Times a wastin'

A marvellous time waster.

http://beta.www.mousebreaker.com/games/topspinner/playgame

After the event, no one wants to know!

So they make all these outrageous claims of "benefits".

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/state-government-hails-world-youth-day-a-success/2008/11/18/1226770451116.html

Now they are being asked to prove it, and they don't want to.

A reasonable person might ask "Why?"

A cynical response might be "Because they might be shown to have wasted the money."

No wonder NSW is doing so badly.

What next? They can't prove that spending millions of dollars on that V8 Supercar race in Homebush - we won't be surprised at that outcome.

Pirates, but of a different sort

So what have authorities been doing about piracy?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/pirates-are-very-good/2008/11/18/1226770413138.html

Seems that they're just paying up and encouraging this behaviour...??

It was taken 730km off the coast - that is a loooong way...

Apparently its been taken to their lair/port.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/saudi-supertanker-taken-to-somali-pirate-lair/2008/11/19/1226770486149.html

More costs to business being passed down to the consumer, because the companies didn't stand up to the pirates in the first place. Paying them only gets them better equipped for next time!

The Poms are idiots

Just read this - they're absolute nutcases.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24672187-23109,00.html

A parent should have the right to discipline their children and not have some nosey dim-witted twit report them for trying to get the child to behave properly. That the police get involved is even more stupid - go stop a thief, or even better - stop those teenage kids from stabbing each other!

These morons that let their children go wild should be the ones locked up now, because children raised without appropriate discipline will be the next generation of thieves, muggers, druggies, murderers, etc. Damn you slackers for dragging down the rest of society.

Useless nosey people, and useless cops!!

Desktop life expectancy?

So my desktop is starting to flicker and play silly buggers (small freezes, etc).

I suspect it may have been because the weather has been so warm recently, but who knows. The fans inside the case dont really want to spin, so they're not doing the job of drawing out hot air either.

I caved in last night, and opened up the computer, blew out loads and loads of dust, and then proceeded to remove the graphics card (7900GT) and CPU (E6600). I was lucky to have a tube of Arctic Silver and the cleasing stuff (Bottle 1 and Bottle 2, whatever they're called). Grabbed a couple of old rags, cut them up, and proceeded to unscrew, clean and redo the thermal paste.

Admitted today is a lot cooler than yesterday, so I am not seeing any(many?) artifacts at all.

I guess I will just have to wait and see how things turn out...

Eee PC 701 - my first opinions.

Okay, I am now posting this using the Asus Eee pc 701, white in colour (Im sure it will turn into a more standard beige over time).
The keyboard is tiny and not very good for touch typing. The keys are smaller, and slightly mishappen, and some keys dont quite register with the same uniform pressure as others.
Meh, my touch typing isnt the best, but even I think this little keyboard is just too small.

Oh, the screen is too small too - just not wide enough.

Seems pretty quick to boot and shutdown, and only 1 instance where i had to hold down the power key :)

Cheap Aussie dollar

Well, the Aussie dollar has fallen significantly over the past month, and this seems to have started with higher prices appearing in the shops. I can see that Dell and some other shops have jacked up prices, and this can only be a bad thing... I was looking at a cheap netbook and some cheap IT stuff, but having kept an eye on websites like fluidtek and ccpu, I have seen them put prices up week by week.

If this keeps happening, I can only assume that plenty of people are going to delay any sort of purchse until after the new year. (Thats providing that they are still in the position of considering spending money on these things, as opposed to just chucking it in the mortgage)