"I've got this in the bag."
Funny Animal Photos by Ty Buchanan
AMD Concentrates on Australia
The Personal Computer is dead. We have seen this many times in the media. This, of course, is not true. businesses rely on PCs. Tablets and mobile phones just don't cut the mustard when it comes to high output data and Internet usage. Try typing a report on a tablet whether it has an attachable keyboard or not and you will be doing it all day. Those tiny keys are just not realistic for most people.
AMD is ratcheting up investment in the Australian commercial computer market. It sees boom times ahead with its new quadruple chip. The company sees Australia as a test market for "differentiation and better value." Australia is now known as a "channel" for AMD.
Many companies are selling AMD products including HP, Dell and Lenovo. AMD is becoming the server of choice in the market. India is a huge market for AMD particularly in education. Its main target is government contracts. The sheer range of offerings by AMD outranks all its rivals. Indeed, its first ARM 64-bit processor came out this year.
In 2013 sales in Australia and New Zealand more than doubled. Using Oceania as a test market makes sense. It costs less to see mistakes made. They can chose what is really successful and promote that in the rest of the world. At last, a company that is doing the job properly.
Computing by Ty Buchanan
Whale Culture in Japan
Japan plans to resume whaling in the Antarctic next year. It will modify its "scientific"research system to fit in to what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) wants, although the court stated that scientific whaling per se was illegal and would always be illegal.
Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) says it will take the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) to the ICJ to stop it harassing Japanese whaling ships when they carry out future legal scientific whale hunting in the Antarctic, in short the resumption of killing of whales for food.
Just why Japan is so pig-headed about continuing to wastefully kill whales says something about Japanese culture - they are arrogant. Japanese consumers want whaling despite not actually buying whale meat. This nation has tonnes of whale meat in storage because it doesn't sell, despite being highly subsidized.
I am about to get personal about this issue. Those readers easily offended should stop reading now..........
Cultures do not change suddenly. It takes centuries for societies to change. The way people think and what they believe in continue, even though rational circumstance prove that things cannot possibly be as people believe.
Because a war ended and countries apparently got back to normal didn't mean societies changed their ways. Japanese culture is the same today as it was in the 1930s. Arrogance prevails despite bowing to this, bowing to that. This bowing custom came about because Japanese were terrified of samurai - frightened of losing a head or half body.
The truth of the matter is that Japan will continue to hunt whales because of the silly custom of saving-face. They perceive a court order as a blemish on their character. People of other countries do not see it this way at all.
Conservation by Ty Buchanan
Dingo is Just an Asian Dog
New research tells us that the dingo is a uniquely Australian dog. This is despite the strong evidence of Asian dogs looking exactly the same and in Asia they are domesticated. This silly "mythification" of animals in Australia says something about Australians generally. Are they seeking something to make themselves unique?
Australian academics have revived the name Canis dingo a term coined in 1793 by German naturalist Friedrich Meyer. Skulls examined by researchers showed the dingo had a long snout and a broad head. A look at a modern dingo in the bush shows it to be exactly the same as Asian specimens living today. There is nothing special about them. Because they are inter fertile with ordinary dogs shows that they cannot possibly be a different species. Their offspring in this case are also fertile. Unlike the donkey which when mated with a horse gives birth to an infertile mule.
Saying they are not descended from wolves is total rubbish - all dogs are descended from wolves! How can they be "distinct from dogs" when they clearly are dogs? They come in all colors: tan, black and tan, black and white, just like domestic dogs.
It is accepted that dingoes were brought here by Asian seafarers five thousand years ago. It cannot be a separate breed. Some European breeds were brought to distant lands centuries ago with no further input from European stock and they have remained the same.
There is not much doubt that academics are for the most part "dreamers'. They do not do much that is practical. Dr Crowther is "on" something, or should be!
Evolution by Ty Buchanan
New System to Watch Workers
Spying is everywhere these days and researchers with employer backing are studying the way employees move during work tasks. They don't seem to care what effect this has on a workers mental state, considering you will have a contraption fitted that will go into the bathroom with you.
The DorsaVi company based in Melbourne has developed a monitoring system called ViSafe. It attaches to the body by means of sticky pads that measures muscle impulses and body motion. Critically, it measures the speed at which one is moving. This will help to make the employee move faster by explaining that he/she does not move fast enough during work hours - hands up for running on the spot!
Data are examined by the subject, researcher, workplace assessor, oh and another employee who is there to make up the numbers. Just where workplace assessor gets his skills and expertise from is a mystery. Like those wonderful abstract tests they give to job applicants that are never tested in real life situations - indeed, which are irrelevant to real life and measure, well, nothing actually.
It is okay to use such technology on sports people, but in the workplace they can cause a build up of stress in employees that employers with there great intelligence cannot seem to understand. This is mainly because employers can please themselves about what they do during the day and workers cannot. Employees are trapped in a prison of compulsory work tasks. "ViSafe can tell you in a quantifiable way how far a worker can bend over." That will prove useful.
Technology by Ty Buchanan
Drug Companies and Pharmacists Want More Regulation
It is always a worry when drug manufacturers and pharmacists force themselves on decision-making bodies. Self interest rules both groups. Drug manufacturers want to increase sells and raise prices by "hook or by crook". Pharmacists want to hold onto their monopoly provided first by a piece of paper provided by a college and secondly by the government paymaster.
Pharmacists are like real estate agents - there is one on every street corner. In a competitive market this shouldn't be the case. Skills learned at university in chemistry is never used. Everything today is prepackaged. An unskilled person could do the job. They even want to do the work of doctors extending prescription repeats.
The Victorian Pharmaceutical Misuse Summit includes the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. They want to bring in a medication monitoring system to reduce the number of drug overdoses. Being cynical, confiscation would be an ideal tact to increase sales. But aren't overdoses mainly taken by those intending to take their own lives? Surely, they are "barking up the wrong tree". More treatment facilities for mental illness are what is needed not medication controls.
We do not need another level of costly bureaucracy that clearly will not have any benefits. Obstructing patients from getting morphine based pain killers will only drive them into the illegal market. More regulation and policing of this "industry" has had not impact whatsoever over the years. In the US they have arrested so many drug dealing people it has become a nation of prisons, Do we want that here?
In Australia, GPs make a joke to patients when they have to phone up with the patient's details and get a prescription number in order to prescribe strong painkillers. Even doctors see it as an unwanted bureaucratic process. A doctor decides to write the prescription before he makes the phone call and the request is never turned down.
Health by Ty Buchanan
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