Scott Yang's Playground

Interesting reading from Alex Payne, on issues facing Hacker News, but also running a community website in general.

A great community isn’t something that you just set up and periodically patch. Running a great community is a full-time job, not a weekend hack project.

Indeed — and that applies to some of the community sites I run as well. You do need to put “time” into it.

Got this via this Dell Swarm offer for just $23.76 to replaced my old scanner (9 year old HP ScanJet 4200C that refuses to work on Vista/Windows 7). It has got wireless printing and scanning, although I am quite a bit disappointed that it can only scan to your Windows desktop computer running Dell’s proprietary software. I guess I was dreaming when I thought it could scan to a Samba share running on my NAS when I bought it.

Well what am I to complain when it’s just $24 delivered.

Via Hacker News:

And according to Nokia entry on Wikipedia

In 1898, Eduard Polón founded Finnish Rubber Works, manufacturer of galoshes and other rubber products, which later became Nokia’s rubber business. At the beginning of the 20th century, Finnish Rubber Works established its factories near the town of Nokia and began using Nokia as its product brand.

Always a solution if Windows Mobile does not work out.

Bought a new toy today. Thanks to Shan-Shan for babysitting the kids while me & Vivian went to pick it up from JB Hi-Fi.

Since I moved to Sydney in 1995 (gee, that was 16 years ago!) we have never really had a TV at home. I guess I never really felt the “need”. The closest thing to a TV would be this Dell 19″ monitor that we connect to a desktop box with TV tuner — in fact we were still using that yesterday! Anna & Elsie have to literally stand next to the “TV” to get a clear picture. So enough is enough. We saw this being advertised at JB Hi-Fi for $999. Went to check it out yesterday, and took one home today. Without negotiation the sales guy gave us $30 discount, and we purchased $129 extended warranty so hopefully it would be good for 5 years.

So — Okano LTV5500F is a 55″ (139cm) Full HD (1920×1080) LCD TV. No LED backlit. No fancy thin profile. “Cheap” and “Big” are about its only two virtue. Picture quality is good enough (as we were comparing to a 19″ Dell UltraSharp the day before), although it probably won’t compare to a Sony/Samsung LCD or a Panasonic Plasma in the shop (that are 2x or 3x the price). It has 100Hz refresh rate, 2x HDMI inputs, USB inputs to attach external storage, and built in PVR function to record DTV shows.

Okano is a rebadged Soniq I heard. But I guess it’s the same with other Chinese brand — you get what you pay for, but we are fine with that :) Now I am just waiting for a new Xbox 360 and a Kinet bundle bargain…

Via Delimiter.com.au, Larry Bloach of Netregistry backs Gerry Harvey’s campaign on applying GST to imported goods/services.

I personally don’t care if Harvey Norman’s or Myer’s profitability is adversely affected but the uneven playing field does affect hundreds of thousands of Small Businesses, and for the families and employees of these, it’s another matter all together.

He seems to have quite a bit of distortion on what an average Australian person believe. Too much a blind faith I’ll say.

Whilst we all like a good, cheap deal, we as a nation are fair people. We won’t wear sports shoes delivered cheaply to us on the back of child labor in Asian sweatshops. Similarly, we shouldn’t be so quick to save a buck when it comes unfairly at the cost of a battling small Australian retailer who is immediately 10% less competitive due to a tax loophole delivered to non-Australian retailers.

Like Gerry Harvey’s case, it would be a trivial problem if the only disparity between Australian goods/services and overseas imported equivalent is 10% in pricing. However the fact that it is not. Larry is in domain and hosting business and he should know. Especially with hosting — overseas vendors are way more than 10% cheaper than Australian providers, and in many cases, arguably more reliable as well.