EEVblog #720 - Mailbag

[Someone]

We've pushed the limits of mobile coverage in Australia and I'm regularly in locations that have zero coverage or used to get CDMA and now get nothing.

Really? That seems unusual. Although if you're with anyone but Telstra, then I can believe it. Optus struggles even in the middle of Canberra.

Patchy coverage is of no use when you don't want to leave a patient or situation, that it works around the corner or at the top of a hill isn't useful. I know of farmers who hated the shutdown of the CDMA networks as they were left without any coverage at all.

One final tip for anyone in a life threatening emergency while outside of cities in Australia, ask for the local Police station (you'll need to know the nearest towns name) and get them to co-ordinate the entire operation, they have many more options and resources than going through the emergency dispatchers.

In Australia, Police will automatically get notified in Search & Rescue operations. They are the primary response agency and will coordinate SARs.

When you know your location there is no need for a search, just aid/recovery/support. Since nothing came back on the emergency services after the David Iredale inquest wrapped up (http://www.smh.com.au/national/triple0-review-urged-by-coroner-as-iredale-inquest-ends-20090508-aw1a.html) and having been involved in many interesting aid/recovery situations I'm familiar with how much better the police handle locations and events outside of the metropolitan areas. The police understand much better spatial information and have a more flexible information system that can handle situations outside of street intersection and post box addresses, and while it would be nice to get helicopter assistance every time they manage the limited resources very well.

For all our international readers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Hydro_SouthCare
A Putin-esque story and the single helicopter that covers a population of 2 million across 300,000 or so square km (similar in size and shape to the whole country of Germany!)

[Tom D]

I've been an advocate for Supermicro since I bought my first SuperO board back in 1999 and have used them ever since.

Same here, my first Supermicro was the old P6SBA BX chipset PII board back in '98, it never missed a beat. My current X7DWA-N machine with dual quad core X5492's is getting quite dated now, and has been running since 2008 with no drama.

The biggest single performance enhancement I've made to it was when I went to four Intel SSD's in RAID zero, so this will have to serve me for a little while yet.

Tom

[Hydrawerk]

http://youtu.be/v7TaU-N3ab0?t=21s
There is a ghost of Nikola Tesla turning your TDS3000, LOL.

[max666]

http://youtu.be/v7TaU-N3ab0?t=21s
There is a ghost of Nikola Tesla turning your TDS3000, LOL.

I wonder if the ghost had to sign in his contract, that he's being filmed and surveilled