August 31, 2003
Quiz of the Week(end)
Bugger. Guess this means any day now because I am already "over the hill". Hope no-one tells my insurance company :-)
Middle-aged. You'll die from something unexpected,
just when your kids are going to college or
something great is happening. Cause Unknown.
At what age will you die?
brought to you by Quizilla
Relax
[Via email from Jivha.]
She left him on the sofa when the phone rang, and was back in a few seconds.
"Who was it?" he asked.
"My husband," she replied.
"I better get going," he said, "Where was he?"
"Relax. He's downtown playing poker with you."
August 30, 2003
Gigaburger
[The Urban Legend for today comes all the way from SWEN.]
EXPERTS WARN OF THREAT FROM 100GB BUG ANALYSTS SAY MCDONALD'S HEADING FOR BANKRUPTCY WORLD ECONOMY WILL BE DEVASTATED
Firebringer News Service (FBNS) - Experts warned today of a new and deadly threat to our beleaguered civilization: the 100GB Bug. As most people know, McDonald's restaurant signs show the number of hamburgers the giant chain has sold. That number now stands at 99 billion burgers, or 99 Gigaburgers (GB). Within months or even weeks, that number will roll over to 100GB. McDonald's signs, however, were designed years ago, when the prospect of selling one hundred billion hamburgers seemed unthinkably remote. So the signs have only two decimal places.
This means that, after the sale of the 100 billionth burger, McDonald's signs will read "00 Billion Burgers Sold." This, experts predict, will convince the public that, in over thirty years, no McDonald's hamburgers have ever in fact been sold, causing a complete collapse of consumer confidence in McDonald's products.
The ensuing catastrophic drop in sales is seen as almost certain to force the already-troubled company into bankruptcy. This, in turn, will push the teetering American economy over the brink, which, finally, will complete the total devastation of the global economy, ending civilization as we know it, and forcing us all to live on beetles.
"The people who know -- the sign-makers -- are really scared of 100GB," one expert said. "I don't know about you, but I'm digging up a copy of THE FIELD GUIDE TO NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS and heading for the hills."
August 29, 2003
Friday Five
1. Are you going to school this year?
Well our school year is about halfway through (starts in Feb, ends in Dec) so I guess not (apart from taking my son ...). Out of interest, we don't use the phase 'going to school' after high school. School system here is:
Pre-school (optional, 3-4 years old),
Primary School, which includes:
Kindergarten (compulsary, 5 years old),
1st class through to 6th class (compulsary, 6 to 11 years old)
High School, which includes:
Years 7 to 10 (compulsary, 12 - 15 years old)
Years 11 and 12 (optional, 16 - 17 years old)
You can then proceed to TAFE (vocational courses, certificates, diplomas) or University (degrees). Normally Year 12 is a prerequisite for university. Each state has a different system for marking the final exams and they do not translate well between states. Some school now offer an independant (and much better regarded by universities) system called the IB (International Baccalaureate)
2. If no, when did you graduate?
Which time? In my long career, I have managed to accumulate:
* BSc (Bachelor of Science) - University of New South Wales (UNSW), major in Computer Science, minor in Geography.
* MCom (Master of Commerce) - UNSW, major in Information Systems
* MCogSc (Master of Cognitive Science) - UNSW, major in Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy
* MBA (Master of Business Administration) - Deakin University, major in Technical (Engineering) Management
* GradCertContEd (Certificate in Adult Education) - University of New England, teaching certificate.
The most amazing thing is, after all that education, I still can't spell and my grammar is terrible :-)
3. What are/were your favorite school subjects?
Actually I can bore people to death by being long winded about a lot of things. I liked operating systems (Unix V6 with AT&T source code) and more recently AI. I occasionally teach (usually at TAFE) programming, systems analysis, basic business courses, and share market analysis.
4. What are/were your least favorite school subjects?
I hated French (did it until Year 10) and regretted it when I got to France and could read but not speak (or at least noone could understand me).
5. Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite?
Well I was about ready to throw in the towel in the MCogSc course due to the heavy humanistic philosophy (Dennett is a twit), I talked to a friend (who happens to be a priest) about the conflict between my religious convictions and the humanistic course material, he offered to introduce me to some new bloke who was going to be lecturing soon. After one meeting, I was encouraged enough to keep going. This bloke not only lectured in that course but actually went on to become the Head of School and my supervisor.
Legal Funding
What is the matter with some people?
I have just about had enough of the self-righteous morons that write in the Sydney Moaning Herald (typo intentional). The outpouring of sympathy for "Australia's Nelson Mandela" and the rage directed at Abbot is just ridiculous. Let's examine the facts for a moment:
There is no fiddling around with the justice system. There has been no real challenge to the facts of the case. Pauline (and Etteridge) have been found guilty of deception (to the electoral commision) and face jail time. So what! Break the law, get caught, face the consequences. The only real defense that Pauline could have used was that she followed the advice of the other two - in other words she was too dumb to understand. As an aside, how the blazes did Oldfield escape? Perhaps as a sitting member of parliament?
There is no judicial duplicity or political-prisoner style basis to Pauline's sentence and unlike Mandela she endorses racist material and redneck propaganda (again possibly due to influence from Oldfield). Pauline will get what she deserves and as Richard Ackland points out, her sentence is at the lower end of the possible scale.
What about the legal fund? Perfectly legitimate. If I was in a court case against someone with deep pockets, I would appreciate the funding. Could be from a friend or relative or someone who dislikes my opponent - so what! As long as they are not tampering with the evidence, the judge will ultimately decide on the value of the case. If Abbott can be prosecuted for involvement in funding the lawsuit then expect punters to start suing "Legal Aid" next!
Basically the SMH (like most of the media) gave Hanson coverage while she was controversial because it sold papers. When she lost it ignored her. Now they see the chance to be controversial again. If she had won the court case the papers would have been against her and critiquing the government for not policing the electoral system. As it was, she lost and so the papers are championing her cause. Grow up and get a real job.
Cross Linking Offer
I figure this belongs in this category. You check it out and tell me what you think.
I received this email (edited for privacy):
I am contacting you about cross linking. I am interested in guru-international.com because it looks like it's relevant to a site that I am the link manager for. The site is about discounts for San Diego golf courses.
I keep the web address confidential and will send it to you only if you give me permission to do so. Just let me know if it's OK, and I'll send you the web address for your review. If you approve of the site, then we'll exchange links.
Looking forward to your reply.
It isn't really SPAM but it is autogenerated. How do I know? It arrived because I was high in the Google search for "golf" because I intentionally misspelt "Gulf" (in Gulf War) and also had the picture of the wally at the women's protest holding up the "Iron my shirt" poster (also references to golf can be found here, here, here and here). This combination of articles convinced some search bot that my blog had something to do with the game of golf!
Name these animals!
Here are two Australian animals (photos taken at Featherdale), what are they? (Hint: the second one is rarely seen in this condition)
August 28, 2003
BOFH
The latest BOFH has just been posted. As always, Simon has picked one of those really annoying points of contention between the users and the operations staff. In this case it is a test server with production data (of course) but the same thing happens with disaster recovery:
Project Planning Meeting
Admin: OK, you need a Sun V480 with 8 Gb of RAM for the production server, mirrored internal disk, dual connections to the SAN. That's about $AU120,000 plus SAN costs. Will you need any DR?
Client: What's DR?
Admin: Disaster Recovery. Your box falls over, we get it up and running on another one.
Client: Sounds good, better have that.
Admin: That will take the cost up to $AU240,000 but the recovery box will also be available for testing changes and patches.
Client: Oh no, we can't spend that much. Scratch the DR.
Admin: Are you sure?
Client: Absolutely.
Admin: That means if your box falls over it may be up to a week before service is restored.
Client: Not a problem, we can use pencil and paper for up to two weeks if necessary.
Six months later
Client: Help, the server has falled over.
Admin: No worries. Power supplies are both blown. Should have new ones some time tomorrow.
Client: That's too long, we need the server up NOW. It's urgent. Do something ...
Right!
If you remind them about not needing DR, they will complain to your manager about (1) your attitude and (2) your uncooperative nature. Don't laugh. It really happened although some details may have been subtly altered to make the case less recognizable!
Designer Bugs III
Hopefully this will be the last word on the matter :-)
There have been some *heated* comments and a few other blogs are getting on on the act. Patrick has this item and also this post about the lack of design sensibility. That is the key to the original comments. It was not a comparison of usability or platform preference - the point was the Microslosh did the wrong thing (and have been doing it for years, despite the hype and promise of "safe" computing).
I can remember a time (in the late 80's) when Sun was being hammered for shoddy security practice. They used to distribute an operating system with rsh access turned on and a '+' in /etc/.rhosts - guaranteed security hole. Due to pressure, they fixed the problem. Some time later there was an outcry about the sendmail version that shipped with Solaris 2.2 and again, Sun amended their evil ways and become a more model citizen of the internet. All vendors, even Microslosh, are entitled to an occasional error, the question is what they do when the error is discovered:
The issue at hand is that the recent virus attacks would not have happened (or would have been less severe) if Microslosh had done the right thing. They have not done so, despite plenty of previous exposure to the problems and it is not outside the bounds of possibility that in a litigious environment, some trigger happy lawyer could make a reasonable case for damages.
Now onto the comments from previous articles. First, some background - Pete happens to be my youngest brother and he is a PC/WinTel bigot (just as I am a Unix bigot). He has had little exposure to Macs and they way they function (hence he is unaware of what they can do). Also it is worth noting that we live in Australia and his comments about software for the Mac in Australia are completely valid.
Pete started the ball rolling by complaining about the lack of Mac software (the biggest retailer of Macs in Sydney never has more than about 20 titles on display) and this is valid (but irrelevant to the points being discussed).
Jivha added some comments about user attitudes to poor design and I think he is right which led to this post.
Raena from Tasmania jumped in on the comment about the lack of Mac software. I think I had better go visit Tassie based on that comment alone :-) She is right, there are many packages for the Mac and given that there are limits to how many variations of a word processor can actually be useful, the Mac has it covered. You need practical software, it exists (including Microslosh Office or the alternate clones like ThinkFree Office and OpenOffice). The weak spot (and this bugs Pete) is games. Not all games appear on PC and Mac but this is in fact true of any two gaming platforms you pick. Personally, there are enough of the games I want to play and that will do me. More importantly, the current Macs have Unix under the hood (i.e. like Linux with a nice face) and that means a lot more than 'New Technology'. BTW, Raena also has a related post on her blog.
Pete jumped back in and asked a series of questions about the Mac which Raena has answered in some detail. I would like to tackle them as well because I think it is important to clear away misconceptions about these things. I have an advantage over Pete in that I use both platforms and work with guys who have spent the last two weeks trying to roll out zillions of updates to some 3500 Wintel boxes in between recurrent attacks of viruses.
I guess Pete doesn't have to buy a Mac yet because the one thing missing is his driving game - but on the other hand, he will have to buy an xbox to play that anyway so maybe the best combination would be a Mac and an xbox to replace the PC :-)
More seriously, the suggestion made in the second article was that offenders (computers infected with a virus), regardless of platform, be automatically disconnected from their ISP and then required to "show cause" before being allowed to reconnect. Effectively a form of licencing, easy to implement, easy to manage and platform agnostic.
Mind you, we all know that in this case, 99.9% of the offenders will be PC users!
Not Cuddly: Echinda
Like the koala (yesterday), this was a low-resolution copy of a photo taken by me at Featherdale. What is most fascinating about this animal (apart from being a monotreme - egg laying mammal) is that the back feet are on backwards. It took about 30 shots to get one where this is clearly evident. When walking it looks almost as if the echinda is walking on the top of its feet with the bottom curled round and facing the back (actually they are attached backwards):
For more information, check out this site.
Plausible?
[This wonderful Urban legend was submitted by Jivha.]
History About The Middle Finger!
Isn't history more fun when you know something about it?
Giving the Finger
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Â Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future.
This famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" (or "pluck yew"). Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, "See, we can still pluck yew! - "PLUCK YEW!"
Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter.
It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used w/ the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as - "giving the bird."
And yew thought yew knew everything.
August 27, 2003
Designer Bugs II
This is a followup to this article yesterday. A few people have left comments and I have found more references along the same lines.
Petemade two key points, firstly:
Its not that we trust them. Its that nothing decent will run on any other platform. Unless you invest in a 'Games Machine' like PS2, X-Box, G-Cube etc, you cannot get decent games for anything else.
and secondly:
PC's would be perfectly safe if people weren't so stupid.
Starting with Pete's first point, just think about the implications - if you want to play games you need to buy a game machine or a PC. No argument from me. The problem comes when you want to use your game machine (be it Xbox, Nintendo, Sony, PC) and hook it up to the internet with inadequate controls. I see a disjunction in the primary purpose of the machine. Yes I play games on my Mac (or the Sun boxes at work) but that is not the primary reason for having a computer (at least for me). I agree there are not as many games available for the Mac. There are enough in the genre that appeals to me to keep me occupied but again that is not the justification for having a computer. After all I use a Newton quite heavily and it doesn't play anything more adventuresome than scrabble. So how about we go back to the earlier proposal and insist that people who want to connect a games machine to the big bad internet require a license. Problem solved. Geeks (like Pete) who know what they are doing and can secure their machines get a license, idiots who can't protect themselves are not allowed to connect to the internet unless they have a secured machine (one that is relatively idiot-proof (and I know that idiots keep getting smarter).
Jivha makes three different claims (edited):
1. People love default
2. Microslosh make things easy
3. Nothing else is that easy
None of this contradicts the suggestions above and please note that I am not proposing a Mac vs PC war here - the suggestion is that boxes which are inheritantly insecure not be allowed to connect without some level of control over the owner (who must prove that they can secure the box). Given Jivha's point about ease of use, how about this: your system gets infected (due to you failing to secure it), you loose your ISP connection (which may involve financial penalties to you). To get a new connection, you have to attend and pass 'Computer Ed' (like Driver's Ed) and arrange to get your box scanned with Nessus or a similar tool.
As the article last time pointed out, a lot of the responsibility does lie with Microslosh. They distribute the software without turning off dangerous services. They made bad things easy (turning on web servers) and good things hard (activating a firewall). The shipping defaults were irresponsible and the patch/update system is flakey at best (see Windows XP slightly less fun than circumcision without anesthesia and read the comments). You may also want to check this article about the number of patches required. Note that in both cases, part of the problem is the update process.
In comparison, Sun ship an operating system with incremental upgrades. It works like this: Solaris 9 is released (called Solaris 9 FCS). As bugs are discovered (and there will always be some bugs), patches are written and tested. These are divided into 'critical' and 'other' and tagged as such on the patch support sites. There is always available a 'critical (and security)' bundle which can be applied to a server to bring it up to date. After about three months, an incremental release of the operating system comes out. This will include support for new hardware and the current critical patch bundle built in (called say Solaris 9 04/02 - i.e. April 2002). The cycle continues. I have machines that may be at FCS + patch cluster and other machines at the 04/02 release. If I have to rebuild, I can use the latest release which jump starts the patch process. With Microslash, installing Win 2K today is the same as when it was released in 2000. There are three years worth of patches to add.
I guess that I want to finish by saying that this is not about which platform is "better", it is about responsibility and sensibility. Microslash is being irresponsible (and Sun have been irresponsible in the past) and should be chastised for it. After all, as Jivha clearly points out, the users will take the easy option and Microslash knows this. Users need to be either sensible (or as Pete puts it: "not so stupid") or forbidden from propagating their stupidity. We need a darwinian solution and right now that license scheme is looking attractive....
Male or Female?
Sorry but this post was so funny, I just had to give it a link. It is one of those stories where you can see the ending coming but it is so well phrased that you feel compelled to read the lot anyway. In case you were wondering, I was nodding at the relevant points - I wonder if (as per the comments), Steve will read the post to Claudia?
Cuddly Koala?
A koala is small and cuddly, isn't it?
Not this one. This big male is unhappy because he is on a tree that has been scented by another male.
Time Machine
There is a wierd piece of SPAM running around the net about a time traveller. I have no idea what it is about but Dan recieved a copy and sent a reply (with photo). I also like the payment option. Perfect really. Pop over and read it. I am waiting to find out what the answer will be....
