neigh!!

Aha! I thought Vincent Clortho sounded familiar. It's from one of my all time favorite movies - Ghostbusters. Louis, played by Rick Moranis, was possessed by the Keymaster Vinz Clortho. Here's a bit of the script from IMDB.

Louis: [Louis, as the possessed Keymaster Vinz Clortho, runs out of Central Park, scaring a married couple] I am the Keymaster! The Destructor is coming. Gozer the Traveler, the Destroyer.
[Louis pants and sniffs, then notices a horse carriage; horse neighs]
Louis: Gatekeeper.
[Walk over towards the horse]
Louis: I am Vinz, Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer. Volguus Zildrohar, Lord of the Sebouillia. Are you the Gatekeeper?
Coachman: Hey, he pulls the wagon, I made the deals. You want a ride?
[the possessed Louis growls at the coachman with his red-glowing eyes]
Louis: [to the horse] Wait for the sign. Then our prisoners will be released.
[Runs amok, scaring bystanders; yelling]
Louis: You will perish in flame, you and all your kind! Gatekeeper!
Coachman: What an asshole.

Similar issue in Australia, only the single entity that owned every copper cable in the country (was post master general, then renamed to telecom, then sold off privately as Telstra), owns all of the major TV rights for cable shows (discovery, nat geo etc...), still owns all of the copper lines, and the telephone exchanges, and the pits/ducts....

They have a wholesale side of the company where they are forced by law to allow other service providers access to the infrastructure to sell services on via unbundled local loop (ULL) or line sharing services (LSS).

LSS services are basically telstra renting out everything to the service provider at cost, and a small premium. So they take all the profits, and make it neigh impossible for anyone else to compete with other providers.

ULL services are telstra giving access to just the copper pairs, service providers come in with their own equipment in the headend. The other providers still must pay rent, and line rental fees to telstra.

Imagine then, how these other companies can compete at a retail service level, against the company that owns all the lines?

They can set their prices as high as the competition regulator will allow them (which in a vast majority of the access undertaking costs, is FAR above what it actually costs telstra themselves), and then sell those same services to its retail arm for less than they charge their competition....they can price match and reap way more profits, or undercut them and drive the competition out of the market!!

Competition came in the 90's in the form of an HFC rollout by Optus, but every street Optus went down with HFC, Telstra followed them, the very next week, making their rollout far less lucrative (ie. not commercially viable).

The practice was ruled anti-competitve and telstra got fined heavily for it. Doesnt matter, it stopped anyone else from wanting to roll out an HFC network ever since.

Recently it has come to a head, Telstra have been forced to vertically seperate their wholesale and retail arms, the prices they set have been capped lower on the wholesale side, they cant over-quote competitors for access over what they provide their own retail arm....but thats not enough.

Noone can run out fibre, cause telstra own all the pits and pipes.

So...the government has stepped in, in the past 4 years or so, created a government owned company called NBNco (National Broadband Network Company), to buy up all the copper lines, rip them out, and roll out fibre to 93% of homes using GPON FTTH technology.

The opposition (who will likely win the coming election) wants to tear this apart. The very same people who set up the rules and regulations and sold off telstra into private hands, and made this mess in the first place, wants to go back on relying on private industry to upgrade this - a critical service infrastructure - which has already shown to be a COMPLETE failure in the past.

I hope that whoever wins, this NBN stays....wholesale competition has never ever worked for national infrastructure. Never, in any country.

Analogue tapes? No such thing exists....magnetic tapes store data in magnetic polarity, positive and negative charge....this is digital. If you are looking for a truly analogue storage medium then youd be VERY hard pressed to find one, neigh Id go so far as to say it would be impossible to find one.

True analogue is to say an infinite state machine. Good luck!

Like I said, unless these guys are doing their recording directly to a master plate, with no digitisation in between, then there MUST be data lost in the process, no matter how good your ADC resolution is.

Dang friendly G, the city sure is loud, but that intro flute music hurts my ears, neigh, my brain.

Neigh!

Okay, maybe I shouldn't have said Wrroonngg so quickly--but you presume that your readings about Rome are more extensive than mine.

Nero, Caligula and many later Emperors are examples of the human psyche let loose. Psychopaths with no restrictions on their behavior.

The Roman Republic lasted for almost 500 years--during which time--homosexuality was looked on as a vice and shameful behavior. Emperor Augustus imposed strict modesty and morality edicts--including homosexual activities--which didn't apply to him. So even in the later, Empire Era, Rome was hardly be considered, "one big, gay death machine."

"Marcus Aurelius was straight at least..." This one gave me a laugh.


