The Government is paying for the NBN by borrowing money. The NBN will make a whole heap of money and that profit will be used to pay back the debt.

This will not cost the taxpayers of Australia $0.01. In fact, once the debt is paid off it will start returning a very tidy profit to the Government in either annual profit or from a sale of the NBN to private (hopefully the former).

This whole project is a once in a century (or more) infrastructure upgrade that will bring massive benifits to both people and business in Australia, as well as returning a very handsome profit to the Government.

Try working in Comms on complicated networks. DNS is great but isn't practical to use in all cases.

Bullshit. I and many friends of mine have songs and albums on iTunes. None of us are signed. We also have our music for sale/streaming on about 10 other site. We all set this up ourselves, no middle-man required. Although there are services that will distribute you music to any of the online sale sites for a fee or cut of your profits.

When people chat loudly on a phone while on public transport, I like to comment on their conversation when they hang up.

Me: It sounds like Susan is a real drama queen. You should tell her to stop being so dramatic.
Phone person: What, were you listening in to my private conversation?
Me: Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realise it was private. I thought you wanted to involve everyone else on the train in your mindless pap.
Phone person: !!?!?

I don't mind people talking on phones when they need to. e.g. I'll be at the station in 20 mins, can you come pick me up? But why have full detailed conversations while on a packed bus/train?

The virtual tuners are brilliant. You can use a single tuner card to record multiple channels off the one Digital stream. That means if you have 2 virtual tuners set up on your one physical tuner card you can record two shows one after the other with the padding you have set for each show. And if the station is broadcasting multicast stations, you can record two of those multicast stations at the same time.

This is exactly what you are asking for. There are plenty of howto's on setting up the virtual tuners.

I've run Windows MCE XP, Vista, Win7 and MythTV. It took me all of about an hour to set up MythTV the way I wanted (yes, with virtual tuners too) following the howto's. Sure I've played with linux desktops before, but I wouldn't call myself an expert by any means.

MythTV has issues (which is why I'm using Win7 now, it is really nice but I miss some of the MythTV features) but it is a work in progress. It does some things much better than the alternatives and some things worse.

If you've had so much trouble with virtual tuners, perhaps you should stay away from MythTV until version 1.0.

That's only because the previous Australian Federal Government stupidly decided to sell off the whole of Telstra. It really should have been split into wholesale and retail, wholesale remaining government owned. Once it was sold off, the infrastructure was sold off with it. Telstra has always been difficult to deal with, completely privatising it just made it near impossible.

The Australian National Broadband Network will finally rectify decades of poor telecommunications and infrastructure policy by successive Federal Governments.

Nice. I wasn't trying to pay you out or anything, it's just that the /. crowd are very varied in their backgrounds.

Agreed. However clear written policies may have helped the situation. Then again, there's no guarantee that Childs would have followed those policies.

Definately agreed. I have "hit by a bus" action files for each position in my team, including myself. As I'm sure you know, it's just good risk management. Unfortunately we have had to implement one of those "hit by a bus" action files in the past.

Have you ever worked in a secure IT environment? Actually, have you ever worked in IT?

Good IT security policy has rules and restrictions over who can have access to certain systems. I manage some systems that my boss isn't authorised to access. There are plenty of examples of this and it is completely normal. Basic IT security practice is to only have access to systems you need to access. An example of this is root access for some systems. In order to get root access you need to place a request with IT Security, they enable your root access for a limited time (perhaps an hour or so, depending on what you need the access for). IT Security keep a log of who gained root access when, why, and who authorised it (if additional authorisation is required).

You need clear written rules for password/account hand-over. Places serious about IT security have a dedicated IT Security section. Typically someone there is authorised to receive passwords to pass out to replacements etc. For some systems you may be required to keep a copy of the account details in a sealed envelope within a dual access safe.

If I gave my boss the password to a system he's not authorised to access I would be fired on the spot and taken to court for breaching security protocol. My contract specifically mentions that scenario.

I'm not defending Childs, from what's come out from the trial he was being a dick. However if they didn't have any clear written rules for password hand-over then the higher-ups also should take some blame for this situation.

I'm not in the US, so I can't really talk about US bank security. But there is a difference between customer security and internal security.

I'm dealing with systems that entire banking sectors use to transfer funds between each other. Many billions of dollars passing through these systems daily.

Compare the risk associated with those systems to the risk of a customer losing thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of dollars. Many banks choose to wear the risk of fraud to make customer interaction easier. Not saying it's right or not, but there's always a trade off.

Look at the way some banks (particularly in the US) hand out credit cards. They know that some people aren't going to pay their bills but they calculate (correctly) that the percentage of defaults will be low enough that the overall business will be profitable. They could get tougher with their customer selection criteria so that virtually noone defaults, but they realised they can make more money this way.

Yes. Well, my section within our IT department in an organisation within the Banking industry.

Password security is one of the questions I ask of all potential employees, as should any IT employer.

Funny thing about banks, they kind of take security a bit seriously.

I would never hire anyone for a technical role who would give a password to an unauthorised person, including their boss (assuming they're not authorised to receive it).

Telstra will most certainly not control the last mile. Well, at least not Telstra in it's current form. This is why the Government is pushing for a split of Telstra into wholesale and retail.

I won't try to defend our Communications Minister, but there are some very smart technical people involved with this project. It will be a huge success for Australia.

Almost everyone who works in communications in Australia agrees this is a great idea, as I do. Some are skeptical about the dollars, but this infrastructure will be in place for many many decades and will be profitable in the long run. A cheer went up in my IT department when this was announced, literally people standing up at their desks saying how awesome this will be for Aus. You should have seen the celebrations when it was announced that Telstra would be split into wholesale and retail. :)

Now consider what the bandwidth of the NBN will be used for. TV, Telephone, Internet, Video Calls, remote diagnosis by doctors, huge benifits for schools, library's, research institutions, small/medium/large businesses and more.

The NBN will form the backbone of Australian communications for many many decades to come. The return on investment will take many years, but this is a long term project that will eventually be extremely profitable as well as hugely benificial to all Australians.

I work in the Comms industry. We have been crying out for this for years. Coupled with a split of Telstra into Wholesale and Retail, this is a brilliant project for Australia.

The US should follow our example, we have similar geographical problems and everyone who knows anything about communications agrees this is technically a great idea. Some may be skeptical about the $, but all agree it's technically a brilliant idea.

And using the term "our dear leader" shows your foolishness. Do you understand communications technology at all, or are you just repeating something someone told you?

Oops. Wrong topic. Must be a bug in the system. Couldn't possibly have been user error.

They may just get a seat.

One of our current federal senators is Seven Fielding, of the christian political party called Family First. http://www.stevefielding.com.au/

That fool got his seat with only 1.8% of the primary vote. The remainder were on preferences.