[Followup: Here is a detailed post on the history of the person behind this email and he may be a few bricks short of a wall (or in Strine: a few snags short of a barbie).]
August 26, 2003
Designer Bugs
Well, you asked for it! Akshley (as my daughter would say), you failed to stop it! You had the chance to end the Microslash articles and I got a whole 1 comment and a two trackbacks from members (1 and 2) of the blog strategy committee. Now that article got a lot of hits and yet people either couldn't be bothered leaving a comment OR (my preferred option) they like a little bit of Microslosh bashing.
Well, first cab off this particular rank would have to be this article from the Washington Post:
Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
Between the Blaster worm and the Sobig virus, it's been a long two weeks for Windows users. But nobody with a Mac or a Linux PC has had to lose a moment of sleep over these outbreaks -- just like in earlier "malware" epidemics.
This is not a coincidence.
The usual theory has been that Windows gets all the attacks because almost everybody uses it. But millions of people do use Mac OS X and Linux, a sufficiently big market for plenty of legitimate software developers -- so why do the authors of viruses and worms rarely take aim at either system?
On a serious note, this question has merit and multiple answers. Apart from any Microslosh bashing there is the point of technical competance. People running Linux are (IMHO) more capable of dealing with a virus and therefore it is less likely to spread. In the Mac arena there is also the overhead of complexity, as a long-time Unix programmer, I would content that prior to MacOS X, writing code for the Mac was *harder* than for the PC. This would require a slightly higher level of intelligence that what is generally available to the average script kiddie.
Even if that changed, Windows would still be an easier target. In its default setup, Windows XP on the Internet amounts to a car parked in a bad part of town, with the doors unlocked, the key in the ignition and a Post-It note on the dashboard saying, "Please don't steal this."
That has to be the quote of the article. I have been emailing it to all the PC support geeks I know and they all groan but agree - the default configuration is insecure. That is not to say it can't be made safe, just that it isn't safe by default.
...The vulnerabilities built in: Security starts with closing doors that don't need to be open. On a PC, these doors are called "ports" -- channels to the Internet reserved for specific tasks, such as publishing a Web page. These ports are what network worms like Blaster crawl in through, exploiting bugs in an operating system to implant themselves. (Viruses can't move on their own and need other mechanisms, such as e-mail or floppy disks, to spread.) It's canonical among security experts that unneeded ports should be closed. Windows XP Home Edition, however, ships with five ports open, behind which run "services" that serve no purpose except on a computer network. "Messenger Service," for instance, is designed to listen for alerts sent out by a network's owner, but on a home computer all it does is receive ads broadcast by spammers. The "Remote Procedure Call" feature exploited by Blaster is, to quote a Microsoft advisory, "not intended to be used in hostile environments such as the Internet."
So the company that touts their OS as being "internet ready" and "where do you want to go (on the Internet)" forgot that in fact it was not intended for such use. Sure. It is also worth noting, although this shows my age, that I can vaguely remember when the alerts were raised in SunOS 4.0 about RPC calls. The suggestion was that rexd and unfiltered use of rpc could be a security risk and so there were patches and other workarounds prepared (like the earliest version of tcp wrappers). That would have been in the late 80's. Interesting to see that it is still turned on in Windows.
...Windows XP includes basic firewall software (it doesn't monitor outgoing connections), but it's inactive unless you use its "wizard" software to set up a broadband connection. Turning it on is a five-step task in Microsoft's directions (www.microsoft.com/protect) that must be repeated for every Internet connection on a PC. Mac OS X's firewall isn't enabled by default either, but it's much simpler to enable. Red Hat Linux is better yet: Its firewall is on from the start.
Interesting to see if this will be rectified in the next release of MacOS X. Also worth noting that the services (referenced above) are, by default, turned off in MacOS X. You need to turn them on explicitly with the relevant warnings displayed when you attempt to do so.
...The patches that aren't downloaded: Windows is better than most operating systems at easing the drudgery of staying on top of patches and bug fixes, since it can automatically download them. A PC kept current with Microsoft's security updates would have survived this week unscathed. But hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Windows systems still got Blasted, even though the patch to stop this worm was released weeks ago. Part of this is users' fault. "Critical updates" are called that for a reason, and it's foolish to ignore them. (The same goes for not installing and updating anti-virus software.) The chance of a patch wrecking Windows is dwarfed by the odds that an unpatched PC will get hit. And for those saying they don't trust Microsoft to fix their systems, I have one question: If you don't trust this company, why did you give it your money?
Talk about getting your money's worth in this article. Another golden quote. If you can't trust them to patch the system, how can you trust them in the first place. Well in a real data-centre environment, there are usually transitions between "environments". A change to production would start in development. Then proceed to unit test. After that, it moves into integration or system test and then finally into production. This is done to ensure that changes do not adversly affect production environments. The problem is that the transition sequencing and testing take time and cost money and previous experience with Microslosh service packs has made it very clear that the testing is not something you can afford to shortcut. In theory, assuming everything is lined up, there is probably a three month cycle through this environment. In practice it is likely to be much longer. For UNIX servers, we sometimes shortcut the sequence (reduce the testing phase) because we can trust the vendor - from experience the vendor tests the patches carefully and clearly documents the changes. For Windblows, this is simply not an option.
...The lack of any limit to damage: Windows XP, by default, provides unrestricted, "administrator" access to a computer. This sounds like a good thing but is not, because any program, worms and viruses included, also has unrestricted access. Yet administrator mode is the only realistic choice: XP Home's "limited account," the only other option, doesn't even let you adjust a PC's clock. Mac OS X and Linux get this right: Users get broad rights, but critical system tasks require entering a password. If, for instance, a virus wants to install a "backdoor" for further intrusions, you'll have to authorize it. This fail-safe isn't immune to user gullibility and still allows the total loss or theft of your data, but it beats Windows' anything-goes approach.
There is a reason for not solving this problem - applications. In the UNIX world (and MacOS X is Unix), there have always been users and so applications learned a long time ago to store important "application" files somewhere central and "user" files and preferences (and licences) somewhere local. In Windblows, there is no clear distinction between a user owned file that belongs to the user and a user owned file that belongs to the application. Clean programming, better design and licencing issues all abound and cannot be easily solved by the supplied tools unlike say MacOS X where the choices have been constrained and limited into a set that work or say Linux where technical users will refuse to implement non flexible solutions.
The biggest issue with this style of working is when vendors try to port PuC (Politically unCorrect) applications to the other environments. A prime example would be an application like E-Gate (a message broker) where filenames are still .dll and .exe and the distinction between product, log, configuration, management and data is completely jumbled (and fails to scale across users or applications).
Note in particular that Microslosh does know how to solve some of these problems (otherwise Office for Mac would not exist) but they cannot solve the whole problem (try using Office for Mac with the /User filesystem on another disk).
...Because Microsoft blew off security concerns for so long, millions of PCs remain unpatched, ready for the next Windows-transmitted disease. Microsoft needs to do more than order up another round of "Protect Your PC" ads. Here's a modest proposal: Microsoft should use some of its $49 billion hoard to mail an update CD to anybody who wants one. At $3 a pop (a liberal estimate), it could ship a disc to every human being on Earth -- and still have $30 billion in the bank.
And here is an even better solution. Stop making Windblows altogether. Make a GUI that looks like WindBlows and invest in something like WINE. Sell the WindblowsGUI + WindblowsOriface + WindblowsWINE and give away Microsoft Linux with every copy. Make the money from updates and applications and become the biggest Linux vendor. You can't beat them, join them.
A Near Miss (Update)
Thanks to a kind manager I was able to work from home yesterday (Monday) so that I could be there to deal with the mess. I got some work done (but not enough) in between visits from various people (skylight replacement, handymen, etc). I also spent some three hours picking up glass/perspex/aluminium/broken tiles and helping the handyman rip the remaining sheets of the roof of the carport (maybe I can photograph the frame later). He also sealed up the holes with plastic. I could do one skylight (the one on the corrugated iron roof) but the other was on the tiled part of the roof and it would not bear my weight. We also had to tear down broken guttering and clean up other debris. This is going to force our hands and make us start the renovating process - we had been hoping to sell up and move but that requires the cooperation of our neighbour (who may have been the father of the BOFH - except that he does it to real estate salesmen instead of computer salesmen).
Blogging may be light until I have made up for lost worktime. At least the roof is covered again...
[Update: New skylights have been fitted and riveted to the frames - why they were only latched before is completely beyond me!]
Music Piracy
This is one of the most beautifully written bits of satire I have come across this year:
Dear EMI,
Happy Birthday to me! I've got an early birthday present from my auntie - it's Radiohead's lovely new album, Hail To The Thief. It's "protected" by the fabulous Copy Control technology, which caused my computer to skip, hang and eventually require a restart when I tried to play it. Oh dear.After an enthusiastic few days of swearing at inanimate objects and searching the Web, I got the audio session to mount after all ... I even managed to get all but one of the full-quality AIFF tracks to copy over to my hard drive, meaning that I'll now be able to hear the uncompressed tracks as they were meant to be heard ... Please send my regards to your incompetent engineers who don't bother testing their creations; it made for an amusing epilogue to this little adventure.
Anyway, it was an amusing couple of days worth of fun and games, so thanks a bundle. I'm sure those scurrilous rumours that you ignore customer complaints won't damage your reputation as a company that really cares about providing the best musical experience to its customers. I'll be sure to keep EMI in mind next time I'm in the mood to bend over, grease up, and experience a session of twenty-first century style audio entertainment.
Must dash - gotta go restart my machine (again) so that it'll actually mount CDs again, and then I'm going to jump onto Gnutella and grab that extra track, for which I am not feeling even the most teeny smidgen of guilt.
Way to go EMI - can the RIAA sue EMI for encouraging piracy? Pop over to Synapse and read the whole article.
August 25, 2003
A Near Miss
Well, did you miss me?
You nearly missed me permanently. Saturday we headed over to the local garden shop. What with it being spring and all we were getting ready to plant the garden. Actually the good bits have already been planted and we have lettuce ready to eat and probably have peas in a few weeks. The strawberry plants are flowering and lots of things (including weeds) are starting to appear. We all got our heads together and worked out what else we wanted to grow this year (cherry tomatoes, butternut pumpkin, etc) and then what we could do from seed and what required something a little better developed. We also took the chance to look at the options for doing something about the sandy slopes.
[Background Information (not generally relevant to this story): We live in a really old house that has a courtyard at the back. The back of the courtyard is about 4 foot above the ground level inside the courtyard. Either side of the courtyard are sandy slopes that run up to a strip along the back of the yard. This is primarily overgrown with weeds. Our intention is to terrace the wider side and grass or brick the sandy bits with a series of garden beds running up the slope. We have lots of sandstone lying around for the surface parts but we need something for the risers and the sandstone is not even enough.]
Got the plants back and set them out ready for Sunday or early next week. Watered the garden, picked a lettuce, killed some snails - all the usual stuff. Didn't go near the computer at all.
Sunday, we are due to visit Mum. The better half is going to learn how to repair old bound books and I am going to patch my brothers computer so he can play Europa Universalis II.
[Background: Cool game. After it crashed a few times, we started saving more often. Turns out the save file is amenable to a little perl hackery and it fact it is trivial to overcome the more annoying aspects of the game with a bit of patching.....]
I was still feeling a bit washed out from last week and the better half wasn't much brighter and we nearly called off the trip - 90 minutes each way (and that is using the motorway which is $2.20 each way). In the end we decided to go, packed up after mass, grabbed a Tiramisu from the local cake shop and a lettuce from the garden and hit the road. Had a great day (are you bored yet?) really. Book mending takes a long time and it was pretty late for the drive back (about 8 pm I think). Bundled the kids in the car, talked about the winds ... and the branches coming down ... and driving safely and ... left. Go home in good time and started inside with the first sleeping kiddie and the thoughts went like this ....
Watch the door... kick the shoes off... swing around... remember not to turn the light on yet... in the bedroom... hmmm, this room is cold... side of cot is down... this room is really cold... hey, there's a real draft here... the window isn't open because the blinds aren't moving... hey, there's a hole in the roof!
Yup, there were two holes actually. One in the youngest kiddies bedroom, the other in the playroom. There was also half the roof missing from the carport (which I hadn't noticed when I came in). You see the weather has been playing up a little. Check out these stories: here, here and here.
The best bit is still to come. The holes in the roof were where the skylights used to be. The back skylight had shattered in the garden, decapitating a dwarf orange tree and the herb garden. Sharp bits of perspex were in among the new plants we had just purchased. Had we decided to stay home, we would have been planting those things when the wind hit! Miracles do still happen!
Joke Adaption
When I was a kid, all the jokes were about the Irish:
Q. How do you confuse an Irishman?
A. Put three spades against a tree and tell him to take his pick!
Then as I got older, the same jokes were told about blondes:
Q. How do you confuse a blonde?
A. Put her in a round room and tell her to sit in the corner?
Occasionally an event in the international scene would change things. After the assasination of the Indian Prime Minister we got:
Q. How do you confuse a Seikh?
A. Give him a piece of paper with PTO (Please Turn Over) on both sides
Really the nationality or hair colour has nothing to do with the joke. It just provides a context to run the joke against. Well one of the oldest jokes I can remember hearing as a child was this one:
There was an Irishman who went to work with one red sock and one green sock. Somebody stopped him and said "You've got one red sock and one green sock on". The Irishman smiled and responded "Yes, and I have another pair like this at home...."
Over time, the Irishman became a blonde and then when my Grandpa went to India on a mission, the first joke he heard was this one with a Sikh instead. What is the point to this long rambling entry?
I just received this in an email (thanks Andrew):
François, a Frenchman, went to work with one red sock and one blue sock. Somebody stopped him and said "You've got one red sock and one blue sock on". François smiled and responded "Oui, and I have another pair like this at home...."
August 24, 2003
Quiz of the Week(end)
Dunno any of those songs and where did they gets those "friend" names from? My friends are called names like Bob, John, Blue, John, Mike, John, Webby, John and John. At least this quiz recognised my high level of intelligence:
Blue Eyes
What Color Eyes Should You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla
Only in America!
[Ed: This item was included in a newsletter from a Real Estate Agent which was sent to my mother. Hi Mum!]
This is the best lawyer story of the year, decade and probably the century. A Charlotte, NC lawyer having purchased a box of very rare, very expensive cigars, insured them against fire among other things. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of cigars and without having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.
In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost "in series of small fires". The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason; that the lawyer had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The lawyer sued......and won! In delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. He stated nevertheless that the lawyer held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure against fire, without defining what is considered to be, "unacceptable fire," and was obligated to pay the claim.
Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid the man $15,000.00 for the rare cigars he had lost in the "fires".
HERE COMES THE BEST PART!!
After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!! With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000.00 fine.
By the way, this is of course an urban legend.
August 23, 2003
Young Professionals - Government Worker
Images provided by Theepan:
August 22, 2003
Friday Five
1. When was the last time you laughed?
About three hours ago at my three year old holding up a "Bob the Builder" singlet against her older brother's back while saying "it wheely will fwit you"... (guess you had to be there to see it).
2. Who was the last person you had an argument with?
My three year old. "No you can't come out of your room until you say sorry to mummy!" (that was yesterday).
3. Who was the last person you emailed?
Dunno. [Looks in logs.] Was about to email Bob and decided he might appreciate some P&Q, so it must have been the guys at work about the Solaris 9 x86 update release. The next email will be to Jake to let him know that his trackback pings ain't working too good.
4. When was the last time you bathed?
Bout 4 hours ago. Normally I shower last thing at night but stopped work early due to ill-health.
5. What was the last thing you ate?
Two slices of bread with vegemite (the kids pinched some of it).
Blog Roundup
Howdy,
Due to a severe bout of gastroenteritis this week, this is going to be an abbreviated blog roundup. Hope that will not disappoint too many fans. One of the downsides of moving this over to typepad is that the stats are not in the same form as they used to be (not a complaint, just an observation) and it used to be cool to note that the Blog Roundup articles got three to four times as many hits as anything else on the blog.
Anyway, randomly starting with whatever comes to mind we have Utterly Boring, which is always full of short and interesting pointers to cool stuff. In this case we have this item which leads to 212 things skippy is not allowed to do in the army. (This is not Skippy as in the "Bush Kangaroo" - a kiddies TV program). Utterly Boring also has pointers on the question of Computer Licenses and Strange Politicians.
