Unless you happen to be a complete Luddite, you know about the Optus (and other) telecommunication meltdown which happened just recently. To that end, you ought to find this image of great amusement.
Funnier again, aparently that sign post states the cable is 17.8M away, aquiting the poor sod who dig up the cable and caused all the trouble, since they weren’t actually too wrong to dig right next to the sign.
I actually only discovered this extremely recently, so good timing for me because I don’t have to wait. But lol, you have to check this out. A must see for all Buffy, Angel and Firefly flans. 😛
http://drhorrible.com/act_III.html
For those who have never heard of this, I got this explanation from Wikipedia:
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a 40-minute, 3-part musical comedy produced for the Internet, telling the story of a low-rent supervillain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to. The movie was written by Joss Whedon and his brothers Zack Whedon (a television writer), Jed Whedon (a composer) and Jed’s fiancée, Maurissa Tancharoen (an actress). The writing team penned the musical during the WGA Writer’s Strike. The idea was to create something small and inexpensive, yet professionally done, in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike.
The ESRB Proves their Use Once Again (not)!
Posted by Zonk on Slashdot
“During the recent Senate hearings on video game violence, one expert claimed that the ESRB underrated violent games. They went on to say that Pacman was 64% violent. To some, this means you shouldn’t play Pacman; to others, it highlights what’s wrong with Senate hearings. Whether a game is violent or not depends on how you classify violence, and the ESRB has the job of doing just that. They’re not regulated by the government, they let the game makers recommend their own ratings, and don’t play every game they rate. Is the ESRB to be trusted?“
Articles like this really piss me off!
Media Companies (records ones in particular) make up a major part of the wealthiest companies in the world.
They are also the first ones to cry foul when something goes “wrong”.
If they would stop releasing shit music, perhaps people would buy the albums. Also notice, that they do not count LEGALLY downloaded tunes in the figure. Sure album sales may have dropped howevermuch%, but how many magnitudes of 10 did legal music downloads go up? The media companies get a slice of these! As media becomes more diversified in nature, people have to shift the focus of their disposable income. How many people bought DVDs in 1996?
I believe in free-market. If the market likes your product – they will buy it. It’s really that simple. Most people understand that the advantages of purcahsing media speak for themselves. No mess! No fuss!
If I like something, I will consume it. And, pay for it. But, like most people, I only have so many dollars to go around and once it’s gone – it’s gone. No matter how much the media companies complain, it will not make me spend anymore money. It’s (for most people) a finite resource.
So, before people start accusing the ‘net for the drop in album sales, perhaps they should check reality first!
All you crazy downloaders out there might want to checkout this article I found – I’ve been having some issues recently with poor download times. I made the changes this guy recommends and my downloads are up around 100k/s again!
Just when you think he can’t possibly get any stupider…
IN BRIEF |Optus is experiencing a major outage in QLD and northern NSW due to simultaneous network failures. According to reports, a fibre link between NSW and QLD was damaged at the same time as a hardware failure occurred on the redundant path.
The outage is affecting all services, including Internet, mobiles and landlines. Many businesses including telcos, ISPs and others that rely on connectivity are also suffering as a result.
Some ISPs are reporting 1PM as a possible restoration time.
(Source, whirlpool.net.au)
This resulted in the total or partial loss for Optus, VodaPhone and 3 mobiles, internet and telephony services. Since many other ISPs and carriers use (in all or part) of the Optus interstate links (such as iiNet) also suffered from the outage which lasted from 8am this morning until just after 1pm today.
The electronic check-in and baggage handling systems at Brisbane’s international and domestic terminals went offline, delaying flights for up to an hour.
Major banks and hospitals were also affected but the 000 number was not. Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital spokeswoman Kieran Keyes said the Optus outage had minimal impact on the women’s and children’s hospital.
