It's sad to see Xii decay the way it has. Back in 1998 when I joined Red Hat, I helped organise the porting of X11 to Linux. I hope Xlibre succeeds in bringing X11 up to date.

Indeed.
And the Germans then learned you could make high strength, light weight monocoque wooden constructions when these started dropping bombs on them - the DH98 Mosquito!

Interestingly, Kurt Tank, who designed the FW190, produced the TA-154 Moskito - a German version of the wooden Mosquito. The performance was not as good as expected and then the RAF bombed the glue factory ...

:-) Love it!

But fortunately, we are still alive and most of us have mobile and data connections. Optus is only the 2nd largest carrier in Oz - so the rest of us are OK.

Mind you, our Internet does suck - thanks to a past Liberal government completely stuffing up the proposed Fibre to the Premises roll out. They promised 'their' version would be better, cheaper and faster.

Of course, it is none of those things...

I have to disagree. The fact that Linux (and much other FOSS) exists is evidence to support my claim.

Back in the 1990s, there was no "market model" for FOSS. That came later than the products themselves.

It's not the cost of the propellant (or rather oxidiser) that matters - it's the MASS (and that of the associated tankage etc). Every kilogram of mass saved increases the payload - which in turn drops the $/kg launch cost.

There are actually FIVE countries that have successfully tested scramjets in flight - the list should include Australia. What is more, the Australian project (HySHot run from the University of Queensland) was the FIRST successful scramjet flight (in July 2002).

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyShot

Simple reason for not including that info - I wanted to hear opinions on all possibilities, not just limited to Android. Good functionality will trump one particular App. My friend doesn't have access to that App now so continuing not to have it is not the real issue - useable, portable email and web access is much more important.

Many thanks for all the feedback. I will talk to the Blind Association here in Australia and then take my friend to try out a few tablets. For software reasons, I am hoping that Android will do enough on a large tablet (there's an app that doesn't run on IOS that I know he would like to have access to), but we'll go and look at iPads as well!

If there are any more comments, please do post them - I'll check back several times over the next few days.

Again, my thanks!

Robert Hart

As a slightly different slant on this troll rousing topic, it is worth noting a few things.
1) Per capita, Australia is the worlds highest emitter of greenhouse gases as we use mostly coal to generate electricity. Furthermore, we are one of the worlds largest coal miners/exporters and so contribute significantly to global CO2 production elsewhere.
2) In September, Australia elected a new government that is predominantly in the hands of climate change deniers. The Prime Minister (Tony Abbott) is on the public record saying that climate change is "crap" (http://blogs.abc.net.au/victoria/2009/12/climate-change-is-crap-tony-abbot-said-to-the-pyrenees-advocate.html). Amongst the new government's first acts was to defund the Climate Commission (along with several other "green" initiatives of previous governments). They are also committed to repealing the existing Carbon Tax legislation, but cannot (yet) force this through the upper house (Senate) which they do not control.
3) In response to its defunding, the Climate Commission reformed itself as the Climate Council, raising around $1 million in under two weeks. Whilst not big bikkies in US terms, this is extremely significant in a small population country like Australia that demonstrates that many Australians feel very strongly about climate change - strongly enough to not only make a one off donation but to commit to regular, monthly donations to support the ongoing public information work of the Climate Council.

From their "about" page http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/about-us/
"The Climate Council is an independent non-profit organisation funded by donations by the public. Our mission is to provide authoritative, expert advice to the Australian public on climate change."

In 1959, John Wyndham (the Day of the Triffids, the Chrysalids etc) wrote a set of linked short stories about a family participating in the colonisation of space. In one of these, the USA, Russia and the UK have nuclear armed moon bases.

An interesting case of art imitating life - even if the the life was top secret at the time!

If you look at the list of companies that were sued (and have settled), you will notice that none of them is an Australian company. It was Australian tax payer dollars that funded this research (and the patenting process), so just how does the Australian government tax all those non-Australain companies??? The ONLY way to do it is with patents so that the companies making money from the technology in many countries around the world pay a part of their profits back to the inventors.

As has been said, the CSIRO will use this money to fund further research - such as the "pure" radio astronomy work which resulted in this spin off piece of technology in the first place!

RobHart

Bias up front: I am an ex academic (in engineering), bored early retiree who is now teaching senior Maths/Physics at high school (in Australia) - including 10th grade Maths. As well as being an academic, I worked in the private sector (including my own business), so I have some idea as to what I would expect of general clerical staff.

I am truly astonished that a "well educated" person could not solve the sort of problems referenced in the article. Simple Maths problems like these do not just show Mathematical capability, but also demonstrate logical reasoning skills - the sort of skills I would look for when hiring someone for a general clerical position.

That said, quite a few of my (middle to lower ability class) kids in 10th grade this year failed to meet this sort of standard, although with most of these it was lack of effort/application not innate ability that determined their outcome. Quite a few of these kids said they couldn't care less as "Maths was irrelevant" to their area of career interest (despite solid examples that demonstrated that idea to be incorrect).

I have the feeling that many kids regard Maths as hard and "you can do well without it" as a socially accepted truth. Yet we live in an increasingly technical (numerate, Mathematical) world, so I can't help but feel this widely accepted "truth" will (or quite probably already is going to) bite us in the bum: without logical, (mathematically literate) people to run our world, it will fall into a hole...