Synapse tread where I currently cannot go with this entry which references a column by Cringely. The discussion is about why IT shops DON'T use Macs, and the reason is obvious :-) There is also some discussion about music piracy (but that gets a whole entry next Tuesday).
AMCGLTD has stories on the real moon hoax and asking the right geek questions (link in story goes here).
No idea how I ended up here (probably after the skippy thing above) but found this which of course lacks some of the correct official beauracratese so someone else fixed it. BTW, appreciate the sentiment in the left column (Aussie flag + "We stand by our mates"). Excellent. Now all we need to do is work on that free trade agreement. In an interesting twist, there was also a review of an article over at our favourite Canadian blogger - yes, he is the only Canadian blogger I have had correspondence with, but apart from the Zil thing, he makes a great read :-).
Sure 'nuf, turns out that Paul has been busy. Not only with the Enola Gay story (that is the name of an aeroplane - not a new sexual preference thing) but also with keeping an eye on the Canadian military (they should have bought Zils) and still finds time to give Kofi a serve. If only I had read that before my own rant. May have added fuel to the fire. Note please, that neither of us are going as far as some apparently have. Sometime later I will have to tell a family history story about the Enola Gay but in the meantime Paul's item also got a tip of the hat from Andrew. Andrew in turn linked to what I hope is a parody.
Speaking of family stories, Pete has a great funny picture today (of a paintjob on a car bonnet) and has been running a series of Sex education articles (also here, here, here and here). He is also apparently making a killing on blogshares and still finds time to run a funny news stories site.
Also part of the funny news stories business is young Jivha who has been keeping a big secret (you will have to read the comments to find out more). On another note, I am afraid that the phrase "flying birdie" now has an entirely different connotation. I cannot imagine going through that at an age to be aware of it. Here the norm (when I was born) was to have it done at birth (I was) but it later changed (not all my four younger brothers were "done") and by the time my son was born it was not even considered possible. Jivha has also been commenting on adverts both local and remote. I also hate those online offers and deals that then turn out to be "available to residents of the 48 mainland states" or even worse that fall over when you try to use a non-US address on the order form. On a more serious note there was a long post about Pundits and comments. Personally I like the comments because I view them as a sort of conversation between the author and the reader. I try to respond to new readers with an email and to all comments with another comment or an email. Some sites pretty much ignore the comments (don't respond, don't email) in which case they may as well turn them off.
Speaking of turn-offs, we come naturally to turn-on's and apparently one lady blogger has been distracting the boys. She has also been trying to help form a typepad community. Another English blogger is trying to correct pronunciation but as an ore-stray-ian I have no idea what she is blithering (nice English word) on about. Of course, sc-arf and jer-arf rhyme and I vote for pl-ar-stik over plaas-tik, it sounds better. My sister lives in the UK and keeps coming back for visits with horrible words like dawn-ce (rhymes with ponce) instead of daan-ce (rhymes with France but they probably say Fronce anyway).
While I am with the bouquets, I have to send a nod to Interested Particpant who not only liked my rant, but actually pointed lots of users at it. Thanks for the linkage!
Finally, there is the story of how not to move a bed.
Put a sock in it!
Let me start by saying that I am going to be quoting from this article which will probably have vanished by the time you read this but you will get enough context here to understand the story anyway....
I would also like to set the record straight and make it clear that I am sorry there were people killed in the recent Iraq bombing BUT pointing fingers will not help the matter Mr Annan.
Let's use an analogy for a minute - I know it will break down but it provides a tool for considering the problem at hand. You have a room full of teens or pre-teens. Make it a class room. The teacher, for whatever reason is absent. Some of the kids are getting on with their work. Some of the kids are bullying other kids. One of the kids who has previously been in the "sin bin" for picking on a little kid is making a mess and damaging the library books. The class "council" has been farting around threatening things but is unable to bring the tyke into line. One of the strongest kids in the class, with a couple of mates asked for permission to sort the problem out, unfortunately this is blocked by the class tart and a few supporters. The strong kid and his mates go ahead and sort the problem out. The class council steps in to "advise" and "manage" the transition to good behaviour. The bad kid socks one of the council in the eye. Council calls foul and blames the strong kid.
Sound familiar?
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today both the United States and the United Nations made mistakes in Iraq ...
Correction - the UN made a mistake. The US, having neutralised the threat (and I am not necessarily agreeing that they should have done it in the first place) appears to be putting a lot of effort into tiding the place up.
Annan said he was surprised to hear reports that the United Nations turned down an offer of security from US-led coalition forces. He stressed that security was the responsibility of the United States ...
I wouldn't be surprised. Perfectly in line with other stupid decisions recently. Besides the security of US forces is the prime concern of the US. The security of UN forces is their lookout. If they want help, ask for it. They seem to be eager to ask for help everywhere else, what is wrong with asking here. The US did not ask the UN to come and fiddle (while Baghdad burns) so why would the US be responsible?
"I don't know if the UN did turn down offer for protection, but if it did, it was not correct and they should not have been allowed to turn it down," Annan said.
There we go, wasn't so hard to admit the mistake. Actually that was mistake number 2. The first mistake was not taking a unified stance in the first place and going in together.
Annan said the international organisation, which provides humanitarian relief to millions of Iraqis ...
Who apparently did not have any form of existence until the US liberated them. Otherwise the UN would have been helping them earlier.
[The UN] would not be deterred by Tuesday's attack which killed 24 people and injured over 100 others.
I thought more than 24 US troops had been killed or injured at this point. Thanks for thinking of them. After all they made it possible for you to be there.
"We have been in Iraq for 12 years and we have never been attacked," Annan said ...
Probably because you weren't doing anything that was a threat to the lunatic running the country - i.e. you weren't doing anything effective at all. Had you introduced the ideas of equality, freedom of religion, education for women, equality of all before the law, food for the starving (even if they were minority groups) then the entire staff would have been strung up from the nearest tree.
Unlike US occupation forces, the organisation had been welcomed by many Iraqis.
This is a throwaway line that was given no attribution in the article. Basically a piece of completely unsubstaniated hyperbole. Ignoring that, we have to assume that it is referring to 12 years ago (after Gulf War I) when the UN arrived. Perhaps one of the reasons that the US are not so welcome is that the welcome was worn out by the arrival of the UN who then managed to achieve exactly nothing in 12 years. That would make me suspicous of anyone with a 'U' in their names who was promising to "solve problems".
The attack renewed discussions about the possibility of sending a multinational force to help secure Iraq. But the idea - favoured by the United States and opposed by others on the Security Council - appeared unlikely to pick up any new proponents unless Washington agrees to cede some control of Iraq to the United Nations.
I reckon Kofi has a future career in standup comedy. The US did what had to be done despite the procrastination of the UN. Now the UN wants a share. Somebody needs to read them the story of the "Little Red Hen".
Annan said an international force is "under discussion. But I do not see UN blue helmets going into Iraq at this stage". He also said he did not foresee quick action on this contentious issue.
Well you got a choice, Mr Big Mouth - you can eat some humble pie or you can organise to get a multi-national force.
"I don't want to get into finger pointing. I think we are all aware that along the way mistakes have been made by all concerned."
Too late. You are already doing it. Now put a sock in it. Just remember that without the support of the US (and the other coalition members) the UN is no more than a pack of Useless Numbskulls.
The Nut Man
Now, listen carefully. There is a man (or at least a man's head) hidden in this picture. You should be able to find it in 15 seconds (took me about 15 minutes):
August 21, 2003
Waltzing Answers
While ozguru is still suffering, here are the three possible answers:
1. "Andy" - because the words of the song include the phrase "Andy watched, Andy waited, as the billy boiled."
2. "Juan" - because the song starts with "Juan's a jolly swagman ...". One of the references mentions that Juan comes from a famous family because his cousin José gets a mention in the US Anthem (José Canyusee).
3. "Hans" - again from "Hans' a jolly swagman ..." but a more likely contender given the inspiration that Banjo gained from a recent shearers dispute which resulted in the death of a swagman/shearer named "Frenchy" Hoffmeister.
So take your pick (or propose an additional one). Ozguru should be back on deck with restricted duties from tomorrow...
Young Professionals - Manager
Images provided by Theepan:
August 20, 2003
Young Professional - Rockstar
Images provided by Theepan:
August 19, 2003
Waltzing Who?
Someone noticed the 'Australian'/'Down Under' nature of the site and sent an interesting link to this article: I Come From the Land ... Up Over which is of course a parody of Men at Work - Down Under. (Music from Sammy: ) The key in the article was the mention of the old Aussie favourite 'Waltzing Matilda'.
Not many people know this but the words and tune that are normally sung are not the original. The most common variant is sung here by Slim Dusty (courtesy of Matilda Centre).
There are in fact three variants. The original (words by Banjo Patterson, tune by Christina Macpherson) can be heard here (via NLA). The second variant (arranged by Marie Cowan) was used as part of an advertising campaign around 1902. This is the version that was published internationally as an 'authentic' Australian song and it can be heard here (again from the NLA). The third form is often called the Queensland version (and there are sub variants as well). You can hear it here (again from the NLA).
A number of governments (Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke) all toyed with the national anthem, it was originally 'God Save the Queen' (GStQ). Under Whitlam the anthem was changed to 'Advance Australia Fair' (AAF) but with GStQ played when royalty were present. The next government reversed this and made GStQ the anthem and AAF became the 'National Song' and 'Waltzing Matilda' the anthem for the Montreal Olympics. At the next change of government it was changed again at GStQ was relegated to the back benches and AAF became the official anthem (and it still is although the words have been fiddled to make it more politically correct and gender inclusive). Waltzing Matilda is officially the 'unofficial national anthem'. It is also the marching tune of 1 RAR (1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment). The tune is also used by the US 1st Marine Division. The song has in turn inspired other pieces like this one (again from the NLA).
Now, here is the key question: What was the name of the Swagman? (There are three possible answers, if you know, put it in a comment. Please don't cheat by searching the reference sites below).
More information can be found at The National Library of Australia and Roger Clarke's site. Translation of unfamiliar Australian terms used in the song can be found at the NLA.
Young Professionals - Magician
Images provided by Theepan:
Adam Goodes
I know I promised not to post any more about the progress of the Swans BUT this is special. On Sunday they played the Brisbane Lions in Brisbane. All the pundits (and yours truly - who is not a pundit) said they couldn't win - not in Brisbane. Well they did and at least some of the credit has to go to this man (and to think I taught him in TAFE when he was a rookie....):
For those who are unfamiliar with Australia Rules, this is called a mark. You jump and catch the ball after it has been kicked. The gent in purple jumped too soon but as you can see, Adam has made a perfect mark. The image is not photo-shopped - they really do have to jump like that which is why the critics call it "arial ping pong". Now after you mark, you get effectively get a "free" kick (i.e. no one can interfere with you until you get rid of the ball) like this one:
A kick like this would easily travel 50 meters (165 feet). On ya mate! Go Swans!
P.S. The first image was scanned from the front page of the paper, the second came from the Swans website.
August 18, 2003
Blog Wars
The history of Scotland is full of internecine warfare. Basically the different clans were almost continually fighting each other. Mind you that was probably just as well because whenever they did unite they were extremely sucessful - it just took a lot of effort to get the unification going. The best way was to arrange for the English to invade and do all the horrible things that they usually did to "inferior" races. The Scots would then forget their differences long enough to deal with the invaders.
Well it looks like the external threats are fading, even the fuss about Iraq is dying down. As a result, the bloggers all appear to be imitating Scotland and indulging in some form of self destructive blog war. The first shots appear to have been almost games - like the one referred to in the latest Blog Roundup which involves Hi, I'm Black, Practical Penumbra and Dead Parrot.
More recently there seem to be some real nastiness creeping in and spoiling things. Medium nasty is this argument (via Paul Jané) between two bloggers. The comments posted were personal and direct. If someone chooses to open up and talk freely on their blog, it would be nice to be at least a little polite about it rather than slapping them in the face. I certainly see the whole thing as a warning not to reveal too much on the blog.
[EDITOR: Please read the comments attached to this article before responding to the next paragraph....]
Even more scary is the argument between Kate (Electric Venom) and DaGoddess (another hat tip to Paul Jané). Now I don't know either of the protagonists personally although I have read Electric Venom before (and used to link to the site) but the whole thing has escalated way out of hand. To some degree I think (personal judgement here) that Kate appears to be trying to make amends for the inital problem....
The whole thing raises the question of what to put on your blog and what to leave off it. Is it safe to put photo's of your kids? In the past I have commented on things like corporal punishment - is that safe?
I try to think of an email or a post like this: would I be happy for the subject of the email/article to read it? If you feel I don't live up to that standard, let me know....
Latest SCO Development
No this is not in the wrong section :-)
Check out this SCO article. It makes just as much sense as all the previous broadcasts from SCO :-)
Here is a little taste:
Lindon, UT - The SCO Group announced the launch of a campaign to shoot 1% of all babies born in the US. "Statistically, 1% of all people are Linux users. Rather than have these young hoodlums grow up without any respect for our intellectual property, we have chosen to nip it in the bud, as it were," said SCO's CEO, Darl McBride. In addition, during the campaign announcement, SCO said that individuals could pay $2,499 per child for immunity from execution. "The price goes up to $5,200 dollars after that family's firstborn reaches 18 months, so it is in their advantage to pony up now," McBride continued. The announcement brought cheers from SCO's chief investors and supporters, including the Gartner Group, and the BSA (Blind and Shortsighted Alliance). The organizations hailed it as "A brave, innovative step in the fight against intellectual piracy."
An RIAA spokesperson that was also present said that they were taking serious looks at SCO's proposal for fighting piracy in the music industry. "I think this will be a great deterrent. It will force parents to talk to their kids about the evils of intellectual piracy. In a free economy, this kind of thing is a must."
Young Professionals - Fireman
Images provided by Theepan:
August 17, 2003
Quiz of the Week(end)
I have no idea what this was about. Look folks, I just take the quiz and answer the questions, deeper meaning is completely beyond me.....
YOU ARE MARRIED TO A WoODCHUCK!!!
what's YOUR deepest secret?
brought to you by Quizilla
Irish Game Show
Now Paddy was an Irishman (an Irishman of note, who fell into a fortune and bought himself a goat). Well this is one of the stories about how he didn't make as big a fortune as he could have :-)
Paddy was staring in a game show. It was an international thing put on for the kiddies. Paddy happened to be visiting the TV station (looking for work) when someone said to him: "You must be Irish". Well Paddy was pleased as punch that he had been spotted and said "And what else would I be?". The lady roped him into appearing on the kids show with the promise of a tenner for joining in and a hundred pounds if he won it. Looked like easy money to Paddy until he discovered the twist. You had to know the answer and spell it as well....
There were a number of candidates but by the final round there were only three left. Paddy had survived by luck (and some lousy spelling on the part of the opposition). He was competing against Joe from Texas and Bluey from Down Under.
"OK", said the host, "here is your question and it's an easy one: Complete this sentance and don't forget to spell the word.... Are your ready? ... Old MacDonald had a what?"
Quick as a flash the Texan gunned his buzzer and shouted "Old MacDonald had a ranch - R A N C H".
The wrong answer buzzer had no sooner made it's terrible sound when Bluey walloped his buzzer within an inch of his life and yelled: "Old MacDonald had a station - S T A T I O N".
Once again the wrong answer buzzer sounded and the host look over to Paddy. "Take your time" he said and offered some help - "It's a children's song about Old MacDonald and all the animals that live on his ... something starting with F".
Paddy grinned as he realised he knew the answer: "Old MacDonald had a farm - E I E I O".
August 16, 2003
Archaeologists
[Emailed by a fellow Newton user from Australia: Allan Ngaparu]
A team of archaeologists was excavating in Israel when they came upon a cave. Written across the wall of the cave were the following symbols:
It was considered a unique find and the writings were said to be at least three thousand years old!
The piece of stone was removed, brought to the museum, and archaeologists from around the world came to study the ancient symbols. They held a huge meeting after months of conferences to discuss the meaning of the markings.