While errors like this are incredibly rare, it does highlight how weak the nation is to possible attacks to our telecommunication infrastructure. If the government owns none of the telecommunication network, and the telcos are unable to reach peering and fail-over agreements, then the country could suffer a total communications blackout with only a handful of targets needing to be hit. Since the government is unable to mandate security with the telcos and with Telstra now being fully privatized, how can the government control and secure the networks in times of crisis?
The fact that some public services were effected at all, shows that this is a major national security problem which needs addressing. Taking down the communication network of a country like Australia, should in our age of technology, be a near impossibility.
From the NineMSN.com website:
Police officers were forced to smash the window of a car in Queensland last week to save what they thought was an unconscious baby.
But the heroic deed, which took place in regional Gympie, became an embarrassing blunder when the baby rescued from the car turned out to be an uncannily lifelike doll, the Courier Mail reports.
A similar incident had occurred in the US when police smashed the window of a Hummer to rescue a “baby” that turned out to be a doll belonging to the owner’s wife, she told the Courier Mail.
“People do have to be careful when they go out with them…I tell them to hold them properly, not dangle them by one leg or something, because other people do think they are real babies and become alarmed,” she said.
Baby reborn dolls can sell for up to $1000 and are usually painstakingly hand-painted with real hair and eyelashes.
“They’re even weighted to feel like a baby’s weight and they flop like a baby,” Ms Cernik said.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but why does anyone need a doll this life-like? Am I the only one who thinks there is something a little creepy and disturbing about this doll. Call me old fashioned, but I just think there is some inherently unnecessary about having a doll which looks like the real deal – and even less need to carry it around town.
I often complain about Apple products. The recent launch of the iPhone 3G is merely just another example of this. Not only is the Apple Reality Distortion Field at full strength again, and now apparently the field has grown so strong that Apple doesn’t even have to advertise with it’s own cash anymore!
Is this honest to god “frontpage news”? Or have they considered making Apple pay for its own advertising, rather than letting it replace actual news content?
Update: Firstly I’d like to point out that I do understand the irony of posting this, since I am effectively providing free advertising to Apple as well. Secondly, I think the iPhone is just another phone; however I do think that the web browsing on it is second to none.
Update II: Thanks to Ben for pointing out this sweet clip from YouTube:
From An Onymous Lefty, Lynch mob makes creepy paedophile seem like a victim:
Out of control scenes in Queensland, where the inability of the courts to find an impartial jury has led to a man accused of a child sex offence being released, to the excitement of an angry lynch mob. Their fine mobby work has led to expensive police protection being required to protect the man, since lily-livered modern governments have some kind of weirdo problem with self-appointed gangs of angry people doling out mob “justice” in place of the courts. We don’t need to see the evidence that a court would – he’s done something similar before which obviously means it couldn’t be anyone else who’s done it this time, so why can’t we exact our revenge in whatever bloodthirsty manner seems best to us?
First, I think it’s important to stress that nothing I am about to say should indicate that I condone the activities of this clearly sick individual. NOTHING!
But at the end of the day, this whole morbid story makes me sick to my neck. It feels like something which could so quickly spiral out of control and end up like the final scene in the “Lord of the Flies”. But by far the most disturbing thing about this that its exactly this type of fanatical and illogical behavior of the public which has led to the failure of incarceration for this man. So far, I believe that the Police, the Courts and the Government have acted properly. As much as my personal feelings are to have this man simply erased from existence, it’s not up to the public to enact on bloody vengeance.
He was placed by the state, approximately 100Kms from the small town of Miles, and provided an extremely low risk of re-offending. Because he’s literally been “run out of town” the police have been forced to move him to a property in South-East Queensland with much higher population density and constant Police protection costing tax payers, $1000 per day!
The lynch mob have not only failed in getting rid of him (as if there was any place better we could stick/do to him anyway), but instead;
To put all this simply, they shouldn’t be protesting outside the property where he lives, they should be protesting outside Parliament House; where issues like this belong.