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Comment Re:New Zealand fauna (Score 1) 338

No more likely to bite you than a bumble bee will bite you. Just don't piss them off and you can handle them without issue. Problem is they look pretty scary to most people. Huge grasshopper type bug with huge thorns over its legs and body that lives in dark places like caves and hollowed trees. Still, as long as you don't piss them off, you can pick them up without fear. Just hope no one before you came along and pissed it off before you got there. ;-)

Comment Re:NZ pacifist warrior culture (Score 2, Interesting) 338

Not really quite the case. Maori and the British fought tooth and nail for most of the 19th century. In fact, some British officers wanted nothing more than to completely wipe Maori off the face of the planet, and in some areas pretty much succeeded.

NZ's history as far as the colony is concerned is far from peaceful. Maori didn't stop fighting each other, maybe. But they didn't just ignore the British either. They used the British technology against each other, and also against the British.

The major issue with the Treaty of Waitangi is that the Maori version and the English version are not identical. The translations were pretty rough. So even after it was signed by all the tribal leaders across the country, there are still disputes going on between the Crown and many of the Maori tribes today. The only difference is that the weapon of choice is now money and land. Or the expenditure of former, and prolonged occupation of the latter.

http://www.newzealandwars.co.nz/ is a good place to find out about the wars that raged in the 19th century.

Comment Re:curious situation: iphone more google than appl (Score 4, Insightful) 326

The GV app is still just an app. It doesn't replace any of the Apple apps. They're still there and still fully functional. What it does do is make them redundant.

Instead of giving people your cell number, you give them your Google number. At that point, all your voicemail is kept on the Google service, all your calls are routed through the Google service to whatever phone(s) you choose to have the calls go to. You are no longer tied to Apple's Visual Voicemail (which by most people's accounts hasn't worked properly in quite a while anyway) nor are you limited to AT&T's network anymore. The same applies to SMS and so on as well. Use your Google number instead of your iPhone number and you can get the messages on any/all your phones rather than just your iPhone.

The GV app also allows you to make calls out through Google's network. Your phone dials Google, then dials out from Google to where ever. With the apps on the various platforms, this is essentially transparent. You just use the dialer in the GV app instead of the Apple dialer. It doesn't sync your contacts to the Google servers as such. Like all apps on an iPhone, it has access to your contacts directly, so doesn't need to store them on the server. Not that it matters much given you can use Google Sync to do it, or even us iTunes itself.

Having said all that, the Apple phone apps are still all there and you can use those as well if you want. But if you do, CallerID will show your cell # instead of your Google number. If people call that number, you lose things like voicemail transcription features and so on.

I am basing this on the functionality in the applications on other platforms such as Android and Blackberry. I doubt the app for the iPhone would be any different in functionality, only in appearance.

But no, the app doesn't replace the Apple ones. It merely supersedes them and essentially makes them redundant.

Comment Re:hate to say it... (Score 5, Informative) 409

I agree... I had a similar issue at a school a few years back. Windows + Mac clients on the network. Rather than try to run two directories, we just used Novell eDirectory with (then available) Novell dirXML which allowed all the clients to use a single directory without realising they weren't native Active Directory or OpenDirectory platforms they were talking to. It saved a lot of effort down the line and proved extremely scalable. Also had the benefit of allowing the network to integrate other platforms in the future without much effort if the school wanted to. I'm sure there are plenty of great FOSS solutions out there, but eDirectory make it so much easier and reduced the cost of implementation significantly, even taking into account licensing costs. Sometimes you do just have to weigh up all the angles.
Encryption

Submission + - Final AACS key found

julie-h writes: The PowerDVD AACS private key for playing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD's have been found. This was the last key needed. What does this mean? We don't have to sniff/snoop Volume IDs anymore. We can create a program that can decrypt (or play if you will) a disc without any need for WinDVD or PowerDVD. So no sniffing/extracting of keys anymore. And more over: it can work on all platforms... In other words: we can make our own independent, user friendly player (or decrypter).
Programming

When a CGI Script is the Most Elegant Solution 256

An anonymous reader writes "Writing local Web applications can be quick, easy, and efficient for solving specific Intranet problems. Learn why a Web browser is sometimes a better interface than a GUI application and why experienced Web developers find themselves struggling to learn a GUI toolkit, and descover that a simple CGI script would serve their needs perfectly well, if not better."

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