The President of the society pointed at the first drawing and said: "This looks like a woman. We can judge that it was family oriented and held women in high esteem. You can also tell they were intelligent, as the next symbol resembles a donkey, so, they were smart enough to have animals help them till the soil. The next drawing looks like a shovel of some sort, which means they even had tools to help them."
"Even further proof of their high intelligence is the fish which means that if a famine had hit the earth, whereby the food didn't grow, they would take to the sea for food. The last symbol appears to be the Star of David which means they were evidently Hebrews."
The audience applauded enthusiastically, but a little old man stood up in the back of the room and said, "Idiots, Hebrew is read from right to left. It says: "Holy Mackerel, Dig The Ass On That Woman!".
End of the week
It is almost 11:30 (will be midnight by the time this article is done) on Friday night and I have a feeling of accomplishment (at last). It has been a terrible week overall. At work some 30+ friends and/or colleagues finished up today (half of the contracting staff). The remainder will be out by Christmas. This will have a hugh impact on operation support because the entire IT operation was only a couple of hundred people to start with. That made things pretty tense and there are ongoing disputes about pay and bonuses combined with appraisals ... AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! That makes me feel better.
Anyway the achievement is that I got my Friday5 posted, not only on Friday but by 5pm as well! I also have finished the weekly blog roundup (to be published on Sunday at midday - isn't pre-publishing wonderful). To top it off, I managed to get some articles together for a shared blog run by Pete who is already famous for Random Riddled Ramblings. Much more productive in one evening than a whole week at work.
As part of doing the Blog Roundup, I followed a link chain and ended up on some site with a quiz that I had not seen before. Being a quiz sucker, I just had to try it out. I know that there is a quiz preset for Sunday but here goes a bonus one:
You are a Playboy.
What kind of Sixties Person are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Huh? I picked conservative options (except for Sean Connery) and ended up with this result? Then I looked at the other results and figured I didn't do too badly after all.
Have a good weekend all, posting may be a little light due to other commitments over the weekend but we'll see - maybe I can remain productive all weekend.....
August 15, 2003
Friday Five
1. How much time do you spend online each day?
Average about two hours a day. Some work related, some for fun and the rest is blogging (and blog reading). I can keep the number this low by doing most of my writing off-line.
2. What is your browser homepage set to?
I use four browsers. Safari and Camino are set to my main blog page (probably where you are reading this). I prefer Safari but occasionally Camino can load things that Safari cannot (like ftp and gopher pages).
OmniWeb is set to Google (the default, blank page for the browser). I have to use OmniWeb to make https tunnel connections through the work proxy server.
IE (shame) is set to the company intranet page because it tests for IE and I don't want to change the settings on the other browsers because that might make web designers only use IE.
3. Do you use any instant messaging programs? If so, which one(s)?
Yes. Couldn't get by without them. One is the only true IM - it is called a telephone, the other is sometimes a delayed messenger - it is called email. To date, I have not found anything that these two cannot deal with. I am toying with iChat AV because it would be cheaper than phoning friends in USA, UK and India.
4. Where was your first webpage located?
I don't remember. Probably at UNSW. My first email address (that I can remember) was something like munnari!usyd!unsw!elec70b!u0 (well the 0 was actually my student number - which had more digits). If you don't recognize that it is a very old style UUCP address. Soon after that I was gremlin AT runx.org.au (no longer a valid email address) and the web still didn't really exist (although the internet did).
5. How long have you had your current website?
This is a question that is both easy and hard. Easy answer is since the start of the 2nd TypePad Beta (July 2003). The hard answer is based on that old zen question about not being able to step in the same river twice. If we accept the continuity of that river, then this web site is merely a time transition away from the previous one and the whole blog thing for me started publicly on the 1st of February 2003.
This week I was trying very hard to be on-time with the Friday posting but it did not appear on the Friday Five website until about 2pm Friday (AEST).
Young Professionals - Doctor
Images provided by Theepan:
Staff Motivation VI
Hammer the standardisation button. If all the workers are the same, using the same tools, they become interchangeable. Stamp out any individualisation. Start with computers. Make everyone use the same, standard system. Don't allow your technicians to have anything different. Ask your friendly Microsloth agent for the most appropriate bundle of software and buy it for everyone. Don't allow consultants to use their own systems (especially if they use Macs) because then they could be more productive than the regular staff...
Quality Software II
A much funnier look at the virus can be found at As the Apple Turns and I quote:
Being Mac users, we usually aren't affected by viruses, so we tend to be a little slow to realize that a new one has shown up to say howdy. Eventually you learn to read the signs, though; judging by the general sluggishness we're noticing around the 'net and the occasional IT person running pell-mell down the street with his hair on fire, we can only assume that yet another virus-thingy has the Wintel world by the virtual throat....
Now, we pretty much always chuckle a little when something like this sends Wintel networks into a tizzy, but this time the Giggle Quotient's just about off the meter. Perhaps you recall how, the day after Microsoft scored a $90 million contract to provide software for 140,000 computers at the Department of Homeland Security, Microsoft announced that most versions of Windows included a little security oopsie that kindasorta lets cybermeanies "seize control of a victim's Windows computer over the Internet, stealing data, deleting files, or eavesdropping on emails." And maybe you recall just a couple of weeks ago when the same Department of Homeland Security (yes, the one that shelled out $90 mil for a pile of software so insecure it's frequently mistaken for Woody Allen's more neurotic younger brother) saw fit to issue "an unprecedented second warning" about this particular security abyss, practically begging all Windows-using Americans to patch their Wintels posthaste.
Gee, guess which vulnerability Blaster exploits? So that should give you a sense of how seriously the average Wintel user takes the necessity of patching Windows's many holes, even when the government gets involved.
Interestingly enough, Blaster has an air of tech commentary about it that most viruses sadly lack; it appears to exist primarily to chastise Microsoft for making Blaster's existence possible in the first place. The worm's code includes this message: "Billy Gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software." On top of that, this Saturday all infected computers will reportedly participate in a massive distributed denial of service attack by firing off zillions of requests to WindowsUpdate.com, Microsoft's site for issuing all those hundreds of security patches that evidently no one ever downloads. (Well, at least the site will get some traffic for once.)
Go read the rest of the article there .... (you may need to check the history files for Wednesday 13th August)
Quality Software
Phones ringing. All day (yesterday). Non stop. Not my phone but all the phones around me. I got a few, mainly wrong numbers. All the same: "yadda yadda WORM yadda yadda VIRUS yadda yadda END-OF-WORLD yadda yadda". Speaking from experience, the punters do not appreciate jokes that link worms with garden shops or virii with medical clinics. Nor are they impressed when you explain that you look after REAL computers that run REAL operating systems that do not fall over just because yet another bug has been found in the worlds most dangerous software.
All together now.... 'Here's a nickel son, get yourself a real computer'.
Actually, I had a brilliant thought. When you learn to drive in Australia (16+ years old), you start with L plates (these are attached to the car to warn other drivers that you are a 'L'unatic) and must have a real driver to accompany you when driving. Then after passing tests you move on to P plates ('P'est) and there are various limits (like speed and alcohol consumption) for a period of time. Eventually you move on to a regular licence. The point is that you have to start under supervision. Maybe we should introduce that sort of scheme for the internet. Everyone with a WinTel system has to start with an 'L' plate and be accompanied by a real computer user who supervises the internet for them. Once they pass the 'no virii for three months' then they get their P plates. When they upgrade to something more serious (like Linux or a Mac) they can upgrade to a full licence :-)
Actually that is not really fair. In the case of driving you need to improve your skills but in the case of trying to keep a PC virus free there is nothing you can do - you are competing against Microslosh and they can introduce bugs faster than you can patch them.
August 14, 2003
TypePad Trick #1
I have just discovered a neat trick for dealing with draft posts. In TypePad, a new post can be saved as "draft", "publish now" or "publish on ...". This is all well and good but if you have an entry that is gradually written over a number of days then it can get lost in the list of posts. You have to use filter or the 'List All' and then scan for draft in the status field.
Well here is another way. Save the article as draft. Click on the clock that now appears under the draft option and then pick some day in the future - e.g. the end of the month. This will keep your draft at the top of the entry list when you edit but leave it as a draft entry.
Interview Virus
You might recall the interview virus that a few sites tried to address. It reached here from Norbizness. One site has gone down (MySQL connection errors) but the others have all answered and TFS Reluctant has put his questions online.
I have only had one sucker victim respondent so far but they may change after people see the questions. The idea is to prepare an answer, post it on your weblog and leave a comment (or trackback) to here so that people can follow the mutating virus (check the rules in the original post).....
Question 1: Where do you live? Where do you want to live? Why?
Question 2: An old relative dies and leaves you $AU5 million. What are you going to do?
Question 3: You get a chance to nominate three people (living or dead) for sainthood. Who and why?
Question 4: If you could solve one of the world's problems. Which one would you choose and why?
Question 5: If you were limited to only reading three weblogs a day, who would they be and why?
There we go, that's not too hard and not too personal. I want to see some more volunteers. Come on and join in. What about you Glenn? Maybe I'll answer my own questions as well....
The Wisdom of Youth
This entry is lifted straight from Chasing Daisy who in turn got the idea from The Challenge. Chasing Daisy has really bright colour scheme that seems to work well while reading the site but gives you spots before the eyes when you go elsewhere :-)
"Never trust a dog to watch your food." (Patrick, age 10)
"When your dad is mad and asks you, 'Do I look stupid?' don't answer." (Hannah, 9)
"Never tell your mum her diet's not working." (Michael, 14)
"When your mum is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair". (Taylia, 10)
"Puppies still have bad breath even after eating a Tic-Tac." (Andrew, 9)
"Never hold a vacuum and a cat at the same time." (Kyoyo, 9)
"You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk." (Armir, 9)
"Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts." (Kellie, 11)
"If you want a kitten, start out by asking for a horse." (Naomi, 15)
"Felt markers are not good to use as lipstick." (Lauren, 9)
"Don't pick on your sister when she's holding a baseball bat." (Joel, 10)
"When you get a bad grade in school, show it to your mum when she's on the phone." (Alyesha, 13)
"Never try to baptise a cat. " (Eileen, 8)
Australian Food
This is the next in an on-going series on Australia. What, exactly, do Australians eat?
If you believe (*1) the guide books this can be eaten raw or cooked and it tastes nutty, eggs, or a cross between chicken & prawn.
Australia has many such interesting forms of bush tucker but personally, I think Crocodile Dundee had the right attitude. When his friend the reporter asks about bush tucker: "Can you really eat that?" He responds instantly: "You can live on it, but it tastes like sh*t.". (She later uses the same line when serving him a New York hotdog).
Generally, we have all the same sorts of fast-food restaurants that exist in the States. We have MacDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King (usually called Hungry Jacks), Eagle Boys (Pizza), KFC, and Oporto. We also have a wide variety of quality restaurants, in Sydney the specialties are Thai, Chinese and Italian. Unlike Europe, there is an abundance of fresh vegies and fruit all year round (trying to get fruit in England at Christmas time was a nightmare) and relatively cheap compared to other places I have been. We grow and export wheat and rice. We farm (and export) lamb, beef and pork. In addition we now have farm-bred emu, deer (venison), crocodile and kangaroo (and yes I have tried all of them). The climate in Tasmania allows us to produce salmon and other cold water fish. Basically, the average diet is probably the same as any other developed western nation (except for the cheap fruit and vegies).
(*1) If you believe the guidebooks, then I recommend not reading any more guide books. Actually, I can tell you from experience that it tastes like sawdust and dirt and it should be avoided at all costs. Really if you want to be adventuresome, try Haggis.
August 13, 2003
Raksha Bandhan II
This is a followup to an earlier article. Based on the helpful comments from a couple of Indian friends (thanks Anvita and Jivha) I decided to do some more research. Firstly I found a better picture which seems to be more representative of the festival (sorry about the poor quality):
The most detailed explanation I can find is from this site. It includes the history and also specific details of how the festival is celebrated. The translation of the festival name is given as "Bond of Protection" which fits nicely.
Other sources of information include these sites: a simple introduction, a news article, a cultural site and an entry on MSN India.
What I can't get over is just how much I can learn from other people. My mother was a teacher (geography, history) and she used to always try to use direct sources when teaching history. She used veterans to talk about the war and people who had seen events first hand. Well this whole exercise for me has been like that - I am learning about this from people who are directly involved in the event. That is much more interesting (and memorable) than just be reading about something in a text book.
Europe vs Italy
Checkout this flash presentation with a tip of the hat to AMCGLTD.
Young Professionals - Dancer
Images provided by Theepan:
Rakhi Festival
This is really cool. I have been reading on a couple of different blogs about the Rakhi festival in India that has something to do with brothers and sisters. For more details check out Anvita or Jivha. Then yesterday's paper had this picture and comment:
Body art ... Arpita Das shows her hands covered with henna designs on the occasion of the rakhi festival in Calcutta. During this popular Hindu festival, sisters also tie sacred thread onto their brother's wrist for his well being in return for his vowing to protect them. Photo: Reuters
Unfortunately the paper did not explain why this lady has tattooed hands and the explanations I have found were about sisters trying things around their brothers wrists. No mention of lady's hands. Now if I had not read those blogs I would have just accepted the paper's explanation and spent the rest of my life believing that the Rakhi festival had something to do with dying the hands of your ladies. Shame on the SMH for not checking the facts...
Staff Motivation V
Now that things are settling down (its been a week since the last rampage), send around a memo about appointing some outside consultants to advise on a restructure. Make sure that the names of thouse known to be in favour of outsourcing are linked with the consultants - either as consultants or advisors. Raise the fact that the cost cutting to date has been insufficient and that we are going "back to basics" like rotating rosters to increase coverage. Don't let the staff work out their own hours, insist that everyone has to take turns at both early and late shifts - that will be sure to upset everyone (even though some would be happy to work early and others late, noone wants to do both on different weeks). If anyone complaisn use the time honoured phrase: "We don't pay for the hours you work, we pay you to do the job, whatever that takes."
American Policy
This was sent to me as a joke but I think it crosses the line between humour and satire so I have posted it here. I would like to thank the source but I won't mention his or her name to reduce the flack (if any).
US FOREIGN POLICY - EVEN A CHILD CAN UNDERSTAND IT!
Q: Daddy, why did we have to attack Iraq?
A: Because they had weapons of mass destruction honey.
Q: But the inspectors didn't find any weapons of mass destruction.
A: That's because the Iraqis were hiding them.
Q: And that's why we invaded Iraq?
A: Yep. Invasions always work better than inspections.
Q: But after we invaded them, we STILL didn't find any weapons of mass destruction, did we?
A: That's because the weapons are so well hidden. Don't worry, we'll find something, probably right before the 2004 election.
Q: Why did Iraq want all those weapons of mass destruction?
A: To use them in a war, silly.
Q: I'm confused. If they had all those weapons that they planned to use in a war, then why didn't they use any of those weapons when we went to war with them?
A: Well, obviously they didn't want anyone to know they had those weapons, so they chose to die by the thousands rather than defend themselves.
Q: That doesn't make sense Daddy. Why would they choose to die if they had all those big weapons to fight us back with?
A: It's a different culture. It's not supposed to make sense.
Q: I don't know about you, but I don't think they had any of those weapons our government said they did.
A: Well, you know, it doesn't matter whether or not they had those weapons. We had another good reason to invade them anyway.
Q: And what was that?
A: Even if Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator, which is another good reason to invade another country.
Q: Why? What does a cruel dictator do that makes it OK to invade his country?
A: Well, for one thing, he tortured his own people.
Q: Kind of like what they do in China?
A: Don't go comparing China to Iraq. China is a good economic competitor, where millions of people work for slave wages in sweatshops to make U.S. corporations richer.
Q: So if a country lets its people be exploited for American corporate gain, it's a good country, even if that country tortures people?
A: Right.
Q: Why were people in Iraq being tortured?
A: For political crimes, mostly, like criticizing the government. People who criticized the government in Iraq were sent to prison and tortured.
Q: Isn't that exactly what happens in China?
A: I told you, China is different.
Q: What's the difference between China and Iraq?
A: Well, for one thing, Iraq was ruled by the Ba'ath party, while China is Communist.
Q: Didn't you once tell me Communists were bad?
A: No, just Cuban Communists are bad.
Q: How are the Cuban Communists bad?
A: Well, for one thing, people who criticize the government in Cuba are sent to prison and tortured.
