Does Richard's response address your concerns?

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

Chris ... I initially thought the same thing when the Nokia 808 came out under Symbian with this camera on it. But a little research into that camera reveals that Nokia may be onto something. Quite simply from what I've seen, it takes stunning images for a phone. It can do a very effective "digital" zoom and by using their pixel 'binning' technique the images are like an effective 5 meg cam in size. i.e quite manageable. I feel Nokia are being quite innovative here and I really don't think the phone should be dismissed so easily. Yes perhaps a little bulky but it will mean I hopefully can have a reasonably high quality cam with me at all times rather than lugging around my Nikon D600 kit with it's array of lenses. The only pity (for me) is that it does not have a 1920 x 1080 screen or better nor a micro SD card slot but I can live without those. I'm taking my patience pills while I wait down here in Oz for the beast to turn up on our shelves and as you would know Chris, that can take far too long :sigh:

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

I'm fine with Windows 8 as I was with Windows 3.1, 95, NT, Win 7 etc. Around the time I set up Win 8 on my dev machine, I also had a Samsung S3 Android phone supplied to me. It took a little while to get used to Win 8. A couple of days tops. I have found I'm still discovering new ways of doing things (or trying to) on my Android Phone. An OS obviously developed by a committee. So if millions can learn and even love Android then Win 8 should be a walk in the park.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

Yep, an excellent article for sure :)

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

... as described with my Lenovo T510 and NVidia NVS 3100M card. Neat. I hadn't noticed before. Oh and I have a dual monitor setup and it works on the left of the left hand screen and on the right of the right hand screen. Just have to move the mouse, no left or right button clicking or holding needed. .. odd eh :)

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

That's cheap ... here in South Oz it's 110 UK Pounds!!!

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

You say you don't like dealing with Telstra (and I agree) yet they provide the widest coverage so you've gone with them (so have I). Fair enough, however then you state that Optus and Vodaphone have the best deals but lousy coverage (all too true). To me, this is the nub of the problem with deregulated Telecommunications in a sparsly populated Oz. With such a large land mass and with low but concentrated population centres, providing network coverage everywhere is expensive so the Telco's like Optus and Vodaphone pick the eyes out of the market, leaving the more regulated Telstra to foot the bill for a greater coverage via higher fees to their customers. I believe we really should have one, really excellent, well provided network. Instead of ugly phone towers on top of everything from tall buildings to fruit shops! With the one network provider wholesaling to the various Telco's at a regulated and fair price. The current situation is a farce, especially if you just happen to be one of the poor sods whose house is alongside yet another phone tower.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

Excellent .. thanks :)

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

If I were you I wouldn’t move here at all. I live in Adelaide, South Australia. These are just some of the reasons why I wouldn't bother: 1. As I look outside at the moment and all I see is a clear blue sky with a few fluffy white clouds. Same as yesterday, the same as the day before that and the same tomorrow. Boring! 2. There is a gentle breeze blowing but I have to wait until this evening before the sea breeze comes in to go sailing. Why do I always have to wait? 3. It has been about 30- 32 degrees all week. Boring. 4. I have far too many things to choose from to do in the next few weeks. The Adelaide 500 Car Race (in the city parklands). The French Group F fireworks is on within two hundred metres from my house this Saturday night. Another thing I’ll have to go to I suppose. Womadelaide is on with 500 international performers coming, again in the city park lands within walking distance to my house. It’s on every year… bloody boring eh! And then there is the Northern lights spectacular on in North Terrace, City. BORING!!! 5. I have to take a day off in two weeks for the next long weekend. Pity, I’d much prefer to work than spending time with friends fishing and just relaxing. 6. If I travel the twenty minutes to the nearest beach all I see is pure white sand for miles and the occasional topless sunbather. Why bother going! 7. If I travel up into the “Hills” all I see is boring green, rolling hills with hardly any traffic with little towns with coffee shops and boring Café’s and people just generally lazing around pretending they are enjoying themselves. No one seems to be in any hurry! Sheeze, they’re boring. 8. I’m going home from work tonight, a long 30 minutes (and I’m a long way out for Adelaide work) were I’ll have to put up with yet another boringly clear night, sitting outside with a few friends all equally bored drinking from a choice of far too many beers and wines. Trust me it gets very boring. So why the heck would you want to live here? It is such a boringly nice to live. Really, I wouldn’t bother. People in Sydney will tell you, Adelaide is great place to fly over. They must be right. Everyone is Sydney are so much smarter than people in Adelaide. Just leave this life to me. I’ll put up with it I suppose.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

modified on Thursday, February 25, 2010 1:43 AM

Try Oz, NZ or PNG. In these countries there are plenty of places that not touristy but are fantastically interesting, great hiking etc. I'm sure there are other locations with a bit of effort one can find.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

It may just be me, but why is it that the images (stunning as they are) always seem to have at least one star that has a "star" burst filter effect applied to it (compass like light rays emanating from the star)? Is this deliberately applied by Nasa or is this some sort aberration of the equipment they use? To me this effect is very distracting.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

One of the best pieces of software I've come across is "BootIt" from www.terabyteunlimited.com An excellent utility that I've been using for years. It runs independently of any OS and can create, delete, slide, expand, contract partitions and format them into any of zillions of OS types. It also has excellent capabilities to determine just what drives and partitions are visible to your OS, one can easily change active status on partitions, images partitions to your choice of media etc etc. PS I am in no way affiliated with the product. I just like to acknowledge excellent software when I see it.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

