi?). Even by Limbaugh's standards, this rant is fucking retarded. Sounds like he needs to cut back on the hillbilly heroin (oxycontin to us civilised folk). One thing is bugging me - are his fans really called ditto-heads? Do they not realise how stupid that makes them appear?
I am going to make a note of 'blog-o-twat' - I like it, and would love to use it in conversation (I can see myself using it to describe somebody who has a tumblr account).
Modern-day Frankenstein invents CURE for BEHEADING
Reg to Australia: Here's your chance to find NBN answers
Friday 21st June 2013 04:14 GMT
Too bad this study will be completely useless...
....At least when it comes to helping voters make up their mind, because there's no way that this study will be completed before the election. If this crowdfunding campaign had been initiated when the election was announced, I'd be right behind it. As it stands, it's too little, too late. When you consider the sheer arrogance and intransigence of their leadership, I very much doubt that a future Coalition government would listen to an independent study (that they didn't fund) which says that FTTN is a crock of shit.
Under Howard we had the World's Biggest Luddite(tm) at the helm of telecommunications policy. Expect more technologically misinformed blunders under Abbott.
Friday 21st June 2013 03:56 GMT
Re: What's your planned outcome ?
"Any form of informed debate on *any* Australian political issue will be welcome."
The thing is, the NBN really isn't a political issue at all, it's the closest thing you can get to a pure engineering problem in public discourse. The fact that such an important infrastructure project is being debated (and put at serious risk) by a bunch of technologically ignorant fuckwits simply re-affirms my belief that we are entering an age where politicians are becoming increasingly obsolete and are actually becoming an impediment (rather than an enabler) of human progress.
Australia downloads a limping 13 Mbps, says Ookla
Tuesday 21st May 2013 09:21 GMT 
I am curious....
....as to where Australia ranks when it comes to upload speeds. I wager it'd be lower than 45th. Oh, and Goat Jam, go take your Liberal Party propaganda elsewhere. There are plenty of News Limited circlejerk sites that will blindly swallow up such nonsense. The 90 billion estimate is based on assumptions which were either plucked out of thin air or are actually refuted by available data on the NBN deployment.
First, the bad news: EA bags Star Wars games rights
The NBN questions Malcolm Turnbull won't answer
Tuesday 30th April 2013 00:51 GMT
Re: It's not that bad of a plan
Not that bad? Rubbish. For a start, the FTTN proposal requires the use of infrastructure well past its use-by date. Furthermore, a FTTN network which allows people the option to upgrade to FTTP is going to add to the cost (each node cabinet will have to have both FTTN AND FTTP gear inside them). And despite their policy document, we're still lacking a detailed breakdown of costs - except for the ludicrous assumption that the Liberals expect Telstra to just give them free use of the copper network (this issue alone could take a year or two to resolve, thus making it impossible for the Liberals to deliver on the "quicker" promise).
Also, what happens when your copper line finally bites the dust? Will you have to cough up 5 grand for a fibre upgrade?
Australia's alternative NBN plan: some taxpayer-friendly questions
Thursday 11th April 2013 12:02 GMT
Re: Too late now
The 90 billion estimate that the Coalition are throwing around is based on a completely arbitrary worst-case scenario using assumptions that have little to no basis in reality. But of course you'd know that if you'd bothered to read the background information to the Liberal Party's policy document. And even under the Liberal's preposterous scenario they assume Labor's network to be completed 4 years behind schedule.
As for the "off-budget" argument - the NBN actually belongs off budget. The NBN generates revenue, and is therefore counted as an INVESTMENT, not an expenditure. Any accountant worth their salt will tell you that investments do not count as expenditures. Even Malcolm Turnbull has conceded that Labor's NBN does indeed belong off budget, as per standard accounting procedures.
Australia's coalition launches new broadband policy
Wednesday 10th April 2013 01:44 GMT
Re: Hmmm
Let's also take a look at the Coalition's claim that their network will be delivered quicker and cheaper. Let's start with cheaper - Turnbull has explicitly stated that they expect Telstra to grant them access to the copper for the same compensation that they're presently getting as part of the SAU. This is just preposterous, as the current SAU calls for the decommissioning of the copper and the migration of customers to FTTP. Telstra will almost certainly demand more money in exchange for such a radical change of the terms. How much will Telstra ask? However much they bloody well feel like, and there is nothing the Coalition can do about it. So right off the bat the coalition estimate fails to account for the possibility of billions more in payments to Telstra. Furthermore, since FTTN is reliant on the last mile of copper, the potential for cost blowouts due to repairs is far greater. So will the Coalition's plan deliver cost savings? It *might* save a few billion in the short term, but, in the long term it will end up costing more as it will merely delay and complicate the eventual upgrade to FTTP. There's also the increased OPEX associated with FTTN to consider.
Will the Coalition's plan be quicker to deploy? Their 2019 completion date assumes full scale deployment of FTTN commences in late 2013. So once elected, the coalition will have about a year to renegotiate with Telstra, get regulatory approval, negotiate new contracts for FTTN equipment and construction and do pilot scale deployments. So right off the bat their quicker promise all depends on a herculean effort.
In conclusion it can be said that the coalition's proposal is technologically inferior, will eventually cost more money, and will probably take just as long as FTTP. This has hardly won me over.
Tuesday 9th April 2013 18:36 GMT
Re: Hmmm
Ugh, I can't believe you actually swallowed that piece of Liberal Party propaganda. The 90 billion estimate that the Liberals are throwing around requires ALL FOUR of the following assumptions to be true:
1. Revenue (ARPU) growth is to be significantly lower than NBNCo projections (for their estimates, they assume that ARPU growth is only 3.5% per annum).
2. There has to be a minimum 40% cost blow-out in the average per-premise cost of FTTP installation across the duration of the project.
3. There has to be insufficient take-up of fixed line services (i.e. a significant portion of households have to go "all wireless").
4. The project is completed by 2025 rather than 2021.
While I admit that number 4 is a remote possibility (NBNCo is already 3 months behind schedule), number 3 is ludicrous (a significant portion of wireless users in Australia are on wireless simply because their fixed line service is useless), there is currently no evidence to suggest that blowouts on such a scale will occur, and statistics on NBN seem to suggest that NBNCo may have underestimated ARPU growth.
Also, the NBN isn't being paid for with taxes - it's being paid for with government bonds. Considering that Australia has a AAA credit rating, borrowing for an essential public infrastructure project that will create a profitable national asset is hardly irresponsible - in fact it's a sound investment. On the other hand, assuming that our existing copper network can still be used as meet our future needs is highly irresponsible. Just remember this - in 2003, Telstra told a Senate inquiry that the copper network would need replacing in 15 years. The Coalition wants to keep using this same copper well past 2019.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
