freshbytes

Stargate Atlantis is awesome.

I’d go so far as to say that out of all the Stargate series, Atlantis is by far the best. Maybe it’s the charisma of Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, the witty responses of Dr Rodney McKay, or the awesome storyline and plot that just sucks you right in.

Whatever it is, it’s awesome.

Anyway, if you’ve been paying attention, you would have seen that the theme around these parts of the interwebs has been changing frequently. By frequently, I mean, changing-so-fast-you-hit-refresh-and-the-theme-changes kind of thing. But you get the picture. Anyway, the current theme is how freshbytes will stay for a while, so get used to it. As usual, if you hate it, make your thoughts heard in the forums where one of us admins will hear your call and try and answer…

You might also have noticed the new “Message of the Day” section on the left sidebar… If you want to submit your own “Message of the Day’, you can do so at the Quote Submission page.

On another note: for you Chemistry people, ALWAYS remember to put your anodes on the left of your electrochemical cell diagrams. I don’t know why we do this, we just do.

Benny, out.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: anode, Freshbytes, staragate atlantis

Yeah, 2nd Tech post in a day – if you’re wondering what is going on, read on… Otherwise, game on!

When it comes to internet in Australia, there is only one person that has all the info. That person is Simon Hackett, the current CEO of both Internode and Agile. Simon’s work in the area of Australian Broadband access is nothing short of extraordinary, and his blog reflects his thoughts.

Apart from being CEO of two of the best Internet-related companies in Australia (Yeah, we do love you, Cisco), Hackett is also a Mac user – which just makes this blogger respect him even more.

Recently, he has posted an article about the current state of Fibre-To-The-Node, a fast broadband access plan for all Australians. Unfortunately, this plan by the government has some major flaws, and over at his blog, he posts a slideshow of why it isn’t the optimal plan for improving broadband speeds in Australia.

Read all about it here: An Inconvenient Truth about FTTN.

Original post credit to MacTalk Australia. Their post can be found here.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: agile, fttn, internode, simon hackett

Most, if not all, people ’round here won’t be aware of a special event happening in India which lasts a month and starts tomorrow night.

It’s the IPL (Indian Premier League). You know, the ‘rogue’ 20/20 cricket competition.

For those who don’t know what is is, it is a ‘formal’ take on 20/20. Local, young Indian players are set alongside some players from around the world who were ‘bought’ by one of the clubs for a certain amount of money. For example, Ricky Ponting was bought for a certain amount of money by the Kolkata club. How do the clubs afford it, you ask? Well, each club is ’sponsored’ by a company or corporation. That’s the way it goes.

This is a very unique way to get young Indian players playing against the greatest players in the world, and in some cases, great players against each other. Some teams are better off than others (like Kolkata, they have Ricky Ponting, David Hussey, Sourav Ganguly, Shoaib Akhtar and Ishant Sharma). Believe it or not, Anil Kumble may face off against Ishant Sharma (they’re on different teams).

If anyone read anything into the ‘07/’08 cricket season in Australia, then they would know that Sharma troubled Ponting with his bowling. It is ironic that they are playing in the same team in the IPL.

The first IPL match is on tomorrow night, at 8 p.m. India time. India is UTC+5:30. We are UTC+10. Yes, this means that this match won’t start our time until half-past midnight. Not cool. The fixture is a bit better for some matches, as some are set to start at 5 p.m. Indian time (9:30 p.m. here). The matches themselves are televised on TDT, so those without a Set Top Box are stuffed. If you can get TDT, then I suggest recording the matches, but for some that may not be possible anyway. Therefore, hassle me (with my MythTV PVR setup), and I might be able to record them for you!

1st match – Royal Challengers Bangalore v Kolkata Knight Riders

2008 IPL Wikipedia Link

The Official Fixture

Enjoy, I know I will. I can’t wait to see Sharma in action again!

written by Chris Jacques \\ tags: aussie, cricket, india, IPL, myth_rec

Yes, after all the time it took for the Linux kernel guys to do some hacking & patching, kernel 2.6.25 was released last night. The last release before this one, 2.6.24, was released back in January.

I’m not sure of the differences in the versions, but I do know that this release includes the ath5k wireless driver. For those not in the know, ath5k is the Open Source Atheros wireless driver. There are many bug fixes in this release, as found when checking through the Changelog.

It is well noted that the Kernel Devs did not use this release as a ‘new feature’ release. Sure, there may be a few little new features, but as far as I know, the next release (2.6.26) is going to have a few new features worth mentioning.

Check it out anyway, either ’cause you want to be up to date or you like checking out really new stuff (or you want a little cred!).

Links to checkout:

http://kernel.org

The changelog (word of warning: this will take a little while to load)

Once again, enjoy.

written by Chris Jacques \\ tags: kernel, linux

Oh yeah, FTW!

Once there was 1 great site, then there were many. Now the original great is back!
I mean, The Pirate Bay is cool, but there is only 1 other site that is more awesome…

DEMONOID!

slashdot article:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/13/007246&from=rss
actual site:
http://www.demonoid.com

And so it was. The first tracker I ever used with BT…online once again. Of course, this doesn’t mean that i’m not going to use TPB anymore. I’ll just use both. No more crap torrent search via google for rare stuff, there isn’t a need for it anymore!

Remember that in order to do some stuff, you need to have an account (yes, I have one). Though, if you read the slashdot article, some users are still wary that the whole thing might be a huge setup. I’m going to let the dust settle before I log back in (and change my IP address, thankfully from changing ISP’s).

And thus did my great torrent machine rejoice, for the grand master has returned!

Enjoy.

written by Chris Jacques \\ tags: bittorrent, onlinerights, privacy

Well…

School photos are upon us once again.

Got any ideas for what we should do for our funny photo? I’d love to hear from you.

Last year’s Year 12’s had hats. Lets not be that lame this year, alright?

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: funny, photo, School, year 12