Q: Like in Iraq?
A: Exactly.
Q: And like in China, too?
A: I told you, China's a good economic competitor. Cuba, on the other hand, is not.
Q: How come Cuba isn't a good economic competitor?
A: Well, you see, back in the early 1960s, our government passed some laws that made it illegal for Americans to trade or do any business with Cuba until they stopped being communists and started being capitalists like us.
Q: But if we got rid of those laws, opened up trade with Cuba, and started doing business with them, wouldn't that help the Cubans become capitalists?
A: Don't be a smart-ass.
Q: I didn't think I was being one.
A: Well, anyway, they also don't have freedom of religion in Cuba.
Q: Kind of like China and the Falun Gong movement?
A: I told you, stop saying bad things about China. Anyway, Saddam Hussein came to power through a military coup, so he's not really a legitimate leader anyway.
Q: What's a military coup?
A: That's when a military general takes over the government of a country by force, instead of holding free elections like we do in the United States.
Q: Didn't the ruler of Pakistan come to power by a military coup?
A: You mean General Pervez Musharraf? Uh, yeah, he did, but Pakistan is our friend.
Q: Why is Pakistan our friend if their leader is illegitimate?
A: I never said Pervez Musharraf was illegitimate.
Q: Didn't you just say a military general who comes to power by forcibly overthrowing the legitimate government of a nation is an illegitimate leader?
A: Only Saddam Hussein. Pervez Musharraf is our friend, because he helped us invade Afghanistan.
Q: Why did we invade Afghanistan?
A: Because of what they did to us on September 11th.
Q: What did Afghanistan do to us on September 11th?
A: Well, on September 11th, nineteen men, fifteen of them Saudi Arabians, hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them into buildings, killing over 3,000 Americans.
Q: So how did Afghanistan figure into all that?
A: Afghanistan was where those bad men trained, under the oppressive rule of the Taliban.
Q: Aren't the Taliban those bad radical Islamics who chopped off people's heads and hands?
A: Yes, that's exactly who they were. Not only did they chop off people's heads and hands, but they oppressed women, too.
Q: Didn't the Bush administration give the Taliban 43 million dollars back in May of 2001?
A: Yes, but that money was a reward because they did such a good job fighting drugs.
Q: Fighting drugs?
A: Yes, the Taliban were very helpful in stopping people from growing opium poppies.
Q: How did they do such a good job?
A: Simple. If people were caught growing opium poppies, the Taliban would have their hands and heads cut off.
Q: So, when the Taliban cut off people's heads and hands for growing flowers, that was OK, but not if they cut people's heads and hands off for other reasons?
A: Yes. It's OK with us if radical Islamic fundamentalists cut off people's hands for growing flowers, but it's cruel if they cut off people's hands for stealing bread.
Q: Don't they also cut off people's hands and heads in Saudi Arabia?
A: That's different. Afghanistan was ruled by a tyrannical patriarchy that oppressed women and forced them to wear burqas whenever they were in public, with death by stoning as the penalty for women who did not comply.
Q: Don't Saudi women have to wear burqas in public, too?
A: No, Saudi women merely wear a traditional Islamic body covering.
Q: What's the difference?
A: The traditional Islamic covering worn by Saudi women is a modest yet fashionable garment that covers all of a woman's body except for her eyes and fingers. The burqa, on the other hand, is an evil tool of patriarchal oppression that covers all of a woman's body except for her eyes and fingers.
Q: It sounds like the same thing with a different name.
A: Now, don't go comparing Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are our friends.
Q: But I thought you said 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11th were from Saudi Arabia.
A: Yes, but they trained in Afghanistan.
Q: Who trained them?
A: A very bad man named Osama bin Laden.
Q: Was he from Afghanistan?
A: Uh, no, he was from Saudi Arabia too. But he was a bad man, a very bad man.
Q: I seem to recall he was our friend once.
A: Only when we helped him and the mujahadeen repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan back in the 1980s.
Q: Who are the Soviets? Was that the Evil Communist Empire Ronald Reagan talked about?
A: There are no more Soviets. The Soviet Union broke up in 1990 or thereabouts, and now they have elections and capitalism like us. We call them Russians now.
Q: So the Soviets ? I mean, the Russians ? are now our friends?
A: Well, not really. You see, they were our friends for many years after they stopped being Soviets, but then they decided not to support our invasion of Iraq, so we're mad at them now. We're also mad at the French and the Germans because they didn't help us invade Iraq either.
Q: So the French and Germans are evil, too?
A: Not exactly evil, but just bad enough that we had to rename French fries and French toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast.
Q: Do we always rename foods whenever another country doesn't do what we want them to do?
A: No, we just do that to our friends. Our enemies, we invade.
Q: But wasn't Iraq one of our friends back in the 1980s?
A: Well, yeah. For a while.
Q: Was Saddam Hussein ruler of Iraq back then?
A: Yes, but at the time he was fighting against Iran, which made him our friend, temporarily.
Q: Why did that make him our friend?
A: Because at that time, Iran was our enemy.
Q: Isn't that when he gassed the Kurds?
A: Yeah, but since he was fighting against Iran at the time, we looked the other way, to show him we were his friend.
Q: So anyone who fights against one of our enemies automatically becomes our friend?
A: Most of the time, yes.
Q: And anyone who fights against one of our friends is automatically an enemy?
A: Sometimes that's true, too. However, if American corporations can profit by selling weapons to both sides at the same time, all the better.
Q: Why?
A: Because war is good for the economy, which means war is good for America. Also, since God is on America's side, anyone who opposes war is a godless un-American Communist. Do you understand now why we attacked Iraq?
Q: I think so. We attacked them because God wanted us to, right?
A: Yes.
Q: But how did we know God wanted us to attack Iraq?
A: Well, you see, God personally speaks to George W. Bush and tells him what to do.
Q: So basically, what you're saying is that we attacked Iraq because George W. Bush hears voices in his head?
A. Yes! You finally understand how the world works. Now close your eyes, make yourself comfortable, and go to sleep. Good night.
August 12, 2003
Comment
My little email icon is jumping up and down. Yup. New mail. Apparently someone left a comment on my old blog. Hit the refresh button and there it is:
Susie was here :)
Huh? Who is Susie? Is this virtual graffitti? Unlike my front fence I don't mind - it is easy to erase (if neccessary) and it means that Susie (whoever she is) is reading my blog. I always appreciate comments because it means that I am not talking to myself. Otherwise I could just go and did a King George and talk to the trees. I try to reply to comments by either - email, commenting on the comment or by leaving a comment on the other persons blog.
OK. Susie has left a valid email address and a blog. Check the blog. Hmmm. The email address on the blog does not match the one she left. Oh well, lets skim the articles. Here we go, found it:
I have to thank Tiger for this idea, for two reasons. The first is I just thought of it while leaving a comment at his blog, and the second is that he wrote a post awhile back commenting on the lack of comments relative to the number of visitors to his blog. So I think what I shall do is this: whenever I read a post I am going to leave a "comment" indicating that I read that post.
Now, as I wrote this morning I have BLA [although not as badly this evening as this morning (thank you Tim)] so, while so afflicted, it is probably not possible to make cogent rebuttals or witty ripostes as comments; therefore what I'm going to do if I can't think of anything amusing to say is just write "Susie was here" or something equally pointless, just so the blogwriter knows I not only read their words, but was struck commentless by the beauty and elegance of their prose...
Maybe I'll just leave punctuation....
{Gotta wonder how many bloggers I'm going to annoy the heck out of before I get bored with doing it...}
What a brilliant idea. Mind you I am not sure if I can cope with that many emails to reply to :-) Seriously it is worth considering.....
Now can I let you in on a little secret? Do you want to be on the top of the blog ecology? You can get there a lot of different ways, but here is an easy approach - if you leave a comment you will automagically get one link on the blog ecology. Same for a trackback. Those will continue to count until the article drops off the bottom of the page (about a month). So, once a month (or more often), leave a comment. Think of it as link preservation. You will also have the side effect of encouraging me to find your blog and add yet more links :-)
Political Spectrum
I was browsing the blog roll and came across this entry over at Norbusiness which explains where the name comes from and also references a political spectrum analyzer. I answered as honestly as possible and ended up with this result:
I wonder how accurate the results are for non-American readers because I would have guessed (based on the descriptions) that I would have ended up on the authoritarian right (over near Gerhard Schrder rather than near the Pope). I also suspect that the center point on the scale is skewed for Americans because John Howard would be pretty close to dead center for Australian conditions ...
Followup: my wife also did the quiz and this is her results:
She is an obvious candidate for the next pope :-)
USS Clueless
[Ed: This is a borderline article. It could be on the main blog but it is really an article review.]
Steven Den Beste has an interesting article entitled: Gulliver Unbound where he discusses a presentation given by Josef Joffe on behalf of 'The Center for Independent Studies'. As an aside the CIS was mentioned in today's papers and the description notes: "Non-partisan but right-wing. Philosophy of free-market economics and individual choice. Socially conservative policies on welfare, poverty and family."
Joffe was comparing America to Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. Joffe frankly discusses the options for the Lilliputians to tie down the giant and coexist with it (her in this case, him in the original story). Steven disagrees that there can be some form of balance in the soft-power and that the US is very aware of this.
Overall the article is very cohesive and very well written but (and you just knew there would be a but) I come away from reading it with a sense of dissatisfaction and unbalance. The first concern relates to the various fears involved. Of course Europe fears an American dominated world. No one wants to lose power. America also fears being tied down by all the little ropes and controls that Europe wants to impose. What is not addressed is that Europe has had many experiences of "bad" leaders and I think that some of the fear of America is not America as she is now but America as she could be in the wrong hands. Steven mentions the fact that America does not want to "rule the world" but it is not inconceivable that a future president might want to do exactly that. There are no safeguards to protect people from their own stupidity and history has taught that eventually the mobs will vote for bread, circuses and protection.
The other nagging question relates to the ambivalent attitude of America towards this so called "soft-power". If she understands the soft power, then why bother trying to recruit allies prior to Iraq. I don;t know what deal was done between the British and the Americans but for Australia's participation, we were offered free-trade (which is good for us but not good for the US and that is why the US uses tariffs to control Australian imports). True, the offer has not materialized but the key question is why was the offer made at all? Surely the US with all that "unbeatable" soft power could have just proceeded. Steven makes it quite clear that America does not need world approval and will in fact ignore world opinion when it contradicts her own intentions. In this case, the war against Iraq did not require the UN. Nor did it require allies or military assistance.
I think the truth of the matter is that Joffe may have identified the key with the concept that America "will recognize that it is better to be somewhat weaker but liked and unchallenged than to be stronger but faced with strong opposition". In this case the use of allies helps to show that America is not acting alone (even though she could have done so) because it is seen as being a cooperative venture between the giant and the midgets rather than as the giant versus the midgets. In this sense, the antipathy towards Britain and Australia from France makes a lot of sense because as Joffe point out, the French were effectively the ring leaders of the group trying to (if I can confuse the metaphors a bit further) bell the cat.
OptiMystic URL
In the last Blog Roundup, there was a newcomer (to the review, not to blogging) called OptiMystic (at TypePad) - one of the typepad blogs that I reviewed or mentioned. The owner (SuperSam) has advised that he will not be updating the typepad blog now that the beta is over. He will however, revert back to his previous blog at OptiMystic (at Blogspot). Feel free to update your links...
BTW, the head story on the blogspot site is currently about Sayyid Hussein Khomeini (grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - founder of the Iranian revolution). [Ed: and complete fruitcake]. Apparently the grandson is actually a liberal cleric (read the article for more details)...
SuperSam also provided a correct link for Anita who I had confused with Anvita.
Jaboobie Moves
According to this article, Jaboobie (& 2 Hard Boiled Eggs) has moved from this url to this one. You might want to update your links.
Read Me (Or Else)
Technically, this should probably be a review but it is so funny that I had to post it here.
Just click on the link and then sit back and laugh: AMCGLTD.
Strine Politics
This is the third article introducing Australia. You will note that I still haven't got onto the perennial American question (about the kangaroos and schoolbooks) but it will come...
There have been some political posts before but the relevant background was missing and that can make it confusing when you are unaware of the history of the participants. I still have no idea why any political party would use a donkey (or an elephant) as their mascot. Are they trying to imply that one party is stubbornly difficult while the other is lumbering and slow to adapt?
To start you off on this journey of discovery, take a quick visit to A. E. Brain who provides a quick break down of the parties.
OK. In Australia, we have three levels of government (and more politicians per head of population than just about anywhere else on earth): federal, state and local. At the federal level (that covers the whole of Australia, including relationships with other countries), the ruling party is a coalition of Liberal and National parties. In Opposition is the Labor party. There are two houses of parliament: the lower house (house of representatives) which is where the prime minister and government function and the upper house (senate or house of review). The senate is also home to a number of fringe parties including democrats, greenies and independents. In recent times the government has not had a majority in the upper house which means that they have had to negotiate with the fringe parties to get their legislation approved. This has also given small parties a disproportionate say in politics (see comments about GST below). The federal government raises funds via income tax, petrol levies and other exciting duties. Income tax is on a sliding scale where you pay different rates of tax on different parts of your income (see below).
At the state level, there is another dual house government which exists primarily to employ politicians. It does not provide any services of functionality that could not be provided at a federal level (and is not supposed to be able to raise money via taxation, but see this post for a way around that restriction). Really the state governments exist purely as a very expensive historic reminder of the pre-federation days. Ideally the state and local governments should be merged into some intermediate layer - perhaps regional councils. Anyway, the state where I reside is NSW (New South Wales) - and by the way it is REALLY ANNOYING to fill in web forms that assume states have two-letter names. Out postcode system uses three letters for a state plus four digits for the area code (although one of the digits also indicates the state). For those designing web apps, the full list of states AFAIK is: NSW, VIC (Victoria), QLD (Queensland), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia), NT (Northern Territory), WA (Western Australia), ACT (Canberra).
Currently (and for the foreseeable future), NSW has a labor party government. It is an almost unwritten law that the state government of NSW will be the inverse of the federal one. In this case though the opposition (which should be a coalition of liberal and national) is practically non-existent (i.e. they have an insignificant number of seats and are unlikely to win the next election - in fact it would probably take two favorable elections just to make them into a decent opposition). As in the federal system, there is greater diversity in the upper house including at least one genuine redneck. Other splinter parties include australian democrats, christian democrats, shooters, one nation (redneck), greenies and independents. Officially income for the state government comes from the proceeds of the GST (Goods and Services Tax) which is levied by the federal government and then passed to the states. Thanks to the splinter parties at the federal level, who negotiated changes to the GST, the system is both complex and confusing. The original proposal was tax everything (and provide rebates to the deserving). Now it is tax some things but not others unless the moon is blue or it is a Tuesday which just goes to show that the ASA (Australian Society of Certified Practicing Accountants - who can't spell ASCPA) show make really big donations to the splinters....
Finally we have local governments who look after local roads, garbage collection, pre-schools, libraries and at the same provide a training ground for developers, solicitors and real estate agents who want to play with the big boys. This is where they get to practice fiscal incompetence and learn to lie without flinching. Local governments raise money through rates (payable by land owners), leasing of council property and fines (parking, littering, etc). Local councils (at least in NSW) are usually hotbeds of allegations and corruption. On a fairly regular basis, one council or another seems to be suspended and replaced with an administrator by the state government.
I don't know about the breakdown in other countries but some are likely to be different. Public schools are funded primarily at the state level, private schools get funding from the federal and state levels (but less per head than the public system even though the academic results are markedly better in private schools). Police are also state based although there is also a federal police force (I guess like the FBI). Hospitals are state based (but in NSW most people think it is a federal issue thanks to some very clever advertising by the labor party).
No level of government in Australia has to produce audited accounting records. The state government boasts on a regular basis about their 'balanced budget' but it is a complete and absolute crock because they confuse balance sheet entries with a cash flow document. Effectively the 'balanced budget' is a positive cash flow projection formed from the sale of public assets. As any student of Accounting 101 will tell you: that's no way to run a business. Effectively you are sacrificing your asset base to fund recurrent costs which mean long term problems are guaranteed.
