Comment Perth, Australia (Score 1) 115
All around the bike path network of Perth, Australia. And I'd like the job of riding it 'round them.
Comment Re:Sounds like a standard system to me (Score 1) 863
I live in Western Australia and this sounds like standard ticket parking to me. Not particularly "smart", but hardly offensive to the degree suggested by the writeup.
Comment Re:Bingo (Score 1) 487
Those folding kick scooters are currently my top pick for urban personal transport if you don't have anywhere to stash something as large as a bike. Recently I've tried; an A-bike, inline skates and a folding kick scooter. The A-bike is too large and heavy for walking around once you've folded it up and moved into areas where you can't ride a bike. The inline skates are a pain in the *rse (literally) if there are problems with the path you're skating on (sand, holes, bumps, etc). The kick scooter is trivially easy to learn to ride, folds up into a really small, light package and is easy to jump on and off as the situation warrants.
Next up I'm going to test springy stilts. I just have to lose about 8kg first.
Comment Re:I encourage this trend (Score 2, Informative) 259
Why would anyone need that many thumb drives?
RAID.
Comment Re:Meh (Score 1) 644
Just like how I installed Windows over the Linux version at work! ^_^ Isn't choice a wonderful thing?
Comment I've done it. (Score 1) 424
I've used BeTwin to run two simultaneous instances of Diablo 2 for a small LAN game. It worked okay, but at US$99 for a single license, there are probably cheaper ways to run old games.
Comment Re:Hmmm . . . . (Score 1) 274
As do I. I even have experience I can put on my CV. Anyone know where I would inquire about this job in Western Australia?
Comment Artificial Sweeteners? (Score 1) 793
I don't know if it was this bill that I heard about a little while ago or something similar, but there are serious risks in any sort of taxation that encourages people to move away from products with real sugar and towards products with artificial sweeteners.
Comment Re:Netbooks "Cheap" portable etc. (Score 1) 400
My EeePC runs XP Home. And Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird. None of the extra license fees you invoke are required. I think the only commercial app I have installed is my old copy of Photoshop 3.
The OS is largely irrelevant. What is important is that they're small and cheap.
Comment Re:Interesting idea, poor implementation. (Score 3, Informative) 194
And that software would be Maxivista.
Comment Re:My Reply to Melissa Parke MP (Score 1) 231
If I have to rent a VPN plan and connect to a server in the US to bypass this stupid filter, then I will.
Since I've been looking at VPN solutions so I can safely use free WiFi spots, I might as well just sign up for a cheap US service so I can bypass The Great Firewall of Australia too.
Comment Re:Well... (Score 2, Interesting) 440
A couple of months ago AVG decided that Portable Thunderbird was a trojan. After an update, hey, no it's not.
I used to recommend it to anyone who needed anti-virus for a home PC but now I recommend Avast and I'll be removing the last remaining AVG install on any of my PCs the next time it screws up in any way.
I used to recommend it to anyone who needed anti-virus for a home PC but now I recommend Avast and I'll be removing the last remaining AVG install on any of my PCs the next time it screws up in any way.
Molten Salt-Based Solar Power Plant 478
rcastro0 writes "Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies, announced today that it will start to commercialize a new type of solar power plant. A new company called SolarReserve will be created to provide heat-resistant pumps and other equipment, as well as the expertise in handling and storing salt that has been heated to more than 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. According to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla 'Three percent of the land area of Morocco could support all of the electricity for Western Europe.' Molten Salt storage is already used in Nevada's Solar One power plant. Is this the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?"
Submission + - Solar Tree Bears Fruit 1
Hugh Pickens writes: "A solar tree recently passed a key test and went on display on a busy street — the Ringstrasse — in Vienna, Austria providing light during the night-time even when the sun had been covered by clouds for four days in a row. The branches of the solar tree were decorated with 10 solar lamps, each one powered by 36 solar cells.and the tree included rechargeable batteries and electronic systems to measure the amount of light in the atmosphere and trigger the solar lamps to go on. "Not just trees but other objects could be decorated with solar cells and so keep streets well lit at night time," said Christina Werner from Cultural Project Management. Google uses a similar concept to light their parking lots with 3,000 solar panels that provide 10 percent of the Googleplex's power demand."
Information Overload Predicted Problem of the Year for 2008 146
Wired is reporting that information overload is being predicted by some analysts as the problem of the year for 2008. "'It's too much information. It's too many interruptions. It's too much lost time,' Basex chief analyst Jonathan Spira declared. 'It's always too much of a good thing.' Information overload isn't exactly new, but Spira said the problem has grown as technology increases societal expectations for instantaneous response. And more information available, he said, also means more time wasted looking for the right information, whether in an old e-mail or through a search engine."