The Love Letters of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Cornelius Fronto
Excerpts from My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries (1998), Edited by Rictor Norton

From Marcus Cornelliius Fronto to Marcus Aurelius

Your lover, too, as they say, composes some amatory writings about you in the hope of enticing you with this bait, if with no other, and attracting you to himself and catching you; but such things are a disgrace and an insult and a sort of licentious cry, the outcome of stinging lust, such as those of wild beasts and fed cattle, that from sexual desire bellow or neigh or low or howl. Like to these are the lyrics of lovers. If, therefore, you submit yourself to your lover to enjoy where and when he pleases, awaiting neither time that is fitting nor leisure nor privacy, then, like a beast in the frenzy of desire, will he make straight for you and be eager to go to it not the least ashamed. . . .

"But then they went through the phase where prostitutes could fuck any man they wanted, even while wed and in plain sight, and the Christian empress would have the man executed if he said something..."

The role of prostitution in other societies varies--ours is not the only moral way. And the actions of the Christian church are--during most of it's history--atrocious. I thought you were talking about early Rome with it's outright destruction and pillage.

"You get the point. Rome was confused but definitely bi with a leaning more towards homosexuality--despite their 'laws.'"

A whole country was BI? Wow--just wow.


>> ^Lawdeedaw:

@Boise_Lib
Now now, don't say I am wrong quiet yet. I just read up on Rome and have the advantage here (I read like fucking two days’ worth...)
Nero was more than gay (He married a man as his husband and a man as his wife...see slit in lieu of vagina,) and Caligula (Who was fucking a man while in the arena in front of everyone, then had that man beheaded during climax) was bi and Tiberius (Who was fucking Caligula after murdering his family) was bi and the typical soldier, and...wait, yeah, there were many more. Basically, 14 out of 15 were gay or gay-ish at least. By that I mean some were open, some closed. Commodus? Yeah, gay...
(Most were simply bi just to have a son btw. Otherwise it would have been just man on man.)
The whole conflict with homosexuality came in later--after the Roman Catholic Church gained power... Now, that's not saying it wasn't against the law in the early days--but that's the same as adultery, yet then orgies were common even though they were illegal... let's pretend the law doesn't matter here---because it didn't...
Marcus Aurelius was straight at least...
And yes, this was the early Rome, when it was brutal, but then that's what I was talking about when I said the world hated them. Later, yes, later they began to hate homosexual behavior. But then they went through the phase where prostitutes could fuck any man they wanted, even while wed and in plain sight, and the Christian empress would have the man executed if he said something...
You get the point. Rome was confused but definitely bi with a leaning more towards homosexuality--despite their "laws."
@shuac I meant the crimes of Rome itself, not homosexuals. It's kind of hard to forgive a nation that captured and enslaved your city and then raped your male children with abandon.
@hpqp
I don't think homosexuality is girly, but that's their reasoning... Sad, so sad because it is not true.

Well it's lucky that, like David Mitchell says, a name is just a label and everyone will get used to it. My kids know a girl named "Mustang", which surely would be worse

You're right that sid-knee would be correct.

The masters of spelling a name one way and pronouncing it another are our cousins across the English channel from you. Have you heard of an English TV show called "Keeping up appearances"? The main character is named Hyacinth Bucket, but insists it's pronounced "Bouquet".
>> ^DerHasisttot:

>> I'm not good at transcribing into phonetic language, I admit it :-)

The first syllable sounds like the french "Zut" as in "Zut alors!", the second syllable sounds like the word "neigh". As opposed to a (hopefully) correct pronunciation "Sid-knee".

>> ^oritteropo:

Even in English speaking countries, she may find herself being teased for having a name which is usually a boys name.
Does that horrible pronunciation sound, to a German, like the sound a bavarian horse would make, or like oppression of the south? Or is there another homophone that I've missed?>> ^DerHasisttot:
My father's wife's daughter called her little girl "Sydney." In English-speaking countries this would not be a problem, but here in Germany it stands out like a lighthouse. Even more problematic is the fact that the mother cannot even pronounce the name properly, which would be sth like "Sid-knee." She pronounces it "Süd-neigh," which is just ugly.



I'm mot good at transcribing into phonetic language, I admit it :-)



The first syllable sounds like the french "Zut" as in "Zut alors!", the second syllable sounds like the word "neigh". As opposed to a (hopefully) correct pronunciation "Sid-knee".

Even in English speaking countries, she may find herself being teased for having a name which is usually a boys name.

Does that horrible pronunciation sound, to a German, like the sound a bavarian horse would make, or like oppression of the south? Or is there another homophone that I've missed?>> ^DerHasisttot:

My father's wife's daughter called her little girl "Sydney." In English-speaking countries this would not be a problem, but here in Germany it stands out like a lighthouse. Even more problematic is the fact that the mother cannot even pronounce the name properly, which would be sth like "Sid-knee." She pronounces it "Süd-neigh," which is just ugly.