As usual any questions are most welcome. I have included an 'Appendix' which explains the income tax rate system a bit more clearly. Note that you still pay tax on goods and services over and above your income tax. I also ignored superannuation (another compulsory tax) and petrol (we pay 90c a litre of which about 60% is taxes and duties of various kinds).
Income Tax
This is the number one question for people coming to work in Australia. Be very careful to make sure you understand this strange system. Start by working out what your taxable income is. You begin with how much your employer paid you and then deduct any 'allowed deductions'. Charitable donations are fairly safe (as long as you keep the receipt) and there may be work related expenses (but these are getting pretty rare). Now add any interest earned (but don't deduct interest paid) and any other income. This new figure (what you were paid less deductions plus other income) is your taxable income. Write this number down because you will need it again in a few moments.
The first $6K is tax free. The next bracket (up to $20K) is 17c in the $. Then 30c up to $50K, 42c up to $60K and 47c for the rest. To make it easier to understand, the tax department provides tables where they calculate the tax at the breakpoints. This means you can just look up your salary the easy way, for an income of $75K (reasonable for a skilled worker but not that generous) you can either calculate it as: (75,000 - 60,000) * 0.47 + (60,000 - 50,000) * 0.42 + (50,000 - 20,000) * 0.30 + (20,000 - 6,000) * 0.17 or use the breakpoint figure of $15,580 + (75,000 - 60,000) * 0.47. The result should be the same ($22,630). Effectively, every dollar you earn over $60K, almost half goes in tax.
Now we need that taxable income figure again. In addition to the income tax you just paid there may be additional levies such as the medicare levy of 1.5%. This is taken against the taxable income, so from your $75K, take away another $1125. You may also have to pay more tax if you have outstanding HECS (student loans) or capital gains. It can also be complicated if you have dividends from shares. Ignoring all that, you would be paying $23,755 in tax (32% of taxable income). If you earned $100K you would pay $35,880 (36%). If you were premier of the state (and we ignore the dodgy tax evasion tactics available to the wealthy) you would pull around $250K and pay $108,630 (43%).
Question Virus
I have been suckered into the question virus (it wasn't hard, I put my hand up for it). The interviewer is none other than Happy Furry Puppy Story Time. The questions and answers are below.
Now for the rules (quoted from Norbizness):
As a condition of being interviewed, I must now become an interviewer of another blogger out there. If you agree to be interviewed (by leaving a comment to this post), you must also agree to the following conditions, or I will be hunted down by the people who started this thing and slapped silly:1) If you want to participate, leave a comment saying "interview me."
2) I will respond by asking you five questions (not the same as you see here).
3) You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
4) You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5) When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.I'm only going to come up with a single set of five questions. As many commenters within the next 24 hours can participate in feeding this exponentially growing viral interviewitis.
Allowing for time, space and the strangeness of timezones, I will grant you until 5:00PM Wednesday (Australian Eastern Standard Time) to respond (it is currently 7:00 AM Tuesday).
The Five Questions
(1) If you could have dinner with four contemporary public figures, where everybody's entree (except for yours) was heavily flavored with strychnine, who would the guests be and why?
I would use the opportunity to clean some things up. Number one quest would have to be the smiling fruitcake. Number two would be Saddam (that would mean that the USA owes me big because I am going to collect that reward and add it to the inheritance in question 3). Number three would be the African fruitcake (Mugabe) for being a violent racist. At that point I have run out of personal targets so I would advertise the fourth spot in the Sydney underworld for lots of money (to add to the inheritance of course).
(2) If you could learn a musical instrument that you don't currently know, what would it be and who would be your ideal instructor?
Actually, I have a serious answer for this one. I would like to learn to play the organ (there is an unused one sitting in our church which no-one can play) and the best instructor I can think of woulr be my former flatmate Chriz Fredericks. Now if you want a more suggestive answer I would have to think really hard and say something like the pan (wink wink) pipes and a lonely shepherdess (wink wink).
(3) Old Uncle Giblet up and died and left you $3 million tax free bucks, which can only be spent on a piece of property (land, house, business). What do you spend it on?
Assume that is $US3 million (more like $4.5 here) plus the reward and the sale of the fourth seat in Q1 would be a nice little earner. I would buy a dairy/orchard on the south coast (or Tasmania) - about 50 acres (that's about half the money) and then a block of units somewhere central (city or eastern suburbs). The units would bring in enough income to pay someone else to milk the cows while I go on a trip to Canada.
(4) What's the one thing you think you offer on your weblog that zillions of other weblogs don't? Really?
My opinion. Absolutely, nobody else has unfettered access to my raw, unbridled, years of collected ignorance. You cannot go to such sterling sites as this one and find the collected ignorance of me.
(5) If you were limited to only reading three weblogs a day, who would they be and why? Please don't mention me, unless it's some sort of pity-based "honorable mention".
Sorry but I can't put your excellent site in the list because I am a voracious reader and I need LOTS of posts. Assuming that I can click the links on the page (but not to other weblogs) then I think the three targets would be Paul Jané who posts lots and lots about Canada, Fark because of the great articles (isn't that what you say about gentlemen's magazines - I only get it for the articles) and the third one would be my old blog because it has an embedded feed from Jivha and Pete as well as some others (I should include you as well). In fact, if I was restricted to only three blogs, I would add a lot more blogs to the embedded RSS feeder along with the full article....
Well that's all folks. If you want me to interview you, leave a comment and suffer the consequences.
Question Virus Followup
Norbizness actually had multiple suckers candidates for that Question Virus.
Other answers can be found at TFS Reluctant (looks a bit like USS Clueless), Sadly, no! (answers not yet available and I can't work out how to permalink the lead article) and Different Strings.
Check them all out and then don't forget to volunteer to be the next victim.
The Russian Joke
I know it is early for this one, but I did promise Alex(ei) that I would post a Russian joke after he protested about all the French jokes....
Ruddy, was sitting, relaxed in his armchair. Having recently become the (communist) mayor of the small village, he was feeling quite pleased with himself. He was smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper while his wife fussed around the room cleaning up.
Just as he was fully absorbed in a story, she muttered: "It's raining again".
"No it isn't", her corrected her. That's just some horses up near the road.
He went back to the paper knowing that what she meant was "and you haven't fixed the leak in the attic roof yet" but at least she hadn't said it out loud.
He got right back into the article was was an absolutely riveting piece complementing the new mayor when she did it again: "It is raining".
"It is not!" he sternly cried.
"But it is raining, I can hear it and you haven't ...."
The mayor jumped out of his chair and roared at the top of his voice, punching the air to lend force to his claim: "I" "Rudolph" "The Red" "Knows" "Rain" "Dear!".
August 11, 2003
Performance Review
[Posted Monday afternoon - after the effects have worn off ... appraisal day is next Monday!]
It's Monday morning. A combination of a busy weekend, insufficient sleep, panadine forte (for a migraine) and flu medication are having an impact. There is an almost surreal effect like being out of one's body observing oneself. I am watching myself get off the bus on the way to work. There is a mild degree of curiosity as to how I can observe myself but not enough to disturb the effect. The observed says something to the bus driver ("Thanks") and gets down the steps to the footpath and sets off along the street. It is early morning and it is cold. Note too cold but chilly enough to keep jackets buttoned and hats on heads. The first walk light appears (near the fire station). Normally the subject will cross this light when the road is clear as this is a one way street and there are few cars turning left at this intersection. Today, he hesitates and waits for a full lights cycle for the little green man to appear. Although he crosses the road briskly and walks along, his footsteps are slowing. It is almost like treacle around his ankles as he struggles to pull himself forward. Fortunately the shops are not yet open or window shopping could slow the subject even further. By the next intersection the bold stride is no more than a slow walk, barely faster than a crawl. Any moment you expect the figure to halt, rooted to the pavement. The next light turns green and the figure shuffles forward. What could be making it so hard to get to work? What is the negative force holding him away from a pay packet? The penny drops with a sick realization, this is performance review week where every mistake will be analyzed and dissected. Every success credited elsewhere.
The only motivation to cross the threshold comes from the thought: well at least it won't make any difference to the bonus this year. No matter what the rating, when applied to a bonus of $0 there is no payout :-)
Fruitcake anyone?
[Rant Warning: What follows is personal opinion and it make be considered offensive by some viewers. The management urge all readers to take a deep breath, count to 10 and find some another article if they feel themselves getting hot under the collar. NOT RECOMMENDED FOR YOUNGER READERS.]
Looks like I spoke too soon when it comes to the debate between Paul and Jivha. The debate arose over the appropriate punishment for the Indonesian fruitcake who has now been convicted of being the mastermind behind the Bali bombings (which killed about 200 people, some Australians, some other nationalities, some locals including muslims).
The largest national grouping of victims was Australia and it appears that Australians were at least partially the intended target (although some of the evidence suggests that fruitcake & co could not tell the difference between an Australian and an American). Both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition have effectively stated that the punishment is up to the Indonesians as the crime was committed on Indonesian soil by an Indonesian national. They have both declined asking for clemency. The leader (is he still the leader this week?) of the (almost completely non-existent) australian democrats has called on the Indonesian government to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. This has been mirrored by others who generally fall into three categories: (a) those who want to "forgive" the crime; (b) those who fear it will spawn more similar crimes and (c) other fruitcakes who would like a precedent to be set before they proceed with similar activities.
It is worth noticing that the fruitcake has now agreed to his lawyers appealing the sentence which suggests that someone has pointed out this to him.
I want to take a back seat for a moment and consider the question in terms of the way Heinlein did in the book Starship Troopers (this was completely ignored in the film). There are two choices for Senior Fruitcake. Either he is incurably insane or he is not. Take your pick. If he can kill 200 people without remorse even though many share his faith and religion then he is, by social definition, insane. This may be a correctable condition via therapy, drugs, remedial education, threat, punishment or whatever. Let us start with the assumption that it is correctable. That means we could invest lots of time and money in his rehabilitation. Note that this is not a casual crime, an off-the-cuff crime, a once-only crime. This was planned down to the last cold blooded detail so the rehabilitation will take lots of time and/or money or both. We are assuming that this will, eventually, work. Fruitcake realises what he has done. Truly realises it. Grasps it in full. Groks the act and the consequences and the fact that repatriation will never be possible. He will then commit suicide because of the realisation of the depths to which he has fallen. Heinlein is arguing that anything less than suicide at this point would indicate that rehabilitation has not yet worked. True rehabilitation will result in despair.
What about the alternative. What if he cannot be "cured" regardless of the time and/or money invested in rehabilitation. Then the problem becomes one of collective responsibility. He is not human - he has proven that already - he is no more than a wild animal (otherwise we could rehabilitate him). If he is not confined in a cage for life he will do it again and next time he will be blameless. It will be our fault for allowing him the opportunity to repeat the performance when we knew he was not capable of self-restraint.
Heinlein also addresses the question of deterrence. Does putting fruitcake to death act as a deterrent? Yesterday some old chook, was waffling on the radio about how it would not stop the same thing happening again. With all due respect it does provide exactly that guarantee. Killing this fruitcake will absolutely prevent THIS fruitcake from doing it again. Other fruitcakes are a different story but note the Darwinian solution at work. I expect that we will run out of mass-murdering fruitcakes at some point in time.
Think seriously about those points for a moment. You do not have to accept it verbatim and tehre are some flaws in the logic but the fundamental point is this - if you want fruitcake to live - are you prepared to personally accept responsibility for it not happening again?
No liberal namby pamby excuses here. Put your name on the line. You know what he is capable of doing. You know he has no regrets. You know he will do it again if he can. Will you, personally, bear the responsibility of ensuring that it does not happen again? I am very serious here.
Lets imagine his sentence is commuted because YOU asked for it. He escapes and does it again in a crowded place like Sydney. My wife or my children are killed. Do you know who I will blame? YOU! Unlike Mr Fruitcake, I would not turn into a suicide bomber or blow up a hotel. I would come after YOU personally. YOU decided to let him live. YOU overrode the rules of the country that convicted him. YOU took the responsibility on yourself and YOU will pay.
Site Update
A couple of nice people (Alex(ei) and Paul) have left comments asking about which blog I would prefer them to link on their pages.
Basically, you may link to which ever site takes your fancy :-)
The long term intention is to have the main blog: GDay Mate with an archive mirror at the old site (should be operational by next weekend). This will keep the size of the typepad blog under control with older archives migrating to the old site. The other two blogs (humour, reviews) will remain independent as long as there are people reading them. They may also feature guest entries as well.
[UPDATE: This is no longer true. The main blog is here and the review blog is here. There is no separate humour blog. You could try this instead.]
Normally I will link to your site via the side bar (identical across all three blogs) or the review blog (via the blog roundup and/or review articles).
The bottom line is for you to consider which site will be of most interest to your readers: inane commenbts from a lunatic down under, occasional jokes and/or silly pictures or a lunatics uninformed opinion about other blogs......
Seriously, from my perspective a link to any of the three blogs is a link and will be reciprocated :-) Thanks to those site who have already redirected their links!
BTW, I changed the names by removing the single apostrophe because some people were getting scripting errors when trying to process he script name.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Via email from Theepan :-)
Mick appeared on the Irish version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and towards the end of the programme had already won $500,000.
"You've done very well so far," said the show's presenter, "but for $1 million you've only got one lifeline left - phone a friend. Everything is riding on this question......will you go for it?"
"Sure," said Mick. "I'll have a go!"
"OK. The question is: which of the following birds does NOT build it's own nest?
(a) Robin, (b) Sparrow, (c) cuckoo, or (d) thrush."
"I haven't got a clue," said Mick, "so I'll use my last lifeline and phone my friend Paddy back home in Ballygoon." Mick called up his mate, told him the circumstances and repeated the question to him.
"Begorah, Mick!" cried Paddy. "Dat's simple......it's a cuckoo."
"Are you sure, Paddy?" asked Mick.
"Of course I'm sure."
Mick hung up the phone and told the TV presenter, "I'll go with cuckoo as my answer."
"Is that your final answer?" asked the host.
"Dat it is, Sir."
There was a long, long pause, then the presenter screamed, "Cuckoo is the correct answer! Mick, you've won $1 million!"
The next night, Mick invited Paddy to their local pub to buy him a drink.
"Tell me, Paddy? How in God's name did you know it was the cuckoo that doesn't build it's own nest? I mean you know stuff-all about birds."
"For heaven sake!" laughed Paddy. "Everybody knows a cuckoo lives in a clock!"
August 10, 2003
Blog Roundup
Just a quick reminder that this now appears on the review site.
Quiz of the Week(end)
Why couldn't I get something more useful, like Xray vision?
You Have the Power of Teleportation!
What's Your Magic Power?
brought to you by Quizilla
Valentines Day
This joke from Jivha.
A woman awoke excitedly on Valentine's Day and announced enthusiastically to her husband, "I Just dreamt that you gave me a diamond necklace for Valentine's Day! what do you think it means?"
With love in his voice, the man kissed her and said, "You'll know tonight."
That evening the man came home with a small package and handed it to his wife. With anxious anticipation, the woman quickly opened the package to find this.
August 09, 2003
Friday Five
1. What's the last place you traveled to, outside your own home state/country?
Interstate would be Melbourne (Victoria) for the AUUG (Australian Unix Users Group) conference last year. Or maybe that trip to Canberra in November... International would be a long time ago, WWDC in San Jose 2000?
2. What's the most bizarre/unusual thing that's ever happened to you while traveling?
Getting lost in San Jose and being unable to find the tram back to my hotel because nobody knew what a tram was (I should have asked for the trolley). Or maybe in Italy, trying to explain to a chemist that I needed flu medication for my wife. I can't speak Italian, he couldn't speak English and everything was in drawers (not on display). I tried to pantomime having a flu. He held up his hand for me to stop and went outside presumably to get someone who could speak English. Instead he came back with his neighbours so they could enjoy the free entertainment. At the end they offered me money....
3. If you could take off to anywhere, money and time being no object, where would you go?
I would love to explore any one of Canada, Scotland or New Zealand. Probably Canada because I have visited the other two previously.
4. Do you prefer traveling by plane, train or car?
Actually coach (bus). You get to see a fair bit (height above road), not too busy and you don't have to put up with the traffic. The downside to a tour is that it is under pressure to get things over and done with.
5. What's the next place on your list to visit?
Canada, I hope.