While trying to convince myself to go to work the other day a song came on the radio that caught my attention. Then again yesterday I heard another song by the same chap. If you are like me and like having music playing while coding perhaps check out the music of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Here is one of many glowing reviews: http://www.smh.com.au/news/cd-reviews/gurrumul/2008/04/11/1207856814878.html[^] To me, he has a sublime voice. Recommended :|

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

In an ideal world I only ever would do this in my own time (e.g lunch time) but how does my Boss (or his voyeristic lacky) really know what is my own time? The point is that someone looking at an email sent to me in good faith by another person should not have to worry about if a third party may intercept it. On the surface it seems so simple. Just only do work related things on work provided facilities. Well that'll mean no private postal mail, no private conversations with anyone (not even the footy results), no private phone calls just work work work for the corporation .... now if that ain't 1984 a bit late I don't know what is. I'm hoping that employers will use this to differentiate hwo they employ people. i.e we are a non-gender, non racial, and non eves dropping employer! The bottom line is the government is bringing this in, in the guise of anti terrorism which is really quite laughable despite the real reasons behind it.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

Hhhmnnn a first class, intellectual reply. If it amuses you so.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

Hi Christian, This is a simplistic argument that the employers often put up. On the surface it seems quite reasonable to only use the internet STRICKTLY for work. However life is unfortunately is not that simple. If my children's school needs to contact me urgently at work on a work supplied phone they certainly can (there are many other cases one could site). Monitoring of phone calls by my employer on employer supplied equipment is not allowed. Just as I can also open a postal letter supplied to me that may have nothing to do with work. The only thing different is the medium used to exchange information. In this case the internet is easily used by people to sureptiously open personal content. Managers should manage not be pouring over employees emails or internet useage. If you are getting your job done in the time allocated what is the problem?

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

After listening to this morning's news I am sitting here totally amazed at what our government is proposing to do. So much so that I feel quite scared even distressed about it. Our Deputy PM, Julia Gillard, is going to allow employers to legally monitor (view) employees email and web site usage. As it is already common place for employers to monitor emails etc I feel the law should be tightened on privacy in this area certainly not relaxed. Apparently, all in the name of preventing a terrorist attack on the Internet in Australia! Yeah right! It took a while but it looks like 1984 has finally arrived!!! So what is my boss going to do next? Monitor my employer provided phones, watch and listen to who I talk to, even open my (but delivered at work) postal mail, have me wear recording devices and monitor me via a GPS where I am at any time! I cannot believe that a labour government would do such a totally uneducated even myopic act and at the same time be seen to be pandering to employers! So an employer is going to be able tell if my email is about terrorism? Or that the web site I am visiting is going to trigger a terrorist act. Are they going to have the time to do this. Oh please!!! The real agenda here is to allow the employers to monitor their employees while the managers remain sitting on their lazy bottoms, rather than getting around and MANAGING their staff. Unreal!!!:mad:

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

I actually rather like the existing Eclipse tool and the associated framework. I was forced, kicking and screaming, into using Eclipse when I used to work for IBM (I sometimes wonder how the friendly folk in India are getting on with my job). I grew to really like the Eclipse IDE. Whoever is in control of the Eclipse "project" must have had a great vision and carried it through the whole range of players associated with it and with significantly tight discipline. Also impressive is the range of spawned projects/ tools and even completely new "Applications" i.e "Eclipse Trader" and others. IMHO very neat stuff indeedy. So if the Eclipse project team and MS can both benefit from this that'd be great to me.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

I have been a fan of Windows for years. I had a great time when beta testing Windows 95. Now I've no idea what happened with Vista but I've tried to stick to it however I think I'm gunna have to give up. I've installed SP1 in the hope the thing would improve but I'm out of luck. The one major stumbling block I have is sleep mode. It sure puts it to sleep alright only to not be able to wake it up!!! I've tried latest BIOS updates, windows updates, Video Updates (NVidia) even reinstalling it. All to no avail. It is a real pain!! Even simple things like the standard photo viewer is horrible in full screen view. Photography is my passion. Vista brags about how photo aware it is but then Bill drops in a dog of a viewer. The photo's look great on my 30" Dell when in Windowed mode but when switched to full screen mode the resolution drops dramatically ... sheeze it ain't hard is it? Put simply I can't see any real advantage over XP except for Chip and PC manufacturers. All the orginal neat features like genuine multi-user etc was dropped leaving only what seems to be a dressed up GUI. Have you ever run Windows 98SE on one of your machines? You have to wonder if we are going backwards rather than forwards at all!!! I simply could not recommend this version of Windows to anyone.

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia,

modified on Thursday, March 6, 2008 9:56 PM

I was lucky enough to attend the last session of the last day of the Adelaide test. Simply awesome... It has been very hot here so I have just slumped in the sofa watching the Aussies cream the Poms. It doesn't get any better than this. Pity the tests were not a bit closer .... I suppose that is what made the Adeliade test so good. Check out ... http://farm1.static.flickr.com/110/314816827_252a317563_b.jpg[^] and the memorable Adelaide score board ... http://farm1.static.flickr.com/112/314817596_6921c81614_b.jpg[^] More pics on my blog ...

Peter Hayward Ngarkat Technologies South Australia www.boxflat.net