I have noticed when purchasing new items these days that there are slips of paper reminding consumers of their rights and whatever the company bandies about as company policy cannot trump Australian consumer law, ever. We do refunds here. Suck it up.

I completely agree. Get a Mikrotik device of some kind. They are reliable, Swiss-army-knife-flexible, cheap, robust and have a huge range of devices to choose from. You can even assemble your own configuration from parts if you want too. The Winbox config utility is fantastic and works just fine with Wine in Linux. They are now coming out with models that have 802.11ac too. I Mikrotiks with ADSL2+ modems (like the Draytek Vigor 120) in RFC-1422 bridged mode but they will work fine with cable modems, Wimax system and with some models you can use a USB 3G/4G dongle.

Anything sold in the last 4-5 years with an i3/i5/i7 with over 2GB of RAM and Vista or Win7 is still more than enough for most businesses and individuals. There is no real incentive to replace the whole machine when there are cheap options to upgrade with a few more GB and an SSD to give it a new lease of life.

As I recall this happened when the South Brisbane exchange was relocated a few years ago. Everyone who was on that exchange ended up with a brand new fibre to the premises connection to replace the copper.

Timothy, you complete numpty. "Officially Confirms" is perfectly cromulent.

30 Days? Sounds like a trial license expiring.

I agree we do lived in a death and gore sanitised world. I don't like such gore as entertainment like we get now with Dexter or any number of other splatter fantasies as it's not tempered in the west with the agony of injury and pain and the finality of death. Gimme living boobs anyday for entertainment! I remember visiting an Indian friends house and a newspaper he had showed a large front page picture of the woman who blew up Rajif Ghandi pieced back together as much as possible - head, arms and legs only. It was pretty jolting to see as a teenager but I think the West needs more of such doses reality.

Given the creator of Windows and US government can, sufficiently compelled, walk into any Windows system that is internet connected at any time they desire what's the frickin' point? Everything else is security theatrics. Do what the old security honcho of MS has done and drop out.

... factories that make $5 wrenchs. I heard they are set to make a killing soon.

My bleary memory now recalls it was probably about PROMIS and INSLAW. Read about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Casolaro

I recall reading about a hushed up brouhaha ages ago concerning backdoored USA compiled software run on Australian government systems in the 80's or early 90's. Google seems to disavow all knowledge damnit.

How do you get a decent image if you have to peer through the sticky tape used to grab the graphene?

Australian and New Zealand ./ers will understand this as "Google Releases Glass Factory System Image, Completely Fucking Broken Bootloader"

Did they try NOT eating surströmming at lunch in the vicinity of the experiment?

I agree. At my age I am at the point where I want development to be more of a hobby and do work activities that don't involve sitting in front of a CAD tool, CRO or debugger any more anyway. Time for a career change? Probably.

The snotty little wet-behind-the-ears original poster needs to show some obviously lacking maturity and get some perspective instead of just whining like a little spoilt bitch.