Daffinitions
From Theepan, via email:
Smile - A curve that can set a lot of things straight.
Rumor - News that travels faster than the speed of sound.
Dictionary - The only place where divorce comes before marriage.
College - A place where some pursue learning and others learn pursuing.
Ecstasy - A feeling when you feel you are going to feel a feeling you have never felt before.
Office - A place where you can relax after your strenuous homelife.
Yawn - The only time some married men ever get to open their mouth.
Committee - Individuals who can do nothing individually and sit to decide that nothing can be done together.
Classic - A book which people praise, but do not read.
Marriage - It's an agreement in which a man loses his bachelor degree and woman gains her master degree.
Worry - Interest paid on trouble before it falls due.
Experience - The name men give to their mistakes.
Tears - The hydraulic force by which masculine power is defeated by feminine power.
Atom Bomb - An invention to end all inventions.
Philosopher - A fool who torments himself during life, to be spoken of when dead.
Diplomat - A person who tells you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
Optimist - A person who starts taking a bath if he accidentally falls into a river.
Pessimist - A person who says that O is the last letter in ZERO, instead of the first letter in word OPPORTUNITY.
Miser - A person who lives poor so that he can die rich.
Father - A banker provided by nature.
Criminal - A guy no different from the rest...except that he got caught.
Boss - Someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early.
Politician - One who shakes your hand before elections and your confidence after.
Doctor - A person who kills your ills by pills, and kills you with his bills
Anachronism personified!
A long time ago (measured in blogtime), Jivha had a
There were two recent triggers that reminded me of Jivha's plight. The first was an article in the SMH which said in part:
Tight neckties 'could harm the eyes'
Power-dressing businessmen could be increasing their risk of eye disease by wearing their tie too tight, research claims. A study, published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, suggested that a tight tie constricted the jugular vein of the neck, which raised pressure in the veins and, in turn, increased pressure within the eyeball.
The second trigger was a story in the same paper today where a bus driver in Sweden also ran afoul of the formal dress code (formal dress for bus drivers?):
Bus driver Mats Lundgren, in the northern town of Umea, asked for permission to drive his vehicle in shorts as temperatures reached 25 degrees, but his request was turned down by his company. However, he was adamant he wanted to keep his legs cool in the inordinate temperatures for northern Sweden.
His solution:
So Jivha, I have two suggestions. Start with a letter from an opthalmologist that says ties are bad for your eyes because they raise blood pressure (and could cause blindness). If that fails, copy the bus driver because dress codes (at least here) don't seem to apply to women.
One contract position I applied for, involved a drop everything customer interview (I had been doing maintenance on servers so I was wearing jeans, t-shirt and a static strap). At the end of the interview a quizzical manager asked: "Do you wear a tie". My immediate response: "Oh yes, but that would be $5/hour more".
Actually, I might keep in mind that I could wear a kilt like Paul Jané if they try and push the tie thing on me again....
Serial Programmers
There is a quiz over here about detecting the difference between a programmer and a serial killer. Link from Utterly Boring.
There is also an interesting one described here but the image is missing. Read the instructions and then checkout the image here. My wife can do it with no problem but I stuff it up everytime I start a new line.
August 08, 2003
Woo Hoo!
Let the fun begin! Open the champagne! All bets are off!
According to The Register IBM is getting into the spirit of things and SCO is shooting themselves in the foot:
SCO still offers 'infringing' Linux source code
SCO has told the public that its version of Linux is no longer for sale due to its legal pursuit of IBM and Linux users. That much is true. In fact, the code does not cost a penny with SCO providing a rather swift download site for SCO Linux.
Close to thirty Reg readers have sent along the following link that leads directly to a FTP download of the Linux kernel, at the time of this report. It's part of SCO's OpenLinux 3.1.1.
The funny thing about this source code, which does appear to be on a SCO server, is it's use of the 2.4 Linux kernel. That's the very kernel that has SCO's knickers in a twist.
SCO has claimed that IBM illegally threw Unix code into versions of Linux with the 2.4 kernel and above, and launched a $3 billion lawsuit to prove its point. IBM has fired back against SCO today with its own lawsuit, claiming that SCO cannot make claims to Linux code, since it sold its own version of Linux under the GPL. Big Blue's lawyers might be pleased to find SCO is still in the Linux distribution business to this day.
Without doubt, the link to SCO's code will disappear shortly after this article posts, but we would say the damage has already been done.
Well Mr IBM, if you need it - I downloaded it. For the first time since I was an undergraduate I am backing Big Blue. Let's face it, if SCO win, it implies the end of the software industry as we know it.
[For latecomers to this stoush, the issue at stake is that SCO is claiming that if you wrote software for Unix then it belongs to them because they own Unix (this is of course the simplified version because IANAL).]
Blog Rules
Oy! There's a few rules when you participate in a blog and in general, they will be true for all blogs.
First: Be considerate. It's OK to be funny but it's not OK to be offensive. You can poke fun at me, my articles, guest articles, other comments. If you can do so in a clever way, then all the better.
Second: If you know things about the author outside of the blog, keep it to yourself. Some of you may know the author in a professional capacity or through email correspondance. It is not appropriate to post such details in comments.
I am sorry to have to raise these matters but sometimes I may post something as a way of letting of steam (e.g. The Staff Motivation entries). That is fine as long as it is relatively anonymous. If you go posting my employers name in a comment, that could be a dismissable offence because instead of a generic winge about employers in general it would be interpreted as a complaint about that particular employer.
OK. Here's what happens. First time you are rude/offensive/inappropriate/etc then I edit or delete your comment. Second time I block your IP address. Sorry but I came close to loosing my job today because of a comment so I need to impose a little order on things.
To make up for this serious entry, there is a second joke for the day over on the humour blog :-)
Quick Translation
International readers have been asking exactly what this entry in Column 8 means:
The Richmond-bound train had just pulled into Mulgrave when Val Roberts, of Kurmond, heard the PA: "We'll be delayed about four minutes while the train from Richmond crosses over. If you want a fag, hop out now."
Please relax, the word 'fag' in Australia refers to cigarette. The driver, guard or station assistant was letting people know that they could alight from the train for a smoko (it is illegal to smoke on trains). The invitation did not involve persons with alternate sexual preferences .... (that would be the English meaning of the word).
Why $2 is not to be Sniffed At
[Ed: This is from Spike dateline 8th August, I can't resist this and I don't think I can add anything to make it funnier...]
A strike by members of the Electrical Trades Union was ended yesterday after a breakthrough in negotiations with Sydney Water. One of the bones of contention was its wish to axe the $1.98 daily pungent odours allowance from the award. Sewerage workers are paid $2 extra a day to smell your smells - and Sydney Water wanted to take it off them. Unfair! That two bucks wouldn't even buy a stick of deodorant. Workers at the Industrial Relations Court yesterday told one reporter that managers had claimed upgraded facilities had ceased to stink. That was until managers visited a plant for a meeting and were forced by the odour to change venues.
How (little) women think?
This is the last in a series of images sent to me by a friend from overseas. Thank you Jivha.
Well Whadya Know?
What do you know about Australia? Most people don't know much and that includes Australians (and me). Let's start out to correct some common misunderstandings and if you feel I have missed something or you really want to know, just bung it in an email (address is over on the right somewhere) or a comment.
OK. When I went to school (back in the DBM - days before metric), every school kid learned two things about Australia. Firstly it is the smallest continent. Secondly it is the largest island. Really useful information. Some of us also learned that you have to remember Tasmania which is another island that isn't attached to the rest of Australia (although for some reason it still has Interstate Highways). I learned that because one of my teachers had been born in Tasmania and he had a ruler which was applied to the knuckles of those who forgot to add it to the map.
What did that really mean? Well in practical terms in means Australia is really, really, big. I mean hugh. I mean like colossal. Think of the USA. Throw away the islands and Alaska. What is left is about the same size as Australia. So what? Well the problem is that only about 10% of Australia is habitable because of a shortage of water. This means that you have lots of land but a small population (18 million or thereabouts). Most of the population live within about 100kms of the coast and most of them on the East Coast (Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria).
Before the 2000 Olympics (held in Sydney), there was an advice site on the web where people planning to come to Australia for the Games could ask questions. One gent from Germany worked out that the airfares were a lot cheaper to Perth (on the West Coast) than to Sydney (on the East Coast) and thinking Euro-style, he asked if it would be possible to catch a plane to Perth and then follow the railway tracks to Sydney (assuming that such a railway existed). Well the railway exists all right but there are a few logistical problems. In the end the advice people decided to answer in the negative. They explained that technically you could do what he was proposing but he would have to carry an enourmous amount of water and he should have started some time ago (like 1997) unless he intended to use some camels to cross the desert.
Camels? Yes. They were introduced to Australia as part of building the overland telegraph lines and many were released into the wild. Racing camels are bred and exported to Arab nations from Darwin (Northern Territory).
The other story you often hear with tourists in Sydney is about their ambitious plans. Having arrived on say Wednesday, they inquire about a tour to Ayres Rock (now called some aboriginal name that I can't remember) for the following day. They tend to be quite put out when the travel agent advises them that it is not possible (it takes at least a day to fly there and a day back). Same response from taxi drivers being asked to take them to the Great Barrier Reef (in Queensland).
When in Europe, I found it useful to get locals there to mentally think about the distance from Rome to Edinburgh. This is the approximately the same distance (as the crow flies) as Melbourne (Victoria) to Brisbane (Queensland). You can drive it in two days (obeying the speed limits) but you might not want to try!
On the way through I have mentioned some of the states. Australia is a federated commonwealth which contains 6 states and 2 territories (one of which thinks it is a state) and some other bits (islands) which we protect but don't have representation. The states are New South Wales (capital is Sydney), Victoria (Melbourne), South Australia (Adelaide), Western Australia (Perth), Queensland (Brisbane) and Tasmania (Hobart). The territories are the Northern Territory (Darwin) and the ACT (Canberra). The ACT is a bit of land around Canberra (the capital of Australia) which was deliberately built in the middle of nowhere. The idea of a territory around it was to prevent the host state (New South Wales) from imposing any control over the federal government.
Hope you enjoyed that. I will try and find some more relative distances (e.g. Perth to Sydney)...
August 07, 2003
G'Day
So what is it with the name of this blog? Well?
Different countries have different ways of greeting people. In Australia, one of the most common greeting is G'Day (Good Day) but pronounced more like "Gid-aye". One of the ways this has been imortalised is in a Slim Dusty (famous Australian country music singer) song. The words are available from Lyrics Playground but I'll quote the main verse anyway:
G'day, G'day, how yer goin'?
Whadya know? Well, strike a light!
G'day, G'day, and how yer go-o-o-in'?
Just say g'day, g'day, g'day and you'll be right.
I haven't (yet) found a site where your can hear just the music but there is a site that has some homemade movies on it and about halfway down the page is this one which is set to the tune. Also the ecard from Slims Birthday (July) has links to a number of online stores that carry his music.
What about the rest of the title/subtitle? Well the next part 'Owyagowin Orrite?' often accompanies G'day to make the phrase the equivalent of the English 'How do you do'. Literally it means 'How are you going, (I hope you are) alright?'. Hence the response is 'Carn complain!' - literally 'I can't complain' implying that you are well.
Of course to do this properly, I should refer to a source instead of relying on you to trust my opinion. This is a quote from John O'Grady (Aussie Etiket):
Introductions
Englishmen and Americans are very strong in etiquette when being introduced to you. They have a reputation for politeness, good manners and social grace.
They work to a conventional formula - a system. And it should be stated, here and now, for their information, that their customs are known and understood in Australia. And also, strange as it may seem, often practised by Australians.
We are not famous for politeness, good manners and social grace, but we are capable of these things.
For example, when being introduced to an Englishman, and he hits us with a question - 'How do you do?' - we don't reply with another one, 'How do I do what, mate?' That would wreck his system.
(Englishmen have some wierd conventions or systems. When they don't know you, have not been introduced to you, but want to ask you something, they say 'I say.' And then they shut up and say nothing. If you answer, 'Yes. mate. what do you say?' they become nonplussed and confused.)
Americans generally repeat your name when you are introduced to them. But they also ask a question. They say 'How do you do Mr McGillicuddy?' This is a rude and anatomical enquiry, and if we answered it we would demonstrate that we are ignorant of their formula. Which we are not. We know that they like to remember people's names, so they make sure they hear them twice - once on being introduced and once when they are their biological question.
There exists, however, a native-Australia etiket for introductions, which is honest, genuine, sincere, forthright and informal, and which you Poms and Yanks should know about. A few lines of dialogue will clue you up:
G'day Smithy. Like you to meet a new mate o' mine. He's a Pom.
Well, that probably wasn't his fault. Howyergoin; mate, orright?'
The Pom is silent.
Don't talk much, does he? What'd you say yer name was?
Charles Tebbutt
Charles? You here that Mick? Bloody Charles. Orright, we got it. What'd you like a drop of, Chick?
A few more lines of dialogue:
Hey Cec, come over 'ere and meet a mate o' mine, name of Ed Miller. Ed - this is Cec.
Pleased to meet you.
How do you do, Cec?
Ed's from America.
Yeah? What's a bloody Septic Tank doin' out here? never mind - what're you drinking', Dusty?
And again:
Joey, meat Jean. Jean - this is Joey.
She extends her hand. She says, How do you do?
Doin' all right, love, long as I got your hand to hand onto. Gees, mate, where did you dig her up?
Met her at a party last week.
Wish I'd been there. I'da got in first.
Well, let her hand go, will you? It's mine.
Got the picture? Honest, genuine, sincere, forthright and informal.
In case you were wondering about the 'Septic Tank' it is a big tank in the back yard used when there is no sewage service available (like where I grew up). It is also rhyming slang for 'Yank' (Yankee Doodle) or American.
More Changes
Thanks to young Pete (who for some reason doesn't appear on the Blog Friends list - I could have sworn I fixed that) and also some hints from ScriptyGoddess I think I have fixed all of the issues raised by readers (especially Mr. Jivha).
The funny bar at the top appears to be an artifact from the template conversion. It doesn't always appear but next time it does, let me know and I will put it in as a bug. Normally under TypePad you construct a template with drag and drop, click and twiddle. As a Pro user you can then 'Convert' the template (which now becomes an [Advanced] template) and then edit the HTML. There doesn't appear to be a way to reverse this. So I fiddle the normal template and then convert and make my changes. If I need to change, I repeat the whole sequence. What appear to happen was that after the conversion, the line appears in some browsers, some of the time ....
Next the lines. There should only be a single line under the date. The comment box no longer appears as a line (because the box is inside the comment loop and if there are no comments the loop doesn't happen). The trackback box also no longer appears as a line because of a little bit of javascript adopted from ScriptyGoddess (article linked above).
Finally the background colours have been lightened a touch to make things a little easier to read. I realise that I should have made the white colour in the humour images transparent before posting them because the white on pale yello looks a bit strange. Oh well, next time.
Pete also asked about including more space in the comment boxes. This was another browser dependant thing. Some of the browsers I used were OK and some were not. Pete kindly suggested using to get around it but I found an easier method of adding padding to the style tag. I would still prefer to move the style code into the style sheet but never mind, at least it works.
If anyone wants the code, just let me know and I'll email it (or post it, if there are many requests).
How (little) women think?
This is the next in a series of images sent to me by a friend from overseas. Thank you Jivha.
Sleeping Parrot
Adapted from the original script found here.
Scene: A website production office staffed by peons.
Reader: Hello, I wish to register a complaint . . . Hello? Miss?
Worker: Hi, I'm Black! What do you mean, miss?
Reader: Oh, I'm sorry, I'm fat. I wish to make a complaint.
Worker: Sorry, we're closing for lunch.
Reader: Never mind that my lad, I wish to complain about this parrot what I subscribed to.
Worker: Oh yes, the Sleeping Parrot. What's wrong with it?
Reader: I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it.
Worker: No, no it's resting, look!
Reader: Look my lad, I know a dead parrot when I see one and I'm looking at one right now.
Worker: No, no sir, it's not dead. It's resting.
Reader: Resting?
Worker: Yeah, remarkable bird the Sleeping Parrot, lovely articles, innit?
Reader: The articles don't enter into it -- it's stone dead.
Worker: No, no -- it's just resting.
Reader: All right then, if it's resting I'll wake it up. (hits reload several times) Hello Polly! I've got a nice cookie for you when you wake up, Polly Parrot!
Worker: (jogging screen) There it moved.
Reader: No he didn't. That was you pushing the screen.
Worker: I did not.
Reader: Yes, you did. Points to date of last real posting in July. Now that's what I call a dead parrot.
Worker: No, no it's stunned.
Reader: Look my lad, I've had just about enough of this. That parrot is definitely deceased. And when I subscribed, you assured me that its lack of movement was due to it being tired and shagged out after a long squawk. You promised two topics every week and one of them was going to be funny.
Worker: It's probably pining for a better browser.
Reader: Pining for a better browser, what kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat on its back the moment I loaded the page?
Worker: The Sleeping Parrot prefers kipping on its back. Beautiful bird, lovely articles.
Reader: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot, and I discovered that the only reason that it had any content in the first place was that it had been nailed there.
Worker: Well of course it was nailed there. Otherwise it would muscle up to those bars and voom.
Reader: Look matey (picks up parrot) this parrot wouldn't voom if I put four thousand volts through it. It's bleeding demised.
Worker: It's not, it's pining.
Reader: It's not pining, it's passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot.
Worker: Well, I'd better replace it then.
Reader: What with?
August 06, 2003
Hacking the comments
I am sure some other typepad user is going to want to know how I fiddled the comments and the trackbacks. If I am really lucky, someone will tell me a better way to do it :-) (and how to get smilies working).
First, make sure you have your template EXACTLY how you like it (because changing things afterwards is hard). Save your template with some memorable name (I will call mine BOB).
Next do the convert operation on your templates (only available to PRO users but you need to be a PRO user to edit the html anyway). Select 'Edit Template Sets' and find your template, it should be called something like 'BOB [Advanced]'. Click on the edit link.
Choose the 'Main Index Template' and scroll down until you find the line that looks like:
| <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#trackback">TrackBack (<$MTEntryTrackbackCount$>)</a>
We are going to replace every line AFTER this one and BEFORE the line that reads:
</MTEntries>
Make sure you keep the two lines I just referred to in the template but delete everything between them (mainly blank lines and paragraph markers and the end of the MTPing tags).
Now cut and paste the following code (sorry for the lack of indentation):
<blockquote>
<div style="background-color: #FFCC33; font-size: x-small; border-top:
1 px solid #993333; border-right: 1px solid #993333; border-left:
1px solid #993333; border-bottom: 1px solid #993333;">
<MTPings lastn="5">
"<$MTPingBlogName$>" linked with
<a href="<$MTPingURL$>"><$MTPingTitle$>
<br /></a>
</MTPings>
</div>
</blockquote>
</MTEntryIfAllowPings>
</p>
<MTEntryIfAllowComments>
<MTComments>
<blockquote>
<div style="background-color: #FFCC33; font-size: x-small; border-top:
1px solid #993333; border-right: 1px solid #993333; border-left:
1px solid #993333; border-bottom: 1px solid #993333;">
<$MTCommentBody apply_macros="1" $>
Posted by: <$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect="1"
show_email="0"$> on <$MTCommentDate$>
</div>
</blockquote>
</MTComments>
</MTEntryIfAllowComments>
You will want to fix the colours (all those #FFCC33 and #993333 bits) unless you happen to be using a desert theme like I am. In this case the #FFCC33 is the background (yellow sort of colour) and the #993333 is the border (red-brown). Given that the two <div style> tags are the same, I tried to fiddle the css template but I don't know enough (anything) about css so I gave up. If you do decide to change the main colour scheme later, I suggest you keep these lines somewhere, delete the advanced template, make the changes to the standard template and start again from the top of this article.
Oh yes, to actually see this working you will need to go to your blog configuration and select the 'BOB [Advanced]' template set (otherwise it will look like nothing changed).
Please feel free to improve my code or tell me how to do it properly with the stylesheets!
P.S. If you want the comments all in one box, instead of a box for each comment (like the trackback entries), then move the div tags outside the blockquotes.
P.P.S. I can't work out how to code the 'if (MTComments > 0)' that I used to use because that works for php but not in html. Maybe a Javascript sort of thingy.....
How (little) women think?
This is the next in a series of images sent to me by a friend from overseas. Thank you Jivha.
August 05, 2003
How (little) women think?
This is the next in a series of images sent to me by a friend from overseas. Thank you Jivha.
Free Trade
According to the BBC:
Singapore and Chile have become the first Asian and first South American nations to gain free trade relationships with the US.
The US Senate's backing for the two free-trade deals follows the approval of the bills in the House of Representatives last week.
Such agreements free trade in most goods and services, sets up a conflict resolution mechanism and provides for the protection of intellectual property.
Canada, Mexico, Jordan and Israel already have similar deals with the US.
[Sarcasm ON]
Obviously this action is to reward these nations for their loyalty and support during the Afghanistan and Iraqi conflicts. It was widely documented how the Chilean special forces were in on the ground in Afghanistan before the war seeking out special targets. Equally the courage and determination of the Singaporean Navy and Airforce during Iraqi cannot be questioned. Without any argument both countries put the lives of their young men (and women) on the line to support the US unlike those lily-livered nations like the UK and Australia who will see hell freeze over before they ever get within spitting distance of a free trade agreement.
[Sarcasm OFF]
Thanks Uncle Sam for rewarding our loyalty. We have been sweating for a free trade agreement ever since you introduced ILLEGAL tarriffs (under WTO guidelines) to prevent us from selling lamb to the USA. I guess all those kind words when we stuck by you in the UN were just so much hot air ....
August 04, 2003
Heinlein
On the weekend, I stumbled (accidently) over a Heinlein blog. It was good to find that there are other people out there who felt that Star Ship Troopers was an abomination. Good movie or bad movie is not the complaint, the fact that the main thrust of the book was completely ignored is what matters. The theme in the book is about the balance between rights and responsibilities not about bonking your friend and fighting bugs. In fact the bonking is definitely not in the book, the bugs are but that is not the focus of the book.
Anyway, of far more importance is the story that The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is going to become a movie. This has to be my favourite Heinlein novel of all time (my copy is falling apart from re-reading).
[Ed: After posting this item, I discovered that Jeff had also found the same site. I know I wasn't browsing Jeff's site when I found the reference so maybe it is someone else we both read?]
How (little) women think?
This is the next in a series of images sent to me by a friend from overseas. Thank you Jivha.
SWOT
Well I think I have been paid the "Ultimate Compliment"(tm) by Mr Jivha (The Tongue). Over in this article he writes about a number of blogs but he singles out BotB for a full SWOT analysis. This brings back memories of trying to teach students how to do this .... but I can't bring myself to mark a SWOT analysis of myself :-)
However there are a few observations I would like to make in my own defense ;-). Firstly, Jivha missed the biggest weakness of all - the speling and grammar. I am, unfortunately, a native Australian speaker and therefore I have no idea what a grammer is (sort of pumpkin?) or what to do with it. I have terrible spelling because (a) I forget to use the spell checker and (b) I don't touch type properly (I use my thumbs and two fingers - left index, right middle because I have no nerves in the right index). Outside of overlooking this major fault, I think Jivha did an excellent job ...
Now to use the material. If somthing is a strength, then it should be maintained and encouraged:
STRENGTHS
1. Writes very cogently when he’s serious and does not hedge or hem-haw
2. Is very un-biased in his thinking and does not let race/caste/religion affect him
3. Is very helpful to newbie bloggers and tech semi-literates like me by guiding attention to the former and helping out the latter
4. Gives credit where it's due - he even gives credits to fwds that he posts!
5. Has a good command over the tech aspects of blogging(he's been a sysadmin for more than 20-25 years) so less chances of some tech error screwing up his site
Well what can I say after that :blush. I try to mix the serious and the light hearted because we all need some of each. I find that the more depressing work becomes, the more jokes I post. I work hard at #2 but sometimes catch myself slipping. If any of you spot me pontificating, stop me. #3 and #4 are, I think, side effects of haven been a teacher. #5 is an accident of history.
Next we have to deal with the weaknesses. These are the most immediate things that the subject of the analysis can deal with to improve their position (that is one thing that distinguishes a weakness from a threat).
WEAKNESSES
1. Is an avowed Mac-phile and an avid Microsoft (he calls it Microslosh!) basher. That might prevent him from forming an un-biased opinion about MS sometimes
2. Beer. From his own comments he’s got a noticeable beer belly ;-)
3. Is too gentle and soft-spoken in his posts (read: does not rant), which in today’s world is a lost quality when most bloggers are looking to read extreme, abrasive, flaming posts
Hmmm. I will own up to #1 but put it in a larger context. I usually sympathise for the underdog. When I was an undergraduate (a long time ago) I was anti-IBM because of the way they handled IP and engineers (e.g. Codd - the father of the relational database). Now I am anti-Microslosh because of the way they abuse their monopolistic power. It is worth noting that I am very concerned that the SCO lawsuite could leave Sun in charge of UNIX and they would abuse a monopoly a lot more efficiently that Microslosh could. Anyway, I will try to be as fair to them as to any other target ;-). #2 is a weakness but I am working on it (with medical help - I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis which is inherited and makes it extremely difficult to burn off fat - i.e. to loose weight). I am about 20kg lighter than a few years ago (but still overweight). As for #3, I try not to rant too much because I find that a personal turnoff. Besides, maybe Jivha might have withdrawn that of he had seen this item. As well as the spelling/grammar problem, another weakness would probably be the diversity of posts which mean that readers may not find a lot to interest them individually (i.e. they like one item on the page but the rest are not so good). I have wondered about splitting the blog and putting all the funnies in one section.
OK. Here's where we make money. Let's face it, you pay someone (well not in this case) to do a SWOT analysis because you want to make a killing...
OPPORTUNITIES
1. Has a good deal of knowledge on PHP/Perl/MT which he could share by posting tips/tricks about them more often
2. Should blog more often about life/things “down-under� as people like me are always curious to learn more about cultures/customs in different countries
#1 is an excellent idea. I always sort of feel that someone else probably has a better way to do it but at least if I start the ball rolling it might help someone else. Expect more hint/tips in the future. #2 is really interesting - it is sort of like mental telepathy. When I wrote the item in response to Glenn I was thinking that I should post more "local" stories. Anyway, there are a few items in the works including a possible blog change.
Now we get to the big problems. These are things that are oustide of direct control but we may be able to build in some allowance for them.
THREATS
1. Since he hosts his own site through his iMac, the chances of something going wrong go up as compared to a commercially hosted site
2. Microsoft buying up Apple – which would mean, gasp, the unthinkable ;-)
3. His ISP has been pretty regular…with outages in the recent past.
#1 - absolutely. I am currently have a DNS caching problem (which could again be the ISP like last time). This links in with #3 and is one of the reasons for considering a possible blog change. #2 is unlikely. As a shareholder (1 share) I would certainly be voting against a possible takeover. Besides, from memory (teaching share trading to TAFE students), there are some pretty effective poison pills which would come into play (as well as DoJ interference).
Wow. That was really useful. Thanks Jivha....
August 03, 2003
Quiz of the Week(end)
The quiz says I am apathetic but I don't care!
You represent... apathy.
You don't really show any emotion. You can be
considered cruel and cold, but you just don't
really care about anything. This is just the
way you are... you're quite a challenge to get
close to, and others may perceive you as
boring.
What feeling do you represent?
brought to you by Quizilla
How (little) women think?
This is the next in a series of images sent to me by a friend from overseas. Thank you Jivha.
August 02, 2003
Friday Five (Late)
I always wondered what this Friday Five business was and then stumbled over a link at Anvita's blog. It turns out there is a real source to these questions at Friday Five. Oh well, given there was no Sleeping Parrot this week, here goes (even if it is Saturday):
1. What time do you wake up on weekday mornings?
Varies depending on when I got to bed. If no late night blogging then around 6:00 AM otherwise 7:30 AM.
2. Do you sleep in on the weekends? How late?
I wish! I have a two three year old and a five year old. If I sleep in, the house would be completely destroyed.
3. Aside from waking up, what is the first thing you do in the morning?
Wake the kids up or tell them off (because they have already been rioting).
4. How long does it take to get ready for your day?
About 20 minutes on a good day (like I was prepared the night before).
5. When possible, what is your favorite place to go for breakfast?
Cup of coffee and a muffin with the boyz in the Cafeteria at work. Coffee is great and the muffin are usually good (but don't ask for a toasted scone - they burn them!)
SCO Spam
Over at Jim O'Halloran's Weblog there is a great spoof on the SCO letter which was sent to leading companies that happen to use Linux.
In related news, Sun is claiming indemnity from prosecution but there is still some doubt about whether this applies only to Solaris or extended to the Sun badged Linux distro as well.
So far, noone has given in and offered to buy them out (apart from Microslosh's generous "investment"). Checkout this cartoon for details.
How (little) women think?
This is the next in a series of images sent to me by a friend from overseas. Thank you Jivha.
August 01, 2003
Clueless
Over at the SMH they have a story about Amrozi (the alleged mastermind behind the Bali bombings which killed about equal numbers of Muslims and non-Muslim). Could someone please let him know about the work of this German scholar. Maybe Amrozi would be less defiant and more remorseful if he realised that he was only going to get "white raisins and juicy fruits" instead of "houris with swelling breasts". Maybe then a martyrs death might lose some of the attraction :angry.
Performance Tests
I thought that this topic had already been covered but now I can't find the entry. Must be old age where your memory becomes like ... like ... like ... you know one of those things for holding spaghetti.
Anyway, when Apple released the G5, they published some benchmarks (I am sure I had them here somewhere). Within minutes the phrase 'Liar! Liar! Pants on Fire!' was circulating the Wintel world. Accusations were flying thick and Apple put out an "explanation" with more details. Still the accusations were raised until somebody asked Intel directly and then everything died away.
Now a few of them are sneaking back over the horizon. Thanks to AtAT the rader has spotted them and AtAT has provided a fantastic link to debunk the myths (poor things will have to sleep on the floor now).
To get your interest going, let me quote a small section from the end of the article:
This whole brouhaha over the Veritest benchmarking stinks mightily. I smell a rat... in fact I smell a lot of rats. I smell the stink of hypocrisy from some corners but in the end all is overpowerd by The Smell of Fear.
Why? Because deep down underneath the Wintel Hegemony's longstanding arrogance dwells the gnawing fear that eventually the public might wake up and realize that the Wintel Hegemony has built everything on stolen, copied and second rate technology. They have kept this under control with paid stooges in the media, well placed FUD plants to divert the public away from the sleight of hand tricks that have been played on them. They have spent a lot of PR time loudly proclaiming "innovations" that they conveniently forget to mention are almost invariably something they copied from Apple, often years later and usually copied badly.
On a more serious front, the article also addresses the Intel attitute to AMD and why there are so many problems with the Intel 64 bit solution. Go read. Enjoy yourself (even if you hate Macs you will like the AMD bits).
How (little) women think?
This is the first in a series of images sent to me by a friend from overseas. Thank you Jivha.
Crumbling Foundation
Thanks to a reference at All AgitProp, I came across this story at One Hand Clapping (which also has other interesting stories like the question of female souls).
Back to the point. The article in question explains why the Quran (Koran?) is so important to Muslims (it is the literal word of God who apparently speaks Arabic). This in turn explains why a number of Muslims are getting upset about claims by a German scholar who suggests that it would initially have been written in Aramaic because Arabic was not a written language at the time of the prophet. The implication is hugh because it brings with it the whole concept of translation and comparitive versions. One of the keys of Muslim theology is that the Quran is exactly no more and no less what was dictated by God.
The main topical interest is the suggestion that the phrases relied on by terrorists about the awards in heaven may have mistaken food for houri. A reward of grapes and dates in the afterlife may be insufficient to encourage young male suicide bombers ....
Hmmm. I am not able to comment authoritatively on the matter but I have a friend who is an Aramaic scholar (and Catholic priest) and I will ask for a professional opinion ....
In the meantime, check out both links above and read some of the comments. Most of them (so far) are thoughtful like this one from "Lexington Green":
Watch this issue. It is monumental. It is going to lead to one of the biggest cultural earthquakes in world history. Let's hope we don't all get buried in the rubble.